Sunday Geekersation: Grant Morrison switches superheroes

Brian Truitt | USA TODAY

Grant Morrison may not hang upside down to get in the mood to write Batman, but he has been known to immerse himself in the tunes of Mindless Self Indulgence.

For seven years, the Scottish comic-book icon has written the Dark Knight and his alter ego, Bruce Wayne, given life and then death to his son, Damian, and thrown any and all drama at the superhero first in DC Comics' Batman series in 2006, followed by Batman and Robin and Batman Incorporated.

Yet, all great things come to an end, and Morrison says goodbye with his final issue, Batman Incorporated No. 13 (out Wednesday), which features Chris Burnham illustrating the confrontation between Batman and former flame Talia al Ghul — Damian's mother and head of the evil Leviathan organization — that Morrison has been building toward for years.

Post-Batman, he's sticking with the superheroes: Morrison is currently working on the mythology-tinged Wonder Woman: Earth One graphic novel with artist Yanick Paquette featuring Diana, the Amazon warrior princess, and her mother, Queen Hippolyta. Also upcoming: Morrison's long-gestating Multiversity, which takes familiar DC characters like Batman, Superman, Blue Beetle and The Question and tweaks them for eight issues of parallel-reality adventure.

Morrison talks with USA TODAY about his Dark Knight finale, what he has in store for Wonder Woman — hint: she's going to need a good lawyer — and how he really feels about the Man of Steel movie.

Q: What can we expect from this final chapter of yours?

A. Batman vs. Talia. Basically, that's what it comes right down to. There's a lot of other stuff happening, but it's also Batman as seen through the eyes of Commissioner Gordon.

I noticed in my first issue of Batman way back with (artist) Andy Kubert, the first panel is seen through Commissioner Gordon's glasses. I don't know why I started it that way but I think that needs a payoff. I decided it would be really good to do the last issue as how does Gordon really see Batman and Bruce Wayne and does he know.

Q: There have been so many different versions of Batman in media that have explored that relationship. In your mind, does Gordon have a clue Bruce is really Batman?

A. That's what this is about. I don't want to say what my conclusion is, but that's a big part of what this story deals with.

Q: Is it truly a grand finale you're going out with?

A. Not even that. I certainly couldn't do what Geoff (Johns) did with that amazing Green Lantern issue where he basically summed up the entire story of Green Lantern and Hal Jordan. His was like the last chapter of The Lord of the Rings and was amazingly done. Also, he had a lot more pages — we do it in 24 pages, because I could only get four extra.

My thing about this was to do all of these in 20-page chunks and also I don't want to do a big long one at the end. It was all about condensing certain elements of Batman down into new forms.

With the way comics have been done in cinema and comics have been done in these panel grids, basically when Chris and I talked about it, we said, "Let's do comics as opera." All through this book of Batman Incorporated, there's been lots of spotlights and stagey setups, and suddenly by the time you get to the last issue you realize what you've been looking at is Batman the Opera.

It's actually just the finale story but hopefully says a couple of new things about Batman and a couple of things you've never thought before.

Q: Can you sum up your time with Batman in one word?

A. Batman rocks.

Q: Well, that's two, but we'll give it to you just for telling the truth.

A. (Laughs) It's got Batman in it, doesn't it?

Q: You've done many epic runs in your career, from Justice League of America to The Invisibles to New X-Men, but will this Bat-journey of yours be near the top for fans down the line?

A. I don't know what people will think — that's for them and posterity to decide. But for me, I've finally gotten to the end. I was getting really frightened when I was doing the last issue. I thought, "This is not going to work." And then when I got it to work, I felt good that I was finally done. This is accomplished.

Certainly for me, it's been a really exciting project. I read all of them before I did the last one. There's a lot of stuff in there that people could spend a lot of time looking at. In the way that the Superman stuff I've done is emotional and physical, Batman has been intellectual. It's been about puzzles and weird storytelling tricks and doing stuff that doesn't normally get done, that even I don't normally do. Because of that weird intricate coursework puzzle nature of it all, a lot of people still haven't figured out all the stuff in there. It'll keep people talking for a long time.

Q: When you're writing Batman, is there something you do to get in a Caped Crusader mind-set?

A. It's really easy to get into the head of Batman because I've been doing it for a while. All I can say is that he makes me more depressed, so I'll be kinda glad to get past that. When you spend a lot of time thinking like Batman, the world can look quite dark.

I listen to music all the time, but for Batman it's usually heavy metal and techno because it seems to suit the action stuff.

Q: How about for other comics you've done?

A. All-Star Superman was like being a Buddhist for the entire period of writing that because I was thinking like Superman and reading all this hopeful, inspiring stuff. He's very different from Batman. Superman sort of elevates you when you're writing him and makes you think to a higher degree, and Batman makes you paranoid.

With Wonder Woman, I've been listening to tons and tons of Elizabethan music like Thomas Tallis and Palestrina. I've got this idea of the Amazons being in the Age of Elizabeth, which was led by a woman, and it was a very psychedelic period with Shakespeare and all that sort of stuff. So there's a little of that influence on the culture of the Amazons.

I've been listening to that music to get that sense of a slightly alien culture but that's really highly developed and has different aesthetics than we do but is able to really express itself. Think of the language in Shakespeare at the time, which was really elaborate and elusive, and the music was the same.

Q: We've been hearing about your take on Wonder Woman for years. Now that you're finally getting into it, is she all that?

A. Oh yeah, it's getting more and more exciting. I've seen a lot of Yanick's stuff, he's done about 18 pages of work now, so I've really got a feel for how the character's going to look and the physicality of it.

It's been really enriching to write. It's not a boring one at all.

Q: What can you tease about her story and your take on this iconic heroine?

A. She's very different, and I'm really focusing a lot more on the mother and daughter story in it between Hippolyta and Diana. I want it to be that kind of book, a story about women. I grew up with my own mother and sister in the house, and it was watching that and the way women can tear each other apart and lift each other up at the same time. I wanted to do a little bit of my own experience with those characters.

Diana's a lot more defiant in it and she's not sent to man's world — she runs away to it so there's a very different dynamic between her and Hippolyta, and the entire thing basically takes place around a trial.

I always felt one of the fundamentals of Wonder Woman in at least the last two decades is that she always seems to be on trial, and I don't mean that in a story sense. Everyone's always saying, "Why does nobody buy Wonder Woman? Why isn't she any good?" (Laughs) it seems like she's always on trial, so I thought if I literalized that and made the story basically the Amazons bringing her back home after her first adventure away and putting her on trial, it'd be different from anything else you might see. The Amazons have their own ways of doing things.

It's kind of asking Wonder Woman to justify herself, which I feel has almost been what the character's had to do for a long time.

Q: Does she bring something out of you as a writer that we haven't seen before?

A. Definitely. The story structure is very different, the way it's written is a lot more poetic, but at the same time there's a ton of action.

What it's done for me is I've had to read the entire history of feminism, which I'm still working my way through. Reading that, you really do get angry. You get a little bit militant. It's brought out my politics again a little bit, which has been buried for a long time. It's getting me back into my alternative roots.

Q: Do you consider yourself a feminist at this point?

A. I wouldn't be any kind of "ist." I don't believe these T-shirt slogans adequately explain the complexities of human existence. (Laughs)

There's a lot of what you've got to agree with. It's undeniable. There's so much that has to be said and there's a lot that really gets you enraged, but as a man who doesn't feel that way, it's hard to identify with. That's always going to be a problem for men who don't recognize themselves in the description.

Q: We've had endless versions of Superman and Batman in media. On the other hand, we've had one Wonder Woman show in the 1970s and, more recently, a TV pilot that didn't get to series. Is the character just that tricky to pull off in an on-screen fashion?

A. People have just convinced themselves that that's true. I know Warner Bros. isn't particularly keen on launching movies with female leads, and most of the big studios aren't. It's just a thing in Hollywood — they have fears about this. They also believe the audience is composed mainly of 18- to 30-year-old men who don't want to know about women. (Laughs)

There are certain attitudes that have been around for a while and I think people just don't question them anymore, and things like Wonder Woman always fall prey to it. I think you could have easily made an amazing Wonder Woman film if you had Angelina Jolie in her prime doing it. I think it would have done well, but I don't know if there's a big-name actress who can do it now.

The executives just run these things over in their heads and say, "I don't know if it's worth putting money into this. It's not a surefire hit. The boys want to see Batman brooding." Believe me, that's what they think: "Boys don't want to see a bunch of Amazons running around."

I don't know, I guess they'll do a Justice League movie and then maybe a Wonder Woman movie.

Q: Along those lines, what did you think of the new cinematic take on Superman in Man of Steel?

A. I kinda liked it and kinda didn't, to be honest. I feel bad because I like (director) Zack Snyder and (writer) David Goyer, and (star) Henry Cavill was really good. But it felt like one of those ones where it's like, "Bring on the second movie now that you've done this," and I don't need to see that as someone who knows all I know about Superman. For me, it was a bit "seen it before," no matter how they tried to make it a little bit different. I'm more looking forward to the Dark Knight version of Superman, the next one, where hopefully it will have Lex Luthor and be some fantastic second act.

It's a credible Superman for now. But I'm not sure about the killing thing. I don't want to sound like some fuddy-duddy Silver Age apologist but I've noticed a lot recently of people saying Batman should kill the Joker and, yeah, Superman should kill, he should make the tough moral decisions we all have to make every day. I don't know about you, but the last moral decision I made didn't have anything to do with killing people. And I don't think many of us ever have to make the decision whether or not to kill. In fact, the more you think about it, unless you're in one of the Armed Forces, killing is illegal and immoral. Why would we want our superheroes to do that?

There is a certain demand for it, but I just keep wondering why people insist that this is the sort of thing we'd all do if we were in Superman's place and had to make the tough decision and we'd kill Zod. Would we? Very few of us have ever killed anything. What is this weird bloodlust in watching our superheroes kill the villains?

Q: One of the best things I've read in the past year was your Image Comics series Happy with artist Darick Robertson. It was very you but not non-superhero you — a palate cleanser of sorts. Do you want to do something like that again soon?

A. Yeah. I've got a Christmas edition of Happy coming out with 10 new pages that adds to the story. I'm also doing this thing Annihilator with Legendary Comics. There's a lot of creator-owned stuff and new character stuff coming out, as well.

Q: You're also working on Multiversity. Your 2005 Seven Soldiers series of books was a really expansive project with a lot of moving pieces to it. Will Multiversity be akin to that?

Obviously it's a lot shorter, for one, but each of the books set in parallel worlds are all complete stories. You can read any one of them without reading the other ones and it'll still work. You don't have to read the entire thing. If you do read the bookends, a lot of stuff that happens will take on a new meaning, but it's not the same kind of thing at all. There are connections but I wanted each of the books to have its own individual story so you'll get a completely satisfying read in one comic book.

(Sunday Geekersation is a weekly series of Q&As featuring luminaries, mainstays and newcomers of geek culture discussing their projects, influences and pop culture.)

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