This is Part 5 in a series of posts looking at why Alan Moore doesn’t like Grant Morrison.

Part 1: Grant Morrison’s First Ten Years of Comics (1978-1987)

Part 2: Karen Berger, the Berger Books, and Vertigo (1981-1993)

Part 3: Grant Morrison Writes Spoofs About Alan Moore and Says Nice Things (1980’s-2010’s)

Part 4: Comics Written by Alan Moore, then by Grant Morrison (1980’s-2010’s)

Part 5: Grant Morrison Says a Lot of Things About Alan Moore (1980’s-2010’s)

Part 6: Alan Moore Says What He Thinks of Grant Morrison and Morrison Issues a Fierce Rebuttal (2012)

Part 7: Alan Moore Describes the “Persistence of Grant Morrison” and Morrison Shuts Up About Moore (2014-2018)

Morrison Compares His Work to Moore’s

GRANT MORRISON: [Arkham Asylum in 1989] was a watershed for me, because I think I finally found my own voice in comics. Up until then, in early Animal Mans for instance, I was still doing what I thought was expected of British writers, which was to be as much like Alan Moore as possible. It was that post-Watchmen, realistic superheroes kind of thing.[1]

GRANT MORRISON: Like Alan Moore, basically because I thought that’s what would sell, and what people would be interested in.[14]

GRANT MORRISON: Watchmen seemed like such an exciting event and there are incredible moments — particularly in the Doctor Manhattan threads but in the end I felt unmoved by what seemed a highly self-conscious intellectual exercise. […] The ‘realist’ stuff seemed stuffy and concept-album-y to me by 1986. Arkham Asylum was my kind of indie-goth response to all that.[2]

GRANT MORRISON: [Arkham Asylum] didn’t start out being completely realistic, but I still imagined it as a solid Brian Bolland [The Killing Joke] type art with lots of shadows.[3]

GRANT MORRISON: [Zenith] was very much a reaction against torment superheroes. Dark Knight is a brilliant piece of Reagan-era fiction and Watchmen is very, very clever in its architecture, but both books felt pompous and concept albumy to me as a young man in the 80s.[4]

GRANT MORRISON: This trend towards realism reached full flower with The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen, and suddenly you’ve got superheroes in the real world; in pain, sexually tormented and fucked up. […] The only way to follow up that dark thing is to make the heroes heroes again. It’s obvious.[6]

GRANT MORRISON: I dislike the idea of “major projects”. I’m not interested in producing gargantuan and pompous 600 page stories which claim to sum up the 20th century.[31] [This is a reference to From Hell]

GRANT MORRISON: Again as a reaction to what Alan’s done in Watchmen. He’s got an all powerful hero in Dr. Manhattan, the superheroes we have were designed as weapons, so they’ve got psychic and pyrokinetic powers.[5]

Morrison Describes Projects He’s Working On As “His Watchmen”

GRANT MORRISON: But Seaguy’s just a superhero story too. And by the time we get into the third book, it’s quite a serious superhero story. This is my “Watchmen,” really. This is where I’m really getting to talk about the idea of the superhero.[7]

GRANT MORRISON: [Zoids] was a metaphor of world politics, and there was the red on one side and the blue on the other, and these poor people in the middle who were just ordinary people, trapped between titanic forces they couldn’t understand. So the first episode, ‘Old Soldiers Never Die’, was about death and inevitability. I sort of jumped in with combat boots, forgetting that this was a comic for kids, and it’s probably the closest I’ll come to something like Watchmen; I put everything into it.[8]

QUESTION TO MORRISON: Can you talk a bit more about [Annihilator’s] origin as a comic book?

MORRISON’S RESPONSE: Rian Hughes challenged me to design something as intricate as Watchmen, and I said “No way!” But I went away and I got into this idea of doing something based around a black hole and the thing in the guy’s brain. So it came from that challenge from Rian Hughes. But I went away and I got into this idea of doing something based around a black hole and the thing in the guy’s brain. So it came from that challenge from Rian Hughes.[9]

GRANT MORRISON: No previous knowledge of history or culture is required to read 18 Days. […] The tone is modern, gritty and emotionally real against a backdrop of techno-mythic super-war. In comic book terms, it does for ‘epic fantasy’ what Watchmen did for superheroes.[10]

Morrison Compares Himself to Moore

GRANT MORRISON: I once saw [Moore] rush into the toilets, only to be followed by an absolute horde of earnest young men with acne. […] Of course, I’m just peeved because no-one has ever followed me into the gents.[11]

GRANT MORRISON: DC are pretty desperate for us Brits. Yes. Well, they had Alan Moore and he was so successful with them so I imagine they were just trying to repeat that success. In fact, in recent DC promotions apparently, I’ve been described as “the new Alan Moore”. In addition, Neil Gaiman has also been described as “the new Alan Moore” as, I’m quite sure, has Jamie Delano. How many of us is it going to take to fill the great man’s winkle pickers?[12]

GRANT MORRRISON: All the characters that I have described have turned up in places. Neil Gaiman told me these things happened to him as well when he was doing Sandman. Alan Moore said it happened to him too.[13]

QUESTION TO MORRISON: Brendan McCarthy’s art is magnificent. People should stick his drawings on the backs of their jackets. Which would piss him off no end. Have you ever been a teen idol, do you think?

MORRISON’S RESPONSE: Not like Alan Moore. He’s been a real teen idol. People have actually surrounded him on staircases. He’s been trapped by this sea of people. No one talks to me at conventions.

FOLLOW-UP QUESTION: Perhaps no one knows who you are?

MORRISON’S RESPONSE: I should grow a beard. […] I wouldn’t mind all that. It’d be okay, really. Like I’ve said before, it’s only a couple days in a year. That’d suit me. People following me into the toilets, surrounded in the canteen. It’d be great. Beatlemania.[14]

GRANT MORRISON: I can’t go on anymore, living this vile lie. I confess, I confess. I am Neil Gaiman. I am Alan Moore. […] So the thing is, now that you know I’m Alan Moore, don’t you think you should all rush out and buy Doom Patrol? It’s only selling 34,000 copies you see, which really isn’t what we’ve come to expect from the author of Watchmen and The Killing Joke.[15]

GRANT MORRISON: Alan Moore, it’s brilliant, you can do poetry and sell vast amounts which is unheard of, certainly in the Western neck of the woods, and that’s what it’s about. We’re using this medium to say the things I wanted to say.[16]

GRANT MORRISON: Then you’ve got the Dark Age and people like Alan Moore and Frank Miller and me and Neil Gaiman came in, and that’s like adolescence, because suddenly we start asking these really difficult pointed questions about superheroes, and why are you wearing tights?[17]

GRANT MORRISON: With Alan Moore for instance, after doing Watchmen, where else was there for him to go but to personal projects about life in Northampton? I really didn’t want to go that route, but I think that’s what’s expected of me.[1]

Moore & Sienkiewicz’s Big Numbers #1 (initially titled The Mandelbrot Set) about life in Northamption (1990)

GRANT MORRISON: Alan Moore’s Mike Maxwell trudging through the black and white streets of Thatcher’s Britain, with the magic word of transformation burning on the tip of his tongue. My own work has been an ongoing attempt to repeat the magic word over and over until we all become the kind of superheroes we’d all like to be.[33]

GRANT MORRISON: I was good at school until the divorce, after which I became a troublemaker. Not that bad it must be said, it’s not like I got busted for pushing drugs like, ah, some of my more illustrious comics colleagues.[34] [This is a reference to Alan Moore being expelled from school at age 16 for dealing LSD]

GRANT MORRISON: Okay, we get it, man. You got thrown out of school at 16 for dealing acid, you’re clever.[28] [This is a more obvious reference to the same thing]

QUESTION TO MORRISON: Would you like to blow something up?

MORRISON’S RESPONSE: I would, actually. It would have to be something quite big, though…where’s the comic convention being held this year? […] Fresh start. All these young guys who’re struggling to reach the top could move up rank at once, wearing Neil Gaiman’s skull on a thong around their neck. I remember Alan Moore suggesting something like that once.[14]

GRANT MORRISON: I chose to see writers like Alan Moore as missionaries who attempted to impose their own values and preconceptions on cultures they considered inferior—in this case, that of superheroes. Missionaries humiliate the natives by pointing out their gauche customs and colorfully frank traditional dress. They bullied defenseless fantasy characters into leather trench coats and nervous breakdowns and left formerly carefree fictional communities in a state of crushing self-doubt and dereliction. Anthropologists on the other hand, surrendered themselves to foreign cultures. They weren’t afraid to go native or look foolish. They came and they departed with respect and in the interests of mutual understanding. Naturally, I wanted to be an anthropologist.[18]

QUESTION TO MORRISON: And then?

MORRISON’S RESPONSE: And then I’ll take a break for a while.

FOLLOW-UP QUESTION: So where do you go from there?

MORRISON’S RESPONSE: I’ll be doing stuff on an independent level, like Alan Moore is doing just now.[32]

Morrison Offers His Opinions About Moore

QUESTION TO MORRISON: I still think in ANIMAL MAN you managed to create the perfect “out” to explain continuity.

MORRISON’S RESPONSE: Yeah. […] Well, I’d like to see more people use it, and not just Alan Moore.[19]

GRANT MORRISON: The real ending of Watchmen should simply have been that they all felt stupid and went home but it just turned into a very traditional comic story with satellites that were somehow able to broadcast theoretical particles and the world being saved by a plot that was lifted from an old ‘Outer Limits’ episode.[12]

GRANT MORRISON: I think [Moore] is too busy becoming a Serious Artiste. We can but hope, though. Maybe he’ll storm the UKCAC building this year, guns blazing … and I shall run headlong into the first hail of bullets.[14]

GRANT MORRISON: To read Alan Moore’s work, it’s so beautiful and architectural and everything about it is great, but for me, that fire of creativity isn’t there in it, and I’m not fooled by it. I read Promethea last night, and I thought, “This is Doom Patrol, I don’t care, there’s nothing new for there for me here, but it’s so beautifully constructed, I wish I could do this kind of thing.[16]

QUESTION TO MORRISON: I’ve noticed that you tend to use the Alan Moore panel transitions a lot.

MORRISON’S RESPONSE: While we’re talking about those transitions, I’d direct your attention to my first ever published story “Time Is A Four Letter Word” which appeared in 1978 in Near Myths. There you will find ‘Alan Moore’ panel transitions, repeated motifs, poetic captions, flashbacks, flash forwards and all the other stuff that was apparently only invented in 1982. In fact, I think we should start calling them “Grant Morrison panel transitions,” don’t you?[12]

GRANT MORRISON: The end of The Invisibles originally had the sun rising with a face on it, you know the way Promethea ended? […] It was kind of like that, based more on the Kabala.[20]

GRANT MORRISON: One thing about Alan, though – if you were at a comic convention and some thugs with mohawks tried to mug you, I’ll bet big Alan would weigh in there with fists flying. There aren’t many other comics creators who’d be much use in a fight.[21]

GRANT MORRISON: Look at Chris Claremont’s run on The X-Men. That expanded the possibilities of the superhero comic at least as much as Watchmen and without being as referential to the genre’s past. He used the characters to write about the real world – about real emotions, real relationships.[22]

MARK MILLAR TO MORRISON: I just read the 1963 stuff. It’s good to see Alan Moore doing superhero comics again, but it’s too bad he’s had to re-hash Grant’s old ideas – 1963 was better when it was called Doom Patrol #53.

MORRISON’S RESPONSE: Well said, mate. Funny how nobody else has pointed that one out.[21]

GRANT MORRISON: The mad notion I came up with was to do the Charlton characters in a story I’d construct as an update on that ludic Watchmen style – if Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons had pitched the Watchmen now, rooted in a contemporary political landscape but with the actual Charlton characters instead of analogues![23]

GRANT MORRISON: After the collapse of his own Mad Love self-publishing venture and the abandonment of the ambitious, nonsuperhero series Big Numbers, there was nothing left for Moore, then in his early forties, but to go back to the place where everybody knew his name. He had branched out into performance and declared himself a magician—describing it as an alternative to going mad at forty—but when he returned to the superheroes he’d made such a show of leaving behind it was clear that he needed money to back up his small press experiments.[18]

ARTICLE ABOUT MORRISON AND MARK MILLAR: Despite making several derogatory comments about each other during the course of that long, long day – in the vein of “If Alan Moore is the King of comics, Grant Morrison is the Queen…” and “Mark slept with John Wagner… and LIKED it!” (I won’t say who said what) – they work very closely and have plenty of joint projects in the pipeline.[24]

QUESTION TO MORRISON: On a slightly more friendly note, perhaps…

MORRISON’S RESPONSE: Yeah, let’s talk about Alan Moore instead.

FOLLOW-UP QUESTION: Do you know I’ve literally just crossed out the Alan Moore question.

MORRISON’S RESPONSE: No, he’s cool, I really like Alan. […] You know what, for me there’s always a thaw.[20]

GRANT MORRISON: It’s two people who are so similar…

FOLLOW UP QUESTION: You either have to be best friends or have a feud, or possible both.

MORRISON’S RESPONSE: Superman and Luthor. And I didn’t mind being Luthor.[28]

ARTICLE ABOUT MORRISON AT A CONVENTION PANEL: The final question of the night came from one genuinely heroic fan: “In the inevitable kaos war between you and Alan Moore, who do you think’s gonna come out on top?” “It’s not like that,” Morrison sighed, reluctant to once again fuel the fire of gossip that’s followed both writers for much of the last decade or so. “But,” the writer added. “I’ve been practicing since 1978 and he’s only been practicing since 1994. Who do you think?”[27]

GRANT MORRISON: I’d like to think that everything can be imagined as an Alan Moore project.[20]

GRANT MORRISON: None other than Alan Moore was sighted leaping lustily into bed with Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee and a host of “hot” new superhero characters. […] Despite how it may seem, however, particularly in the light of my track record, I have come not to bury Moore but to praise him. I rejoice in the chaos created by his brilliant move. I wish only that he could be a little less coy about his motives. Instead of bandying the usual bollocks about needing the cash to finance more worthy work, or that he plans a “dissection” of the superhero genre, why doesn’t he just stand up and admit that it’s because he needs the money and because superheroes are more vibrant, more luminous and more relevant than any number of dreary comics devised for the sole purpose of being reviewed in the Guardian? Christ knows, he’s entitled to a bit of cash for his work and he’s been out in the cold for long enough after bankrupting himself in a brave but misguided effort to produce comics for an imaginary nation of well-read adults. […] They don’t give a flying fuck for Big Numbers.[25]

GRANT MORRISON: Alan Moore’s From Hell, which owes a great, unacknowledged debt to the subtext and subject matter of Ian Sinclair’s books White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings and Lud Heat. In many ways, Moore’s work could be regarded as heavily plagiaristic.[26]

Alan Moore and Ian Sinclair are actually good friends, and Moore discusses the enormous influence of Sinclair’s work in From Hell‘s substantial appendix sections.

QUESTION TO MORRISON: Maybe it’s for the best that DC Comics is starting over now.

MORRISON’S RESPONSE: But I don’t know. There’s been lots of things, the sexism in DC because it’s mostly men who work in these places. Nobody should be trying to say we’re taking up a specifically anti-woman stance. I think it would be ignorance or stupidity or some God knows what. I was reading some Alan Moore Marvelman for some reason today. I found one in the back there and I couldn’t believe. I pick it up and there are fucking two rapes in it and I suddenly think how many times has somebody been raped in an Alan Moore story? And I couldn’t find a single one where someone wasn’t raped except for Tom Strong, which I believe was a pastiche. We know Alan Moore isn’t a misogynist but fuck, he’s obsessed with rape. I managed to do thirty years in comics without any rape![29]

QUESTION TO MORRISON: What would you like to see happen in the world of comics over the next 12 months?

MORRISON’S RESPONSE: I’d like to see Alan Moore show his “equipment” for a special “naked” cover of Promethea. He and J H Williams could symbolize the journey of consciousness into the realm of the nude, while carrying out a deliberate tribute to John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s album “Two Virgins”. It would be great. And who here wouldn’t be curious to see the backside of the creator of Watchmen?[30]

NEXT: Part 6 – Alan Moore Says What He Thinks About Grant Morrison and Morrison Issues a Fierce Rebuttal

SOURCES

[1] Grant Morrison Interview with Comics Scene #28 (1992)

[2] Grant Morrison Interview with Sequential Tart (2002)

[3] Grant Morrison Interview with Fear #15 (1990)

[4] Grant Morrison Interview with Thrill-Power Overload: Thirty Years of 2000 A.D. (2007)

[5] Grant Morrison Interview with Speakeasy #76 (1987)

[6] Writers on Comics Scriptwriting (1999)

[7] Grant Morrison Interview with Comic Book Resources (2009)

[8] Grant Morrison Interview with After-Image #6 (1988)

[9] Grant Morrison Interview with Newsarama (2012)

[10] Grant Morrison Interview with Newsarama (2010)

[11] Drivel by Grant Morrison from Speakeasy #101 (1989)

[12] Grant Morrison Interview with FA #109 (1989)

[13] Grant Morrison Interview with Submedia #1 (1999)

[14] Grant Morrison Interview with Amazing Heroes #176 (1990)

[15] Drivel by Grant Morrison from Speakeasy #107 (1990)

[16] Grant Morrison Interview with Notes from the Junkyard (1999)

[17] Grant Morrison Interview with Comic Book Grrrl (2012)

[18] Supergods by Grant Morrison (2011)

[19] Grant Morrison Interview with Heroes and Dragons (1997)

[20] Grant Morrison Interview with Mindless Ones (2011)

[21] Grant Morrison Interview with Comic World #18 (1993)

[22] Grant Morrison Interview with OP18 (2000)

[23] The Comics Cube’s My Thoughts on Multiversity (2009)

[24] Article About Grant Morrison and Mark Millar from Xstatix #1 (1992)

[25] Son of Drivel by Grant Morrison from Tripwire #3 (1992)

[26] Drivel by Grant Morrison from Speakeasy #115 (1990)

[27] Grant Morrison Talks With Fans at Meltdown Hollywood, Comic Book Resources (2005)

[28] Grant Morrison Interview with Gavin Edwards (2011)

[29] Grant Morrison Interview with Rolling Stone (2011)

[30] Grant Morrison Interview with Amazing Comics (2003)

[31] Grant Morrison Interview with Blackout (1990)

[32] Grant Morrison Interview with Strange Fruit (1990)

[33] Grant Morrison Interview with Newsarama (2008)

[34] Grant Morrison Interview with Speakeasy #120 (1991)

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