This is Part 3 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)

Animal Man

1988’s Animal Man was Morrison’s first project for DC Comics (and the US market).

GRANT MORRISON: I worked up a four-issue miniseries pitch for Animal Man, an obscure superhero from the sixties. […] I even saw a way to give the character a fashionably Moore-esque spin that would hopefully make him appeal to DC editorial.[4]

His pitch was accepted, and he went on to write those issues in what he described as:

GRANT MORRISON: Alan Moore style – lots of poetic captions and interesting scene transitions.[1]

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.[2]

On the strength of those four issues, DC extended Animal Man into an ongoing series.

A few issues later, Animal Man #7 introduces a new Morrison creation called the Red Mask, who sports the same red helmet and cape as the Red Hood from Moore and Bolland’s The Killing Joke.

LEFT: The Red Hood from The Killing Joke by Moore & Bolland (1988)

RIGHT: The Red Mask in Animal Man #7 by Morrison & Truog (1989)

Also, the Red Mask’s logo is straight from the cover of Watchmen #5.

LEFT: Watchmen #5 by Moore & Gibbons (1987)

RIGHT: The Red Mask from Animal Man #7 by Morrison & Truog (1989)

In the final page featuring the Red Mask, we see him splattered on the sidewalk after falling from a tall building. This page basically inverts the first page of Watchmen #1.

LEFT: The first page of Watchmen #1 (1986)

RIGHT: The Red Mask’s last page in Animal Man #7 (1989)

Animal Man #23 features the Psycho Pirate, showing that he owns a copy of Watchmen.

The Psycho Pirate owns a copy of Watchmen in Animal Man #23 by Morrison and Truog (1990)

Doom Patrol

One issue of Morrison’s Doom Patrol profiles the Morrison creation Beard Hunter, who kills bearded men and collects their beards as trophies. He visits the Bearded Gentlemen’s Club of Metropolis, where there’s a portrait of Alan Moore labeled “our founder.”

LEFT: Photo of Alan Moore from the 1980s

RIGHT: The Bearded Gentlemen’s Club of Metropolis in Morrison & Giarrano’s Doom Patrol #45 (1991)

Morrison wanted to have John Constantine make a guest appearance in Doom Patrol, but DC wouldn’t let him. So Morrison created a Constantine knock-off instead: Willoughby Kipling, a British, chain-smoking, trench-coat wearing sarcastic magician (with black hair instead of blonde), whom Morrison went on to use as a series regular, showing up to help the team defeat various occult villains.

Moore’s John Constantine, created in 1985

Morrison’s Willoughby Kipling, created in 1990

Kipling’s introduction, and first adventure with Doom Patrol, mirrors the plot of Moore’s 1985 “American Gothic” storyline in Swamp Thing that first introduced Constantine.

In both stories, the sarcastic British magician (Moore’s Constantine/Morrison’s Kipling) alerts the protagonists about an ancient, secret, foreign cult (Moore’s Brujeria/Morrison’s Cult of the Unwritten Book) that plans to use a sacrificial child to summon forth a primordial being (Moore’s Darkness/Morrison’s Decreator (or “Ultimate Darkness”)) and bring about the destruction of (Heaven/Everything).

LEFT: Constantine explains the ancient Brujeria cult to series protagonist Swamp Thing (1986)

RIGHT: Kipling explains the Cult of the Unwritten Book to series protagonists Doom Patrol (1990)

Also, Both Moore’s Brujeria cult and Morrison’s Cult of the Unwritten Book unleash assassins:

LEFT: In Moore’s Swamp Thing, the Brujeria cult unleash their assassin the “Invunche” to kill Sister Anne-Marie, a nun (1986)

RIGHT: In Morrison’s Doom Patrol, the Cult of the Unwritten Book unleash their assassins the “Little Sisters of Our Lady of the Razor,” who are nuns (1990)

Another issue of Doom Patrol introduces the Morrison creation Flex Mentallo, who, in his first appearances, looks exactly like a weird muscular version of Alan Moore.

In the first appearance of Morrison’s Flex Mentallo, he was a really muscular guy with an Alan Moore head, Doom Patrol #36 by Morrison & Jones (1990)

Seven Soldiers: Manhattan Guardian

Morrison’s Manhattan Guardian series features a battle between two new Morrison creations: No-Beard and All-Beard (guess who they represent).

No-Beard, who is bald and beardless, joins forces with series’ protagonist the Manhattan Guardian, declaring “All-Beard and me are having a race to find a certain treasure and be crowned King of the Under-Pirates!”

All-Beard is depicted as a longhaired, bushy-bearded, ranting lunatic who rambles as he kills civilian hostages.

LEFT: No-Beard

RIGHT: All-Beard

Morrison & Stewart’s Seven Soldiers: Manhattan Guardian (2005)

No-Beard and All-Beard are mortal enemies of one another, both underground pirates on a quest to find a macguffin they call “the Heart of New York”. When All-Beard finds it, No-Beard challenges him to a duel to see who is truly worthy of it.

No-Beard wins.

Seven Soldiers: Zatanna

Morrison again revisits the setting from Swamp Thing’s “American Gothic” storyline, this time the part where Moore killed Zatanna’s father in a séance where he spontaneously combusted. Morrison has Zatanna sit in her father’s place at the same table and take part in another séance where characters spontaneously combust.

LEFT: Zatanna takes part in a séance and characters spontaneously combust, including her father. Moore & Bissette’s Swamp Thing #50 (1986)

RIGHT: Zatanna takes part in another séance at the same table, sitting in her father’s place, and characters spontaneously combust. Morrison & Sook’s Seven Soldiers: Zatanna (2005)

Morrison also uses concepts from Moore’s Promethea to critique Promethea (or maybe just to do his own version of it), as comics reviewer Jog explains:

JOG: In “Just Imagine Grant Morrison Creating Promethea” […] Morrison flashes back to Zatanna guiding her team into the Imaginal World on a quest to find her father’s lost books of knowledge, where they chat with strange beings and encounter unordinary page layouts and everyone spouts exclamations about what’s going on. […]

I realize the trouble inherent in quoting anything Morrison says in an interview, but Ian’s recent report did feature him clucking over the “glaring errors” in the final issue of “Promethea”, suggesting a desire to provide a more authentic view of Ideaspace. […]

At best the sequence works as unflatteringly derivative window-dressing that does nothing more than take us from Point A to Point B in the plot, not coherent enough to convey anything of magical substance and not pointed enough to act as effective satire.

The “Immateria” in Moore & JH Williams III’s Promethea #15 (2001)

The “Imaginal World” in Morrison & Sook’s Seven Soldiers: Zatanna (2005)

All that really catches your attention on the latter front is at the very end of the issue where a character complimentarily remarks to Zatanna “I love the way you write about magic. It’s so like, down-to-earth and non-preachy.”[3]

Final Crisis

Morrison’s big DC crossover event Final Crisis is filled with references and critiques of Moore and his work.

By basically repackaging this famous line from V for Vendetta…

…and applying it to superheroes as a whole, Morrison mounts a defense for superheroes against “people like Alan Moore.”

GRANT MORRISON: There is no enemy that Superman can’t defeat, there is no enemy Batman can’t defeat, these are ideas that cannot be destroyed. And even as ideas, once people like Alan Moore went in there and deconstructed the superhero, the superhero just took it and Alan created one of the greatest works ever in the field but the superhero survived and got up again. By the end of Watchmen everybody thought it was over, I remember the days and they were saying that’s the end of the superhero, it’s the graveyard of the superhero, but of course it’s not – the superhero is made to survive any assault.[21]

In the Final Crisis plot featuring the Monitors, Morrison uses the all-powerful Monitor characters as a metaphor for comic book writers. Specifically, the two main Monitors are Nix Uotan (a heroic stand-in for Morrison himself) and the vampiric Mandrakk (a villainous stand-in for Alan Moore). Morrison uses these stand-ins to tell a meta narrative about how the idea of the superhero will survive the “deconstruction assault” by writers like Moore.

GRANT MORRISON: Mandrakk is actually the ultimate evil where there’s no hope. The grave. He’s entropy, I suppose. No matter how hard you try, this entity will consume the universe and you’ll be sucked into the gaping, bulging Black Hole of Mandrakk.[5]

It’s also “final” in the sense that it’s all about endings and apocalypses. It shows the DCU degrading, drained of all meaning, drained even of stories and characters, reduced to nothing but darkness, a mute Superman and a greedy Vampire God.[6]

Mandrakk (a stand-in for Alan Moore) wants to eat (or “deconstruct”) Superman. Final Crisis (2008)

Mandrakk has sucked all the life out of the story![6]

Finally I wanted to wrap all that up inside the final story of the Monitors and explain their strange relationship with the DC Multiverse, in a kind of mythic “origin” story inspired by the basic conflict that defines my job.[6]

It’s one of the most highly-structured and demanding pieces of work I’ve done and brings to fruition a lot of long-time obsessions, I suppose.[6]

Comics reviewer and annotator Rikdad provides details about Final Crisis’ meta narrative:

RIKDAD: Nix Uotan arrives and – note the narration boxes – becomes the narrator of the rest of the story. Nix Uotan, the Monitor, represents the writer of this story, Grant Morrison, and declares, “This is between Monitors now,” meaning that the fight is between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. […]

Nix Uotan (a stand-in for Grant Morrison) becomes the actual narrator when he shows up to save Superman from Mandrakk (Moore). Final Crisis (2008)

Mandrakk recognizes Uotan and says, “My son?” which is a probable pun on “Morrison” being “Moore’s son.”

Mandrakk (Moore) calls Nix Uotan (Morrison) his “son.” Final Crisis (2008)

Declaring “There is no limit to what I can do” (because he is, after all, the writer), Nix Uotan has his unbeatable team burn Ultraman and Mandrakk with heat vision and the Green Lanterns spike the vampire Mandrakk through the heart. […]

Nix Uotan (Morrison) uses a magic word to summon an army of superheroes to kill Mandrakk (Moore), thus saving the multiverse from superhero deconstruction. Final Crisis (2008)

It’s not Superman surviving one writer or another, it’s the idea of Superman defeating the idea of killing him. […] In the real world, this means that in trying to destroy heroic superheroes, Moore and his ilk would destroy the darker, horror kind of comics that he likes, to his own chagrin, yet Superman, a better idea, and his target, will survive! […]

Nix Uotan victorious. Final Crisis (2008)

Superman’s answer to Mandrakk, and Grant Morrison’s answer on Superman’s behalf to Alan Moore, is “To Be Continued.”

Nix Uotan reports back to the other Monitors that his mission was successful. Final Crisis (2008)

In fact, the first word we read from the infinite book is “Previously!” That’s not how a story starts; it’s how a story continues. Put that and Superman’s epitaph together, and you get a serial format, beginning each issue with “Previously” and ending each with “To be continued.” Superman’s story goes on. They never end.[5]

In other words: “In the end? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.”

Doctor Manhattan and Ozymandias in Moore & Gibbons’ Watchmen #12 (1987)

Additional references in Final Crisis to Moore’s work include:

LEFT: Walter Kovacs, Watchmen (1986)

RIGHT: A guy with the same sign, Final Crisis (2008)

LEFT: The Killing Joke by Moore & Bolland (1988)

RIGHT: A guy with that cover image on a shirt, Final Crisis (2008)

LEFT: Parallel universe Supremes flying in unison, Supreme #41 by Moore & Bennett (1996)

RIGHT: Parallel universe Supermen flying in unison, and one of them is Supreme, Final Crisis (2008). Morrison explains: “Since I wasn’t able to use the Supermen analogs from other companies directly, I had to create analogs of the analogs.”[7]

LEFT: Doctor Manhattan, Watchmen (1986)

RIGHT: One of the parallel universe Supermen, Final Crisis (2008)

TOP: Retired, disguised Superman talks to Lois and then breaks the fourth wall by winking at the reader while shutting a door, Moore & Swan’s “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” Action Comics #583 (1986)

BOTTOM: Superman, in his Clark Kent disguise, talks to Lois and then breaks the fourth wall by winking at the reader while shutting a door, Final Crisis (2008)

At the time of its release, many readers and reviewers complained that the storyline in Final Crisis didn’t make any sense.

GRANT MORRISON: There’s a lot going on but I’ve noticed that no matter what I say about the content of ‘Final Crisis,’ there will still be online fans who’ll swear blind they have no idea what the book is about.[8]

I’ve seen some of the complaints and I must admit I’ve become a bit defensive and almost feel I’m constantly trying to explain things to people who won’t like it, no matter how much I bang on.[9]

But this is my job. I’ve been getting paid to write stories every day for 30 years. If I choose to do a story this way, and call it a story, then it’s a goddamn story, Robin! There are no rules. You can do anything you like with words and pictures. I would never consider myself qualified to tell a doctor how to go about his business based on having seen a few episodes of ‘House’, you know.[9]

This is not to say you have to like Final Crisis or that you ‘just don’t get it’ if you don’t.[9]

I think as the years go by, people will see how well it was made.[9]

Morrison Says Nice Things About Moore

In interviews over the years, Morrison has given quite a bit of commentary on Moore and his work, some of it positive:

GRANT MORRISON: Then, of course, like everyone else in the civilized world, I love what Alan Moore has been doing. You could say he’s been an influence in a different way because I’d given up on comics ever making any progress until I picked up Warrior in 1982.[10]

GRANT MORRISON: Warrior convinced me that writing comics was a worthwhile occupation for a young man.[10]

GRANT MORRISON: I generally like Alan’s work, particularly ‘V For Vendetta’ which I think is, to date, his masterpiece. I’m looking forward to ‘The Mandelbrot Set’ though and hope it’s going to be a genuine fractal comic.[11]

GRANT MORRISON: When Warrior came out [featuring Marvelman and V for Vendetta] and I saw Alan Moore was getting away with doing sensible, forward-looking work in the comics field that I decided I might as well write for comics.[12]

GRANT MORRISON: Alan will hate me saying this, but it was my sort of stuff. I remember reading V for Vendetta and there was this one thing V says: “I’m the black sheep of the family, I’m the bogeyman of the twentieth century,” and I thought, this is what I want to read, it’s like The Prisoner, it’s like the stuff I’m into, the whole anarchy thing.[12]

GRANT MORRISON: I can’t understand someone like Pat Mills getting so worked up about superheroes [in his series Marshal Law]. If he hates them so much, why doesn’t he write a comic about going to the shops or hanging around public toilets? Alan Moore dislikes superheroes and so he goes off and does a comic about ordinary people in Northampton, which seems to me a much more sensible and rational way of going about things.[20]

GRANT MORRISON: Of all the Watchmen characters, people love Rorschach most because he’s the real superhero. He’s the one who wouldn’t let you down.[9]

GRANT MORRISON: No-one in any other medium has written better superhero stories than Mark Millar or Alan Moore or Warren Ellis … no-one anywherebut here. Superheroes are the thing comics do best.[13]

GRANT MORRISON: I think there’s a lot of evidence to support the idea that comics have taken over from ‘rock’ music as the popular art world’s least compromised avenue for expressions of rebellion and dissent. In a recent article, I talked about how all the lines I’ve noticed running between comics and the counterculture — Alan Moore is a respected performance poet on the London bohemian arts scene, for instance.[14]

GRANT MORRISON: I read all the books that come out and I really, really like them but the last time I cried at a comic was Alan Moore’s “Pog” story in “Swamp Thing.” I want more real chunks of feeling in my books.[9]

GRANT MORRISON: Wasn’t that amazing? [The V for Vendetta masks] have become the default face for anarchists. They all wear that now. Everyone wears that on anti-corporate demos, and on all kinds of marches and protests. I’m amazed that that thing has become the real version of what Alan set out to create.[15]

The Guy Fawkes masks from Moore & Lloyd’s V for Vendetta used during the Arab Spring uprising (2011)

Morrison Takes Offense at Other Writers Copying Moore’s Style

GRANT MORRISON: I’ve noticed at DC now that there are fifth generation copyists starting to turn up. It was okay at the time, and Swamp Thing was really good, but when you start getting the origin of Congorilla with “poetic” captions, things have gone seriously wrong.[16]

GRANT MORRISON: Alan took that kind of thing to the limit in Watchmen I think and it’s one of the superficial aspects of his style that a whole new generation of dour copyists is sure to pick up on. The most important lesson anyone can learn from Alan’s work is simply that he refuses to stand still. He’s constantly thinking about his work and how to improve things and find new perspectives. If new writers could pick up on that, instead of latching onto things like transitions and nine-panel grids then the world would be a much happier place and nothing bad would ever happen again anywhere.[11]

GRANT MORRISON: What annoys me the most about these people is that they seem to just go to the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations and find something. And they always use Ozymandias, and none of them ever sit down and read Shelley or Nietzsche, they just find nice quotes. You can find every one of these quotes in that book. I was actually quite annoyed when I found that the phrase “Serious House on Serious Earth,” the title of the Arkham book, is actually in there. I took it from the Philip Larkin poem “Churchgoing.” I was horrified. People will think I found it in the Dictionary of Quotations rather than coming from being a lifelong disciple of Philip Larkin.[16]

GRANT MORRISON: Most of the new American superhero writers I’ve come across seem to think using a couple of poetic captions like Alan Moore elevates the quality of their work to art — but it doesn’t without a fresh perspective.[17]

Morrison Solves the Secret Ending to Moore & Bolland’s The Killing Joke

In 2013, Morrison went on Kevin Smith’s podcast declaring he had solved the secret ending to Moore and Brian Bolland’s Batman graphic novel, The Killing Joke, stating that Batman kills the Joker on the last page.

GRANT MORRISON: No one gets the end, because Batman kills The Joker. […] That’s why it’s called The Killing Joke. The Joker tells the ‘Killing Joke’ at the end, Batman reaches out and breaks his neck, and that’s why the laughter stops and the light goes out, ’cause that was the last chance at crossing that bridge. And Alan Moore wrote the ultimate Batman/Joker story [because] he finished it.[18]

The end of Moore & Bolland’s The Killing Joke (1988)

Five years before Morrison’s revelation in 2013, The Killing Joke artist Brian Bolland had already discussed how Batman-kills-the-Joker had been an often-speculated fan theory, making a joke about it in his afterword to the book’s re-release in 2008.

BRIAN BOLLAND: I’m told by my editor Bob Harras that there’s room for up to 800 words. If I go on longer we have to start dropping pages of art and we wouldn’t want that, would we? So, reader, if I should stop in mid-sentence it’s because I’ve run out of space. […] People seemed to find the last page of the story ambiguous, so before I conclude this text, remind me to reveal what actually happened. […] speaking of which, it’s time I revealed what happened at the end of The Killing Joke: as our protagonists stood there in the rain laughing at the final joke, the police lights reflecting in the pools of filthy water underfoot, the Batman’s hand reached out and…[19]

Nevertheless, Morrison’s announcement generated headlines and articles such as:

2013 ARTICLE “GRANT MORRISON CLAIMS ALAN MOORE SECRETLY KILLED THE JOKER IN 1988”: Grant Morrison delivered a bit of a mindfuck on Wednesday. Strangely, he didn’t do it in one of his own comics, but by revealing the secret end of Alan Moore’s seminal Batman graphic novel The Killing Joke— namely, that Batman actually murders the Joker at the end.[18]

Since then, the theory is virtually always referred to as “Grant Morrison’s Theory.”

NEXT: Part 4 – Comics Written by Alan Moore, then by Grant Morrison

SOURCES

[1] Grant Morrison Interview with Submedia (1999)

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

[3] Jog – The Blog’s Review of Seven Soldiers – Zatanna (2005)

[4] Supergods by Grant Morrison (2011)

[5] Rickdad’s Final Crisis Retro Review Part III: The Monitor Plot (2018)

[6] Grant Morrison Interview with Newsarama Part 1 (2009)

[7] Grant Morrison Interview with Newsarama Part 2 (2009)

[8] Grant Morrison Interview with Comic Book Resources (2008)

[9] Grant Morrison Interview with IGN (2009)

[10] Grant Morrison Interview with Fusion #7 (1985)

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

[12] Writers on Comics Scriptwriting (1999)

[13] Grant Morrison Interview with Newsarama (2002)

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

[15] Grant Morrison Interview with Entertainment Weekly (2011)

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

[17] Grant Morrison Interview with Comics Scene #12 (1990)

[18] Grant Morrison on Kevin Smith’s podcast (2013)

[19] Brian Bolland’s Afterword to The Killing Joke 20thAnniversary Edition (2008)

[20] Grant Morrison Interview with Ark #32 (1990)

[21] Grant Morrison Interview with ComicBookGRRRL (2011)

The images above are the property of their respective owners and are presented here for not-for-profit, educational purposes only, under the fair use doctrine of the copyright laws of the United States of America. The lyrics at the very top are from the song “Blame It On The Tetons” by Modest Mouse.