Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods

Charlotte · November 1, 2010

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003VADSNW?ie=UTF8&tag=nprim-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B003VADSNW" target="_blank">Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods</a>

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Ask any ten comics fans about Grant Morrison and you'll get eleven different responses. A couple will have never heard of him. Some will be upset that he "totally ruined (X)" where X is the JLA, Batman, or appropriately enough, the X-Men. Some more still will be dismissive of his comics as freeform gobbledegook. Others will love his comics for nothing more than being high-concept high-speed supercool books about the weird.

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Then you'll get people like me who see Grant Morrison as the natural successor to Alan Moore and Frank Miller. People like me will devour <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003VADSNW?ie=UTF8&tag=nprim-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B003VADSNW" target="_blank">Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods</a>.

<img src="http://www.rpgpost.com/uploads/imgs/pre_1314240583__395.jpg" align="right" alt="" />Even amongst the people who write and draw comics for a living, those slightly oddball people who would never truly have been happy balancing spreadsheets and cutting hair, Grant Morrison is a standout. If he turned out to have been beamed into our world from a pan-dimensional basement universe full of pure thoughtstuff, we would all be more surprised that such a thing exists, than we would be that Grant Morrison came from it.

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003VADSNW?ie=UTF8&tag=nprim-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B003VADSNW" target="_blank">Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods</a> does what it can to dispel that notion. The documentary takes a long look at Morrison's early life, through interviews with friends and with Morrison himself. His parents were both political activists, trying their best to fight the proliferation of nuclear weapons; having so much literature about the bomb around the house terrified Morrison as a child, until he discovered superhero comics, where the bomb could be stopped by one selfless, indestructible man. A sign that a documentary or a biography about an artist is doing its job is when it informs you of the story behind their stories; Talking With Gods succeeds here, lending a new light to the one John Constantine story I know of that Grant Morrison wrote.

Morrison's early days in the comics industry are gone into. He talks about his reverence for, and rivalry with, Alan Moore, who Morrison claims sent him a threatening letter when he was contemplating taking over Marvelman after Moore's departure. This sets up the contrast between Morrison and Moore nicely; Alan Moore has become a recluse, unhappy with the state of any comics other than his own and having never fully made peace with the notion that his work is a contribution to a vast tapestry, rather than its own painting. Morrison, by contrast, seems gregarious and friendly, and takes solace in the fact that comic book universes will outlive him, fully accepting that someone will come along and do the X-Men differently or have a take on the Justice League that doesn't align with his own.

<img src="http://www.rpgpost.com/uploads/imgs/pre_1314240588__396.jpg" align="left" alt="" />The rivalry between Moore and Morrison (and between Frank Miller and Morrison, which isn't gotten into here but Morrison has taken his shots at Miller) is the best example I can think of for why Morrison is the spiritual successor to Moore and Miller and their contemporaries. In a pop medium like comics, it is inevitable that the young eat their parents; moving forwards is how it stays alive, as trends shift and styles change. Siegel and Shuster begat Otto Binder, who begat Julie Schwartz, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, who gave way to Jim Starlin and Dennis O'Neal and Neal Adams and Chris Claremont and Marv Wolfman, and eventually, to Alan Moore and Frank Miller. And here we run into trouble because Moore and Miller begat just about no one; the gravitational pull of these giants is too great. Even Brian Bendis, probably the most influential writer at Marvel for the last ten years, cannot fully escape the impact of Frank Miller's impact on Daredevil. Comics have yet to move on fully from the impact of these two greats, partially because their respective magnum opuses were about deconstructing the superhero and in order for the superhero to go on they have to be put back together – but putting them back together means that saying that on some level, Moore and Miller were wrong. And who'd be ballsy enough to argue that?

Enter Grant Morrison, who dismisses the idea of a "realistic" superhero as missing the point; he doesn't want to drag the superhero down to our level. He wants to raise us up to theirs. Alan Moore and Frank Miller set out to change comics; Morrison wants to use comics to change the world. Morrison talks about his fears of the atomic bomb and how he wishes he could replace the idea of a device that bakes shadows into walls when it explodes with the idea of a man who would never let you down and would always find a way. You need a particular type of egomania to be a writer and doubly so to be a comics writer, a field where there are fewer working writers than there are NBA basketball players – but to seriously contend that you want to use fictional people to save the real world, as Morrison so often does in his work, takes a self-confidence that is in a league of its own.

<img src="http://www.rpgpost.com/uploads/imgs/pre_1314240593__397.jpg" align="right" alt="" />It shows through in his work. Morrison, when he's not playing with meta-fiction, often writes about intangibles such as hope and love, finding confidence and becoming the person you want to be. His stories are emotional, and not just in the sense that "emotion" is used in art, to denote only negative emotions. His stories run the full spectrum, from terror to triumph. He shies away from what he calls "left-brain" stories about how fast something can fly or what the economic systems of a superhero world would be like, choosing to engage the reader on an emotional level. The "how" becomes less important than the "why."

<img src="http://www.rpgpost.com/uploads/imgs/pre_1314240599__398.gif" align="right" alt="" />Of course, no discussion about Grant Morrison would be complete without touching on the fact that he believes he can cast magical spells. I know that's simplifying and mocking it slightly, but the fact remains that Morrison talks, quite earnestly, about the times he has encountered demons and Jesus and UFOs whilst in shamanistic trances and how to use sigils to bend the course of one's own life. The movie even has a reprisal of his basic "pop magic" sigil essay from The Invisibles, where he claimed that rubbing one out to a mashup of letters would increase sales on his book. I know about phrases like "confirmation bias" and personally have the spirituality of a plank of wood, so I don't really buy into that stuff. What intrigues me more is how Morrison's legend has grown as his public persona has become more like a comic book character.

Despite him hardly being the only bald man in comics, he is instantly an iconic image; bald man, well-cut suit, sharp features. The mentor figure in The Invisibles is a dead ringer for Grant Morrison, by Morrison's own admission; his work communicates an obsession with diving into a constructed reality, interacting with it and having it change you. He tells a story in Talking With Gods about how, not long after writing a scene where King Mob is tortured with flesh-eating bacteria, that a sore appeared on his face that terrified him and then he was visited by a hallucination of Jesus. The movie is filled with anecdotes about other creators and their oddball run-ins with him, whether just brushing the tip of the weirdness (Warren Ellis tells a particularly funny story here) or being a part of it, like his artist on The Invisibles indulging in magic mushrooms with him. Grant Morrison is described as the rock star of comics, and that seems to almost fit; he has an affected persona as a man operating on another level, though unlike a rock star he seems utterly genuine and not trying to put one over on anyone. He writes about people becoming what they want, and has practiced what he preaches (or, depending on how much of it you buy into, he has gotten high off his own supply.)

Rounding out and peppered through the documentary are brief interviews with other creators in comics, all of whom obviously have a reverence for Grant Morrison. Phil Jimeniez and Cameron Stewart talk about the crazy things they get to draw; Mark Waid relates a story about Morrison and Waid interviewing a cosplayer dressed as Superman "in-character," making it sound almost like a possession. Morrison's impact on comics itself, however, is more difficult to quantify than his impact on creators. Morrison is famous for being a tough act to follow in comics. At this time of writing, just about none of his concepts and ideas from New X-Men are still around – the only notable idea of his being that Scott Summers and Emma Frost were made for each other, and even then this idea would probably have been jettisoned if Joss Whedon hadn't agreed.

<img src="http://www.rpgpost.com/uploads/imgs/pre_1314240604__399.jpg" align="left" alt="" />His detractors claim that his work is all highly emotional gobbledegook anyways, so how can you make sense of it if you have to write where he left off; his advocates claim that Morrison is such a unique voice than any attempt to imitate it rings hollow. This is what sets Morrison in the same league as Frank Miller and Alan Moore; his impact is difficult to truly follow up on. What sets him apart, however, is that while Moore and Miller inspired a legion of imitators, endlessly trying to replicate the pacing of Alan Moore's scripts and the details of his worlds, or the final explosive battle and quotable dialogue of Miller's Dark Knight Returns – Morrison's fans in the comics professional community aren't trying to be like him, or at least, the successful ones aren't. Mark Waid's run on JLA, immediately following Morrison's, was far less spaced-out and more character based. Attempts to imitate his blend of animal rights activism and metafictional horror on Animal Man have gone nowhere, the character returning to the third string. The campaign to resurrect Aztek has yet to reach the same level of success as the one to bring back Hal Jordan. Yet his impact on comics creators is profound, leading to the conclusion that Morrison's fans aren't trying to imitate him, so much as are inspired by him. They are inspired by the notion that a man can be as thoroughly off the beaten path as Grant Morrison is, and still make it big and find an audience. That being your own person pays off, and what better success could there be than that?

So Morrison, by the end of the film, stands revealed as a man who is real, and not just some invention like Alice Cooper or Rob Zombie; who acts like a shaman and writes like a superstorm. He communicates with fictional characters like I do with my mom, and he bears the influence of teenage years in boarding school and the early childhood traumas that the world gives us all. He was not beamed into our universe – he was born here and developed naturally into who he is today. He's a strange, strange man, and as human as they get.

Grant Morrison's writing has left me laughing, in tears, and angry. It has left me excited, thoughtful, or confused. It has never, ever left me bored. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003VADSNW?ie=UTF8&tag=nprim-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B003VADSNW" target="_blank">Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods</a> paints the portrait of a human being who proves that human beings will never leave me bored, either.

More information about <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003VADSNW?ie=UTF8&tag=nprim-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B003VADSNW" target="_blank">Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods</a> may be found <a href="http://grantmorrisonmovie.com/" target="_blank">at its own website.</a>

Matt · August 3, 2011

Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods is now available for free (you have to watch ads) on hulu.

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