[comics] Tom interviews Grant Morrison [Part One | Part Two]. Morrison on Animal Man: ‘The Animal Man project began as a four issue miniseries in what he describes with a laugh as the “Alan Moore style – lots of poetic captions and interesting scene transitions”, but it soon spiralled away from this concept. “Half-way through the first four issues I decided that I just couldn’t continue with it. They had asked me to do it as an ongoing series, but it just wasn’t the kind of thing that I wanted to do. Suddenly the idea of the ‘Coyote Gospel’ came to me and that basically set the template for everything that I’ve done since.”‘

[comics] Grant Morrison discusses Animal Man… one of his early DC comics… ‘As Animal Man progressed, I moved away from miserablist heroes in their grainy, rainy ‘real’ world (that looked like no real world outside my window) and instead twisted my head into thinking not what would it be like for superheroes to live in the real world but what would it be like for a real person to live in a superhero world – an actual comic continuum, a universe drawn on paper, as thin as the ink surface but as rich and deep and involving as a 50 year-deep, shared, living universe could be. Once I’d worked out the cosmology I decided to start playing with it a little more seriously. I wondered if I could make a comic so close to real life that by writing an event or person into the comic I could make the event occur or the person appear in my own life or in the lives of others around me. I experimented with the Flex Mentallo comic then got serious with The Invisibles, which changed my life and rewrote the world around me.’

[web] Tom launches the Barbelith Zine… also check out the Barbelith Collective (Blogs) and the Barbelith Underground (Chat). ‘…barbelith.com grew out of discussions of some of the issues raised in [The Invisibles], and went far beyond them almost immediately. It’s a home for dialogues about society, technology, media, magic, religion, sex, and what-all else. It’s a community which is boisterous, passionate, sometimes acerbic, yet on occasion surprisingly tender and supportive. Debate is fierce and standards are high, but no one should feel excluded or too shy to contribute.’

“I told you my work is almost completed. Let me tell you now exactly what I’m planning to do. I’ve spoken of the importance of catastrophe to progress and change. Think of the minor accidents that made you and the others what you are today. Now imagine a mass accident if you will. Imagine generating a global catastrophe curve. What might happen then? How would humanity be forced to change and adapt? With the nanomachines I can do it. I can remake the world and everyone in it. I’m not entirely sure what kind of world will exist when I have finished, but I know it will be better for everyone. If I have any faith, I have faith in the unexpected. The unpredictable. I believe in the catastrophe. I welcome it with open arms.”

[comics] Glasgow team brought in to revamp X-Men. Grant Morrison: ‘I’m going to be concentrating less on the supernatural powers and treating it as a bit more soap opera style, looking at what its like to be a mutant like the X-Men. We’re saying what their love life is like, what music they listen to, just looking at these characters a lot more than has been done in the past.’ [via Comic Geek]

[comics] Mile High Comics publishes a first look at Morrison and Quitely’s New X-Men… ‘But Ms. Nova …I’m only a Dentist’

[comics] A couple of Pages from Grant Morrison’s X-Men have appeared on the internet — Page #1, Page #2 — discussion about it is going on here. ‘Sunspot Activity. Manic Depressive mood swings; I feel like a Hindu Sex God, Jean.’ [via Plasticbag]

[comics] Grant Morrison updates his site… new column… New X-Men details… ‘The work should speak for itself I think but I hope people will enjoy the effort we?ve put into this posthuman soap romp. The series is very shiny and takes the X-Men to new places and to NEW extremes of body and mind. Brutal, fantastic and driven by cosmic angst…We?re emphasising some of the dormant hardcore elements of the Claremont/Byrne era and pumping them up to full volume. Ultra-violet light. Weird cruelty. Mental torture. Transformation. Alien empires. Stress. That kind of thing. I?ve tried to be very faithful to the ever-present darker undercurrents of my favourite X-Men era.’

[chat] The Barbelith Underground has returned…. the bulletin board for ‘cool egghead stoner motherfuckers’.

[comics] Disinfo has the transcript of Grant Morrison’s interview with Richard Metzger (which has on Channel 4 a couple of months ago). ‘WOOOOOOOOOW! Here we are! Right! Fuck man, I tell you when I was a kid I read Robert Anton Wilson and all this shit and here we are, we’re standing here, talking about this shit and it’s real! OK, I’m pissed (Holds up red beaker.) and in half an hour I’m gonna come up on drugs, so watch for it!(Audience laughter.) I guess, I don’t know, is there any practising magicians in the audience? Put your hand up if we got any? Yeah? Come on! (Puts his hand up.) Bold! OK, a few. OK, by the time we finish this you’re all going to be practising magicians. This shit’s easy right?’ [Related Links: Grant Morrison’s Website, TimeMachineGo, Barbelith]

[morrison] Fantastic interview and in-depth profile of Grant Morrison at PopImage… also includes my index of Morrison’s work. :) ‘Just take a look at MARVEL BOY. I never have to SAY anything, I never have to SHOW anything particularly offensive and yet… the whole book reeks of barely-repressed sodomitic, incestuous lustings. I believe there are many and varied ways to inject a bracing dose of steaming eroticism into a given comic book.’

[morrison] Here is a transcript of Grant Morrison’s DisInfo TV episode… ‘…Coca-Cola is a sigil, the McDonalds ‘M’ is a sigil, these people are basically turning the world in to themselves using sigils. And if we don’t reverse that process and turn the world in to us using sigils, we’re going to be living in fucking McDonalds! Magic is accessible to everyone, the means of altering reality is accessible to everyone, and when everyone starts doing it we’re going to see our desire manifest on a gigantic scale. Everyone’s desire. What happens when everyone’s desire becomes manifest?’ [via Ms Woo]

[comics] Interesting page about an unpublished Vertigo comic from Grant Morrison, Pete Milligan and Jamie Hewlett — Bizarre Boys. ‘BIZARRE BOYS, VERTIGO VOICES’ most irreverent title, is a story within a story within a story. It’s about some fictional characters called the Bizarre Boys, and about the writers who write them, and about the writers who are writing about the writers… There are two voices telling the tale of BIZARRE BOYS, and they don’t agree with each other at all. BIZARRE BOYS is a comic about a comic and about the process of putting together a comic. It’s a sparkling tapestry of post-modernism and a fast- moving breathless chase across time and space.’ [via the Warren Ellis Forum]

[morrison] Grant Morrison updates his website and has published good news for sad, lonely, fanboys everywhere: ‘”Sex is out of the question for me” admits once-promising Olympian John with a chuckle. “When you add my spinal injuries and other morbid disabilities to the obesity I’ve suffered since the accident well, you have the chemical combination for loneliness right there in the palm of your hand. That’s mostly why I started putting aside my spare time for poring over lists and charts and I can assure fans that 2001 will be be a hard and horny one for comics enthusiasts worldwide.”‘

[comics] Grant Morrison’s website updates…. Morrison on Lennon (in the Digital Ink section): ‘I was in a band at the time Lennon died and we were all huge Beatles fans (to annoy our raincoat-wearing Joy Division-loving peer-group we had the moptop haircuts, the Chelsea boots, the tight trousers, the psychedelic shirts, the guitars etc – see picture) so I was fairly down when my fave moptop was plugged by a madman but…when all was said and done, I’d been raised a punk on ‘Clockwork Orange’ and David Sherwin so when we went onstage with the band that night we began our set by yelling “THIS ONE’S FOR THE LATE GREAT JOHN LENNON! UP HIS FUCKING ARSE!!!!”. Big? No. Clever? No. Pure Pop Genius? I think so.’

[comics] Fandom.com looks back at Grant Morrison’s Animal Man…. ‘Safe to say, it was a Morrison story, so there was tragedy – brutal tragedy that came as a total shock. But there were also revelations about the universe, theoretical physics, cosmology, suffering, redemption, discovery, and, of course, a touch of peyote. For readers who`d been with the series since it`s beginning, the beginning of Morrison`s final run was incredibly cohesive. Mirror Master`s attack back in issue #8 was of key importance to what Animal Man was about to go through. His revenge was swift and horrible, and at the same time, satisfying, but hollow, leaving Animal Man saying to Mirror Master at the end of issue #21, “I can fix it. I can fix it all. I`ve had an idea. A time machine. All I need is a time machine. I can fix everything.”‘ [Related Links: grant-morrison.com, TimeMachineGo]

[linkmachinego] Where LinkMachineGo and TimeMachineGo come from… The Invisibles by Grant Morrison. ‘…Mason receives a fax from one of his researchers in San Francisco reading ‘Time Machine Go.’ This interests Robin. Once in SF, Jack and Fanny are sent on a mission to collect the Hand of Glory. They meet the mysterious Pierrot and Columbine in a nightclub, whilst King Mob meets his ex Jacqui for a massage and an argument about his motives and his actions. At the offices Mason’s researcher Takashi explains that his breakthrough is to think of time as a single place, if you build a machine that can go ‘up’ above time, it can then choose its own re-entry point.’ [Related Links: grant-morrison.com, Barbelith – from Tom Coates.]

[morrison] Magic for Mutants — Grant Morrison’s column on his new website is well worth checking out… ‘Corporate entities are worth studying. They and other ghosts like them rule our world. So…figure out why the Coca-Cola spirit is stronger than the Doctor Pepper spirit (what great complex of ideas, longings and deficiencies has the Coke logo succeeded in condensing into two words, two colours, taking Orwell?s 1984 concept of Newspeak to its logical conclusion?) Watch their habits, track their movements over time, monitor their repeated behaviours and watch how they react to change and novelty. Learn how to imitate them, steal their successful strategies and use them as your own. Create your own brand, your own logo and see how quickly you can make it spread. Build your own god and set it loose.’

[comics] The greatest ever comic scandal: Photographic proof that Grant Morrison is Alan Moore! [Related Links: grant-morrison.com, TimeMachineGo]

[quelle surprise!] This internet thing might just have a future… Grant Morrison has launched his own website. ‘Whatever you do, make sure you go right to the top, because you sure as hell can’t piss upwards on people.’ [via Barbelith Underground]

[comics] First panel from Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell’s new Zenith — done as Ali G… [via Barbelith Underground]

[grant morrison] Interesting transcript of Grant Morrison’s chat on the BBC’s Edfest website. ‘Jinx: Will Zenith be returning to 2000AD? Grant Morrison: Yes shortly and in a fairly bizarre story It starts off with Britney Spears being raped by a robot’ [Related links: plasticbag.org covers the Flex Mentallo / Charles Atlas WWF Smackdown]

[grant morrison] A scan of an early Grant Morrison comic strip — Gideon Stargrave. Originally published in 1978 in a comic called Near Myths. “Are you Gideon Stargrave?” “As often as possible, but you know how it is these days.” [Related Link: TimeMachineGo]

[comics] Excellent interview with Authority writer Mark Millar. ‘…I thought Grant was a bit mad. He was going through his ‘Bizarro persona’ at the time. Did you ever hear about that? As a shamanic exercise, he purposely said the precise opposite of everything he meant for six entire months and broke his vocabulary down into “Me am not want drink of Vodka”, etc. It was very, very fucking scary, and his girlfriend of some years had a breakdown during the course of the exercise. He was a good sort, though, and we hit it off almost immediately thanks to my sterling knowledge of Silver Age DCs.‘

[photos] Hunter S. Thompson and Grant Morrison— Seperated at birth?

[weblogs] Every wondered what the word Barbelith means? Grant Morrison: “The word ‘BARBELiTH’ is derived from a dream I had when I was about 20 or 21 and coincided with my first structured ‘magical’ experiences and a minor nervous breakdown (in the dream, BARBELiTH was the name of some higher dimension or alternate reality). Like a lot of stuff in INVISIBLES I used the name unconsciously when I needed something to call the red circle that represents our Universe’s placental twin. I’d taken the etymology as far as ‘bearded stone’, which seems much less interesting and less weirdly appropriate than ‘alien stone’. My real life is getting more like the comic every day (in ways I should have suspected but didn’t really expect on this scale). There’s more on the red circle and its many meanings in DOOM PATROL #54, I just realised. That issue was written in near-trance so fuck only knows what’s been trying to get through all these years.”

[comics] Great two part interview of Grant Morrison in Sequential Tart: [Part One] [Part Two] ‘It lets your head expand and it also throws you on your mettle. I always travel on my own and you find yourself in the middle of Bangkok and you think ‘what do I do?’ and that’s a great feeling to have – you solve it and you go about the world feeling fantastic because no-one knows who you are and no ones putting any personality on you – you can swam into any place and say ‘I’m James Bond!” (laughs)’ — GM on travel.

[comics] Warren Ellis interviews Grant Morrison. “Fans of comics like INVISIBLES and JLA may be interested to know that I was Mr. DeFalco’s unwilling ‘bitch’ for most of the late 80s. Because I was quite young-looking and fairly skinny, I could quickly be done up with a bit of curtain as an ideal ‘visiting niece’ whenever one of Tom’s morbid testosterone build-ups was giving him grief.”

[comics] Grant Morrison issues a call to arms. “This is simple: if you really hate comics so badly you want to see them die, then keep filling the message boards with frustrated, ignorant bile (I’ve been reading some of this stuff and a lot of guys out there really need to get laid or take up meditation). Otherwise, let’s have a momentary ceasefire to figure out ways of rebuilding the profile of the entire comics medium. The responsibility is with us; we all know how awful it is and how crap comics are. We’ve all heard that tired old song of self-loathing long enough and it’s getting to be a real drag. If you think there’s no hope then please f*** off, die quietly and prove yourself right.” [via Barbelith]

[comics] Grant Morrison posts on Nexus: ‘Imagination is the Fuel of the 21st Century. I’ll be right here on and off for the rest of the week at least. Ready to start fucking with the future, padre?’

[comics] “Nothing ends that isn’t something else starting. So which side are you on? Do you know yet?” I’ve just read the last issue of the Invisibles… [Personal Shite]

If you want to find out more about the Invisibles check out: The Bomb and the Nexus.

[comics] The final issue of the Invisibles is out. I still have not got a copy — deliveries in the UK were delayed by the bank holiday on Monday!

[comics] What is Hypertime?

[comics] Tom gets an email from Grant Morrison! [why don’t I get emails from Grant? WHY?? WHY?? I’ve been a good soldier… I read Zoids for fucks sake, Grant! :) ]

[GM] Hmmm… the Invisibles seem to have got grantmorrison.com

[GM] Nice Grant Morrison Interview.

[GM] Excellent! You can now browse the OneList archives of The Invisibles and TemporaryNexus mailing lists by each individual post rather than by daily digest versions.

[Comics] Diamond Previews covers Grant Morrison’s Marvel Boy. [scroll to the botton of the page!]

[quote] “What’ll it be next? Choice extracts from the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations? Trotting out the Nietzsche and the Shelley to dignify some old costumed claptrap? Probably. Sometimes you wonder, in an interconnected universe, who’s dreaming who?” — Grant Morrison (1989)

[Comics] Interview with Grant Morrison in ifuse. Nice review of Morrison’s Kissing Mr Quimper in The Independent. [via The Invisibles Mailing List]

[quote] “I really do think that the battlelines have been drawn. I want to see comics as a pop medium, I want to see the Forbidden Planet empire reaching out to every city in the world like McDonald’s. I want to see comic creators and retailers in Vogue and on telly, but ranged against that brilliant global vision are the cornershop bankers who just want to sneak home with their brown paper bags and their Betty Page video’s and who’re just desperate to keep comics at the level of stamp collecting and train-spotting because they can’t face up to the glare of the real world. Which side will you be on? — its as simple as that.” — Grant Morrison (1992)