Infected Worldmind

They’re missing the full spectrum of these character’s emotional lives. The most important thing is the long-involved soap operas. It’s a type of narrative that you don’t get anywhere else except on very long-running soap operas, where characters can go into depth. 20 pages every month going into these characters lives over decades give you a lot more insight and a lot more involvement than say a two hour movie, even with Robert Downey Jr.

Grant Morrison, on what fans of superhero movies miss when they don’t read the comics, via Kevin Melrose at CBR’s Robot 6. It’s a nice quote, but I’ve always thought that DC/Marvel characters were relatively static in the comics as compared to their animated, film and tv adaptations. I think the lack of closure in superhero comics can also be viewed as a shortcoming in comparison to the films/tv shows. I think there’s a special charm to following a story that’s perpetually in its second act, but it’s unfair to pretend that it’s for everyone.

i am davidbrothers dotcom: quimper →

Coming to the end of a five-year run on various titles starring the caped crusader, the Batman brand has cemented Morrison’s reputation as one of the top writers in his field. That fame though has come with the price of becoming a figurehead for the industry, a responsibility that he is happy to…

Great comments. Here’s where David and I part company - I think Grant Morrison’s series of controversial interviews and comments over the last year and a half are incredibly helpful. They remind me of things that I should never forget (as a comics reader):

(a) the public personae constructed by entertainment figures are fundamentally fictions. They’re created to evoke a response from the audience and generate revenue. We never should have taken Morrison seriously. He’s a “freelance commercial writer who sells stories to pay the bills”. We were suckers for thinking that he was anything else, or that the counter-culture stuff he peddled in the ‘90’s was anything more than a slick advertising campaign for a product.

(b) most journalists working the ‘cultural industry’ beat are hopelessly compromised. Sometimes this is because of the journalists themselves, many of whom double as enthusiasts. Sometimes this is because of the commercial interests of their employers, who rely on the industry that they cover for advertising revenue.

Grant Morrison

So, yes, the principles voiced everywhere in Flex Mentallo would have us disapprove when superheroes shrug off genocide with a joke (New X-Men), when Kirby characters get murdered just so the plot has a MacGuffin (Final Crisis), when porn sites pop up devoted to teenage girl heroes (7 Soldiers), or when a villain tortures his victims before performing invasive surgery on their faces (Batman and Robin). Flex and Sage would shake their heads in dismay—and Morrison would follow through with it all anyway. Perhaps, then, the new tones in this edition of Flex can likewise re-color our understanding of Morrison’s past decade-plus. We can see now that Flex Mentallo, like Morrison’s comics in general, trades in the same ersatz grown-uppedness that it protests in other comics. Morrison’s comics have never been ben-day bright; in the end, like Flex Mentallo, they’ve always borne that undercoat of ugly Vertigo gray. That’s what lies at their center—and that, at last, is all there is.

Flex Mentallo and the Morrison Problem | The Comics Journal

“I mean, honestly, what kind of writer would write one fictional book, and then contradict the point of that fictional book in other fictional books that feature different fictional characters in different fictional contexts? Not very consistent, is it? Smarten up, Grant!”

Terrible.

(via iamdavidbrothers)

A waste of an interesting premise. I hoped that Rogers would explore the weird experience of enjoying the commentary about a cultural product more than the product itself (a feeling that I had with Moore and O’Neill’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and that many people I know have w/ Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men). Maybe next time.

(via essentiallydazzling)

I’m sorry that people were discouraged, but anyone who expects me to take any stronger “stand” on this issue are going to be disappointed. I’m not the leader of a political party. I’m a freelance commercial writer who sells stories to pay the bills. I’m not an employee of any company except for the one run by me and my wife. I’m not a role model or the figurehead for any movement. I don’t doubt that corporations can be underhanded, and I feel sorry for anyone who genuinely gets caught out. We live in a world where every day involves multiple negotiations with corporate power in one way or another, and all I can say is, enlist a lawyer to go through any contract before you sign it. Or self-publish.

Otherwise, my own relationship with DC Comics is a pretty good one. I have a lot of friends at the company. I’ve always been treated fairly and with respect. I get to do what I want without heavy-handed editorial interference. The accounting department pays regularly, it pays on time, royalties are good, my back catalogue is kept in print in multiple editions and honestly, I couldn’t say the same for some of the small press or alternative publishers I’ve worked for in the past. Most of them still owe me for work done in good faith. Under DC’s umbrella, with access to their printing facilities and distribution, I’ve been able to put out pretty idiosyncratic personal stuff like “Kill Your Boyfriend,” “The Invisibles,” “The Filth,” “We3,” “Joe the Barbarian” and others to a wide audience. Me and my collaborators own those books. No one can do “Before We3” but me and Frank Quitely! No one can do “After Seaguy” except me and Cameron Stewart. I never signed a contract I regretted, and I never felt cheated by DC. My own experience proves they can be reasonable and honorable, if you deal with them in an adult fashion and I have to take that into account before I condemn anyone working there today over decisions made in the past. I’ve found that “issues” rarely seem to come in convenient black and white, and that’s pretty much my last word on this.

Grant Morrison In The Thick Of The “Action Comics” - Comic Book Resources

“they can be reasonable and honorable, if you deal with them in an adult fashion” is definitely a shot

edit: in fact, it’s a pretty stupid thing to say and counterfactual. I don’t even have to think hard to come up with people DC dicked over in various ways who were presumably dealing with them in “an adult fashion.”

I wish I stopped reading this guy’s interviews years ago, because he’s pretty well shattered my interest in his work with this mealy-mouth business. He doesn’t have to take a stand and he’s not a figurehead, but he’s definitely more than willing to go to bat in favor of DC Comics while throwing sneak disses at other creators. Which makes him something.

(via iamdavidbrothers)

I love the subliminal Alan Moore diss. Classy move for a middle aged freelance commercial writer. I also love that he fails to acknowledge that his contract negotiations with DC were informed by the contracts (and subsequent success of) Moore and Gibbons’ Watchmen. He had options that Moore didn’t have in the late 1980’s (and which Siegel and Shuster didn’t have in the ‘40’s or ‘50’s). If you’re standing on the shoulders of others, don’t pretend that you’re standing on the floor. The other important thing to remember is that many creators with claims against Marvel and/or DC aren’t alleging that they signed bad contracts, but that the publishers have violated the terms of the contract.

(via iamdavidbrothers)

It might be depressing to watch characters we love go through the wringer. It’s depressing to go through it ourselves. And it’s depressing to believe that the world is under threat, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. People who use their powers only to build fantastic lives for themselves and turn away from the world may be making interesting choices — but that doesn’t mean they’re heroes.

Alyssa Rosenberg, from her review of Grant Morrison’s Supergods. I still haven’t read the book (still reading The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn; The Believers and Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention), but I wholeheartedly agree with Alyssa’s sentiment. The world sucks, but you can’t turn your back on it.

comicsalliance:

Grant Morrison Talks About Action Comics, His Batman Mega-Story, and Mothers [Interview]

It might not have featured a free ride home or Bojangles, but one of the highlights of my convention weekend at Comic-Con 2011 was getting to sit down with DC Universe uber-architect, Supergods writer and living legend Grant Morrison whose Batman books I have annotated in detail. We discussed the new Action Comics relaunching in September, the upcoming conclusion of his Batman story inBatman: Leviathan, the curious lack of mother figures in his work, and the Wonder Woman: Earth One series that wasn’t.

Grant Morrison: So thanks for all the annotations and stuff, I think they’re really good.

ComicsAlliance: Thank you very much! One of the things I’ve noticed in the books so far is this recurring thematic motif of absent parents damaging their children, similar to the Sheeda from Seven Soldiers and also with Bruce Wayne and his father Thomas, Bruce and his son Damian, etc. Is this theme going to continue next year in your work on Batman: Leviathan and Action Comics?

GM: That’s interesting — it’ll certainly come into Leviathan, but because there’s a big reveal there I can’t really talk about it. Certainly the whole year of Leviathan is about the Batman/Damian relationship and where that goes, and like I said it’s a big “weepy” type of story, so it’ll be very much in that vein. It’s really Damian relating to his father for the first time in a big way and the two of them trying to find some kind of common ground, which they don’t really have.

Read much more at ComicsAlliance.

David Uzumeri interviews Grant Morrison at SDCC for Comics Alliance. For my money, one of the best of the many, many interviews Morrison has done promoting his work and the DC Relaunch. I don’t agree with Morrison about much anymore, but he’s still one of the best writers in mainstream comics. Check it out.

When a fan commented that he was “exhausted” of reading Superman’s origin over and over again, Morrison recommended that maybe he take a break from superhero comics, because “superhero comics are supposed to be fun” and “you should get exhausted by walking up stairs, not reading superhero comics.

David Uzumeri, from his recap of Friday’s Superman panel at SDCC. It sounds like the fan was a little rude, but this reads like a missed opportunity on Morrison’s part. Instead of a put-down, I wish that Morrison engaged with the fan by explaining why he decided to tell a story set at the beginning of Superman’s career and distinguishing between his upcoming run and previous stabs at a Superman origin story.

Well, to me it’s [disputes over intellectual property and creator’s rights involving creators from the Golden Age] never been honestly what’s interesting about this stuff. I think the stories outlast all of those complications. You look at the people who created those characters, and they’re all dead. But the characters will still be around in 50 years probably – at least the best of them will. So I try not to concern myself with that. These are deals made in times before I was even born. I can say from experience that young creative people tend to sell rights to things because they want to get noticed. They want to sell their work and to be commercial. Then when they grow up and get a bit smarter, they suddenly realize it maybe wasn’t so good and that the adults have it real nice. [Laughs] But still, it’s kind of the world. I wouldn’t want to comment on that because it was something I wasn’t around for. I can’t tell why they decided to do what they did. Obviously Bob Kane came in at the same age and got a very different deal and profited hugely from Batman’s success. So who knows? They were boys of the same age, but maybe some of them were more keen to sell the rights than others. It all just takes a different business head.

-Grant Morrison, breaking my heart. Well, not really. I would’ve just reblogged Abhay or David Brothers, but I wanted to add those first two sentences, in which Morrison exhibits a particularly ugly form of tunnel vision. Read Abhay’s quick post, I (almost) agree with all of it.

I’m usually pretty good at judging a creator on his/her work alone, but this dampens my enthusiasm for Morrison’s upcoming run on Action Comics. Yeah, I know, he’s still the best writer in superhero comics, but that doesn’t hold much weight with me anymore.

I think I’ve worked out who Wingman is

teatimebrutality:

And I’m sorry Tumblr, but I don’t think it’s your guy.

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Great theory about a mystery in Grant Morrison’s run on Batman Inc.

(via teatimebrutality-deactivated201)

I saw the movie [All-Star Superman] and it’s one of my top three superhero movies ever. Only the superfans are going to complain, because the film has about 90 percent of my stuff in it. Much of it is actual dialogue taken from the book.

Grant Morrison, praising Warner Brothers’ adaptation of All-Star Superman, his classic 12 issue miniseries (with art by Frank Quitely). Warner Brothers is releasing All-Star Superman as a stand-alone animated film directed by Sam Liu (“Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths”) and written by Dwayne McDuffie (co-founder of Milestone, long-time writer/editor at Marvel and DC and writer on Ben 10, Static Shock, and the JLU animated series). Check out the trailer here. via Bleeding Cool