Luckily, others have content for you to enjoy.
*Because I'm spent for the night.
*Rarities Dept:
“I think it's been done by two very good writers, but I think in lesser hands it's going to become really tedious.”
- Grant Morrison, on the topic of Frank Miller, Alan Moore, and the contemporaneous yen for grim superheroes, from 1987’s Speakeasy #76
And there’s oh so much more waiting for you at the lovely ‘Lost and Found’ section of Dan Fish’s Fish1000.biz. There’s few things better on our comics internet than happening upon an internet cache of rarities and obscurities, and that’s what’s waiting for you here.
Like the 23 other Morrison interviews, starting with a local paper’s profile of the 16-year old hopeful from 1976 (“I’m hoping to take up art as a career. If that doesn’t come off I’ve nothing else in mind.”) and moving right up to the late ‘90s and all the projects associated with that period. Loads of coverage regarding everything from Arkham Asylum to Kid Eternity (“Karen Berger sent me a whole pile of Kid Eternity stuff. That was a case where they said, 'Can you do anything with this character, because everyone hates him.' So I just made everyone hate him even more.”) to The New Adventures of Hitler to Vampirella Monthly. Mark Millar shows up more than once. The quotables are legion.
“As far as any comparison with other comics writers goes, I rate my work outrageously highly. In comparison with the so-called 'mainstream' writers I worship and admire, however, I'm a complete incompetent. As I've said a million times before, it's breathtakingly easy to look good in comics. The competition is so inept that any slight technical skill or imaginative flair is enough to elevate one to divine staus [sic]. I do feel, however, that the work I've been doing for the last few years has largely been a waste of time. Dave McKean terrified me recently by reminding me just how short life is and how little time we have to produce enduring and worthwhile work. It's true and I've spent forty years writing ZOIDS and FUTURE SHOCKS and God only knows what else.”
“I write DC superhero comics for reasons of nostalgia, more than anything else. There's something comforting about snuggling up with all those childhood characters. I expect it has something to do with inadequte [sic] breastfeeding when I was twelve. I'm afraid I don't share this currently fashionable hatred for superhero characters. I mean, is it really that important? I can't understand someone like Pat Mills getting so worked up about superheroes. 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. The only superheroes I detest are the ones bristling with guns and body hair, so I'm quite happy to write about the other kind - the silly, infantile ones - until the day I die. Having said that, I'd immediately take my own life if I had to write exclusively in the superhero genre. It's only a very tiny, tiny fraction of what is interesting or amusing to me.”
“My approach to DAN DARE can be summed up quite simply as 'pissing on the flag.' Other than that, I don't have much to add.”
“I really don't understand how the Americans can survive without decent chocolate. Snickers bars!... it's like eating the pale and bloodless ghost of a Marathon. It's appalling. [America] was also very cold. By and large, I hate the country and everything it stands for but all of the people we met were terribly nice. How can they live there?”
That’s all from a single chat in 1990, from Ark #32. Quite a bounty.
Not that the site’s all talk. You’ll also find edited sequences from The Invisibles, uncollected pages from JLA, and even (how appropriate!) Morrison’s first-ever work on a certain Caped Crusader: a not-too-hot 1986 prose back-up from the year's UK annual, which does at least feature Our Hero evading Catwoman’s commandeering of that giant dinosaur in the Batcave.
And it’s not all Morrison either! Thrill to the supplemental stories in Alan Moore’s Supreme that never showed up in the trade paperbacks - plenty of Rick Veitch, a little Kevin O’Neill, and many gobs of Silver Age madness (some of which are probably cover versions of actual Superman family stories, truth be told). Delight in the also never-collected Travis Charest-illustrated short from WildC.A.T.s #50. Enjoy an early Garth Ennis/Steve Dillon collaboration from A1. Taste the sensation of those pages Chris Ware tacked onto the Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid On Earth paperback. Utilize an X-Statix Doop translation key. Just visit the site, eh?
*Rarities Dept:
“I think it's been done by two very good writers, but I think in lesser hands it's going to become really tedious.”
- Grant Morrison, on the topic of Frank Miller, Alan Moore, and the contemporaneous yen for grim superheroes, from 1987’s Speakeasy #76
And there’s oh so much more waiting for you at the lovely ‘Lost and Found’ section of Dan Fish’s Fish1000.biz. There’s few things better on our comics internet than happening upon an internet cache of rarities and obscurities, and that’s what’s waiting for you here.
Like the 23 other Morrison interviews, starting with a local paper’s profile of the 16-year old hopeful from 1976 (“I’m hoping to take up art as a career. If that doesn’t come off I’ve nothing else in mind.”) and moving right up to the late ‘90s and all the projects associated with that period. Loads of coverage regarding everything from Arkham Asylum to Kid Eternity (“Karen Berger sent me a whole pile of Kid Eternity stuff. That was a case where they said, 'Can you do anything with this character, because everyone hates him.' So I just made everyone hate him even more.”) to The New Adventures of Hitler to Vampirella Monthly. Mark Millar shows up more than once. The quotables are legion.
“As far as any comparison with other comics writers goes, I rate my work outrageously highly. In comparison with the so-called 'mainstream' writers I worship and admire, however, I'm a complete incompetent. As I've said a million times before, it's breathtakingly easy to look good in comics. The competition is so inept that any slight technical skill or imaginative flair is enough to elevate one to divine staus [sic]. I do feel, however, that the work I've been doing for the last few years has largely been a waste of time. Dave McKean terrified me recently by reminding me just how short life is and how little time we have to produce enduring and worthwhile work. It's true and I've spent forty years writing ZOIDS and FUTURE SHOCKS and God only knows what else.”
“I write DC superhero comics for reasons of nostalgia, more than anything else. There's something comforting about snuggling up with all those childhood characters. I expect it has something to do with inadequte [sic] breastfeeding when I was twelve. I'm afraid I don't share this currently fashionable hatred for superhero characters. I mean, is it really that important? I can't understand someone like Pat Mills getting so worked up about superheroes. 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. The only superheroes I detest are the ones bristling with guns and body hair, so I'm quite happy to write about the other kind - the silly, infantile ones - until the day I die. Having said that, I'd immediately take my own life if I had to write exclusively in the superhero genre. It's only a very tiny, tiny fraction of what is interesting or amusing to me.”
“My approach to DAN DARE can be summed up quite simply as 'pissing on the flag.' Other than that, I don't have much to add.”
“I really don't understand how the Americans can survive without decent chocolate. Snickers bars!... it's like eating the pale and bloodless ghost of a Marathon. It's appalling. [America] was also very cold. By and large, I hate the country and everything it stands for but all of the people we met were terribly nice. How can they live there?”
That’s all from a single chat in 1990, from Ark #32. Quite a bounty.
Not that the site’s all talk. You’ll also find edited sequences from The Invisibles, uncollected pages from JLA, and even (how appropriate!) Morrison’s first-ever work on a certain Caped Crusader: a not-too-hot 1986 prose back-up from the year's UK annual, which does at least feature Our Hero evading Catwoman’s commandeering of that giant dinosaur in the Batcave.
And it’s not all Morrison either! Thrill to the supplemental stories in Alan Moore’s Supreme that never showed up in the trade paperbacks - plenty of Rick Veitch, a little Kevin O’Neill, and many gobs of Silver Age madness (some of which are probably cover versions of actual Superman family stories, truth be told). Delight in the also never-collected Travis Charest-illustrated short from WildC.A.T.s #50. Enjoy an early Garth Ennis/Steve Dillon collaboration from A1. Taste the sensation of those pages Chris Ware tacked onto the Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid On Earth paperback. Utilize an X-Statix Doop translation key. Just visit the site, eh?
posted by Jog at 10:45 PM
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