Writer Spotlight - Grant Morrison

I'm going to be doing a monthly writers spotlight, highlighting interesting writers and their best works.

This month we look at Grant Morrison.

Grant Morrison is one of a large bunch of British comic book writers who got picked up by DC and Marvel after success over here, (this bunch including Warren Ellis, Alan Moore, Mike Carey, Paul Cornell, Neil Gaiman and Mark Millar) and probably one of the most iconic comic book writers out there still.

His early works, including Animal Man and Doom Patrol focussed on the metafictional aspects of comics, bringing his characters face to face with God (played by Morrison in a bizarre cameo at the end of his Animal Man run) and even breaking through into the real world towards the end of Doom Patrol.

Running themes throughout his work are the ideas of superheroes coming face to face with analogues of themselves, and it's this aspect that I love about his writing.

So, here's my top Grant Morrison comics:

Arkham Asylum

Batman is called to Arkham Asylum when the inmates take over and demand that he is incarcerated as well simply because to be Batman he has to be as insane as the rest of them. Morrison's Batman stories have a genesis here and have been resonating in his Dark Knight stories ever since (see below). The characterisation of each of the villains is ingenious - his Mad Hatter verges on peadophillic in his Alice in Wonderland obsession, and his Two Face has been weaned off his beloved coin, and has instead been trained to use a six-sided die to increase the different options available to him (eventually, doctors say they want to teach him to make decisions using a set of tarot cards). This story is also the first one to start to delve into what makes Batman, what sets Bruce Wayne apart from other people - why can no-one else be Batman? It's a similar idea that Alan Moore explored in The Killing Joke, when the Joker claims that all it took for him to become a villian was one bad day, ("You had a bad day once, am I right? I know I am. I can tell you had a bad day and everything changed. Why else would you dress up like a flying rat?"). Arkham Asylum is in many ways an introduction to the themes and ideas that Grant Morrison plays with in his writing.

JLA: Earth 2

The Justice League of America as it stands these days is a shambles. For people who don't read DC comics constantly, the team is a vertibable who-the-hell-are-you mixture of C-listers (Donna Troy?) and almost completely unheard of characters (Congorilla anyone?). So what a joy it must have been to have been reading the title in the late 90's - Superman, Green Lantern, The Flash, Batman, Martian Manhunter, Wonder Woman...the list goes on. Morrison's run on JLA is fantastic, but no storyline is stronger than this one-shot graphic novel illustrated by Frank Quitely in which the JLA team up with an alternate universe Lex Luthor to defeat their evil counterparts. Again, Morrison's theme of superheroes coming across alter-ego's of themselves is the basis for the story - and is used here to show how each of them embody their heroic ideals. Only the Bruce Wayne from this earth can be Batman, only Clark Kent can be Superman. Towards the end of Earth 2 when Owlman (that's Batman's alter-ego) reaches Earth 1 and discovers his father's grave he declares "We've been sent to the one place we can't succeed either, tell them nothing means anything. He's dead. There's no-one left to hurt." His heroes, in a classic DC comics fashion, are not in disguise when they are heroes, (Tarantino makes a similar point in Kill Bill Vol 2 when he talks about Clark Kent being Superman's disguise), they are being themselves.

Final Crisis

A massive DC event and a continuation of his both his Seven Soldiers of Victory and JLA series, this seven issue storyline managed to be the most loved and hated series in recent memory. More than anything, this series felt like a finale to his entire JLA run, in which he killed the Martian Manhunter, sent Superman into a metafictional world filled with DC comics characters no-one wanted to write anymore, shot Batman back in time to the dawn of man and brought back the original Flash. The seven issue series serves as both a testement to the power of these characters, but also to the power of stories - where the ultimate villains in the end are the monitors, an alien race who preside of the entire universe and who dictate events and who, in the end back away seemingly because of the power of their own creations.

WE3

Three missing pets become weapons of mass destruction and go on the run in this three issue mini-series. Coming across like a mixture of Transformers and Homeward Bound this is probably the most straightforward of Morrison's stories, but with Frank Quitely's incredible artwork behind it - it becomes a cinematic joy to behold.

Doom Patrol

Anyone who hasn't picked this series up, hasn't experienced comics. This post talks about the series in so much detail. The series has been collected into six trades, and contains a sentient road called Danny The Street. What more do you need to know?

Pudding Not Included

I'm fairly certain this is the best thing I've ever seen.

World Cup

So, it's that time again! The world cup is upon us and I don't know about you but I couldn't be looking forward to the end of it more. The sad fact is, unlike so many people, I'm not entirely into football. So, instead, to pass the time, and hopefully to get me into the spirit of the event, myself and Bad Language have decided to name ourselves the official Creative Laureate's of the 2010 World Cup.

This presents me with a few problems. Problem one - I don't like football, and to write in the spirit of the event is going to probably go terribly. Problem two - I don't know anything about South Africa. I have never been. I want to though. Maybe that will be enough.

Expect the first story later this week.

I hope it isn't racist.

That's How I got to Manchester

My short story, 'That's How I got to Manchester' was named after the Tom T Hall song, 'That's How I got to Memphis'. It was written originally for the Rainy City Stories website, and sits on there in its perfect location at the Hilton Hotel.

Recently, as part of Bad Language, we were interviewed about the idea of writers and their environment. Charlotte Carpenter, who interviewed us, took my story away as a recording, and has come back with a rather wonderful extract, complete with sound effects. It really is rather special, so I've added it below for you all to listen to at your own whim!

Because Blogger doesn't allow us to put mp3 files directly on here, I've embedded it as a video, along with a slideshow of photos Charlotte took as part of the project about writers and their environments.

Ten Rules for Writing

The Guardian recently did an excellent article on writers rules for writing, with people like Neil Gaiman and Elmore Leonard. It seemed as though the thought behind writing a list of ten rules would be fairly cathartic for a writer, being as most writers probably don't consciously know their rules. So with that in mind, I've set about writing down my own. Some are fairly obvious and some are other (more famous) writers rules - but I still stand by them:

1. Write. It might sound stupid, but is it possible to be a writer without writing? Even if it's not the novel you're working on, or the short story you want to finish, write something - a shopping list, a ransom note, a blog! - just sit down and write!

2. Bare use of Adverbs. This is one that can really put me off a story, this article explains it better than I ever could, but pick up any Dan Brown book and you'll see some beautifully awful use of them.

3. Sparing detail. We are in an office are we? What does it look like?Is the wallpaper the normal cream coloured, slightly raised print we see in every single office? Are the workers sat on black leather chairs at computer screens? Does it look a little bit like an office? Good. We don't need two hundred words to tell us this. On an equal note, if a character has a gun, I don't need to know what make the gun is, or the car he drives, or the plane he rides in. The only times you should break this rule is when any of the above is essential for the character...although when it's essential to tell us your character is flying in his DC-10...I don't know.

4. Don't write what you know. I know about working in restaurants, shops, bars, pubs, banks, offices...I know about going out with my friends and having fun. I know that if I wrote a novel about that no-one would want to read it. There's a line that can be crossed all too easily when it comes to the age old rule of 'write what you know' when people can take it far too literally. If everyone did that, we wouldn't have this.

5. Embrace your instincts. So your character has just met the potential love interest in a bar, he's leaning in close to kiss her when he pulls a gun and...where did that come from? When I write, my instincts always try to take over and there's that thought in the back of your mind when you wonder what would happen if you did pull that gun and kill the love interest only a few pages after you introduce her. Embrace that instinct. You can always re-write (see rule ten).

6. Don't do an impression. Make the story your own. No-one wants to read a rip off Tolkien or Ellis, do they?

7. Don't do this. Enough said

8. No maps, guidebooks, dictionary's or sketches. Can you tell your story using just words? No. Then you're not a writer. You are probably James Cameron.

9. Write. So good it's in there twice. Why are you not doing it already?

10. Re-Write. Nothing is ever finished the first time. Probably not even the tenth time, but by that point you won't be able to tell. If there's anything that's improved my writing, tenfold, it's getting the crap kicked out of it at writers groups.

So those're my rules. What are yours?