Grant Morrison: Talking with Gods

DC Comics, the stodgier comic book publisher and competitor with Marvel’s more revolutionary line, has in some cases hired talent wholesale from abroad. After luring supreme creator Jack Kirby away from Marvel in 1970, Carmine Infantino (a previous artist himself and now DC’s official publisher) orchestrated the hiring of cartoonists from the Philippines such as Alfredo Alcala, Ernie Chan, Alex Niño, Nestor Redondo, and Gerry Talaoc. These cartoonists were masters of their craft, worked for lower rates, and gave DC’s output a unique work, far different than the Marvel house style. Many of them later left DC for Marvel.

After hiring several fine British cartoonists in the ’80s (Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons, Steve Dillon) DC lured British writer Alan Moore to the states, where his more literate and adult take on longstanding characters shook up the industry. After Moore left DC on bad terms, Editor Karen Berger hired a wealth of British writers and artists, most of whom had worked on the British anthology title 2000 AD: Jamie Delano, Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean, Peter Milligan, and (the Scottish) Grant Morrison. In keeping with the times, latent pop culture undercurrents like goth culture, neo-psychedelia, Dadaism and surrealism were deployed in DC’s comics for the first time in these creators’ works.

Directed by Patrick Meaney (The Image Revolution) and produced by Sequart Research & Literacy Organization, Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods lets Morrison explain his upbringing and working methods, interspersed with commentary from industry leaders and colleagues (Karen Berger, writers Geoff Johns and Mark Waid, etc.). Brought up in a pacifist, politically activist and subversive family, Morrison grew up inspired by superhero comics and surrounded by the books of Aleister Crowley his uncle owned. These two threads of his many interests bore fruit in his DC work, wherein he applied so-called chaos magic (helped, in time, with copious drug use) to the writing of DC series like Doom Patrol and Animal Man, as well as his creator-owned The Invisibles, a long-running series for DC’s Vertigo imprint.

Morrison’s work, which can veer from the incomprehensible and emotionally cold to the heartfelt sublime, is widely regarded in the industry, and Morrison is treated by many fans as a rock star. In the documentary, Morrison tells of several Philip K. Dick-like epiphanies, such as being abducted by aliens in Kathmandu. You can be the judge of whether that happened or not. In fact, you’ll have to, because Meaney doesn’t question any of the outlandish tales Morrison relates; he just films Morrison talking with no commentary, edited with occasional artsy rock star poses, making what could have been a more critical or probing work a study in hagiography.

Talking with Gods is well-directed and better looking than nearly any cartoonist documentary I’ve seen. Comic book fans will find it both essential and mesmerizing. Morrison and his British cohorts brought new ways of creating and reading comics to life, artistic declarations which, decades later, are still reverberating for those who care about the potentials of the art form. For a real understanding of Morrison’s life and working methods, though, we may need to look forward to a later, less gullible documentary, in which Morrison’s life story isn’t told by Morrison. A more objective, less fawning perspective is needed.

—Michael R. Neno, 2018 Sep 9