Grant Who?

I just realised that non-comics people would probably have a question mark hovering above their heads, Metal Gear Solid-style, after reading my last post. So who is Grant Morrison? Why, simply one of the greatest writers in the comic book medium, that's who! His magnum opus, in my opinion, is the amazing, mind-bending Vertigo (DC's line of mature comics launched in the wake of Swamp Thing, Hellblazer and Sandman) series The Invisibles. It's about psychic secret agents who are waging an unseen war against those who would rule the world. It's about sex, drugs, violence and magic. It's about Buddha and the end of the world. It's about everything, really. It's also the reason I still read comics today- I got my hands on a copy of the first trade paperback. At a time when I thought comics were all about overly-muscular men beating 10 kinds of $*#! out of each other while angsting about their dead wives/girlfriends/children/pets (this was the early-90s!), The Invisibles restored my faith in the medium.

Grant Morrison's specialty is subverting the superhero genre and transmogrifying it into a way to express supremely imaginative concepts and ideas. One of his most famous mainstream works, Arkham Asylum (illustrated by famed Sandman cover artist and director of the recent fantasy film Mirrormask, Dave McKean), is a metaphorical story based on the theories of Carl Jung. Batman is cast in the role of the conscious part of the human mind, fighting to keep the unconscious part (represented, of course, by the inmates of Arkham Asylum) in check. One of the most original takes on the Batman mythos in recent years, Arkham Asylum has been a best-seller since it's release.

He's not incapable of doing mainstream work either! His mid-90s Justice League of America revamp was hugely popular and helped create the genre of "wide-screen" superhero action that Warren Ellis would use to great effect in his later title The Authority (the same book GM is going to be revamping later this year!). He similarly revamped the X-Men in his book New X-Men, which was by far and away the most exciting, SEXY X-Men book to come out for a long, long time. Last but not least, his new All-Star Superman series (with the supremely-talented artist Frank Quitely) makes that tired old hero cool again.

So that's who Grant Morrison is- the coolest English-language comic book writer ever (not the best because that's Alan Moore. Neil Gaiman's the gothest). That's why I'm so, so, so excited about his new (old?) books coming out later this year.