Grant Morrison
Grant Morrison (born January 31, 1960 in Glasgow ) is a Scottish comic book author .
Life and work
Morrison began working as a full-time comic book writer in the 1980s. After initially writing individual short stories for British comic magazines such as Near Myths , he finally got his first permanent engagements as the writer of the comic strip Captain Clyde , which appeared once a week in the daily newspaper The Govan Press , as well as the sci-fi series DC Thompson's Starblazer .
In the mid-1980s, Morrison was finally given the opportunity to write for renowned comic magazines such as 2000 AD and thus establish himself as a sought-after author on the British comic scene. A particularly popular work from this period is the Zenith series , created by him and Steve Yeowell , which attempted to deconstruct the American genre of superhero comics.
In 1989, Morrison was able to gain a foothold in the American market, where he was able to achieve a first respectable success with the graphic novel Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth , published by DC Comics . His artistic partner was the painter Dave McKean . At the same time, Morrison began working as a regular on the primarily adult-oriented series Doom Patrol and Animal Man , which appeared in DC's Vertigo imprint. There were also several issues of the Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight series (# 6-10). What all these works had in common was the tendency to distort the plot and character drawing of the characters by adding surreal features: In this sense, Morrison portrayed Batman's archenemy, the murderous joker, in Arkham Asylum as a transvestite while he was the hitherto unidentified, ominous disease of the Psychotic Batman adversary Clayface, who had always been cited as the main incentive for his murderous deeds since the character's introduction, interpreted as an allegory of the immune deficiency disease AIDS, which was rampant in the 1980s.
He remained connected to the European market through the St. Swithin's Day series , published by the British publisher Trident Comics. St. Swithin's Day and Morrison's next project, The New Adventures of Hitler , were overshadowed by heated controversy for most of their life. British newspapers and some parliamentarians, such as Teddy Tylor , criticized the anti-Thatcher stance of St. Swithin's Day , while the Adventures of Hitler , if only because of the choice of the main character - the German dictator Adolf Hitler in his youth - often as a provocation was rated.
In the early 1990s, Morrison initially devoted himself to projects such as Kid Eternity (with Duncan Fegredo) and Dan Dare (with draftsman Rian Hughes), before working with the draftsman Daniel Vallely in the series published in the British comic magazine Crisis (# 55-61) Bible John - A Forensic Meditation , which is about the acts of a serial killer.
Together with Mark Millar, Morrison then designed some of the stories in the Judge Dredd and Big Dave series for comic magazine 2000 AD before he finally began to concentrate fully on his work for the Vertigo imprint, which was founded by DC. In the following years he worked for Vertigo on mini-series such as Sebastian O , Flex Mentallo (with artist Frank Quitely), Kill Your Boyfriend (with Philip Bond) and the graphic novel The Mystery Play .
In 1996 Morrison took over the job of the author for the renewed superhero classic Justice League of America , which he supervised for almost four years until 2000. The draftsman Howard Porter and ink draftsman John Dell were put at his side as artistic partners . In parallel with his work on JLA , Morrison wrote the miniseries DC One Million in 1998 , which forms the core of a cross-series crossover in which the main characters from Morrison's JLA series (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter and others) move into the distant future of the 853 Century and there must be a series of futuristic adventures that dragged across the mini-series, as well as the individual issues of the ongoing series of the various characters. In addition, Morrison scripted several issues of the series The Flash (No. 130-138) and Aztek at this time . The Ultimate Man (No. 1–10) for DC, as well as the ambitious series The Invisibles for Vertigo, filled with political and pop cultural allusions and magical reflections .
With the graphic novel JLA: Earth 2 , Morrison presented his last work for DC in 2000, before he moved to Marvel Comics and took over the New X-Men series . He then wrote the six-part miniseries Marvel Boy and several editions of the long-lived science fiction series Fantastic Four
In 2004, Morrison returned to Vertigo with three new miniseries: Seaguy , WE3 and Vimanarama . The series are about the experiences of a picaresque hero like picaresque novels, whose adventures are set in a post-utopian world that has no use for him ( Seaguy ), cybernetic "improved" pets that run away from their owners ( WE3 ), and an ancient Pakistani myth that has been adapted to the narrative possibilities and the aesthetics of a modern American comic ( Vimanarama ). He was again supported in drawing by Quitely, among others.
In 2005, Morrison was again writing "mainstream comics" for DC. In this context, he first wrote a multi-part story for the series JLA: Classified , before he began to devote himself to the project Seven Soldiers of Victory , which was designed as a magnum opus . After completion of the project, Seven Soldiers comprised a total of seven four-part, interlinked mini-series ( The Manhattan Guardian , Mister Miracle , Klarion the Witch Boy , Bulleteer , Frankenstein , Zatanna and Shining Knight ) and two "Bookend" magazines that bring the mini-series together, So a total of thirty booklets that offer a broad adventure story with imaginative reinterpretations of well-known characters.
Between 2006 and 2007 Morrison took part in the series 52 (Nos. 1-52) supervised by an ensemble of authors consisting of Keith Giffen , Geoff Johns , Mark Waid , Greg Rucka and himself . At the same time, Morrison took over the All Star Superman series , which he launched especially for him , in which he presented a reinterpretation of the history of origin and the adventures of the science fiction hero from the planet Krypton. All Star Superman was not only a great commercial success, but was also widely praised by the critics: Among other things, it won the Eisner Award , the most important US comic award , in the category "Best New Series" in 2006, and in 2007 honored with the Eisner Award as "Best Continuous Series".
Morrison's run on the series Batman, which began in 2006, attracted a great deal of attention, for example detailed reports in online and print media such as Spiegel Online and Die Zeit . This attention is mainly due to the publisher's announcement in January 2008 that the title character, the night avenger Batman , is to be killed in Morrison's final storyline Batman RIP . He is supported artistically in this work by the draftsmen Andy Kubert and Jesse Delperdang as a partner.
In 2006, Morrisons wrote the new editions of the WildC.ATs and The Authority series under DC's Wildstorm imprint, which are visually implemented by the cartoonists Gene Ha and Jim Lee .
The publication of an authorized Morrison biography by British journalist Craig McGill, who began work on the work in 2003, is scheduled for 2009.
Working outside the comic industry
Works that Morrison has written for other media include the framework for the video games Predator: Concrete Jungle and Battlestar Galactica (published by Vivendi Universal), as well as the stage dramas Red King Rising (1989) and Depravity about Aleister Crowley . Both plays were implemented by the Edinburgh theater Oxygen House. While Red King Rising is about the relationship between Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell , the role model for the main character of Carroll's children's book Alice in Wonderland , Depravity about Aleister Crowley is about the life of the mystic of the same name . Both plays were awarded the First Award, a British theater prize for independent productions, and the Evening Standard Award in the “New Drama” category and were published as a book in the prose volume Lovelyy Biscuits (1999).
That same year, Morrison and Quitely designed the packaging and cover for Robbie Williams ' album Intensive Care , which they provided with intricate tarot card motifs.
In 2008 he wrote the screenplay for Area 51 , a film adaptation of the Midway video game of the same name.
In 2011 his first book was published, entitled Supergods . The German edition was published in 2013 in Hannibal Verlag under the name of Super Heroes: What we people of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman can learn & Co .
He was in the development of which started in July 2020 series Brave New World , based on the book Brave New World is based, involved.
Prizes and awards
The operators and customers of the industry information service "Comic Book Resources" voted Morrison the second most popular "comic book author of all time" in 2006, one place behind Alan Moore and one place before Neil Gaiman . In 2012 he received the British Fantasy Award for Supergods: Our World in the Age of the Super Hero as best non-fiction book.
literature
- Grant Morrison: Superheroes - What we humans can learn from Superman, Batman, Wonder Women & CO . Hannibal Verlag, Höfen 2013, ISBN 978-3-85445-418-2 (Original edition: Supergods: Our World in the Age of the Super Hero )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Fictionbox: "Area 51": Grant Morrison writes screenplay , October 19, 2008
- ^ Grant Morrison - The Official Website - Work Outside Comics
- ^ DNB, catalog of the German National Library
Web links
- Grant Morrison in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Homepage
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Morrison, Grant |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Scottish comic book writer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 31, 1960 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Glasgow |