In the pages of Guardian, Grant Morrison (No-Beard) and Alan Moore (All-Beard) battle to the death for control of underground domain no one really knows or cares about. In a textbook example of Anxiety of Influence – not to mention a pretty good joke – these pirates are named No-Beard and All-Beard. The Seven Soldiers mini-series Guardian has a wonderfully absurd subplot involving two warring pirates who have taken over the city’s subway system. They also happen to look a lot like Grant Morrison. These men from an alternate reality are tasked with guarding the continuity of the DC Universe. In Seven Soldiers 0 (chronologically the first issue) we meet the Seven Unknown Men of Slaughter Swamp. Two final instances of Grant Morrison inserting himself into a comic are found in his Seven Soldiers mega-crossover. Seven Soldiers 0 and Seven Soldiers: Guardian 1-2 Whether you believe any of that or not, The Invisibles is still an important comic series, if only for introducing the term “wank-a-thon” to humanity. Fast forward a few years and Morrison is happily married to a hot redhead. When the violence visited onto King Mob began to manifest itself physically on Morrison, he decided to put his character on a steady diet of sexual relations with a hot redhead. ![]() Part of the idea was to create an exciting life for the character in an effort to bring his own life more excitement. Morrison wrote himself into the comic in an effort to change both his life and the world. Who happens to be the main character in the first comic book story Grant Morrison ever published, back in 1978. One of his characters (or maybe one of his other personalities, I wasn’t really paying attention) is also Gideon Stargrave Gideon writes horror novels under the pen name Kirk Morrison. Gideon Starorzewski is also King Mob, an ultra-violent super-spy/hero who leads a cell of The Invisible College, a centuries old secret organization that fights a never-ending battle against the Archons of the Outer Church. Shortly after designing the physical look of the character, Morrison shaved his head and started dressing in a similar manner. ![]() In interviews at the time, Morrison admitted that many of the excerpts were taken verbatim from his own journals, and that while the events in the story did not necessarily happen, many aspects of it were indeed autobiographical.Ĭertainly the most infamous instance of Grant Morrison inserting himself into a comic narrative was The Invisibles’ King Mob/Gideon Starorzewski/Gideon Stargrave/Kirk Morrison. The text of the story is mostly excerpts from the unnamed character’s diary. Swithin’s Day, about a “Neurotic Boy Outsider” who travels from Northern England to London to assassinate Margaret Thatcher. While he was writing Animal Man, Morrison and artist Paul Grist created a comic called St. “Pointless violence and death is ‘realistic.’ Comic books are ‘realistic’ now.” Here we see, less than three years after Watchmen 12 comes out, a meta-textual critique of the grim and gritty narrative that ruled super-hero comics throughout the 90s, and still seems to hold sway over DC’s comic and film universes.Īdding another layer of critique and meta-textualism (or, as his critics would say, “confusion”) Morrison gives Animal Man the very thing he had previously denied him – demonstrating that even the character of The Writer was not necessarily in control of this universe – and then ends on a seeming note of cynicism, before pulling the rug out from under himself with the very last panel. In doing so, he forces us to question our assumptions about God – primarily why we assume he creates out of benevolence, when we always create out of need.Īs the story comes to a conclusion, The Writer assures Animal Man that he cannot bring his family back from the dead, as that wouldn’t be realistic. By inverting the Biblical Job story, Morrison asks us to connect not with the suffering Job character, but rather with the emotionally-detached creator. The Writer reveals to poor Buddy what we already know: he exists merely for our entertainment. The final issue of the comic is a conversation between Animal Man and his creator, where After this moment, Buddy soldiers on for another six issues until, at the end of issue 25, he finally meets the Big Bad. ![]() But this revelation – demonstrated by the issue 19 splash page where Buddy Baker stares at us wide-eyed and shouts “I can see you!” – is only the climax of the story’s second act. Back before meta was cool (which is to say, 1988), Grant Morrison, along with artist Chas Truog, sent his titular hero on a 26-issue odyssey in which he would learn that he was, In fact, a comic book character. We know Grant Morrison is in the comic industry, but did you know he is also IN comics? Take the jump to see!
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