Grant Morrison on Batman and Robin

Grant Morrison Talks IDW ‘Doctor Who’ Reprints, Possible Film Ideas

Disclaimer: The Editor-in-Chief of this site does not subscribe to the views MTV and VH-1, and the “culture” of beach bums and jocks presented by their programs. That said Splash Page seems to be getting great scoops on the sequential art (nee comic book) industry.

(C) Grant Morrison

Published by Jennifer Vineyard on Thursday, October 23, 2008 at 4:25 pm for (Splash Page).

Before “The Invisibles,” before “Doom Patrol,” before “Animal Man,” even before “Zenith” — there was “Doctor Who.” Grant Morrison cut his teeth on the comic versions sprung from the TV version, writing three stories that 20-some years later, people still talk about. Accordingly, IDW is reprinting them, with the first issue collecting “Changes” and “Culture Shock,” now in color and currently in stores, with other early stories by Dave Gibbons soon to come. And now, Morrison wants to do more

“[These stories] were very early on, when I was starting to work in comics,” Morrison said. “And it came up because I met John Ridgeway through some other work [‘Liberators’] on Warrior, so it was kind of through John, he suggested it. I was a big ‘Doctor Who’ fan all my life, so it was a good fit, you know. I absolutely enjoyed doing it, and I would love to do more with ‘Doctor Who.’”

More comics? “Not necessarily as a comic, because I’ve done enough of it in the comics,” Morrison said.

As a novel, as was the rumor? “I’m not so keen on novels,” Morrison said. “I used to want to be someone who wrote novels, but I actually prefer comics. I like to dispense with descriptions and just have images.”

As a television episode? “If I was going to do it, I’d probably do the television version,” Morrison said. “That would be the thing to see. ‘Doctor Who’ for me was always about drama. It was about actually watching it on the television, and the fact that in Britain it was kind of a Saturday night ritual thing was a very primitive, sitting-around-the-campfire kind of feeling. I think that’s the aspect that I always liked: the fact that kids would be terrified, but at the same time, parents would watch it, and they would be able explain to the kids what it was they were terrified about. It was about the communal experience, and it’s become that again, since Russell T. Davies took over.”

Read more.

More MK vs DCU reveals, a new Marvel vs Game (?), Grant Morrison joins Virgin Comics, Spaced: A San Diego ComicCon 2008 Coverage Summary

– At ComicCon 2008 in San Diego, Midway revealed that Jax and Kitana from the Mortal Kombat series, as well as the Joker and Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) from the DC Universe will be in Mortal Kombat vs the DC Universe. DC Comics employee Jimmy Palmiotti will also be a hidden character in the game.

– Perhaps as a rebuttal to the DC crossover fighting game, Kevin Feige, President of Production at Marvel Studios, hinted in San Diego that Capcom may produce a sequel to Marvel vs Capcom 2. My advice is to release the previous Marvel vs games on the various direct downloading networks for the PlayStation 3, Wii, and X-Box 360.

– Grant Morrison at a panel by Deepak Chopra’s Virgin Comics, announced that he will be working on the animated shorts based on the Indian epic, Mahabharata, entitled MBX. Morrison hinted that they will be four minute cell phone shorts during his presentation on this new CGI rendered project. Stan Lee, founder of Marvel Comics, later joined him on stage and discussed collaborating with him to create a new and original comic Superhero soon. Lee also marveled (no pun intended ) on the progress of video games in their storytelling especialling in regards to Marvel Alliance: Fusion the new RPG coming soon to the PS3/X-Box 360.

– Simon Pegg, star of Shaun of the Dead and soon to play Montgomery “Scotty” Scott in the Star Trek prequel, was at the Convention to promote the release of his series, Spaced, which finally was released in the United States and Region One DVDs on July 22nd. Its is the story of an aspiring comic book writer played by Pegg who wrote much of the script similar to Shaun of the Dead, and his roommate an aspiring writer played by show co-creator Jessica Hynes. John Cho, of Harold and Kumar fame, will play Mr. Sulu in the Trek aforementioned prequel.

– Russel T. Davies, executive producer of Doctor Who and Torchwood did not attend the convention due to time constraints working on the next season of Torchwood.

Grant Morrison’s web site has been updated for the first time in years.

Thanks to Klintron on Technoccult:

There’s also a new column he’s running there (you’re supposed to register to be able to see it, but direct links there seem to work fine):

The mental, magical immersion in the DC Universe of superheroes that’s consumed all my time these five years past is finally, and quite literally, drawing to its apocalyptic conclusion and I can’t concentrate on much else until the dust settles.

[…]

What else? It’s been hectic but I’m having a good time doing these ‘Final’ storylines for Superman, Batman and the DC Universe itself. I want to end on a couple of big, definitive stories before I take a break from superheroes for a little while and I’m really happy with the way all of these are turning out.

Full Story: grantmorrison.com

Grant Morrison (C)

Robert E Howard and the Stygian Set

“Reptilians,” bipedal amphibian or reptilian entities in the last few decades have been hot topics amongst ufologists, cryptozoologists, conspiracy theorists, and students of the Occult. Grant Morrison attributes his usage of these beings to Dogon legends.

http://www.key64.net/content/post/5-Legends-of-the-Voudoun-Gnostic-Workbook

The Dogon people of Mali tell tales of amphibians who hail from the star, Sirius B. However, before Grant, another titan of fantasy fiction, Robert E(rvin) Howard popularized “serpent men” as antagonists, first for his earlier character, Kull the Conquerer (of Atlantis) and then for his more popular Conan the Barbarian (of Cimmeria and later Aquilonia). In his stories, the Serpent Men are the children of Set…

www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/serpmenp.htm

Speaking of Robert E Howard, (whose popular character Conan of Cimmeria will celebrate his 75 year anniversary in Sword and Sorcery adventures this December) the author earlier in his life was an amateur boxer.

www.pjfarmer.com/woldnewton/Costigan.pdf

He later died of a suicide induced by a depression. Given what we know now…

Howard was depressed when he committed suicide. It may have been related head injuries. Yet, one wonders did he just imagine the Stygians? Or is there more to his stories of Ophidian Set? If he suffered concussions, did he see visions due to them?

Some parapsychologists say altered states of mind from meditation and use of entheogens such as LSD do not create visions but rather break the veil placed upon reality to keep homosapiens with their feeble minds, sane. If so what odd events did Howard witness? What odd events did he, Howard Philip Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith happen upon? What is CTHULHU? As REH asked himself, “what nameless shapes may even now lurk in the darkest places of the world?”