Taking a break from the Fringe, I attended the Book Festival for an evening. I decided to pay respect to my love of comic books, and found a ticket for Grant Morrison.
Morrison, in person, is rather lovely and funny: far from the esoteric, brooding genius I had imagined from reading his Invisibles, he was lively, chirpy and quick to mock his own image. Nevertheless, I was disappointed by the talk: the interview was based around his latest book, a prose guide to the superhero. This personal, but exhaustive history of the medium has a few of the touches I adore in his comics - the fascination for human potential, the child-like wonder at the imagination - but these were under-emphasised.
The question I longed to ask is based in my understanding of Morrison's great works, The Invisibles and The Filth. In both of these, there appears to be a tension between Morrison's beliefs in an almost anarchic lack of restraint, against his absolute power as an author to direct the narrative. Although he briefly touched on the manner in which he finds his characters taking on lives of their own - to such an extent that he suggests that the stories write themselves - this conflict seems to energise his writing and lends his work a consistent, distinctive voice.
In his superheroes work, particularly his series of New X-Men, the conflict is made more explicit by the nature of the universe he is manipulating. The Marvel Universe has a history, a set of physical laws, a social structure and even morality that is preordained. Characters come ready defined, and while Morrison might inject his preoccupations into the action, there is still a sense that nothing he can do will change the essential nature of the universe.
Most tellingly, he injected major changes into the life of Cyclops, the X-Men's leader. For so long the ideal boy scout, happily married, noble and idealistic, he became a more complex character under Morrison. He had an affair with a noted "bad girl," Emma Frost, gained a more pragmatic approach to life and death and finally started a new life with Frost. This appears to have derailed his subsequent development. Later writers, less able to deal with the shades of morality than Morrison have converted Cyclops into almost totalitarian leader, his new sexual liberation reflected in a more oppressive form of leadership.
The problems faced by his characterisation of Cyclops echo the themes of an earlier leader, this one belonging to Morrison, in The Invisibles. King Mob shares the open, comfortable sexuality of Cyclops, without the levels of angst that were inevitable for a mainstream good boy getting it on with a naughty lady. He operates a similar battle pragmatism, although he moves towards the "thou shalt not kill model" at the same speed Cyclops moves away from it. In place of eye beams, he has guns and martial arts skills (The Invisibles inhabit a far more realistic universe, although still in the fantasy genre).
Both leaders seem to embody the themes of Morrison's personal battle between anarchy and leadership: how can freedom exist within organisations that, out of necessity, need to have a single person in a commanding role? This tension, and its elegant unfolding in both works, is the friction that elevates Morrison's writing above the usual smash and grab of comic book action.
Given this, and considering the importance of the occult meaning hinted at in all of his writing, the inevitable question arises. Since it was not raised at the event, replaced by queries about the position of women readers, how he got on with his dad and something about some other author, I shall articulate it here, in hope of some answers, perhaps from the wider community. Who would win out of a fight between Hulk and Superman?
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