Grant Morrison interviews like Morissey, only without Morissey's sense of humor (and the mopiness, but that's what makes Morissey funny in an ironic way, a la "Weeping Gorilla"). Warren Ellis's interviews are inarticulate, venomous, and angry: he reads like an Irish version of Ann Coulter. Kurt Busiek interviews like a Kennedy: he's political enough to make everybody come away feeling like he agrees with them.
I do absolutely love this part:
Some have seen the book as an ode to the King, Jack Kirby, and in so many heartfelt ways it is, but SEVEN SOLDIERS is also my personal hymn to the poetic imagination of Len Wein, whose 70s work turned me into a teenage fanboy. A great deal of SEVEN SOLDIERS – as with so much of the work I’ve done for DC - relates directly to, and expands upon, continuity established by Len. I owe an immense imaginative debt to Wein, who is humble, bemused and patient every time I collar him to tell how much his work meant to me. The way a hero ought to be.
Very classy praise for a class act like Len Wein, one of the six greatest comics writers of all time right up there with Steve Englehart, Ed Hamilton, Steve Gerber, Alan Moore, and Alan Brennert.
Everyone remembers the Englehart/Rogers DETECTIVE COMICS (and with good reason; not for nothing is it called the "definitive Batman") but one group of stories that was equally interesting was Len Wein's tales, which featured Ra's al-Ghul framing Batman for murder. To say nothing of the extraordinary "A Caper a Day Keeps the Batman Away," which features the return of Calendar Man, in a zany jewel heist crime wave, with an unpredictable ending (not as unpredictable as the ending to "The Malay Penguin," but
still).
The one thing that does sincerely bother me about Grant Morrison is this entire attitude and mentality:
I like finding the clunkiest, ugliest properties and turning them into prom queens, so the restoration/recreation part of my brief at DC is always welcome. I can sit in the garden with a pen, a notebook, some colored pencils and the sun in the sky and do little drawings for hours and hours...far from the eyesight-knackering tyranny of the computer screen.
First...the purple prose is fruity as hell. You're not Hunter S. Thompson, Grant! "eyesight knackering tyranny of the computer screen?" Is he for
real? The second thing is the idea that characters that aren't successful need to be "fixed." The truth is, you don't fix a character by totally erasing them and making a new version. You "fix" a character not by making them "cool," but by making the reader realize why they already are. If you're going to make the Guardian a black man with a black girlfriend, why bother telling a story about the Guardian AT ALL?
And I fail to see how "his" Shining Knight is in any way an improvement over the beloved character. The Guardian, divorced from the context of the Jack Kirby kid-gang, has no real reason to exist.
Though I will admit, it was very, very cool to see what Grant did with Ra-Man, bringing him back as a colossal cosmic magical being called "King Ra-Man."
The All-Star idea is to distill everything we like about the characters into one simple package that’s very much aimed at a more mainstream pop audience who don’t like to have to ask embarrassing questions like ‘Why is Superman married ?’ and ‘Why isn’t Robin Dick Grayson ?’
This is another attitude that I don't agree with. Just because Dick Grayson started out as Robin does not necessarily mean he should
remain Robin. Characters should have the right to grow and change even if it contradicts pop culture images of the characters. It's not a "flaw" that, for example, Dick Grayson is now a confident, heroic adult with his own identity, an identity he grew into gradually.
What I'm trying to say is, characters should exist independently of a frozen status quo where Dick Grayson is "always" Robin and Supergirl is "always" a bubbly, blonde teenager. This does not mean that any kind of change is automatically a good idea, but that it is noble if talented writers make an attempt to allow there to be something like progression, to let stories not be self-contained. I for one, thought it was wonderful when Steve Englehart in his GREEN LANTERN CORPS was given the choice to bring Hal Jordan back but instead he made the choice to tell stories with John Stewart.
I've said it before, I'll say it again: SCREW newbies. The comics are their own entity, with characteristics independent of versions of the characters in other media.
It is for this reason that I am reluctant to embrace the ALL-STAR lines, and why their spirit is so misplaced: they seek to "boil a character down to their essence," but the thing is, characters don't have an essence to boil down TO: characters are the sum of their history, not a concept that fits on an index card, and if you divorce them from their history, they are no longer the same character.
You could warn a guy about all the F-bombs he drops... it kind of takes away from the stuff he says, for me. I could never see Julie Schwartz do that in an interview!
Ha ha, wuss.
Grant is a weird fellow, but as long as he can keep writing great Superman stories, I couldn’t care less.
Despite EVERYTHING I just said about being totally against the ALL-STAR line in theory...you know, as much as I absolutely
want to hate it...I do like Morrison's ALL-STAR SUPERMAN. I love the Future Supermen, Atlas and Sampson in the time go-kart, Dino-Czar and the dinosaurs at the center of the earth, Lois getting temporary powers as a birthday present, Superman rescuing a ship from the sun...it's so wonderfully whimsical that it smiles at me and I can't help but smile back.
Still, I much prefer Johns and Busiek's Superman, which is almost a compliment to Morrison, because the extraordinary talents of those two men means that even someone shorter than they is still a giant. Johns and Busiek told tales of a tough, loveable Superman and they took time to build their world.