Over the last few weeks, my good friend Pdraig Malid has been writing a series of articles

about Alan Moore and Superfolks, which became an edgeways look at the long running friction
between Moore and fellow writer, Grant Morrison. While Moore has previously spoken out about
his thoughts on Morrison in various interviews, Morrison has generally kept quiet on the issue.
There have been occasional barbs of course, and plenty of praise, but very little on the actual facts
of the matter.
The popularity of Pdraigs articles perhaps suggests there is a demand for such information
however, and many of the comments certainly demonstrate a lack of adequate knowledge of the
facts. Now who could possibly shine a light on this topic? Ah, hang on, I know just the fella.
Behold then, a remix edition of Alan Moore and Superfolks Part 3: The Strange Case of Grant
Morrison and Alan Moore, where we cut and splice the original article with Pdraigs blessing I
hasten to add! with Grant Morrisons own voice. Some bright hard fact-saliva, as one man would
put it, and it is sorely needed. Whatever your stance on Moore, Morrison-bashing is rather rife, and
quite unfair when you are aware of both sides of the story.
As to my own credentials, I have interviewed both men more than once in the past, and enjoy many
of the works of both, but have had very different experiences with the two men on both a personal
and professional level. I freely admit then my bias towards Morrison, as Pdraig does for
Moore. But enough of me, lets get on with the remix. All Grants words are in red fontfor ease of
reading:
Hope the following rather massive info-dump helps clarify a few things. I also hope this may
explain why Ive sometimes felt myself to be the victim of a genuine grudge that seems quite
staggering in its sincerity and longevity. Reading the comments section following The Strange
Case of Alan Moore and Grant Morrison I cant help but note how heavily my detractors rely on a
total lack of research, gross distortions of historical fact, and playground name-calling to support
their alleged points.
Not that I expect this to make much difference but the opportunity to separate fact from fantasy is a
welcome one. Pdraig quotes from Alan Moore discussing me during a webchat earlier this year
without challenging even the most obvious and basic of the many historical inaccuracies and
contradictions in Moores assertions. In fact, Moores recollections are completely unreliable and I
wouldnt mind having some facts put on record, once and for all.
Thanks to Pdraig for allowing me to respond directly to his piece and to Laura for bringing it to
my attention and offering me space on The Beat to get some things off my medal-heavy chest.
Originally, when I set out to look into the various allegations about Alan Moore and Robert
Mayers Superfolks, I thought it was going to be a comparatively straightforward piece to write.
Just read the book, find out what people had said, and attempt to match the two of them up together.
What could be easier, I asked myself? Ten thousand words and nearly a year later, I find that I could
not have been more wrong. However, doing the research is at least half the fun, Ive always said.
Much of the fascination of writing about things like this is that you never know what youre going
to find out. And one of the things that I found out was that I really needed to know more about the
animosity between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison, as it seemed to be a constantly recurring aspect
of the story of Moore andSuperfolks.

So, to go back to where I started, back to the beginning of the piece called Alan Moore and
Superfolks: Part 1 The Case for the Prosecution, theres that piece from Grant
Morrisons Drivel column in Speakeasy #111 (July 1990), where he talks about reading Superfolks,
and makes it really quite clear that he thinks or pretends to think that Alan Moore plundered the
book for ideas. But this isnt by any means the beginning of their for want of a better word
relationship.
But what is the beginning of that relationship? There are two different versions of this, depending
on who you listen to.
Not entirely. One version is supported by incontrovertible facts and verifiable research. The other
relies on demonstrable errors. Beginning with the latter
So, first theres Alan Moores version of events, which Ive transcribed from the webchat he did for
the Harvey Pekar statue Kickstarter. One of the questioners asked,
You are somewhat surprisingly not the only acclaimed comics writer from
the UK to also be a vocal magician. Obviously Im talking about Grant
Morrison here, who has never been terribly shy about his views on you or
your work. Can we possibly draw you out on your views of him and his
work?
To which Moore replied,
Well, let me see The reason I havent spoken about Grant Morrison
generally is because Im not very interested in him, and I dont really want
to get involved with a writer of his calibre in some sort of squabble. But,
for the record, since you asked: the first time I met him, he was an aspiring
comics writer from Glasgow, I was up there doing a signing or something.
They asked if I could perhaps if they could invite a local comics writer
who was a big admirer of mine along to the dinner. So I said yeah. This was
I think the only time that I met him to speak to. He said how much he
admired my work, how it had inspired him to want to be a comics writer.
And I wished him the best of luck, I told him Id look out for his work.
When I saw that work in 2000 AD I thought Well, this seems as if its a bit
of a cross between Captain Britain and Marvelman, but thats probably
something that hell grow out of.
Lets start with an aspiring writer
The usually well-informed Moores grasp of the facts is a little shaky here but the truth is well
documented and, as can be quickly verified, my first professionally published comic book work
Time Is A Four-Letter Word appeared in the independent adult sci-fi comic Near Myths in
October 1978 (written and drawn by me, the story was/is, amusingly enough, based around the
simultaneity of time concept Alan Moore himself is so fond of these days and which informs his inprogress novel Jerusalem). By 1979, I was also contributing stories on a regular basis to DC
Thomsons Starblazer series and Id begun a three year stint writing and drawing Captain Clyde,
a weekly half-page newspaper strip about a lo-fi realistic Glasgow superhero. Captain Clyde
ran in three newspapers. I was even a guest on panels at comics conventions.

In October 1978, Alan Moore had sold one illustration a drawing of Elvis Costello to NME and
had not yet achieved any recognition in the comics business. In 1979, he was doing unpaid humour
cartoons for the underground paper The Back Street Bugle. I didnt read his name in a byline until
1982, by which time Id been a professional writer for almost five years. Using the miracle of
computer technology, you can verify any of these dates right now, if you choose to.
Its true that Moores work in Warrior and The Daredevils, combined with the rising excitement
of the early 80s comics boom in Britain, galvanized me into refocusing and taking my existing
comics career more seriously at a time (1982) when the music career Id tried to pursue was
spinning in circles but I hope even the most devoted of his readers might understand why Ive
grown tired of the widely-accepted, continually-reinforced belief that Moores work either predated
my own or that he inspired or encouraged me to enter the comics field when its hardly a chore to
fact-check the relevant publication dates.
So Ill repeat until maybe one day it sticks; I was already a professional writer/artist in the late 70s,
doing work-for-hire at DC Thomson alongside creator-owned sci-fi and superhero comics. This
was at the same time as people like Bryan Talbot, Peter Milligan, Brendan McCarthy, and Brett
Ewins, making us some of the earliest exemplars of the British new wave. If Alan Moore had never
come along, if hed given up halfway through his ground-breaking turn on St. Pancras Panda, we
would all still have written and drawn our comics. We published our own fanzines, and small press
outlets were popping up everywhere. 2000 AD was at a peak. Marvel UK was in a period of
expansion and innovation. Id already submitted art and story samples several times to both DC and

Marvel, along with a pitch for a crossover entitled Second Coming to DCs New Talent
Programme in 1982. I was on the files and I didnt stop angling for work. DC would have found all
of us, with or without Alan Moore, who seems curiously unable or unwilling to acknowledge that
he was part of a spontaneous movement not its driving force or sole font of creativity.
It was on that basis that I recommended him to Karen Berger when she
was starting [indecipherable speech Vertigo?].
Its hard not to be a little insulted by Moores comments that he recommended me to Karen Berger
for, what he has described on more than one occasion, and with a fairly extravagant degree of
solipsistic self-regard, as a proposed Alan Moore farm with Vertigo Comics, seemingly unable to
imagine veteran writers like Peter Milligan, me and others as anything more than extensions of his
own self-image. See herehttp://www.seraphemera.org/seraphemera_books/AlanMoore_Page1.html
or here
http://blog.newsarama.com/2012/08/10/all-the-writers-were-instructed-to-write-this-like-alanmoore/
However, as five minutes research will confirm, the Vertigo imprint was established in 1993, by
which time Alan Moore had fallen out with DC over the For Mature Readers ratings system and
quit doing new work for them (I believe his split with DC occurred in 1987). I had already been
working there for six years doing Animal Man, Doom Patrol, Arkham Asylum, Gothic,
Hellblazer and Kid Eternity. I had a good relationship with Karen Berger and was a fairly
obvious choice for her to call when she conceived the Vertigo imprint. No other recommendation
was necessary. It ought to go without saying that none of us were told to write like Alan Moore
nor did we and that this is an out-and-out lie.
Far more significantly, much of the material that fed into early Vertigo was originated by the
creators and by Editor Art Young for the proposed Touchmark imprint of creator-owned adult
comics hed been assigned to put together under the aegis of Disney, of all things. Coincidentally
gay-themed series like Peter Milligans Enigma and my own Sebastian 0 which actually grew
out of a pitch for a revamp of IPCs Janus Stark character were commissioned by Art for
publication at Touchmark, not by Karen Berger. When Touchmark experienced a failure to launch,
Art was re-hired by DC and brought his portfolio of projects to Vertigo. At no point was Alan
Moore involved in any of this.
Again, why the fibs, other than to reinforce once more the fantasy of me and indeed every other
Vertigo writer in a junior or subordinate position to himself?
As Moore points out, the work I did on Zenith 25 years ago can trace a little not all of its
influence to Marvelman and Captain Britain both of which I loved; my own introduction to the
first volume of Zenith, published in 1988, admits as much, while also listing the books many
other touchstones.
Then there started a kind of, a strange campaign of things in fanzines
where he was expressing his opinions of me, as you put it. He later

explained this as saying that when he started writing, he felt that he wasnt
famous enough, and that a good way of becoming famous would be to say
nasty things about me. Which I suppose is a tactic although not one that,
of course, Im likely to appreciate. So at that point I decided, after Id seen
a couple of his things and they seemed incredibly derivative, I just decided
to stop bothering reading his work. And thats largely sort of proven
successful. But, there still seems to be this kind of [indecipherable speech]
that I know.
I dont believe I ever tried to get famous by insulting Alan Moore. It doesnt seem the most likely
route to celebrity.
The commercial work I was doing in the early 1980s wasnt much like the kind of material I wrote
and drew for myself, or for indie publication. To get work with Marvel UK and 2000AD I
suppressed my esoteric and surrealist tendencies and tried to imitate popular styles in order to
secure paying jobs in the comics mainstream. There is a reason those pieces were written in a
vaguely Alan Moore-ish style and its because I was trying to sell to companies who thought Moore
was the sine qua non of the bees knees and those stories were my take on what I figured they were
looking for. I also did a good Chris Claremont and a semi-passable Douglas Adams. My personal
work from the same time is written in a very different style, and is more in the vein of Doom
Patrol or The Invisibles. You dont have to take my word for this: it can be verified by looking at
the Near Myths material or stuff like the Famine strip in Food For Thought from 1985. It can
even be gleaned by looking at the clear difference between the first four Animal Man issues and
the fifth The Coyote Gospel story Pdraig mentions and subsequent issues.

Doing my own approximation of the in style to get gigs on Marvel UK books was, I thought, a
demonstration of my range, versatility and adaptability to trends, not the declaration of some
singular influence it has subsequently been distorted into over four decades mostly by Alan Moore
and his supporters, in what can sometimes feel like a never-ending campaign to undermine my
personal achievements and successes and to cast me, at all times, in a subsidiary role to the Master.
Furthermore to suggest, as Moore does, that subsequent work of mine, including the balance of
Animal Man, Doom Patrol, Flex Mentallo, JLA, The Invisibles, New X-Men, Seven
Soldiers, Batman, All-Star Superman etc. was equally indebted to Captain Britain and
Marvelman means either one of two things: that hes read the work in question and is again
deliberately distorting the facts for reasons known only to himself or that he hasnt read it at all, in
which case hes in no position to comment surely?

(I do know that Alan Moore has read a lot more of my work than he pretends to one of his former
collaborators quite innocently revealed as much to me a few years ago, confirming my own
suspicions but until Moore himself comes clean about it that will have to remain in the realm of
hearsay.)
And, as far as I know, hes the only bone of contention between me and
Michael Moorcock. Michael Moorcock is a sweet sweet man I believe he
has only ever written one letter of complain to a publisher over the
appropriation of his work, that was to DC Comics over Grant Morrison, so
the only bone of contention between me and Michael Moorcock is which of
us Grant Morrison is ripping off the most. I say that its Michael Moorcock,
he says its me. Weve nearly come to blows over it, but Im reluctant to let
it go that far, because, Im probably more nimble than Moorcock Ive got
a few years on him, Im probably faster, but Moorcock is huge, hes like a
bear. He could just like take my arm off with one sweep of his paw, so well
let that go undecided for the moment. But, those are pretty much my
thoughts on Grant Morrison, and hopefully now Ive explained that I wont
have to mention his name again.
Why would he feel qualified, on the basis of the couple of things of mine he claims to have read a
long time ago, to insist that not only do I rip him off on a regular basis but his friend Michael
Moorcock too? Can anyone tell me from which Michael Moorcock novels Zenith and Animal
Man were plagiarized? (And if Moorcock made any complaints to DC in the 90s, I never heard
about them. I had no idea there was any beef with Moorcock until Pop Images Jonathan Ellis drew
my attention to it in 2004).
As an important aside in this discussion, Moorcocks spurious allegations of creative theft are based
on exactly TEN pages of material in issues 17-19 of The Invisibles. These pages were explicitly
presented as a Moorcock pastiche or more strictly a pastiche of my own Gideon Stargrave stories
from Near Myths, which were heavily but not entirely influenced by Moorcock and J.G Ballard
occurring in the head of the fictional character King Mob. King Mob actually talks about his
obsession with Jerry Cornelius within the story and I reference Moorcocks work as an inspiration
for these pages in the letters column of issue 17.
Not content with deliberately misinterpreting a mere ten pages of my fifteen hundred pagecomic
series, Moorcock this sweet, sweet man continues to this day to jeer and spit abuse. Heres
Alan Moores mate Michael Moorcock
http://www.multiverse.org/fora/showthread.php?t=6506
describing me as a sticky-fingered tea leaf (!) and talking about having me duffed over.
Ive read the work of Grant Morrison twice. Once when I wrote it. Once
when he wrote it. As far as Im concerned my image of Grant Morrison is
of someone wearing a mask, a flat hat and a striped jersey and carrying a
bag marked SWAG.
Sexy!

Leaving aside his own appropriation of entire swathes of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Harry Blyth,
Moorcock fails to convince that hes read any aspect of my work even once, let alone twice. He
has so far failed to back up the casual slander with any actual evidence or examples of when he
found the time to write The Invisibles, St. Swithins Day, The New Adventures of Hitler,
We3, The Filth, Kill Your Boyfriend, Mystery Play, Seaguy or Joe the Barbarian to
name just a few. In a 34-year career, Ive also written long-running DC and Marvel series, plays,
screenplays, video games, short stories and a book; all of which, if Michael Moorcock is to be
believed, were written by him. Except for the bits I stole from Alan Moore!
Allow me to demonstrate how easy it is to play this dangerous game:
Ill start by pointing out how various interviews in which I talked about my practice of Chaos
Magic during the 1980s and early 90s clearly played into Alan Moores decision to declare himself
a magician in 1993. Next, with censorious authority, Ill point to my own Doom Patrol #53 and
claim it gave him the idea for his 1963 project at Image, released a year later. Ill suggest that
Moores take on Supreme was a lot more like my take on Animal Man than Zenith was like
Marvelman or Captain Britain The Supremacy in Supreme is a fairly blatant copy of the
Comic Book Limbo concept I introduced in Animal Man seven years earlier and the Moore
books wider meta-fictional concerns also covered territory well-trodden by Animal Man.
LOEG: Century with its apocalypse/moonchild plot occurring over three time periods cannot help
but recall the apocalypse/moonchild plotline running over three time periods in The Invisibles
fifteen years previously with Orlando playing the Lord Fanny role, if you fancy. I could go on and
on here, with convincing examples, but you get the idea. Ill wind up with some condescending
comment about how I figured hed grow out of the rip-off magic and metafiction nonsense then
wryly conclude that theres not much chance of that now hes nudging 60.
The above is at least as plausible as Alan Moores outlandish attempts to claim that my entire career
rests on two stories he wrote 30 years ago.
As Ed Brubaker pointed out in the comments section of Part 2 of Pdraigs series of articles, all
writers are influenced by all kinds of things, including one another, all the time. The wider issues
around plagiarism, influence, ownership and appropriation especially in the context of the IPdriven corporate vision of creativity are definitely worth further discussion but Id like to keep
this narrowed down to Pdraigs essay and specifically Alan Moores comments about me.
However, as evidence that Im not alone before the jury, Moore has charged and found guilty the
entire mainstream comics industry of living off his leftovers for 30 years here
http://www.mania.com/alan-moore-reflects-marvelman-part-2_article_117529.html
and in other interviews which relentlessly position his own oeuvre as the source of all our Niles.
No-one would begrudge him his own obvious influences if he didnt feel compelled to lecture the
rest of us from a moral high ground he occupies dishonestly
Moore includes Geoff Johns among the parasites and raccoons rooting through his trash. Why?
Because Johns seasoned his own epic expansion of the Green Lantern mythos with a couple of
minor elements from Moores Green Lantern short story Tygers (1986) a story that was itself
created to make sense of a plot hole in the 1959 Green Lantern origin by Gardner Fox!

So, in fact, both Moore and Johns were simply doing their work-for-hire jobs by adding to and
expanding upon the many-authored quilt that is DC, and specifically Green Lantern, continuity. In a
shared narrative universe, such as those of DC or Marvel, any element introduced into the
continuity surely becomes part of the backstory and is therefore available to other writers to build
upon or incorporate. Johns Green Lantern work and the Blackest Night story in particular would
have worked as well without any reference to Tygers, in fact. Why the sneering, dehumanizing
putdown? Who chastises a man for the unspeakable crime of synthesizing prior elements of Green
Lanterns back story into his own fresh and personal creative vision for the character, mlud?
Would Moore have appreciated a comparison to vermin snuffling among Gardner Foxs garbage for
treats when he brought Foxs Floronic Man back from the archives to feature in a Swamp Thing
(Len Weins trash!) story? What obsessive snouting around in the municipal tip does League of
Extraordinary Gentlemen reduce to if we regard Alan Moores endeavours through the same
unforgiving lens he applies to Geoff Johns work?
Geoff Johns like the rest of us, has his own identifiable obsessions as a writer. He has his own
interests, his own points of view, and his own way of articulating his ideas via his chosen medium. I
know for a fact that Geoff has seen and done and endured things in his life that Alan Moore is
unlikely ever to experience, yet Moore automatically brands him creatively bankrupt and tries to
insists that Johns imagination is so low on fuel, it relies for sustenance on his own. If I can speak
up for a friend, Geoff Johns, like the rest of us, like anyone who picks up a pen to earn a living, has
plenty to say and, with all respect, he doesnt need Alan Moores help to say it.
Excuse the fit of editorializing there. It had to happen. Lets return to the facts in this Strange
Case
The other version of the story comes from Patrick Meaneys Talking with Gods documentary,
where Morrison says,
I remember reading V for Vendetta and thinking, this is what I wanted to
do, this is the way comics should be. One of the first things I did was go
down to see Dez Skinn in London, the publisher of Warrior I had taking
this story, which was a Kid Marvelman spec script, and he bought it straight
away so, again, that was a really good jump for me. Then Alan Moore had
it spiked, and said it was never to be published. Thus began our slight
antagonism, which has persisted until this very day. They asked me to
continue Marvelman because Moore had fallen out with everyone in the
magazine, and taken away his script, and they said Would you follow this
up? And to me that was just like, oh my God the idea of getting to do
Marvelman, following Alan Moore, Im the only person in the world
whod really do this right, and I was well up for it. I didnt want to do it
without Moores permission, and I wrote to him and said, Theyve asked
me to do this, but obviously I really respect you work, and I wouldnt want
to mess anything up, but I dont want anyone else to do it, and mess it up.
And he sent me back this really weird letter, and I remember the opening of
it, it said, I dont want this to sound like the softly hissed tones of a mafia
hitman, but back off. And the letter was all, but you cant do this, you
know, were much more popular than you, and if you do this, your career
will be over, and it was really quite threatening, you know, so I didnt do it,
but I ended up doing some little bit of work for Warrior.

Its hard to put exact dates on either of these versions, but presumably Moores story happened
before Morrisons, and, given that Morrisons story refers to Moore having stopped writing
Marvelman for Warrior this puts the date at some point between August 1984, when Moores last
Marvelman story appeared, in Warrior #21, and February 1985, when Warrior#26, the last issue,
came out, containing the Morrison-scripted The Liberators: Night Moves incidentally. So the
meeting in Glasgow between Moore and Morrison must have happened at some point between the
first issue of Warrior in March 1982 and Moores last story, in August 1984. The exact timing in
possibly not that important, but I like to nail these things down if I can!
The timing is very important because Moore met me not once but many times the first at a comic
mart in Glasgows McLellan Galleries (in 83, I think) when I gave him a copy of my music fanzine
Bombs Away Batman! which contained positive reviews of his strips in Warrior and
2000AD. The second time was at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow in 1984 where I
recommended William McIllvaneys Laidlaw novels to him. On both occasions, and whatever he
may have thought then or now, I was not an aspiring writer but a many times published one, as can
easily be checked.
In the company of Bryan Talbot, I spoke briefly with Moore again at a comic convention in
Birmingham in 1986, by which time we had corresponded on the subject of Marvelman, and
when we met for a fourth time at the dinner he semi-recalls (in Glasgow during the Watchmen
Graphitti Editions tour in 1987, when he and Dave Gibbons signed a copy of their book for my
mum), I was a full-time professional, working for 2000 AD and DC too by that point not an
aspiring writer (I also met and spoke with him after that the last time we were in a room together
was at the Angouleme comics festival in 1990 but by then he would no longer communicate with
me, even by semaphore).
When Moore says They asked if I could perhaps if they could invite a local comics writer who
was a big admirer of mine along to the dinner., the careful, self-aggrandizing, phrasing suggests
not only that Moore had no idea who I was but that some special privilege had been accorded me
when, in fact, the meal was organized by John McShane, who ran AKA Books and Comics in
Glasgow at the time. I spent two afternoons a week hanging around Johns shop talking comics, and
as a friend and a fellow professional who knew Moore and respected his work, he naturally invited
me along to the dinner as a guest. This mysterious local comics writer was, in fact, someone Alan
Moore knew, had met, and had even exchanged letters with previously, as outlined above. A fellow
professional, in fact.
I remember talking to him about becoming a vegetarian sometimes you cant live with the
contradictions, Grant which suggests Id started work on Animal Man. I kept detailed
diaries from 1978 93 and I can check the exact dates but Arkham Asylum was also written in
1987. I was far from up-and-coming at the point in time Moore cites.Why the made-up stories about
me?
Meanwhile, Morrisons own star was on the rise. He started writing Zenith for 2000 AD in August
1987, after various other work here and there in UK comics, and this was his breakthrough work. I
didnt come across him myself until later on, when he was writing Animal Man for DC Comics,
and still think that The Coyote Gospel from Animal Man #5 is one of the single best things ever put
on a page, by anyone. It was during this time that Morrison, as Moore put it, had a strange
campaign of things in fanzines where he was expressing his opinions of me []. He later explained
this as saying that when he started writing, he felt that he wasnt famous enough, and that a good
way of becoming famous would be to say nasty things about me Morrison himself refers to this

too, in his book Supergods where he says,

High-contrast Western manga art by my Zoids partner Steve Yeowell made
Zeniths world a frantic modernist blur of speed lines and contemporary
fashions and haircuts. We announced to the world that Zenith was intended
to be as dumb, sexy, and disposable as an eighties pop single: Alan Moore
remixed by Stock Aitken Waterman. Keeping all the self-awareness outside
the story, we used interviews and forewords to admit to our sources. In
them we praised creative theft and plagiarism, quoted the French
playwright Antonin Artaud and sneeringly suggested that the likes
of Watchmen were pompous, stuffy, and buttock-clenchingly dour. The
shock tactics Id brought with me from the music world, delivered with the
snotty whippet-thin snideness of the hipster, had helped me carve out a
niche for myself as comics enfant terrible, and Steve was happy to play
along as the handsome nice one with nothing controversial to say.
My public persona was punk to the rotten core. Outspoken and mean
spirited, I freely expressed contempt for the behind-the-scenes world of
comics professionals, which seemed unglamorous and overwhelmingly
masculine by comparison to the club and music scenes. My life was rich,
and my circle of friends and family was secure enough that I could afford to
play a demonic role at work. Reading interviews from the time makes my
blood run cold these days, but the trash talk seemed to be working, and I
was rapidly making a name for myself. Being young, good-looking, and
cocky forgave many sins, a huge hit British superhero strip did the rest and
proved I could back up the big talk
Talking about this more recently, in David Bishops Thrill-Power Overload: Thirty Years of 2000
AD (Rebellion, UK, June 2007),
Sorry to interrupt here, but an interview from 2007 cant have appeared more recently than the
extract from Supergods, published in 2011, without the aid of string theory.
Morrison recalls being asked by the editorial people at 2000 AD to come up with an idea for a
British superhero strip, he said,
[Zenith] was very much a reaction against torment superheroes. Dark
Knight is a brilliant piece of Reagan-era fiction and Watchmen is very,
very clever in its architecture, but both books felt pompous and concept
albumy to me as a young man in the 80s. I wanted to do something a little
less self conscious perhaps, or to align myself with a different current of
thinking. I had grown bored with the dull realism of the grim n gritty
school. Brendan [McCarthy]s work was so unique, so personal and
inspirational that I was completely blown away and converted utterly to the
McCarthy method tell the truth on to the page and let your psyche all
hang out. At the same time I wanted some realistic aspects to my story.
I decided to make it about the superficial things I was into at the time:
clothes, records, TV shows. Instead of creating an aspirational superhero, I
gave Zenith all of my worst, most venal traits. I wanted to create a postcard
from the 80s, but I also thought that if I did it without the prevailing

captions and thought boxes the strip might stand up quite well on its own.
My own opinion of what happened, and how I feel about it, has changed quite a bit since I started
writing these three pieces. Yes, I have a lot of sympathy for Alan Moore about the things that were
being said about him, but I think that its pretty obvious there was more than an element of the
japester, the trickster, about Morrisons writing, in particular the piece he wrote
about Superfolks in his Drivel column in Speakeasy in 1990, which he makes all the more obvious
in his end piece.
Context!
There was more than just an element of the japester, the trickster to Drivel. As may be
deduced from one or all of the following clues:
the title.
The accompanying photograph of me sneering, stripped to the waist wearing a rather pretty
necklace, and flipping a V-sign.

Photo Used in Drivel Column

The over-the-top, bitchy and camp style of the writing

Drivel was a monthly, scurrilous, humour, gossip, and opinion column in Speakeasy, the
leading British comics magazine in 1990 when the piece in question was written. I had a brief from
my editor Stuart Greene and I mostly stuck to it, except when I used Drivel to indulge in William
Burroughs-style cut-up experiments. My fee for the column went to Blue Cross, so all that
manufactured bile wasnt wasted and helped make the lives of some rescue animals a little more
comfortable on a monthly basis. Otherwise, the persona I adopted for Drivel was an exaggerated
caricature partly inspired by the Morrissey interviews I enjoyed reading. The whole point of the
column which was one of the magazines most popular features, incidentally was to take the
piss out of the comics scene at the time.
Alan Moore was only one of the many, many targets of Drivel and he came off lightly in
comparison to some others with whom I am still on friendly terms. The main target of the satire in
Drivel was myself and if anyones reputation has suffered as a result of people in other lands and
different times presenting as indictable some daft words written in jest, Id suggest its been mine.
In defense of my 30 year old self, he had an editorial mandate to amuse and provoke, unlike the 59
year old Alan Moore who insults, condemns and hurls baseless accusations at his contemporaries
and their work in almost every interview he gives. I find it tragic but quite pertinent to this piece
that the loudest voice in our business the one that carries the furthest and is taken most seriously
by the mainstream media is the one that offers nothing but contempt and denunciation, with
barely a single good word to say about any of the many accomplished and individual writers
currently working in mainstream comics, let alone the wealth of brilliant indie creators.
Does he ever, for instance, use his high media profile to do anything other than steer potential

readers away from modern comic books and their creators while over-playing his own
achievements and placing himself centre stage at every turn? How hard would it be to say
something encouraging, positive, or hopeful about the generally improved standard of writing in all
comic books these days? Or at least say nothing at all.
And if I may untangle the logic behind so much of his hectoring: Moore constantly reiterates the
idea that all modern comics are copied from stuff he did in the 80s and theyre all rubbish!
Is he genuinely saying that his influence has been entirely malignant? If he actually believed that,
Id almost feel sorry for him. I see my own influence all over the place and Im quite chuffed.
Id also like to point out that that was over twenty years ago now, a long time to have something
like that hanging over you, and this applies equally to both of them: Moore is still having it used as
a stick to beat him with, and Morrison may wish that a not-terribly-serious piece he wrote as a
young man, and which has cast a much longer shadow than anyone could ever have expected,
would simply go away. (And, indeed, having someone like me digging it up one more time can
hardly help in that, although Im hoping that this might get to be the final, and definitive, word on
the subject)
I also imagine that having someone get in touch to offer to take over writing his first major piece of
work probably wasnt received terribly well, and its hard to blame Moore for that, either.
For a broader picture of what was happening with Alan Moore and Warrior at the time, I suggest
asking Alan Davis (another on Moores list of excommunicated former collaborators) or Dez Skinn
for their recollections. Im sure itll be in one of those George Khoury books about Marvelman. I
wasnt part of all that.
But in many ways Morrison was only doing what Moore had done before him. I can certainly
recognise the punk spirit in some of what Morrison says Im less than 100 days older than
Morrison, and I do recall that rule #1 in punk was that everything that went before was rubbish. In
hindsight, of course, there is much that was discarded that has since been reappraised, and found not
to be so dreadful after all! In much the same way, when Morrison says, Reading interviews from
the time makes my blood run cold these days, I imagine that one of the things hes particularly
referring to is his treatment of Moore in those early articles.
My blood runs cold because I am no longer a young man but an increasingly decrepit 52 year old
with a lot less arrogance, a lot more life experience, and a bit more compassion for people, even the
ones I dont particularly like. With the wisdom of hindsight, I wish I could tell my younger self that
in the future, no matter how much he thought hed changed or matured, Drivel would always
return.
These days, if I aim a barb at Moore, and I sometimes do, its generally as revenge for having my
attention drawn to some latest interview or other. I know theres a lot more to him than the
contemptuous, patronising Scorpionic mask were all just people and we all do the same daft
people shit and all that but its the face Ive been exposed to more often than not, so Im afraid my
view of Alan Moore has a somewhat negative bias that deepens every time he opens his mouth to
preach hellfire and damnation on the comics business and its benighted labour force.
Having said that, I learned long ago to separate my antipathy toward the mans expressed opinions

from my enjoyment of his work and Ive been very complimentary about that work over the
decades. Conversely, I can guarantee you will search in vain for a single positive comment about
me or my work coming from Alan Moores direction in spite of our obvious shared areas of
interest.
I certainly think that Morrison may now regret some of his earlier actions but, particularly in this
Internet age, nothing is gone, and everything is remembered. It is interesting, I think, that in his
book Supergods which itself seems to actually reflect the title of Superfolks he doesnt actually
mention Superfolks in relation to his or Moores work, but in the context of having been an
inspiration for Pixars The Incredibles Even so, Supergods has the line Behold, I teach you the
superman: He is this lightning, he is this madness! by Friedrich Nietzsche as its epigraph, the same
as Superfolks did, and Marvelman didnt. Is this all some sort of strange cosmic coincidence, or is
Morrison trying to tell us something? Honestly, I have no idea.
The structure of Supergods is roughly based on the Qabalistic idea of the Lightning Flash the
zig-zagging magicians path from the lowest material sphere of Malkuth/the material world via the
various sephiroth or spheres to the highest spiritual sphere known as Kether in this system. In the
same way, the book moves from the earthy foundations of the early chapters, with their focus on
physicality, to the speculations, philosophies and higher considerations of the concluding
chapters.

I chose this structure for a couple of obvious reasons firstly, because the superhero as a figure
unites the mundane and the divine and secondly because every time a new age of comics was said
to begin, I noted that it tended to be announced by a superhero wearing a lightning bolt insignia, or
descended from one (as Marvelman from Captain Marvel), or came with iconic references to
lightning, thunderbolts and electricity. My favourite superhero is The Flash and his emblem is a
stylized, simplified echo of the right-to-left zapping course of the Qabala flash.

I was very aware of the irony of re-using that hoary old Nietzsche quote but there was, quite simply,
no more apposite epigraph for Supergods, I hope youll agree.
The title of the book, by the way, is not a reference to Superfolks but to David Bowies song The
Supermen which includes the lines and supergod dies.
So, what do I think, in the end? I think, first, that, although Grant Morrison poked fun at Alan
Moore with regard to Superfolks he certainly didnt mean it to be taken as seriously as it was, or for
it to become a big stick to beat Moore with.
Pdraig will need to offer more convincing evidence that my 1990 Speakeasy column has done
the slightest harm to Alan Moores sales or his reputation. Ill wager that less than 2% of the readers
of Watchmen still the worlds best-selling graphic novel have heard of Superfolks, let alone
Speakeasy or Drivel (although the proportion is likely to rise if people keep drawing attention
to this very minor issue currently its an item on MTV Geek). As Ive said, its far easier to make
the argument that Moore, along with powerful allies like Michael Moorcock, continues to indulge in
clear, persistent, and often successful attempts to injure myreputation, for reasons of his own.
And I really think its a shame that Alan Moore has such difficulty moving on from things like this,
because hes done his own share of saying mean things about Morrison, to this day. I genuinely love
Moores work, and one of the things I love most is the sense of compassion, of redemption, that is
in much of it, but reading over these pieces, its hard not to see Moore as the one who is
perpetuating this, rather than Morrison, who only ever has good things to say about Moores work
these days. Its not that I dont think that Moore has good reason to do the things he does, just that it
can be difficult sometimes to see that your gods have feet of clay. In the end, though, I still love his
work, and still admire him enormously as a person and as a creator. I dont read as much of Grant
Morrisons work as I used to, mostly because I finally decided that I was giving up on superheroes
for good a few years back
By only reading my work-for-hire superhero comics from 20 years ago, I feel Pdraig has missed
out on most of the important stuff of my career. I hope hell try The Invisibles, The Filth, AllStar Superman, We3 and Seaguy at least.
but his work on Animal Man and Doom Patrol is still some of the best work ever done in
mainstream comics, and I think that people give him a hard time which he definitely doesnt
deserve. I probably fall into that category myself, although I think I may go rethink some of those
ideas now. After all, its never too late to change your mind.
There is one final thing I want to clear up, seeing as it came up here: Whatever happened to that Kid
Marvelman story that Grant Morrison sold to Dez Skinn?
Dez Skinn, in Talking With Gods said about Morrison,
He was such a quiet unassuming kind of guy when hed come into the
office, he was more like a fan than a professional, you know, very shy, very
timid-seeming, but his work was the absolute opposite, it was totally out
there, even his early stuff. I thought it was a really nice little five-pager but
Alan, like any creator, I guess, who owns material, didnt want anybody
else touching his material.

And heres Dez again, this time talking in George Khourys Kimota! The Marvelman
Companion,
C
l
i
c
k

Grant did submit a Kid Marvelman story, about a discussion between Kid
Marvelman and a Catholic priest, and it was quite fascinating because Kid
Marvelman argued a very good case against organised religion. Nobody
was flying, no beams from anyones eyes, but a bloody clever script, clever
enough that I sent it to Alan Moore for his opinion. Alans reply was,
Nobody else writes Marvelman. And I said to Grant, Im sorry, hes
jealously hanging on to this one.

t
C
o
lC
There
is a long-standing rumour that the story was published in Fusion #4, a Scottish comics
il
fanzine,
but the piece in question, called The Devil and Johnny Bates, was actually an article
cie
about
Kid Marvelman by someone else. None the less, Morrison did draw two covers
kcm
forFusion
including the one for #4, both of which are reproduced here. Yes, that is Kid Marvelman
ka
on
ti the cover of #4, and Marvelman himself on the cover of #6. But that Kid Marvelman story never
did
otl get to see print, it seems. Which is a shame.
o
I stprobably have the only surviving copy of the script. One day Ill look it out and put it online. I
hs to remember it being quite good but I made the teenage mod Johnny Bates look exactly like
seem
ahi forever damning myself as Moores Devil!
me,
ras
er
et
o
no photo courtesy of Jonathan Mayo]
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