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It can have passed nobody's attention that the "All-Star Superman" thread recently witnessed a clash of titanic forces. I refer of course to my discussion with Haus about Grant Morrison.
I am grouping comments together in the quotations below, but I hope not taking them too far out of context.
me: Morrison is not just another participant in this democratic arena; he's surely one of the main reasons for this site, and provides the fuel for much of this specific board's discussions. If he hasn't read your recent posts, and misunderstood the one above, I think he has the fair excuse that he was redeveloping the DC Universe.
I wouldn't seek to write that kind of privilege into the FAQ even if I had the power to, but on a personal level, including that of textual interaction on here, I couldn't help but give Grant Morrison a whole reel of slack if I were his target in this case.
It's not just that Morrison writes pretty good comics at the moment. His fiction has been important to a lot of people here since the late 1980s. You can't type the word Barbelith without owing him a debt. He might not have started a ton of threads, but surely he's deposited a great deal of currency in the big bank of your imagination.
Haus: If you want to give people special privileges to say and do whatever they like because they write extremely good comics, then please feel free to do so. You will certainly not be alone in this - the Swingball set is in the shed holding its weekly meeting. However, it is not board policy to do so, nor is it, IMHO, good policy for human interaction.
If you would be happy to be insulted by your inamorata because at least it means she noticed you, that is also fine, but it's not a way I choose to conduct my affairs, as it were. So, Mr. M is free to behave as he wishes, and it will not affect the extremely high regard in which I hold his writing of comic books. Mr M. is at liberty to insult you, and you are at liberty to feel a warm glow at having been insulted. Personally, I think that being a spiritual father or whatever laurel you wish to bestow probably increases one's responsibility to being responsible rather than diminishes it.
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I am an unapologetic fan of Grant Morrison. (I am also interested in the academic study of fan cultures, which puts me sometimes inside, sometimes out and sometimes on the borderline.) As my comment above implies, Morrison's comics have played a significant part in my life since around 1988. I've bought most of his output since the first episode of Zenith. There were times when my monthly calendars seemed like countdowns to the next Doom Patrol. I had photocopied enlargements and hand-copied panels from the comics he wrote decorating more than one student flat. Odd fragments of his dialogue and narration, maybe even half-remembered, have stuck in my mind and come out sometimes as a chorus or commentary: Once I was a little light. Sewing up the door! You're talking to the Hangman's Beautiful Daughter. Come in out of the rain. Whose home alternative? Our home alternative? The shichriron are right behind me!
In Edinburgh, 1990 I think, I went to see the play Red King Rising because Morrison wrote it. I sent off for an obscure single by Morrison's band the Fauves. I got into the Fall because Penny Moon wore their badge in Zenith. Recently I paid to see Morrison talk for an hour at the ICA, and asked him a couple of questions. I felt like I was glowing afterwards from the contact with that creative energy, and was boosted that I'd interacted, even in a small way, with the author of myths that mattered to me.
I even had a picture of Morrison on my bedroom wall once, or rather nine pictures, because it was the speech-to-camera page he drew for an issue of the shortlived magazine Heartbreak Hotel.
So, I am a Morrison fan. I admire Morrison a little more than I admire Brett Anderson, and less than I admire David Bowie, but they're on the same scale -- that is, my fandom is related to him as a person, or as a public persona anyway ("Grant Morrison", whoever he's being at the time) rather than simply being restricted to an appreciation of his work.
But what about you.
Are you a fan of any comic writer or artist, in the way I've described -- that popstar, filmstar fan-mode of seeking out things they touch, wanting to see them in person, reading the books they recommend? Or do you take the more sober line of mostly enjoying their work, being glad they do what they do, but having no interest in them beyond that? |
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