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Underground > Comic Books >

New book about Grant Morrison's early career (Zenith, Animal Man, Doom Patrol)

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miss wonderstarr

19:57 / 19.01.07

Oh I didn't mean "secular", I meant the word I can't currently think of for the life of me, that means judging from your own limited perspective. Begins with "s" I'm sure. Like if you're from a metropolis and you go to a village and sneer "this place is the sticks, there isn't even a Pret."

miss wonderstarr

20:28 / 19.01.07

Ooh "solipsistic".

miss wonderstarr

23:38 / 19.01.07

Anyway, yes: in Zenith II, Phaedra Cale is the exotic other, as an American (and African-American). There's a lot of stuff constructing her as culturally alien ~ Zenith's a dumb Brit, Eddie's a scotch fairy, and US Intelligence is described as a contradiction in terms. Her representation, and the way she's responded to by the other characters, is quite different from the way Morrison constructs "naturalised" Americans in, say, JLA ~ where English characters are the exotic other.

I've been trying to think about why "Dare" seems to me to be about Englishness specifically, not Britishness ~ partly because it's about colonialism and Empire, and about a 1950s hero (as in Zenith Phase III) finding himself shockingly confronted by Thatcherite Britain of the 1990s. I don't really know, but I imagine the Scottish, Welsh and Irish experience of the British Empire was quite different from the English one ~ the Scottish perspective on British colonialism would, I'd have thought, be quite different to the view from London. (Which reminds me that in Zenith II there's explicit reference to Welsh nationalism.) Also, in Dare isn't there an indication that even the North of Britain has been abandoned by the South, and almost annexed as another, inferior country?

00:26 / 20.01.07

All I can say is, I really really wish Dare was back in print again. Pure Rian Hughes brilliance!! (along with Flex Mentallo of course) I barely remember his Steed & Ms. Peel books, but I did get 'em and read 'em back in the day.

13:28 / 31.01.07

brief question for the sequart.com chaps; is 'Masters of the Medium: Grant Morrison' coming out soonish? if so, fancy giving me a date and place of publication?

the simple existence of a book of the type you're writing on the man morrison makes an academic point i'm trying to make very much easier, simpler and shorter, and it'd be good of you to help me fill in a footnote, if you would. by citing the simple fact that you're writing your book, i can say in a line what i'd otherwise take three paragraphs to say.

incidentally, out of interest, looking at the early versions of chapters you've got on your website, i see a lot of reproduced images; i know this is all generally considered to be kosher under fair usage laws online, but are you alright for paper publication? i ask out of genuine curiosity, because i'm aware of at least one author, publishing a book through a major publisher, who had to go through at a relatively late stage an remove all reproduced images and replace them with panel descriptions because the comics publishers got pissy. has something changed? if so, spelendid...

15:24 / 31.01.07

"brief question for the sequart.com chaps; is 'Masters of the Medium: Grant Morrison' coming out soonish? if so, fancy giving me a date and place of publication?"

The book should be available on Amazon.com in about one month.

"the simple existence of a book of the type you're writing on the man morrison makes an academic point i'm trying to make very much easier, simpler and shorter, and it'd be good of you to help me fill in a footnote, if you would. by citing the simple fact that you're writing your book, i can say in a line what i'd otherwise take three paragraphs to say."

What exactly do you need?

"incidentally, out of interest, looking at the early versions of chapters you've got on your website, i see a lot of reproduced images; i know this is all generally considered to be kosher under fair usage laws online, but are you alright for paper publication? i ask out of genuine curiosity, because i'm aware of at least one author, publishing a book through a major publisher, who had to go through at a relatively late stage an remove all reproduced images and replace them with panel descriptions because the comics publishers got pissy. has something changed? if so, spelendid..."

We're simply going to publish the book under the fair use policy. We're confident that we don't violate the fair use policy because this book is basically a text book; we're not selling the book based on the images, nor are we advertising that in order to increase sales. If we had a TON of images in the book, I'd be worried, but we were very wary to place only the most pertinent images.

00:16 / 01.02.07

Also, regarding the use of images from Grant's DC work, I contacted Paul Levitz directly, and he said that DC is not in the habit of giving permission to print images (with the implication being that if they did give permission, they would be legally responsible for paying royalties to the artists, I think), but that if we are covered under fair use (and we are) then we should just go ahead and publish the images.

Unlike the online essays, the book contains only about 20 images total (in about 200 pages of text).

And the book will be available at New York Comic-Con!!! Visit us there and say "hi."

By the way, Grant loves the book and thinks it's "cool." So you should too.

miss wonderstarr

06:37 / 01.02.07

You should maybe do other stuff here except for say how great your book is, because I'm finding that a bit tired now.

10:57 / 01.02.07

You seem like a nice guy, Tim, and I'd quite like to read your book, but I have to agree with MW. Let's stop adverstising, shall we?

12:15 / 01.02.07

Wonderstar: In defense of the Tim and myself simply promoting the book, pan up about three posts. We were simply answering Ginger's questions.

miss wonderstarr

12:18 / 01.02.07

Well, I'm just seeing a disappointing lack of discussion, and to be honest a lack of any obvious interest on your part in anything else but promoting the book. I mean, thanks for drawing my attention to the website because I enjoyed it, but I just feel your contributions are a bit one-note, geared mainly towards plugging the book.

I don't mean to sound too critical ~ maybe the thread's run its course anyway.

miss wonderstarr

12:19 / 01.02.07

Actually I've used the phrase "promoting the book" or similar 3 times in 2 posts, so I'm getting a bit tired of my own contribution here.

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:25 / 01.02.07

To be fair, they've written and produced a book about Grant Morrison's early work. Maybe they're just sick of looking at it. There's only so many times you can read Really and Truly before all the houses on your street start to look like penises...

12:56 / 01.02.07

Wonderstar: I know what you mean. And I DO think that the original point of this thread has run its course. Perhaps then, for a change of pace, you'd like to critique our cover art for the book.

Take a look at it here.

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:03 / 01.02.07

Oooh! Is there a foreword by Ross Kemp?

13:20 / 01.02.07

ahahahahah !
I don't know if the US readers of barbelith will catch it.
But if I, Frenchie that I am, can, they should.

14:28 / 01.02.07

Nice one Harmony Haus! You got my number!

15:55 / 01.02.07

sequart lovelies, in terms of what i need:

the blurb from the copyright page of the book, with place and date of publication, author and publisher's names'd do it, if you would. it'll turn into a bibliography entry that looks a little like...

Cowe-Spigai K. and Neighly P. (2003): Anarchy for the masses: the Disinformation guide to The Invisibles, Disinformation, New York

that. so the information required to flesh out such an entry'd be grand, ta.

do you publish in britain? if so, make sure you get copies deposited in the copyright libraries, would make my life much easier.

concerning fair usage, have you employed council to check? i have a fairly extensive correspondece with DC's legal department in a big file on my desk, and one part in particular suggests that you might want just to spend a few quid on a lawyer to make sure you've kept your boots clean. my department at my university were sufficiently nervous about submission of my thesis to the university library, which counts as not-for-profit publication, that they spent a revolting amount of money on this; we ended up getting a wet-fish answer out of DC that sounds pretty similar to yours, but i know similar discussions've ended even less defitively; we got a semi-solid answer, because we were doing it through a lawyer, and talking to their legal dept. i'd suggest that talking to their law-men might get you a more reliable answer than talking to paul levitz. our situation was probably rather less complex, since nothing at the university end involved revenue creation.

if you want a bit more on this, i'd be happy to quote you a few selected e-mail highlights via private message, though as i say, our discussions were all based on academic stuff and no money was involved. the general message from DC seems to be that, unless you say batman's gay just before a film comes out, they won't sue you, but it might be wise just to make doubly sure your arse is covered.

if it'd be of any use, i could dig out the relevant letters, but i'm a bit dubious about quoting them directly.

miss wonderstarr

20:27 / 01.02.07

I remember dealing with DC's copyright department about reproducing Batman pages for a book, in '99. As I remember, they allowed us a maximum of two images under fair use.

That's not two pages.

It's two FRAMES.

I decided to go without.

21:02 / 01.02.07

the bit i'm happy to quote, from a DC lawyer, since it was posted elsewhere in a public forum by someone else and seems to be part of their standard reply on such things, is the concluding paragraph from their e-mail. having basically said 'we probably won't sue you because we probably can't be fucked, but we might change our minds. death is whimsical today. do you feel lucky?', they signed off with:

'I'm sure this doesn't resolve the problem for you, but you can be sure that it is not our intent to squelch academic inquiry into our characters or properties in any way.'

we had a QC who specialises in IP law on our side, and all we got was the implication that we were beneath their notice, so if you're relying on goodwill and fair usage...

00:22 / 02.02.07

Sorry to belabor this point, but when did I endlessly promote the book in any way? If you go back and read my posts, all I'm doing is answering questions that were asked and discussed topics of interest. Not once did I say the book was great or anything about how you should buy it, or anything like that. Except for that last post, which was directly in response to a question about where and when it would be available.

I'd actually like the thread to continue as a discussion of his early work. I'd like people to ask questions and raise points about Zenith, or Animal Man, or Doom Patrol. I want to know what you think. So, what do you have to say about his early work and its influence on his later work and/or other comic book writers who followed him?

01:15 / 02.02.07

erm... could you tell me where you publish, then, please, so i can bung you in a footnote?

02:09 / 02.02.07

Ginger, the bibiographic info would look like this:

Callahan, T. (2007): Masters of the Medium: Grant Morrison--The Early Years, Sequart.com Books, Honolulu, Hawaii.

Do you need anything else?

What is your work about, anyway?

12:50 / 02.02.07

many thanks, that's great. i'll squeal if i need anything else, and will, of course, grab a copy when it comes out.

i'm writing my docotoral thesis on multiple authorship on comics, and using grant morrison's stuff as a 'data set', if you will. all very continental-theoretical and abstract, but with a massive amount of punk and sexy quantum physics in the later chapters. great fun, and keeps me from slashing my wrists when i have to spend a day teaching t.s.eliot...

00:03 / 19.05.07

If anyone's interested, the book is finally available! Amazon's got it, at least:

Grant Morrison: The Early Years

03:36 / 19.05.07

Not amazon.ca - any word on a Canadian release date?

23:00 / 19.05.07

Still waiting on Canada and U.K. release info. But, since Julian Darius's Batman Begins book is available at Amazon.ca and Amazon.uk, I would imagine my Grant Morrison book will be listed there eventually. I really don't know how any of it works, though.

If anyone has read the book, let me know what you think about it.

01:31 / 28.05.07

Tim: Well I'm very interested, so thanks for the post.

I'm going to hustle down to my local comic shop and see if they have a copy. They know I'm generally loco for anything with Grant Morrison even written on it, so chances look good.

The only downside is that I've never read Zenith and was sort of hoping it would come out in trades one day. Looks like I'll have to scrounge up a copy earlier than that.

13:11 / 28.05.07

I'll probably purchase a copy when it becomes available over here

19:59 / 28.05.07

An update:

The book's now available at Amazon.co.uk and BarnesandNoble.com and the regular Amazon.com

But it won't be available at your local comic shop anytime soon because Diamond has not approved it yet. Hopefully that will happen eventually, but there's no guarantee.

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