Tuesday, August 05, 2008

An Interview with Me: At Newsarama

Last summer I set the internet on fire with all of the interviews I did with everyone from CBR to Collected Comics Library to Raging Bullets, and I'm back at it again.

Zack Smith, of Newsarama, has just posted an interview he did with me a few weeks ago. It's full of useful nuggets about my newly revised Morrison book and the soon-to-be-released Teenagers from the Future book.

Here's an excerpt:

NRAMA: Aside from the typical answer of "the weirdness," what, in your opinion, really makes Grant Morrison unique as a comic book writer?

TC: I don't even think of Morrison as being particularly weird as a writer. He's weird from the perspective of someone who's used to simple, straightforward comic book stories about Spider-Man punching Doc Ock, but even if you step back and look at Spider-Man punching Doc Ock, there's a lot of weirdness going on there. Comic books, especially superhero ones, are really weird.

Morrison just brings a different kind of weirdness—draws upon different sources—than the guys who write comics and were raised on Stan Lee and Star Trek. And I guess that kind of makes him unique—not the supposed "weirdness"—but the depth and range of his influences.

Anyone who can bring Borges, Albert Hofmann, Jung, Maya Deren, Shelley, Coleridge, Joe Orton, and a dozen other influences to bear on superhero comics is pretty unique in the industry. And because of those influences, his comics don't have the tone and rhythm of anyone else's comics. (He's also quite good at writing dialogue, too—a trait which almost nobody gives him credit for.)


I say lots of other smart/controversial/inane stuff too. Read the whole interview HERE.

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