Grant Morrison

Grant Morrison
Spread the love
Grant Morrison

Born on Jan 31, 1960, at Glasgow, Scotland, Grant Morrison MBE  is a Scottish comic book writer, screenwriter, and producer. Grant Morrison has written extensively for DC Comics, followed by Marvel, Vertigo, Marvel Knights, Midtown Comics, and Virgin Comics. They became the Editor-in-Chief of the American science fiction and fantasy comics magazine, Heavy Metal, which ran from Apr 1977 to Apr 2023, between 2016-2018.

They have won several recognitions, including Eisner, Harvey, and Inkpot awards. Grant was appointed as a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for their services to film and literature in the 2012 Birthday Honours.

Grant came out as non-binary and now uses “they/them” pronouns since October 2020, but has stated that they have no issues with being referred to with he/him pronouns.

Grant Morrison wrote Animal Man, Doom Patrol, JLA, Action Comics, and Green Lantern, as well as the graphic novels JLA: Earth 2, Wonder Woman: Earth One, Seven Soldiers, The Multiversity, DC One Million, and Final Crisis. He also wrote All-Star Superman, Batman and Robin, Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne, and two volumes of Batman Incorporated, Flex Mentallo, We3, Seaguy, The Filth, The Invisibles, New X-Men, Marvel Boy, and Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth.

They are also the co-creator of Damian Wayne, the son of Bruce Wayne, with Talia Al Ghul.

Red King Rising, and Depravity, two plays staged by Oxygen House at the Edinburgh Fringe, had scripts by Morrison, winning a Fringe First Award, the Independent Theatre Award for 1989, and the Evening Standard Award for New Drama. They also wrote Judge Dredd, Really and Truly, and the controversial Big Dave.

With Vertigo, they got Sebastian O, The Mystery Play, and Kill Your Boyfriend. In 1996, Justice League of America was revamped by Grant as JLA, along with the four-issue crossover DC One Million. They also played a crucial part in plotting multiple crossovers.

The Matrix (1999 flick) had numerous elements that critics attributed to the influence of Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles. Grant, themselves, realized the similarity when he saw the film.

Later in 2000, Morrison along with Frank Quitely released the highly recognized graphic novel JLA: Earth 2.

Grant in 2005 wrote a series of seven interlinked four-issue with thirty books in all, featuring Mister Miracle, Manhattan Guardian, Zatanna, Klarion the Witch Boy, Bulleteer, Shining Knight, and Frankenstein. The then editorial vice president of DC Comics was enthralled with their idea of uplifting DC’s almost laid-off characters and gave them an unofficial title of “revamp guy”.

Other than comics, Grant is behind the script work of Vivendi Universal’s Battlestar Galactica (2003) and Predator: Concrete Jungle (2005). In 2007, they wrote the adaptation of the home console game, Area 51, for Paramount in development.

Grant was selected as the No. 2 favorite comic book writer of all time by Comic Book Resources in 2006.

Later at the 2008 New York Comic Con, Morrison announced that for the production of webisodes based on the Mahābhārata, they would be working with Virgin Comics in a way transforming the Indian storytelling to a Western-flavored one, concentrating on people raised on movies, comics, and video games.

In 2010, Dynamite Entertainment and Liquid Comics decided to collaborate to release an illustrated script of Grant Morrison’s, 18 Days that was Mahābhārata-based, along with illustrations by artist Mukesh Singh.

Grant Morrison’s analysis of superheroes gave way to Supergods: Our World in the Age of the Superhero in July 2011. It was published in the United States by Random House Spiegel & Grau, and in the UK by Jonathan Cape.

Also in 2011, they worked on the screenplay for Sam Worthington’s production, Full Clip Production, Barry Sonnenfeld’s Dinosaurs vs. Aliens.

In the third quarter of 2012, they published Happy with Darick Robertson as their first-ever Image Comics creator-owned work. And in 2017, they co-created the Christopher Meloni and Patton Oswalt-starrer Syfy TV series, Happy, which ran for 2 seasons.

The Multiversity, 2014-2015, was one of the major projects for DC. This included the return of the black Superman, President Calvin Ellis from Earth 23, who originally appeared in Action Comics vol. 2 #9.

Personal life

Grant Morrison and his wife Kristan live in between homes in Glasgow, Scotland, and Los Angeles.

Awards

  • Inkpot Award (1990)
  • Order of the British Empire (MBE)

Appearances

Grant Morrison made a comic character cameo in Animal Man #11 and #14. Later, at the end of #25 in 1990, followed by a conversation with the title character in #26.

The character was named ‘Writer’ and appeared the next year in Suicide Squad # 58, written by John Ostrander, as one of the minor characters killed in one of the trademark suicide missions.

Grant Morrison was depicted fighting with a fellow X-Men writer, Mark Millar, in an issue of Simpsons Comics over the title “Writer of X-Men”.

Grant Morrison also appears as the renegade member of the reality engineers in Morrison’s 2005-06 Seven Soldiers miniseries.

In ‘Tales of the Unexpected’ Morrison appears along with 52 co-writers Geoff Johns, Greg Rucka, and Mark Waid.

Grant was the physical model for Captain Cold in Darwyn Cooke’s DC: The New Frontier.

In the ninth episode of the fourth season of Titans, “Dude, Where’s My Gar?” Morrison appears as themself.

Adaptations of Grant Morrison’s work

No.YearTitleTypeNotes
1.2010Justice League: Crisis on Two EarthsAnimated filmBased on JLA: Earth 2  
2.2011All-Star SupermanAnimated filmBased on All-Star Superman  
3.2014Son of BatmanAnimated filmBased on Batman and Son
4.2017*Happy!Live-action seriesBased on Happy!  
5.2019**Doom PatrolLive-action seriesBased on Doom Patrol
  *  Concluded in 2019
**  Ongoing  
  

Images:

11 Essential Grant Morrison Books:

  1. The Multiversity
  2. All-Star Superman
  3. Seven Soldiers
  4. Final Crisis
  5. Batman Incorporated
  6. Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth
  7. Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne
  8. DC One Million Omnibus
  9. The Green Lantern
  10. Batman R.I.P.
  11. JLA

Follow Grant at:

X (Formerly Twitter)

Pic Credits: Google/DC

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back To Top