Grant Morrison

Grant Morrison, born 31 January 1960 in Glasgow, Scotland, is a Scottish comic book writer, screenwriter, and producer. Their work is marked by nonlinear storytelling, humanist themes, and countercultural influences. Morrison has had a long association with DC Comics, where they wrote major runs on Animal Man, Doom Patrol, JLA, Action Comics, and Green Lantern, along with graphic novels like Arkham Asylum, JLA: Earth 2, and Wonder Woman: Earth One. They also created the meta-series Seven Soldiers and The Multiversity, the mini-series DC One Million and Final Crisis (both central to company-wide crossovers), and the maxi-series All-Star Superman. Morrison’s most famous DC work is a seven-year Batman saga that began in the Batman ongoing series and continued through Final Crisis, Batman and Robin, Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne, and two volumes of Batman Incorporated. They co-created the character Damian Wayne. The 128-page graphic novel Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, painted by Dave McKean, was published by DC in 1989.

Morrison’s creator-owned projects, mostly through DC’s Vertigo imprint, include Flex Mentallo and We3 with artist Frank Quitely, Seaguy with Cameron Stewart, The Filth with Chris Weston, and the three-volume series The Invisibles. At Marvel, they wrote a three-year run on New X-Men and created Marvel Boy for Marvel Knights. From 2016 to 2018, Morrison served as editor-in-chief of Heavy Metal magazine. Their work has earned Eisner, Harvey, and Inkpot awards, and in 2012 they were appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to film and literature.

Morrison attended Allan Glen’s School in Glasgow, where a careers teacher rejected their first art portfolio and suggested they work in a bank. Their first published work appeared in Near Myths in 1978, when they were about 17, with Gideon Stargrave strips in four of the magazine’s five issues. Encouraged, they found more work, including a weekly strip called Captain Clyde for The Govan Press and contributions to DC Thomson’s Starblazer.

In the early 1980s, Morrison toured and recorded with their band The Mixers, occasionally writing for Starblazer and UK indie titles. In 1982, they submitted a Justice League of America and New Gods proposal called Second Coming to DC, but it wasn’t commissioned. After writing The Liberators for Warrior in 1985, they worked for Marvel UK in 1986, writing for Doctor Who Magazine (the final strip with a teenage Bryan Hitch) and the Zoids strip in Spider-Man and Zoids. That year also saw their first Future Shocks for 2000 AD. In 1987, Morrison and Steve Yeowell created Zenith for 2000 AD, which caught DC’s attention. DC accepted proposals for Animal Man and a 48-page Batman one-shot that became Arkham Asylum. Animal Man placed Morrison in the “British Invasion” of American comics alongside Neil Gaiman, Peter Milligan, Jamie Delano, and Alan Moore. In 1989, they took over Doom Patrol with issue #19, introducing dadaism and Jorge Luis Borges. Arkham Asylum sold 182,166 hardcover copies and 85,047 paperbacks, according to comics historian Les Daniels in 1995.

Morrison continued British indie work, writing St. Swithin’s Day for Trident Comics, whose anti-Margaret Thatcher themes sparked tabloid backlash and a complaint from Conservative MP Teddy Taylor. The New Adventures of Hitler in Cut magazine in 1989 also caused controversy; the strip was reprinted and completed in Crisis after Cut folded. Two Morrison-scripted plays staged by Oxygen House at the Edinburgh Fringe—Red King Rising (1989) about Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell, and Depravity (1990) about Aleister Crowley—won a Fringe First Award, the Independent Theatre Award for 1989, and the Evening Standard Award for New Drama.

In the early 1990s, Morrison returned to Batman with the “Gothic” arc in Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #6–10. They revamped Kid Eternity for DC with Duncan Fegredo and Dan Dare with Rian Hughes for Fleetway’s Revolver, coloring Dare’s future with Thatcherism. In 1991, Morrison wrote Bible John—A Forensic Meditation for Crisis, based on an analysis of possible motivations.