Latest / Half the Picture / #7 - GRANT MORRISON (Part 1 of 2)

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#7 - GRANT MORRISON (Part 1 of 2) · Half the Picture

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That was the breakthrough for me thinking about, okay, here's a person who just embodies the very
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best of what humans can aspire to. And if we just allow him to do that on the page, if we allow
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him to embody those qualities, I think it's almost provocative, especially in the world we're
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in now. And I think what James Gunn is saying in his movie is that it is genuinely provocative
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to present basically a kind person who wants to help and who will get himself beaten up and knocked
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around, but he never gives up, he will never let you down when he always there to help. And so to me,
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yes, it's a fantasy, but it's a great fantasy and it's one that is worth aspiring to.
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Hi guys, I'm Billy and welcome back to Half the Picture podcast. I guess this episode is
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none other than Grant Morrison, one of the most legendary writers to ever work in comics and
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who's written some of the greatest comics of the last 40 years, including, I mean, oh my god,
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Batman Ark and asylum, JLA, we free, you know, Batman RIP, The Invisible's, Doom Patrol, Final
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Crisis. I mean, there were so many, although they came on the podcast primarily to talk about all
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star Superman, their comic of Frank Quietley, which since it came out 20 years ago, as become
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revered as one of the greatest Superman comics, if not one of the greatest comics of all time.
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He was a huge influence on James Gunn Superman and a big inspiration for his direction and take
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on the Man of Steel. I mean, look, guys, Grant's been one of my favorite writers since I was a kid,
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since I first picked up Arkham Asylum when I was 13 and I cannot wait to share this conversation
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with you. We started talking about Superman, but then we, you know, we spout off into all these
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strange and weird and wonderful areas. I mean, if you're a fan of grants, you'll know just how
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strange and wonderful their career really is, you know, all the stories they've accumulated over
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the years and obviously all the great comics they've written as well. So, you know, we've really
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got into it, but we got into it so much that we actually had to split the episode into two parts
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because, you know, just we just went on for so long. So part two will be coming down the line soon,
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but without further ado, let's roll on part one of my conversation with Grant Morrison. Enjoy.
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Hi, Grant, welcome to the show.
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Hey, darling, how are you doing? Thanks a lot for the intro. That was very appealing.
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My pleasure. My pleasure. So today, as I was saying before we hit record, today is the day of,
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I guess you could call it Superman Day. Today's the release of James Gunn's The Superman movie.
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It's the birth of a new DC universe on screen. It's a new, new phase and I mean, you're Superman
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as a character that you've been sort of tied to for years. I mean, you've written what is Helubs
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arguably the definitive take on the fun story of Superman, all star Superman is the name of it,
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which you wrote 20 years ago now. It's been 20 years since that started. Can you believe you can
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believe it? Yeah, it's hard to believe, but it has been 20 years. You know, people have lived in
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that aid in that time. Denisties have risen and fallen, but yeah. It takes things 20 years,
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I think, to go from the comic page to the screen. It's very typical, you know, because people
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were doing Frank Miller's Dark Night like 20 years after the comic or the Doon Watchman 25 years
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later. So they came up with this weird lag time for the catch-up with us 20 years after we've
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been passed that long ago. So yeah, so talking about Superman, I guess, start there, because I guess
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all of superhero culture and comics and films, the story, it all comes back Superman.
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So because you've written Superman in various different versions and guises, you worked on the
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new 52 Superman action comic, you could be booted Superman for like a new age with the new 52,
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you wrote him in JLA when he had the mullet, which he picked up a pill. I think it was the
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idea that he had the mullet. And then came also Superman right in the middle of that. In 2005,
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you and Frank, quietly, your friend and artistic calibrate created that story. And I guess just
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going back to the beginning, where did that story come from? Where did that particular tape
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or Superman come from? Well, it was after the JLA stuff, where I've been doing Superman and JLA,
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and I started to get a feel for what was possible with that character. And as you say,
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the original superhero is the progenitor of all these things that we've been watching on
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the movies for the last 25 years. So yes, it is kind of important. And I was fascinated by the
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creation of the character, because there hadn't been anything like him before that. There had been
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the Americans, had heroes who were, say, gangsters or cowboys, or they even had inventors like Tom
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Swift or Frank Reed, who appeared in pulp magazines back in the day. But Superman was something
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completely new. And there's so many great ideas within the notion that he had his monogram on
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his chest. And what was very new, they had the sign right there so that he was instantly
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recognizable from a distance. The same with the primary colors, the red and the blue. And what
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I discovered, you know, I mean, most people think of Superman, they're so used to the costume,
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they don't really think a bit where it came from. But looking back at the creation of it, the
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costume was based on circus strong man outfits. So that's why he wears those weird trunks over his
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tights. You know, it's not one can ever understand why he's got a belt and trunks over a pair of tight,
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but it was to recreate the look of circus strong men. And they also wore the capes as well for
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a bit more drama. So it was very much he was based on that, but then he did this huge initial.
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And the cape allowed the figure to be very dynamic. So when he was drawn, he was constantly
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moving and the cape allowed that kind of motion to be depicted in the comic. So there was a lot
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of really great ideas went into the creation of the character and going back to the root of that.
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I just got, I got very excited about understanding what could be done with something like that,
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you know, because to me was, it was a cartoon embodiment of humans greatest idea, which is quite
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simply that we can be better. And it goes, it goes back to for me to the humanist thinking, you know,
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back in the Renaissance in Italy, when Pico de la Miranda La was doing is the oratory on human
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dignity. And he talks about this, he's saying, you know, humans, what we are, is what we're really
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good at, is imitating things. That's our greatest skill. You know, if we see a bud, we can eventually
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invent airplanes, we see fish, we invent submarines, we copy all the time. And so his thesis was
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basically, if humans are such copycats, why don't we only copy the finest creatures that we
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can imagine? So he talked about angels, we should aim towards the quality of the angels,
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because those were the regarded as the most sublime beings, you know, at the time in religion.
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But for us, it's kind of the superhero or the that kind of special person. So I was fasted with
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this idea, it was a humanist idea from a long, long time ago, that I'd found this new reflection
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in a very strange place, you know, it was in children's comics that were created in 1938,
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for basically for children, illiterates and servicemen, you know, those comics were created for
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in the first place. But what they did was give a home to this vision of what we could be. And
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although it's cartoonish, although it's kind of silly and it's for kids, there's something beautiful
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about it. And I really felt connected to that notion of presenting what's the best of us,
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who's the best of us? What would he be like? And that idea of, you know, Superman not only has
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super strength and super speed and super invulnerability and damage resistance. I figure he's also
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got super intelligence, you know, in the sixties comics, he was a great player in the fact that
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Superman's also an inventor and that is very smart. So I love that he'd get super intelligence
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then I'm thinking, well, he'd have super all the qualities, you know, he'd have super kindness,
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super compassion. And that was the breakthrough for me, thinking about, okay, here's a person who
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just embodies the very best of what humans can aspire to. And if we just allow him to do that on
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the page, if we allow him to embody those qualities, I think it's almost provocative, you know,
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especially in the world we're in now. And I think what James Gunn is saying in his movie is that
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it is genuinely provocative to present basically a kind person who wants to help and who will get
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himself beaten up and knocked around, but he never gives up, he will never let you down when he
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always, he always there to help. And so to me, yes, it's a fantasy, but it's a great fantasy and it's
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one that is worth aspiring to. So I really felt that if I could embody that in my work in the same
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way that I think James felt could embody that in the movie, then we'd be breaking some kind of
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ground, we'd be giving people a kind of aspirational figure that I think is quite needed at this time
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in history. Absolutely. And I think the key word there is it is provocative because in a way,
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in this day and age, in this sort of very sort of scientific, rational and lightened sort of
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21st century that we live in in the West anyway, at least, but I think so globally now, it is like
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optimism almost does seem like a kind of revolutionary act or a provocative act.
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No, just putting you sort of flattening the flag down and sort of the land of yeah, optimism is
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a sort of an action. And I mean, that's the other fit thing I'm going to be saying about
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Super Bandit, like, you know, the Superman always for a lot of people's incident in body hope,
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but then I remember you saying like, it is hope, but it is also action. It's not a sort of abstract
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sort of concept of hope. It's like, he gets, but you know, shit done. Was I remember what you
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were saying? And it would you have been because also the, I think it sounds like the thing that James
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in his film is sort of focusing on is that this is a guy, yeah, he's constantly in action,
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and I like you were saying he's in motion, he's moving constantly.
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Yeah, I think that that's that's a very important aspect of Superman, you know, is that
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people do talk about Superman as a symbol of hope, but as I've said, you know, so hope is quite
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abstract and it every, everyone can hope, but hope isn't enough, you know, there has to be action
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someone, someone that has to others or someone else generally has to do something if we want things to
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change. And to me, that's the most important thing, but Superman is, as I say, he's a scraper,
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he's a fighter, he's not a, a psionic figure as he sometimes presented. There was a lot of images
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of Superman where he's hanging in space and the sun is behind him and he's kind of meant to be
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kind of Christlike or godlike, but that's not Superman Superman is just this young person who
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happens to have all this power and this particular attitude. And so I think it's important to see him
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getting in there, getting his ripped up, his clothes ripped up, his face beaten about, but always
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getting back up and always fighting the good fight. And that's the important thing is that
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is the action aspect, the scraper aspect, the fact that this guy will just keep taking on the bad
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guys and keep taking on the breweries wherever it costs him. And again, it's a fantastic, fantastic
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unreal figure, but what's trying to live up to? Absolutely. And I'm focusing on that for a
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moment, because I remember in your book, Super Gods, which we mentioned, you talk a lot about
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the superhuman, super heroic ideals embodied in Superman. And how writing all Superman specifically
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was almost the story of which details these legendary labors that Superman accomplishes over
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the last days of his life, for anyone who hasn't read it, Lexi for essentially sort of causes
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Superman to fly too close to our sun and his cells get supercharged with solar radiation and
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cell death start because that's occurring. And he then has realized that he has only so much time
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left. And so he starts to, you know, accomplishing all these heroic labors, the 12 labors of Superman.
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And you described writing this story of writing Superman almost like you said, your phrase of
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the only easing was like a monk contemplating the deeds of a saint. And you said, everybody
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said he felt elevated and kind of like by sort of just contemplated like what would Superman,
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like you say, super creative is super, you know, compassionate is super strong in every single
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sense of the word. So like, what would that, how that make you feel as a writer? I guess like,
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what was that like, and did you, I guess, thinking seeing things are Superman seats, and did you
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then sort of take that with you after all those Superman? Did you move that into your life and
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into like your, your work in a sort of more broad sense? Yeah, I mean, certainly as much as I felt,
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I could, you know, I'm not a fighter like Superman. It was raised and pacifist by a soldier dead.
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So I've never been someone who likes getting into fights, although I've been in fights. So I
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generally try to solve things without fists. So I'm not like Superman in that way. But certainly
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writing the book was, it was like Buddhist meditation almost. It was very much having to put
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yourself in the mind of someone who doesn't think like a human being whose thoughts are purer and
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more exalted and more direct and just more to the point. So that aspect of it really changed
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how I thought. And it did, it did kind of push me into a position, you know, I mean,
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around here my version of Superman is looking after like 40 fero cats. So I'm kind of have to make
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sure they're okay or today I have to go and get one cat, some medicine because he's sick. I have
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to look after some kittens that have been born. So for me, there's that sensory responsibility that
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I feel is kind of a super money and let's call it, you know, and so certainly things like that,
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where you just feel there's things that you do because you say to yourself, well, this is the
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right thing to do. I don't really want to have to do this twice a day and have to feed 40 cats. I
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don't want to have to look after 40 animals. But it's the right thing to do if they're living in
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the space around your house. So stuff like that where it just became really obvious from Superman's
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perspective like what you do and you sacrifice a certain extent to do these things in order to be
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there for other creatures and other people. So yeah, I mean, it really affected me in that way
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and my sensory responsibility went through the roof, which wasn't necessarily great for mental health,
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but you know, we try our best. We try our best in the name of Superman. Oh yeah.
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It's touching on animals there because you mentioned that, you know, because I know you've been
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an animal lover all your life, right? You know, you've been sort of, you know, you're a great cat lover,
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you know, you're, you know, and they've had their pictures of you have like, you know, if you're going
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back to the 80s, like your cat on your shoulder and stuff and all this stuff. Yeah. And obviously,
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I think like we free, which I know is which is one of your comics, which you did with again,
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with Frank Whitley, who was the artist on all sorts of Superman, was a really big, you know, that was
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that almost feels a club letter, not just to sort of animals, but also to humans and the and the
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relationships we have with the world around us and the creatures around us and how that reflects
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back who we are. And and like that's James, James Gunn, the director, I know for a long time, he
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he really wants to get a film of we free off the ground. Is that right? He was really trying to
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yeah, he did it was, it was kind of his favorite comic and he wanted to do it. And to be honest,
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he kind of did it and gagged into the galaxy three, you know, he kind of, he kind of picked
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our pockets a little bit there, but God bless him. But yeah, he, he wanted to do that and he's a big
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animal lover, as you can see, you know, cryptos in the Superman movie and he's got EGLE in the
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the peacemaker show. So James has always certainly sneaked, you know, super animals into things as
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well, I'd like me, you know, if I can get sticky, the super cat into a story, I'll do it, you know,
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get super horse or super monkey or anyone's ridiculous things. I was always really fond of the animal
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characters. And I think you're right when you say that how people treat animals is kind of,
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it kind of says everything about them. So yeah, I think to take again them back to that, that
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Superman morality, it's a lot about how you would treat animals, how would Superman treat animals,
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we'd make sure they all had food, you know, you would take a little bit of time out of these
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patrols to put some kebble down. So there is that, I think it's very important to see what people
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think of animals to get the, the measure of how they would, how they would help other people as
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well. I was going to say that yeah, because I think in many ways, just touch you on, you mentioned
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Garty to the galaxy three, I mean, I remember watching it, there's some of them thinking,
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and knowing what I knew about how he tried to get we free made for someone else. Like yeah,
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this is like the stats that the imagery is exact, there's like rocket cocoon in the,
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in the pen for the animals and stuff. I mean, what's your reaction seeing that when you saw that film?
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I'm just like, can a deja vu?
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No, that was it, that was it. That's, that's, that's, that says old deja vu.
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Well, that was a similar experience. I think you have a similar experience for the matrix,
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because obviously the matrix owes so much to your series from the 90s near visible,
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so about the sort of counter cultural rebels sort of, you know, trying to overthrow
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Yeah, I mean, the matrix was very specific, you know, because the invisibles had kung fu people
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wearing leather, fetish stuff and round mirror shades, and they were up against insect agents who
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were black and who turned into armored beings from beyond. And there was jumps from the,
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the top of a building and there was magic mirror coming out of the mirror and covering people.
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So there was a lot of stuff in there, but again, I loved the matrix. I went to see it in Australia.
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And as I said, I just sat there, kind of like, okay, deja vu, deja vu.
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And it was like, I felt kind of, this is bad, because the invisibles will never get made,
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but at the same time, the matrix is just a great movie, you know, it's just, I don't like the sequels
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quite as much. I thought that they, they kind of let it down a bit, but that first movie is just a
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brilliant movie from start to end, I think. So I was quite happy that those ideas were getting out
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to a much more wider mainstream world. Yeah, that's kind of narcissistic, very use-for-terroric ideas.
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And it's what, and yeah, clearly, they were, clearly, they were appealing, you know, I mean,
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people really loved that. So I was, was validating in the sense that I knew those ideas would be
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appealing, but also they've been quite oddly toned and twisted over the last 25 years as well.
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So you'll find right when QAnon people saying things that once left-wing invisibles, people
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used to say in the 90s, conspiracies, conspiracy stuff, and that kind of counterculture stuff,
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got almost twisted into its own dark reflection. So it's been interesting for what's that process?
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Well, it's almost like the whole Red Hill, Blue Hill, that whole rhetoric is just,
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it's been co-opted, and it's just, it's so bizarre. It's like you said at the start,
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like those 20-year cycles, we don't really know how things going to last until 20 years,
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and the matrix really has, you know, it was always, I think it was always a phenomenon in its
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way, but like then, really, I think people my age and a bit older, grown up and now come of age,
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it's like, you know, people just love it, yeah. And also your image is touching again on cinema,
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like your, because so many of your characters and sort of your comics have influenced so much,
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if not directly, if sort of so many of your characters have propped up in Met Superhero and
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Blockbuster Cinema for the last 20 years. I mean, like, even in Depple Wolverine last year,
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Cassandra Nova is the main baddie, and she was born in your pages of your new X-Men.
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You know, she was an incredible comic, by the way, just to say.
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Well, thank you, thanks. But yeah, I mean, that is what happens, and it is a bit strange for me,
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I think it must happen to all of us, you know, that sense of, if you've been around long enough,
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your work percolates into culture, and you suddenly see it coming back, you know, I'll watch
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a Doctor Who, and I think, oh, Russell Davis is read that Alan Moore comic, or he's read that
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comic by me, and there it is. And then I'll see films, and there's a ton of things,
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stranger things, they'll have a little bit invisible in it. They'll be characters like you say,
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we'll crop up, you create a creative 20 years ago. So it's an odd thing to influence pop culture,
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and for people who read my stuff in the 90s to have grown up enough to put it into their own
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movies, or into their own comics, or into their own artwork. And part of it is, as I say,
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is it's lovely, it's validating, it's nice to have made some kind of impact. But at the same time,
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it's really, you know, I've seen it all before. And when that happens, it's, oh, God, I've already
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done this, I've already read this, you know, so that's what I feel a bit sorry, but I don't have
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the pop culture that I used to where it wasn't influenced by me, or by people that I know from
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comics. So there's all these weird strands that I'm too familiar with, like back in the day,
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it was great, because there was no pop culture influenced by me, and I could just be influenced by
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all the pop culture. Hi, well, I mean, we'll come back to that, because I want to talk about
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some of your experiences in a bit, but touching back on our star Superman, when I was re-reading it
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for this interview, I mean, the fascinating thing to me about that story, which as I say, you know,
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has been sort of, is now held up as one of the sort of quintessential Superman stories, and James
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has talked about it a lot in relation to the roof. And you know, they're, they're, they're
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promotional images from the film, which directly quote panels from the comic. I mean, Superman and
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Cricto, that huge, that quad poster, that is literally a panel from all star issue six, the
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small village issue with Superman and Cricta, Superboy and Cricto on the moon. And, but when I was
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reading the comic, what say, there was very little in the comic that, and I hadn't realized this before,
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but like, there's very little that ties it to the period in which you guys created it. So the
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bit naughties, which like, I mean, I'm 29, so I grew up in that, that was a decade of which I sort
20:47
was a kid and was reading a lot of comics. And I met, and the prevailing tone I remember from comics
20:51
was, I'm sure you're, I didn't find this, but it was like, very, you know, it was post 9-11, so
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post 9-11 politics. Absolutely. Really realism, the artists with people like, you know, Brian Hitch,
21:01
like that's for widescreen, cinematic, Capricenium, you know, flashy combo cart, you know,
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which is very, the aesthetic of it was very, like a blockbuster and very different to the kind
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of style and direction you and Frank went in, the Vincent, the artist went in,
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for us our Superman, which was much more sort of explicitly to me like,
21:20
comic book, like there was a lot of wi-liped in there and in the way that the characters were
21:24
like hunched and the way they moved and the fact, and also the absence of pop culture,
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it's as virtually that no pop culture, it's just in that humming, which there's nothing in it
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and it feels timeless. It is, I think this contributes to it sort of this sort of transcend
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inequality that for me it had repeating it and I was thinking like, was that something that was
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very explicitly in the DNA in the beginning, like you and Frank taught to like, we don't want to
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go in the direction that everyone else is going in, we want to react against that and go against
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the grain and do something that is separate from that, was that something that you guys were
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conscious of when making it? Yeah, it was very much of that, you know, and as you say, the comics
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that were out at the time, it was very interesting because they had borrowed all that language from
22:02
cinema, so there was great, like the ultimates and the stuff that Brian Bendis was doing in Spiderman,
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but it was borrowed from the language of cinema, so you had what was called decompression,
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which is basically people writing screenplay style comics, which were, but Stanley told the
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origin of Spiderman in 13 pages and it took Brian Bendis six issues of 20 pages each to tell the
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same story, so it was very much a different approach and as you say, even the art what was done,
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it was done on black backgrounds so that the panels actually looked like cinema screens as if
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you were in a theatre and surrounded by, you know, it was, it was blackness with the light projected
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purely into the panels, so we were aware of all that and when we did, we three, which was the first
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thing we did after those types of comics, it was very much been influenced by video editing
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techniques rather than cinema, so we thought it multiple chalk top panels and lots of small images
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and a different plan around with time, so we were really thinking about what's the difference
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we've been video editing and film editing and let's do that, and the time all started Superman
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community, the idea was definitely, we thought it was just too classical, let's do something,
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again, based on that Renaissance idea and the Enlightenment man, that sort of notion of we wanted
23:17
it to be very altered and classical and none of the craziness that we'd put into
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we three for instance, and I took out a lot of the non-linear or the psychedelic stuff that I
23:27
usually like to put in stories and we made it very much that simple four square, very easy to read
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panels, there's only a certain amount of words in all the panels, you'll notice there's not a lot
23:40
times where people do big long monologues or speeches that take up space, so it's very easy to
23:46
read I think, and that was part of, as you say, they attempt to do something timeless,
23:51
which is self, we're going to do Superman, it's the greatest superhero, you know, I kind of
23:55
reached a point in my career but I thought I'm at the peak now, so let's write a story about how it
24:00
feels to be at the peak but then suddenly it all goes away because he's dying, so there was a lot
24:05
of influences that I felt went into that and very much what let's do, that's classical thing that
24:10
could be read forever, that your grandmother could read and enjoy it and a kid could read and enjoy it
24:15
and a jumping Z could read and enjoy it, it was very much intended to be timeless and universal,
24:21
and I think that's been born now, but the fact that people are still talking about it now and
24:27
still, as you say, reading it and it doesn't have those connections, if you read an issue, the
24:30
ultimate's now, it's wild because there's all these references to, you know, Shannon, it was a
24:36
breath or, do you know? It's junior and they, yeah, you have Freddie Prince Jr, you're kind of lost
24:42
without a concordance with that and it's fascinating, it's like my zenith stuff for the 80s and
24:47
2018, where if you read that now and he's talking about network seven and magenta divine and all
24:52
these weird 1980s pop culture reference points, so I think there's a room for that type of work
24:58
as well as a time capsule of a period, but as I say, and as you point out, all stars with man was
25:04
very much designed to be the Bible for Superman, their mortal work, the one that will survive it,
25:10
there's probably the only thing of man that will survive into the next few generations, I think.
25:15
Oh, I mean, you said, I mean, I, I assembly disagree because there's so many, you know, great,
25:20
great comics of yours that you've, that, you know, I mean, and I love and I know many of the people
25:23
of like, like, you know, Arkham Asylum and New Axe, and we free and you, and yeah, so I'm sure
25:28
that's all true, but uh... Well, well, to much, thanks very much. Fine, we'll tell. Fine, we'll tell.
25:34
Soon, we'll, indeed, tell that. I think there'll be digging all-stressive menu in the
25:38
rubble of Washington, restarting society. I mean, I guess we've got it, as we're on Superman,
25:44
we've got a touch on the movie. I mean, well, like we were saying, like you and James
25:47
going to have been friends, it seems, for decades at this point, right? I mean, you guys go back...
25:52
Not, not decades. I mean, I met James, I think, going over the time, super commits, or maybe
25:56
2009 or a little bit, but yeah, but I've known him since then, and obviously we hung a bit,
26:02
but when I've spent a lot more time in Hollywood, yeah, I mean, I've been following his career,
26:07
and I'm very keen to see this. I haven't seen the film yet, obviously, but I'm really excited
26:12
to see it, you know, I feel as if he's been eager to do this for a long time.
26:17
Well, however, they offered it to him when he sort of first moved to DC, and then he did
26:21
suicide squad instead, and then he said, no, but I'll stick a pin in that. I'll jump on Superman
26:25
in a few years, but yeah, I mean, I'm planning to go see it over the weekend. I can't wait.
26:30
Have you got a date lined up yet for when you're... No, yeah, we may see it this weekend,
26:34
but not sure. It'll be within days, I reckon, you know, because I don't normally go to
26:40
movies or tend to wait, so I can get them on TV, but I'll definitely go and see this one, I think,
26:45
it's worth seeing on IMAX. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I mean, because it was interesting to me,
26:52
is that like, I know that you've consulted with DC on sort of film projects before,
26:57
in the past four years. I mean, I know, go back to the Northeast, you were one of the guys from
27:01
DC that, I mean, was it Warner Bros. brought in sort of pitch ideas for one woman and Greenland?
27:06
Absolutely, it was me and Jeff Jones and Marth Wolfman, who was there as sort of older generation
27:11
of DC creators, and he asked us to pitch for a ton of things, you know, I did three separate
27:18
pitches for Superman. I did like three different ones for Aquaman. I did Wonder Woman and I did
27:24
a whole bunch team Titans. Honestly, it was ton of them, so we were doing a lot of work at that time,
27:29
and the paid is a lot of money, but nothing was produced, nothing was made. If they'd made my
27:34
Superman film back then, that would have been the one. I was going to ask that Wonder Woman pitch,
27:40
did it, but did it have any of the themes that, you know, the original master and, you know,
27:44
bondish, imaging themes that would go? It was kind of material that I then used for the Wonder Woman
27:51
Earth one book, which turned out to be fairly controversial, but that was kind of based on that,
27:56
the basic story of that, with the Ares, robots, suits and Maxwell world. That was the main story in
28:02
it, but now they didn't take on any of those things. They read everything and then said, no,
28:07
do another one, no, do another one. So there's all these beautifully walked out pitches for
28:12
different versions of Superman movies and Aquaman movies. I wish I could find them again,
28:16
but I think they get lost in a computer night. Well, I was going to say, as a sort of consultant
28:22
at the DC for a long time, I know that sort of even actors have turned to you for inspiration.
28:25
I mean, like Jared Leto, I heard was when he was pointing together his take on the Joker and
28:29
Ezra Miller, even I think got in touch, I want to say for the fly. And Ezra, my Ezra Miller hung out
28:34
with us, in fact, you know, before all the controversy that's around it, Ezra, and honestly,
28:37
we didn't get any of that from the, from the kid he was, I, I, I would like them, you know,
28:42
that you're a person that I met and that, but he, he brought a flash strip with me, you know,
28:47
I've kind of honestly, he provided that an explosion onto paper. And then I had to take it into
28:54
and turn it into a story, but I was pretty good. I think the script was written in two weeks
28:59
because they were just on our backs the whole time. So it was a kind of ridiculous pace,
29:05
because a lot of really great stuff in it. I think if it'd been given a couple of,
29:08
a couple more, a couple more polishes, it would have actually been genuinely brewing. But again,
29:13
they didn't want to go that route, and they certainly didn't want to, to use me. They've always
29:17
been strange with me, you know, even though I've worked with them for so long, they're kind of,
29:21
they don't like the comic book guys getting to near the stuff. They've got a weird,
29:25
weird fetish about that. Yeah, I guess it is kind of the, the number of instances of like
29:30
combat writers genuinely sort of being able to bridge that, that gap. It is, there are,
29:34
there are too many. And I guess because they are such two different mediums, I mean, because
29:38
I, but you have written for screen you, you know, you develop tathic television and bravely world.
29:42
Actually, so many of your ideas come through in so many different films. Do you find that
29:47
they're two different disciplines when you're writing a comic and obviously writing a script?
29:50
They've got to be, you know, so getting that script made, it must be so such a difficult
29:55
approach. I think the main difference is just simply that movies cost an awful lot of money
30:00
and comics don't. So with a comic, you can experiment more, you can try things and comics come
30:06
out faster, come out one of every month. So you're writing 20 pages every month of a character's
30:12
adventures. So sometimes you can do 20 pages where he's just in a psychedelic nightmare,
30:17
sometimes you can do 20 pages where that character, she's just sitting in a throne for 20 pages.
30:22
You couldn't really get away with that in movies. I know, so you can't, you can't go as,
30:27
as wild and extravagant with your imagination as you might in a comic book because if you've got
30:32
good artists, they can drop pretty much anything. But if it's on a movie, you're going to have to
30:37
spend a lot of money on CGI or AI or whatever they're using now. So the big thing I found was that
30:43
the control on movies is so much more powerful because there's a lot of money people involved and
30:49
they can't risk the failure. So where comics is like poetry, comics is like being an author,
30:55
you just get to do your thing and there's not a heavy editing. I mean, there may be for other people,
31:01
but I was menacing enough that they didn't give me a hard time. So I kind of, when I wrote a comic,
31:06
it was what I wrote. Whatever I wrote came out. And if I was sick that month, you could tell,
31:11
if I was bored, you could tell. I mean, genuinely didn't write things when I was bored, but usually
31:15
you can tell if I'm happy or sad. So there's a different, as I like I say, it's more like poetry,
31:20
it's more of an author thing, it's just that you've been allowed to be very individual.
31:25
In a movie, in a movie, it's more like our TV show. It's a team game, you're in a football team
31:31
and you have to flatten your ego, then you have to be working with people and you have to know when
31:36
they sit back and listen to someone else's ideas and all that. So I've found it fascinating. I'm
31:40
working on it, I've showed you just now, that's that NDA thing. I just love almost the anonymity
31:46
of it. You know, comics is such a focus on you and you're the superstar, you're the singer.
31:51
And it can become a bit, you know, wearing. So I enjoy the flippin' between them and doing that,
31:58
that kind of a more collective work, where if I have an off day and somebody else with a great idea
32:04
and I don't have to worry about it. It's totally, I mean, it's interesting, because I remember
32:08
something that Frank Whiteley or Vincent is your name said, in the documentary about him,
32:13
what do I do all day? He said, when you're in comics, you know, you're one at your big
32:18
car in a sort of fairly sort of small compact machine, you know, if you're an artist or a writer,
32:23
it's really like, you know, it's a small team and you're on, and like I say, you're kind of on
32:26
display, your vision kind of gets out there, whereas in it on a film set or a television set,
32:31
or even in like sort of, he was talking about magazine illustration and stuff, you're in much
32:35
smaller car than a bigger machine. And I guess that's, you know, that's part of the fear that also
32:40
the joy of comics, like you say, you want to stage, but it's your stage. Yeah, and it's nice,
32:45
it's like pop music, it's like being a singer, it's like suddenly your record's done well,
32:49
and suddenly you get an album out and everybody likes you, you know, horse the next single,
32:52
what's the next one? And you know, you know, you know, you're going to hit the backlash at some
32:56
point, you know, and like me, if you keep going through decades, you go through back lashes and
33:00
revivals and back lashes so fast that it just seems like waves in the ocean. So yeah, I mean,
33:06
that is fun for the, like I say, it's nice to go back and forward and to do different types of
33:12
walking, not to that same pressure and that intensity of if you put a foot wrong, the fans are on
33:17
your back, you know, if if something goes wrong in a film, you're really blamed for someone else,
33:23
you'll get the blame. Totally. So touching, but it wants more briefly on the Superman movie,
33:29
because as I say, you were consulted with the DC for many years and like, you know, like,
33:32
Jared Lowe and Ezra Miller. And James has obviously been a fan of yours for a long time and
33:38
you guys friends. I mean, did he ever like, and obviously also Superman was kind of in the back of
33:43
his movie? I mean, did he ever talk to you about the movie? Did he ever talk to about the character?
33:46
Did you ever get to visit the set? So no, Frank did visit the set with a bunch of other DC artists.
33:51
Yeah. Yeah. I was invited on that, but I wasn't able to go to that. But yeah, I was
33:57
invited to that. But otherwise, now James didn't we talk to him a bit because I think, honestly,
34:01
I think he wanted to just have his own take. And although he was influenced by elements of all
34:07
star Superman, and I think possibly even more influenced by elements of action comics, because
34:12
my action comics Superman is much younger and much brashier and much more of a fighter and a
34:18
scraper. The older Superman that we do is kind of stoic and kind of internalized character,
34:25
you know, you don't see him. He doesn't hit many people in it at all. He uses his strength and
34:29
he uses his powers, but he rarely hits anyone, whereas the young Superman runs about getting into
34:34
fights constantly and all that. So I think that element was there. But other than that, I don't think
34:41
it would have been good to have me as a soundin board because it would become more of my Superman.
34:45
I think it seemed what I had to say. And he took what he wanted from that and then had to create
34:50
something that suited him. So no, I mean, I wasn't involved in any of the background or the development
34:57
fair enough. Fair enough. Well, it's interesting to say something that you said in the previous
35:02
question, which was there, like, with comics, there's, you kind of get to do your thing,
35:06
but it sounds a bit more or less. And then whereas in movies, so yeah, it's much more, you're
35:10
part of a team, a football team, it's like, and I feel like there's a lot more oversight in that
35:15
in media, in that in film and television, that comics. And this is just my understanding,
35:20
I mean, I could be completely off it, but like it seems to me that like comics for a long time,
35:24
obviously back for a lot of many decades, they were seen as a pretty, like we said at the very
35:28
beginning, kind of, yeah, for children or sort of, you know, it's incredible. You know, like it's
35:32
you know, quite a cheap, basic form of sort of the literature entertainment. And then obviously
35:36
over the years with with yourself and right is like, yeah, Alan Moore, Frank Miller, like,
35:40
you know, creating all this incredible work like Watch Man and putting comics, giving them that
35:45
sort of respectability and, you know, graphic novels became a term and like even I've always
35:48
purchased comics, but like, you know, comics is the comics is what they are, you know,
35:53
graphic novels would come with it as I can only come on or it doesn't quite describe them.
35:58
Totally. Now it's just, it is what it is. It's a, it's a comic book, you know, but it seems,
36:02
it still seems to me, and actually I could be completely off it, but there's a certain amount
36:07
of there's like a less, there's a less oversight in sort of the development of comics. And I feel
36:11
like maybe more you can get as a writer or creator, you can get away with more things for better or
36:16
worse, maybe. And because it's a visual medium now, you're using, you know, pen and ink rather than
36:20
saluloid, you can still book things on a page visually that are pretty out there and pretty
36:25
inspiring or shocking or taboo busty. I remember thinking this when I was reading Alan Moore's,
36:31
you know, I can, I know it's a contemporary of yours. Like, who when he was doing Moss Girls?
36:36
And I should, I don't know if you've read it, I know if you're familiar with Moss Girls.
36:38
I'm familiar with it, but well, there's some pretty, I know all about it.
36:44
Hey, yeah, it's, you know, it's pretty out, it's pretty full on and, you know, basically,
36:48
you know, an erotic, you know, a piece of erotic literature or pornography, as he called it,
36:52
you know, in comic book form. And there was some pretty, you know,
36:56
out there things and things in their acts, out there acts in there, which, you know, you think if
37:00
this was, you know, yeah, I mean, if this was on a screen, you wouldn't be able to just, just
37:05
get that idea would never have got past the pitching stage, you know, for that secular chapter or
37:10
that scene. But because it's a comic and because obviously, if it's in the case of Alan Moore, you know,
37:14
he is a, you know, he has cachet, his name is cachet, you're able to sort of get things
37:19
out there. I guess my point is that like in comics, do you feel like there's a sort of less,
37:23
because there's less oversight, maybe because people still view them, like publishers still
37:27
view them as, oh, they're just comics, you can get away with stuff that is a bit more experimental,
37:31
a bit more taboo bus thing, a bit, a bit more out there. Is that, do you think there's any good to
37:35
that? I think that's definitely true. Although, I mean, I got grew up with kind of
37:40
owe to a cinema and I was always interested in world cinema and things. So for me, cinema and
37:46
also BBC television, like in the days of Dennis Potter and people at David Rudkin, who are big
37:51
influences, me provided that kind of the taboo bus thing that we're using a popular medium
37:56
to say things that we don't normally hear. But certainly comics, I mean, a lot of people think
38:02
of comics as barely culturally above the level of toilet graffiti. So if we can get away with
38:08
a lot of stuff, you know, they're considered sensationalists and crude anyway. And sometimes
38:14
the drawings aren't even that great, but there's something magical about the way it works. And you
38:19
know that the idea is obviously that comics engage the alleged bright and left hemispheres of the
38:25
brain. You know, there's this whole theory that with pictures and words together, so you're getting
38:29
this holographic effect that you don't get from any other type of art. And I also think the
38:35
interesting name of comics is the tactile, the relationship we have with them is very intimate
38:40
and it's not like cinema. And cinema, you're sitting in a darkened room and the director is in
38:46
control of what you see an experience for two hours or three hours or like these days, three
38:51
and a half hours. But you know, in the same television is different television. So it was like
38:56
another person in the room, just like a granddad babbling in the corner, you know, either pay attention
39:01
or you don't. But with comics, there's a very intimate connection between the leader and the
39:07
creators. Are you holding it and you're turning it in your pace is in control. So there's
39:13
it's very different the way people interact with the comic. And I think that gives them their very
39:17
odd quality. And it's again, I'd use the word fetishistic and it's the basic sense on a cell in
39:26
a sexual sense. But in the sense of the comic has a total quality, you know, it's the way you
39:31
interact with it and the things that it tells you activate in the brain and very interesting ways
39:37
and they become real. I mean, these ghastly drawings are sometimes really badly drawn up tagging
39:42
old mouths, but you're buying into it and you're crying because this character's upset. So I think
39:48
there's a great, there's a great magic in that, you know, it's sort of, I'm talking with
39:54
bad drawings, a lot of the drawings are fabulous, as you know, you can get frank quite with
39:57
aeronomic drawers or any of these great guys. But even when the drawings are crude,
40:02
like they are in a lot of the early Marvel comics, the stories can still move us, can still make us
40:07
feel things. And I find that fascinating just with ink on paper and the way we interact with it,
40:13
that we can create these holographic universes that we really immerse ourselves in and become part
40:18
of and feel from. So I think that's what comics have got us are. It's an intense,
40:24
totalistic, you know, almost magical power that will give them their odd flavor. And no other
40:30
medium has that in the same way. It doesn't, I don't have that same interactive quality.
40:35
So that's why it brings me back to them. Certainly, they have a genuinely magical feeling that I
40:41
want been able to put ideas through them. But yeah, I mean, like I said, they've always been
40:45
considered as slightly disreputable. So it means you can explore not only
40:51
no highfalutin philosophy, you can just explore co-dimagerie and the most ridiculous thing,
40:57
you know, like Mickey Mouse getting up the ass. So whatever you want, you can do that drawing,
41:02
and if people want to look at it, fine. Yeah, I mean, I think that's another strength that comics
41:07
have that no one else has. Certainly not now, I think it's like I say, I grew up in the 70s
41:11
where there's a lot of transgressive imagery on TV, and it was like fantastic. And it formed my
41:17
imagination. I'm sure also people like Alan Moon and Peter Mulligan and others in our generation
41:22
were drawing a lot on that stuff. But nowadays, I don't think there's that same level. So comics
41:28
can still go there, you know, comics can still show you things and tell you things that I don't
41:34
think you'll get anywhere else. Beverly, and it's funny that you mentioned sort of the period
41:40
that you grew up in, like the drama that you were consuming, like there's Potter and, you know,
41:43
that era, the place for today, that era of sort of 60s, 70s, 80s, Britain, because I thought about
41:48
this a lot when like we've had guests on people like Mike Lee, the director, and who obviously
41:53
created it, you know, doing some of their best work in that period with like nuts and May and
41:56
Abigail's party. But like, I feel like if you're of a certain age and if you're British, so if you
42:01
were born in say the 50s or the 60s or the 70s, and you were growing up in that time, you know,
42:05
which is a pretty turbulent time in a lot of ways socially and politically, you would have seen
42:09
shit, right, you know, on television, because you know, three or four channels, and then you would
42:12
turn on you get colloddened by Peter Watkins or Abigail's party or, or scum by Alan Clark, and I
42:18
can't imagine the influence that, yeah, it would just be straight into your living room, but I've
42:22
can't really imagine, you know, okay, it would have cut your head off, you know, I'm sure.
42:26
And you can see scum directly influencing the scene in Alan Moore's miracle man, but it's
42:32
like you're Johnny Beats in the reform school, and it's all there, you know, and you'll see something
42:37
that's maybe I've referenced from Dennis Porto, so yeah, very much, my theory about that really is
42:43
that what happened after the war was that the working class would allow you to speak for 40 years,
42:50
maybe, before you start looking. Yeah, but we were educated when we were, you know, raised at
42:55
libraries, and I was lucky, you know, I lived when guys got my parents were well read, they were
43:01
super very poor, but well read, you know, so we were encouraged to read them or encouraged to
43:06
be into culture, but for me, what happened was working class was suddenly giving a voice, and
43:12
out of that, you get some of the greatest drama we'd ever produced, you got all the best pop music,
43:18
you got great comics, so I mean, I could go through those were the great comedy, there was
43:23
the working class suddenly got a chance to speak, and what they come out with was this torrent,
43:28
this explosion of new culture, and over the decades, like this rich kid started to notice how much
43:35
fun we were having, and took it all back, so the pop stars, they were rich kids, the artists,
43:40
they were rich kids, they were all the comic people, and I'm not saying everyone, I'm sure they're
43:44
still outlets, but that flow, that torrent was kind of tund off, once the working class had done
43:51
all the work and provided all the pop songs and the comics and the films, that then could be
43:56
dissected and collaged over the next 40 years of culture, whatever work was done, there's no need for
44:02
it, and it became the playground of nipple babies again and rich kids who said, well, I want to be in
44:08
the charts, I'd want that, that looks like fun, but without that mad creativity, without that,
44:14
sense of having something to say that hadn't been allowed up until that moment, and I still find,
44:19
I'm a found out in my dealings with the BBC is like the minute they hear a govern accent,
44:25
they're doomed, honestly, it's over, and they talk about, they want to hear voices from the
44:30
regions, but the minute they hear them, they're like, oh, too much, and so that's that type of
44:36
material we are talking about, the material that is raw and edgy and and scary and talking about
44:42
stuff that's really going on, not just what the Sunday Times is talking about, is going on,
44:47
has been, has been kind of diminished and replaced because it's too much for people, it's like that,
44:54
you know, in Los Angeles, there's too much for a lot of people, so Dennis Potter, too much, me too
45:00
and it'll be too much in one way or another, but that's the basic worry, it's always too much for them,
45:05
so I find that, it's working class culture has been provided so much because it was like a dam that
45:11
was out of the bust, and all of the stuff exploded out of it, and then that was that access to culture
45:17
was kind of turned off again. Totally, and I think, I mean, I'm from Sheffield, so, you know,
45:22
you've got a bit of book here, and so I'm out of the London, so I can definitely attest to that,
45:26
sort of sense, you know, if you're from the outside, yeah, you're from the outside, and there's a
45:30
sense of privilege and sort of gay keeping, and which does I think have a basic in class, and I think
45:36
that, you know, I think the period that you're talking about those 30, 40 years were working class
45:41
people had more of a voice, and we're giving an opportunity, I think, or took the opportunity to
45:45
like influence the art and the pop music and the drama, and I think, like I said, like I feel like
45:50
it's a great part of that, was the kind of the education system being more robust, and like,
45:55
maybe like the 11 plus and grammar schools being more easily available, like, you know,
45:59
in post-war, Britain, and then like that beating, you know, like the Beatles, so, you know, absolutely
46:03
all four of them, we know, were all educated, smart, but incredibly working class, you know,
46:07
Scalsism, they had that voice and that energy, and that colour and all feed through into the work,
46:12
and you're absolutely right. And like you said, after I've pushed war, the whole idea of
46:16
educating the working class was very important, but now the last thing they need is an educated
46:20
working class, you know, so you don't get that, and they wanted educated people to do the jobs
46:26
that they imagined would come in the post-war, and then suddenly automation and a lot of other
46:30
things made every job more and more obsolete, so people didn't need to be educated anymore,
46:35
but again, we grew up in a golden time where it was encouraged, and libraries were encouraged,
46:40
and you were intended to read and understand politics, you know, one class people were
46:46
shops tours and union people, so I think a lot of that is drained away, and the influence,
46:52
the influence from that culture, we now watch these things about the Glasgow shipbuilders,
46:58
and the way the shops tours spoke, and it's really my father spoke, is library card vocabulary,
47:03
you know, it's really funny, they love big words, but they use them in this ridiculous kind of
47:08
very old way with a heavy Glasgow accent, you know, so I've kind of learned from those guys,
47:15
but I love that, oratory, and it's a very specific, I can tell that's from a generation of people
47:21
who were sent to the library, and who were taught basic English, and taught to, they don't speak well,
47:27
and speak even when they're obviously regional. Certainly, and I think there was also a sense of
47:32
the auto-dye that in that, like you go, if you failed your 11-plus, so you couldn't get into
47:37
grammar school, you go and educate yourself with a librarian, and it's like, I guess you could say
47:41
in today's sort of vernacular, it's the ANSI brainrock, or whatever, you know, it's ANSI, it's like,
47:46
no, it's self-education and self-direction, and you know, it was really, really important, and still is,
47:50
isn't it? Well, I would say it is, but I mean, I don't have to worry about the state of
47:57
hiding away in the country, hiding in the country. Love in the Twin Peaks T-shirt, by the way, is that
48:04
the thing? And I'm always wearing the Twin Peaks T-shirt, yeah, it's the atom bomb one.
48:09
Oh, yeah, from the season 3, the return. Yeah, the return. I mean, I feel like we've gone too
48:14
long about mentioning your book, Super Gods. Sorry, let's get into that. Because this, I mean,
48:19
this really just on a personal level, this book was a huge book for me reading it as a teenager,
48:23
I mean, like so many different ideas, and it was almost like a download of information,
48:29
and all these names of people I hadn't heard of, like, Terence McKenna, and, and like,
48:33
Dan, the Renaissance, and the last thing you mentioned, Pico, and all these things, those ideas.
48:37
And like, I've read this book and reread it many times over the years, and it almost reads
48:42
like a kind of manifesto, for me anyway, of like a sort of a more positive, proactive future,
48:47
governed by the principles of the superhero that you outlined in the book. So these ideas,
48:51
they were talking about with Superman, the enlightened sort of ideal and the irrational man,
48:55
and how if we emphasise the best in us, rather than the worst, we can, that, you know,
49:00
that can, that strains through into how we live, and that can make us sort of better,
49:04
so it's all essentially help make a better society. And, and I guess like, I like to have
49:08
reread this book many times over the years, and it's been nearly 15 years since it came out. It's
49:12
not so, you know, not so, that's not been brought that too much. But like, do you think like,
49:17
it's a book that seems to encompass, you seem like you were going after everything in that book,
49:21
like you were trying to tackle not just superheroes, and also your own life. There's a lot
49:25
on that as your memoir as well. But like, it's that felt to me like you were tackling kind of
49:29
everything that you could, everything under the sun, strain through this prism of this sort of
49:33
work, the highest score, so super heroic sort of view of the world. And I think now that we're
49:37
nearly 15 years on from the books release, what are your views today on the modern world? Like,
49:42
you know, post this book, I mean, do you feel like we're living closer to that sort of like,
49:45
almost being sucked into a kind of common book, reality of sort of like, doing that world
49:49
is sort of edging close to our world in a positive sense. So do you think we're moving towards
49:53
a more sort of negative darker space and time? I mean, what do you think of, I guess what I'm
49:58
saying is, what do you think of the world? Big question. Definitely the narrative that we're
50:04
living through tells us that everything's getting lost, doesn't it? And it's very persuasive, you know,
50:10
but it's a collage of a lot of stuff and it's designed to make us feel a certain way. So it's hard
50:16
to trust whether people are actually feeling that way. I mean, I think generally people are
50:22
the same as they always were. They just want things to be okay and to be able to pursue their own
50:27
creativity and their own strange ideas. And most people aren't violent or want to get into conflict,
50:34
but we continually choose to like people who seem to define themselves through murder.
50:41
You know, so there is this, the problem is still with the sociopaths that we continually think
50:47
have leadership qualities, but at the same time, the culture keeps feeding back the notion
50:52
that sociopaths have leadership qualities as early books that will tell you this stuff. So we've
50:57
been fed a certain world view and then that world views manifest. And so it is like what a
51:02
picot has told us. In all and to me, the whole zombie culture thing we've been sold, you know,
51:08
I'd be feeling that there was those two visions of the future. And one's basically Star Trek,
51:12
they're until Gene Roddenberry Star Trek. Hey, we all get together and go out in the space and
51:16
make friends. And if we don't, make friends, we're phasing them, but never mind that part.
51:21
The idea is just basically, here's an international crew of characters from Earth and Earth is lovely
51:26
and we're taking out this lovely liberal world view. And then you had the walking dead. And it's
51:32
like, no, this is the future. This is where it's all going with resource collapse. Whatever, whatever
51:37
the walking dead are, that's us. And looking at it to me that that zombie thing which became very
51:44
big, that image of the zombie kind of took over from the super hero, the progressive notion,
51:49
the Star Trek figure, you know, the astronaut. It was the zombie, it was a image of humans.
51:56
But to me, it's just, that's actually just billionaires fear of the masses. And we've been sold
52:02
it. We've been repeatedly hypnotized with a billionaires nightmares where they wake up sweating
52:08
and it's all these emaciated figures clambering up the wall of the compound.
52:12
And it's all the people they've impoverished and starved. That's their nightmare. It's not our
52:18
nightmare, but we've been fed their nightmare to the point where it's where the world's going. Is
52:23
this the way the world's going? Well, yeah. And that's the way it is in their heads and almost
52:27
they're trying to create that. Even if it's just through fear, they'll create the thing they fear.
52:32
So, nothing we have to be aware of the narrative we're getting. And again, it's just,
52:37
it's hard for me. I grew up in a very simple Cold War world. Well, you know, surveillance is bad.
52:42
The prisoner is, you know, in the individuals, the most important thing. And I don't necessarily
52:47
agree with that. And I certainly don't live in a world where perverse anything matters anymore.
52:53
There's a thing. So, that, to me, is strange and the complexities of it have just become
53:00
fractioned out in ways that to me just like I can't. I can't argue that position because that
53:05
opposite position is exactly through also and will be defended by as many people as we are.
53:11
So, having opinions, having ideas like this seemed to no longer suit the taste and
53:18
tender of the modern world at all. But the way I see it, yes, it's telling itself a story and
53:24
in living up to it. And, you know, it's like being visible, when the invisibles for the billionaires
53:29
of sacrificing children just like the Aztecs because the dark gods feed on anguish.
53:34
That could just be as true. You know, these people might be, it might be eyes wide shut with, with
53:40
Cthulhu. And yeah, all of this is being done to feed the gods to give them strength to break through
53:47
and take over the wild and slavers all. All of these, we can tell any mad story about this,
53:53
but there's, yeah, the narrative right now is that we're fucking up and everything's going wrong
53:58
and somehow it can only leave in disaster. And the idea that they're even talking about
54:02
conscription or world war three constantly in the papers is bugging the destiny as well,
54:08
you know, because I just think get out of here, but you're trying to create conditions, you're trying
54:13
to create a certain ambiance of fear and the chance of disaster occurring all times to keep
54:21
everybody anxious. So again, I don't trust, I don't even know the input from the world outside
54:28
is real or true anymore. So I can't, I can only form strange collages of what I've experienced in
54:34
the past and how it worked before, but there's too many stories. But yeah, the main story is
54:40
negative right now. And I think, as you see, bringing it back to super gods, I was trying to
54:45
emphasize again, here's the, here's the kind of the last shred of the positive future we've got
54:49
that the superhuman, the super people that are showing up in all these films are getting closer
54:55
and closer to the real world. They came up from comics and two dimensions and paper and ink
55:00
and they made it through to CGI and special effects and millions of people watching and billions
55:06
even watching them. And I thought, well, the next stage you're at is for us to become them, come
55:11
out and you know, so I thought why it was always thought it was important to emphasize super hero
55:16
morality as well. And why Batman shouldn't kill, you know, because Batman kills then he's just
55:22
the Joker, he's an un, not in a costume, killing people who he doesn't like. But Batman is a super
55:28
hero because of his weird stance, he takes super, super hero, because no, I won't kill people,
55:32
thank you, some other way of doing it, I'll use my imagination. And I think they should all have,
55:38
there's some, some characters should be the punishable as yeah, you can have some characters that
55:42
kill a Marvel man to make it more realistic. But I think the basic superhero concept is a morality
55:48
that's beyond us, but worth striving for and always worth aiming at, you know, just like the
55:54
idea of Christ and the messages of Christ, it's really hard for a normal human being to achieve
55:59
any of that or all of that, but certainly worth pursuing and worth trying because it kind of makes life
56:05
about better, you know, to not have a lot of conflict and to have friends and to do stuff for
56:11
that to be a super person now in a super villain. Totally. And I think that was what was so powerful
56:16
about the book to me when I first read it when it came out was the fact that by as a kid growing
56:20
up in the Northeast and into the 2010s and that post 9 or 11, you know, in the West and how they're,
56:25
you know, the central question I think in the media, I mean, now it's like, yeah, when's,
56:28
I guess when's conscription going to come in? When's World War 3 going to be? What was it say? But
56:31
then it was like when's just when's the next bomb going to go up? When's the next, you don't know
56:35
that they're going to happen? And like I'm growing up in that time, you know, the media, that sort of,
56:40
the media still had a bit more of a model of it, presence of thinking our lives and now it's
56:44
totally fragmented or even more fragmented. It was beginning then, but I think in the last 25 years,
56:48
it really just feel like that narrative that you talk about that sort of negative zombie narrative
56:52
has really come to the core. And as a kid, he was kind of growing up in that world. I really felt
56:56
that. And so I kind of clung to things like this book, like super gods, because exactly because
57:01
as a sort of I get sort of optimistic, hopeful kid, I was kind of looking for the kind of this
57:07
and that was why the book was so important. It was like someone reaching out. I mean, it was you
57:11
and just like, this is, oh, that's only one way of looking at the world. You know, there's so
57:15
much more going on in, you know, you talk about the fifth dimension and how that is almost humid.
57:19
That is human imagination. The human head is so much bigger and strangely more complicated and
57:24
it's capable of so much more than we're giving a credit for. And that's what was so inspiring
57:28
about the book. It was like, you know, there's so many other ways to do this. And like the
57:31
the monolithic aspects of I guess the other world and that narrative, it's like when you describe
57:36
the bomb, when you were a kid, you grew up so close to where the American nuclear submarines were
57:42
were stationed and how bomb was a terrifying idea. But Superman was a better, stronger, faster idea.
57:48
And that was an incredibly inspiring thing to me. And I think it really carries through from
57:53
like that time when you were a kid right through till now. And I think it's really important to
57:57
emphasize these more optimistic narratives just as a better idea, as better as counter ideas
58:03
and narratives, which can defeat if you like, if you want to use that jargon, defeat those
58:08
narratives. Definitely. I think it's almost imperative, you know, and I feel it was,
58:14
it was on the verge of punk rock just to be optimistic and to say, okay, don't always
58:21
feel what you tell me I should be feeling. You know, I think there may be other ways.
58:25
And obviously again, it's what people focus on. It's what the narrative is. It's as easy to
58:30
focus on scientific discoveries. I mean, we're reaching out further into the universe and
58:35
discovering further into the past. We're never before. And you know, people have seen things that
58:41
have never been seen. We've sent out probes that are going faster and further and photograph
58:46
and planets. So there's some immense discoveries being made in science and in medicine and in art
58:53
and things are happening that people don't talk of it. And even in the West, you know, the atmosphere
58:58
in the Eastern countries is very different from here. And there was a sense of renewal and
59:04
analyzing and facing the 21st century and having ideas and opinions that are forward looking
59:12
seen from that perspective. So it's only we feel kind of decadent under the the way that I think
59:18
again, it's scared people are telling us to feel scared like them when in actual fact it says,
59:24
no necessarily. I mean, we are threatened by them. I'm still living on that same log
59:29
with the nuclear subscoping down. So once I'm number one targeting Britain, it's mean
59:34
for that other place and on. So yeah, I mean, there's this right here, you know, Superman, yeah,
59:39
he's a better idea than the bomb. So I'm hoping he's a better idea if anything gets
59:45
wastering here. Yeah, I mean, it's this is it's real and we're living it. But what else we got,
59:51
if we don't emphasize the good stuff, we don't pursue the the mind and the positive and see if it
59:56
walks and see if it's better, see if it makes us feel better, it feels other people better,
1:00:02
then can we all forgot, you know, let in some people might just say, oh, it was nihilism and it's
1:00:07
faint, but as I said, magic counters nihilism because magic always fains meaning and so that people
1:00:13
always find meaning in things even in nihilism. So I say like, when you tell me the universe is
1:00:19
utterly meaningless, and there's no meaning in anything, and it's just a chunk of the particles
1:00:24
and then, but how come everywhere we work, we find meaning everywhere, even look at a B dead in
1:00:29
the ground, we find meaning, look at glass, we find meaning. So where's that coming from?
1:00:34
And if it's coming from us, then where the meaning generator isn't this fabulous universe,
1:00:39
we'll be doing some more cool stuff. So it is kind of, there's nihilism and then we won't go,
1:00:44
nah, because that's, you know, I've got you guys, it's easily counted by the world isn't like that
1:00:49
because everywhere we look, we see that it's not like that way, we're in boon meaning it,
1:00:54
everything, even if the meaning is that it's hopeless, it's awful, people write entire books about
1:01:00
how hopeless an offlet is, you know, that's how much meaning is imbued even in nihilism. So I think
1:01:05
meaning wins in the end.
1:01:17
Hey guys, that was fun wasn't it? See what I mean about spinning off into all the
1:01:21
weird and wonderful corners of Grantscareer, but it's plenty more that came from,
1:01:25
as you'll hear in this little teaser for what's coming up in part two.
1:01:28
But what we're actually approaching is a technological reality of that, that people are getting
1:01:37
coasted and hooking certain contact and kids brains that allow them to create a telepathic net,
1:01:43
and once there's a telepathic net, they're exchanging thought, and they're exchanging thought
1:01:46
with AI at the same time. When we come out, there's this little guy just coming down the street,
1:01:52
and he apart from shooting, he looked like he'd come from the 70s of this whole thing,
1:01:55
he's going, I've just been to a better bed, that's how I have.
1:02:00
No way, he goes, you're fucking Tory bastard.
1:02:05
But yeah, you know what I'm doing, there's Batman Deadpool thing, so it's the only comic I
1:02:09
agreed to do in the last few years, and he said, do you want to do this, Batman Deadpool,
1:02:13
and I guess, sure, I've got to do this.