Friday, September 30, 2011

Graphic Literature and the Point of Interface of Multiple Dimensions

Why do comics enthrall you so much?
Magic. It was always really fascinating to me that Superman was so much older than me and yet I could come along and write adventures with Superman in them and add to his life story. Then I could die and Superman would keep going, with other people writing stories to keep him alive. He's more real than I am because he has a longer lifespan and more influence, so this notion of the 'real' 2-dimensional world of the comics and what it had to say to the 'real' 3-dimensional world of non-fictional people. That really connected with me in a big way and helped me grapple with big ideas about the universe and life and death. I wanted to really 'make contact' with that world and bargain with its inhabitants. I saw it as the lynchpin of my magic. The comic universes are living breathing alternate worlds we can visit. And, if we're lucky enough to be comic book writers we get to play directly with the inhabitants and environments of the 2nd dimension. I wanted to travel in those worlds. By the time I was doing The Invisibles I had gotten past the idea of just putting a drawing of myself in a comic, as I did in Animal Man. I wanted to treat the story like a real continuum. I wanted to really get involved with the comic, in the two dimensional surface of the comic itself and at the point of interface where 2-d becomes 3-d and then touches 4-d. I wanted to see if I could exchange places with a comic book character, so I made myself look like King Mob, and started to have adventures so I would have stuff to write about.
- Grant Morrison

No comments:

Post a Comment