This internview originally appeared on the MANIA site.
MANIA: With Darkseid due to appear in issue #12, and all the Leaguers slated to die (temporarily, one assumes), what comes next?
Grant Morrison: Well, issues 10 to 15 are a six part
story which is the biggest story I've attempted so far. It's got the
new Injustice Gang led by Lex Luthor. And along the way we're going to
be doing some dragging in of Darkseid and expanding the edges of the DC
Universe in lots of different ways, and kind of setting up the teams for
the second year, which will bring in the whole twelve members of the
Justice League.
I guess the Injustice League has to be indirect and
crafty because the Joker and Luther are people who can't challenge the
JLA directly.
Luthor decided that they've never won before mainly because they've tried to go up against them in street fights. Knocking each other through walls is useless when you're up against Superman. So Luthor's ideal way to win is to make a corporate takeover of the Justice League using his business acumen.
So with these things in mind, the organization which the people like Superman, Batman and the Martian Manhunter belong to has these young heroes, like the Flash and Green Lantern, and Luthor's people are trying to sweet-talk them into joining the bad guys by pointing out the fact that they are humans, and they are working for the aliens. It's like making them a better offer.
Luthor is absolutely convinced that his business skills and his corporate savvy are going to allow him to take over the Justice League; but Bruce Wayne is a member of the Justice League, and he's a better corporate shark than Luthor is. This means the two ultimate human minds are pitted against each other.
You wouldn't count the Joker as one of the ultimate
human minds?
Well, he's the mind of a different stroke.
Yes, he is indeed. You never really
played Bruce Wayne as being a competent businessman.
Well, here's what I thought--I can actually
see him doing that stuff on behalf of the Justice League, which would
just add a new dimension to the whole team dynamic. Also within this
story, half of the Justice League is sent into possible futures which
are liable to come about if the Justice League wins against the
Injustice Gang. The whole thing has been gagged in the future, so they have to contact their selves in the past to warn them
not to win.
Because it could actually turn out worse if they won?
Yes.
In the final issue of Aztek, the hypothetical
scenariothat the JLA asked him to solve was one where all the superheroes
have been killed and Darkseid is ruling the world; it sounds as if it's
very similar to what's going to happen in the coming issues.
Pretty much, that was always the flash of
things to come. There's a lot that was set-up in that issue of
Aztek that will pan out in the Justice League story, in a sense,
since Luthor's scheme in Aztek was actually designed to bring
out the end of the Justice League.
The Injustice League is the inverse of the seven
original heroes, but by the time they go up against them there's going
to be three more--Aztek, Zauriel and Green Arrow...
Actually, I don't increase the Injustice Gang
because it's easily getting too many. It's the big seven
against the big seven, with the new members of the Justice League as well.
So the whole series is pretty much focused on the main seven members, and
we're going to have another five members.
Are the new guys going to rotate in and out? Say, the
original seven, then a different five people every year or so?
I don't quite know what to say; I just want
the best guys in the world for the 12. We're going to have, as you know,
Captain Marvel and Plastic Man. To me, it's the bad guys who I'm going
to rotate. But certainly, if Wonder Woman's off for a month, we're going
to be doing Supergirl and stuff like that. So there will be other
members; it'll be a 12 member group composed of seven core members plus five.
So Captain Marvel has definitely been approved then?
As far as I know, yes.
How are you going to play Captain Marvel? Are you playing him similar
to the way he was presented in the JLI?
No, I want to do something different because
that's already been done. They played him off as a
comedy figure most of the time, and that is just a level I don't care to
repeat. Captain Marvel is one of the ultimate superhero fantasies.
Captain Marvel is what Billy thinks of as the
ultimate Dad, or the ultimate grown up. He's not really a grown up, he's
actually a little kid's version of what an ideal grownup is. He's
really polite and really nice, and he's also tough and at the same time, and
slightly naive, because a kid's idea of adulthood is kind of limited.
So when he's in situations that Billy has never imagined,
he'll just react as sort of this idealized Dad might?
Sure. You'd think if your Dad was up against a
villain he would be really great.
And Captain Marvel's impressions of the other Leaguers?
I think he's going to take them all at face
value and expect the best.
Take Batman at face value, and you might be afraid of
him.
He wouldn't be afraid, I don't think he's
afraid of people because he's got the courage of Achilles. Besides, I get the feeling that to kids, Batman isn't scary; Batman is
only scary to bad guys and villains.
And of course he's going to love every moment of being
in the League, without any doubts like Aquaman has...
Captain Marvel would be the complete opposite
of Aquaman.
But Aquaman is going to stay in the League?
Basically yeah. He's definitely the hardest
one in the League to do.
So there's a six-issue struggle with the Injustice Gang
which eventually brings in Darkseid, and other major villains, and
what's after that?
After that we're doing this thing called
Camelot. It's a trip into the Justice League Round Table to
complete the twelve, and also brings in the guy who's going to be the new
member. Again, I can't say who he is... he gets thrown in because
Aztek is thrown out.
I would guess that Aztek would be gone as a result
of his Luthor connections, which he exposed during the previous story.
So in a sense, you felt you had to write him out?
Yeah, I felt that it just seemed... I don't
like people coming in with an agenda, and the agenda there was that I
wrote Aztek's book. I felt that Aztek was in
there with no justification, other than the fact that Mark and I had
writtten him, and people could object to that. I just wanted
some comment in the way that is was canceled. He's thrown out of the
Justice League as abruptly as he was thrown out of the DC Universe.
Yes, actually having read the final issue of Aztek, I went back and
got all the others... I don't suppose you're not going to do anything
with Aztek in the future?
Well, later, because I want to set up the
ending to the story, which we have already written. We could do it in a
couple of specials.
I noticed you deliberately summed up all the dangling
plot threads on the last couple of pages of Aztek#10.
Well, actually it finished the entire plot in
one word balloon in Justice League, which kind of tossed Aztek on his
head again. The Camelot story does that; the main function is just to
introduce the new members, so again, I can't tell you too much about the
story, but after that we might do something with some of the young
heroes [Captain Marvel Jr., Robin, Supergirl], as a sort of
Justice League Jr.
There's enough of them out there. You're bringing
back a lot of the best early Justice League villains, so can I ask if
you have any plans for, say, Felix Faust?
Nothing that worked out yet. I wanted to do
something with Starro, but everyone hates Starro so much that the story,
of course, would be about a completely different Starro.
It's still Starro, but a completely new idea, other than the fact it's still a starfish with an eye in the center. And the story is a really good one, I'm really pleased with that.
I thought I'd please everyone and do a lot of the old characters in the first year, and in the second year, I'll make up a new bunch, then just kind of mix and match after that. So I thought, just for a few issues, to come up with the new stuff and unique nemeses big enough for the Justice League to handle.
Well, the first one that you've done of those was
Asmodel, who is just big enough for the Justice League to handle--
possibly too big. Is it difficult to come up with the kind of nemeses
they can face on even terms?
Not really. I like working in that grandiose
scheme of things; that sets the JLA apart from everyone else.
What can you tell me about the enemies you're thinking
about for the second year?
Well, Starro. We've changed his actual being;
he's actually the size of Hudson Bay, and he sort of latches onto the
North American continent.
Then there is this energy entity that has been buried on the moon for 30 years and has actually been awakened by the Justice League construction activity. And it's a different sort of genie in a bottle combined with a spirit that's been captured. Whoever used it was trapped inside with this terrible force of energy until a human shakes the bottle. Naturally it wants to be free and comes into conflict with the Justice League.
Based on the idea of "If he was a crooked man he'd have a crooked head," I came up with the idea of a Batman of evil--this fellow who had a traumatic shock as a child and decided, "I will become the ultimate evil."
Someone as capable and intelligent as Batman, and actually traveled over the world and used all the money to become the ultimate detective and martial artist and then to take out the JLA. And his tactic is, "Okay, I'll wait until these people are vulnerable and I'll beat them forever.
Well, that is equal time for the villains because
Batman has defeated several of the biggest villains just by basically
being smarter than they are, and by wanting it more. So they get to
face him on his own terms. Now, will Batman be involved with dealing
with this fellow, or will they have to face him without Batman?
Well, Batman will surely be involved there
somewhere but I don't exactly know how. I wouldn't think they could
take on Batman himself, but they'll need him this time, which gives me the
chance to keep Batman in danger for a change.
I was just thinking of the classic DC run that I grew
up with--the Shaggy Man, the Key, the Phantom Stranger was a member of
the old JLA for one time...
What I'd like to do is a Phantom Stranger
appearance, because he used to turn up at least once a year in a special
story, a supernatural one. There's another supernatural character that
I'd like to use as well, but again, there is so much I can't talk
about-- something that's never been done in Justice League. But
yes, Phantom Stranger is a possibility. Shaggy Man... I'm still trying to
come up with a story, I definitely want to do something with that
character. It hasn't gelled yet.
Well, there hasn't been a great deal done with him in
the past, that I saw, so the field's wide open as it were.
It's so simple, it's just rampage and
destruction.
So you're planning to be on JLA for the
long haul.
Oh, definitely. Some of the plan has got a
really far reach. I want to do this comic for the twenty-first century.
This has got to be the super team for the twenty-first century.
So the whole thing is constantly updating and upgrading the
possibilities of what superheroes can do, and bringing back the
imagination that comics used to have.
What's a twenty-first century superhero, in your
opinion?
Well, definitely I want to see different
costumes. Because I used to draw and design a lot of the stuff that we
do, and I'm trying to design superhero costumes that no longer have
jackets, because that was such a thing of the '80s. I'm trying to get
back to the basics of superheroes and then taking it forward and upgrade
the type of technology that we use, and ways we think of their powers and
the ways that they could be used.
Also to think how a superhero mind would think. Now that Superman's magnetic, he picks up a CD and he can read it just by looking at it. He can read anything because of his sense of the whole electromagnetic spectrum. To me, there's a lot of details that come of imaginatively construing their powers and what these things could do.
There's a great deal of that in issue three when the Flash
was battling Zum and they were both using really bizarre applications of
super speed. It made perfect sense, but no one had ever done it before.
Yes. Again, it's kind of reading through
Popular Science and kind of making up some bits which you think are
great. But using the wits, which DC characters always did. Marvel used
their fists, but DC applied their powers to the problem cleverly. I think
it was one of those things that DC always did well, and is one of the
things that is coming back into comics. Using the applications of the
super power to solve problems.
And they were somewhat qualitative rather than
quantitative. It wasn't that Superman said, "I'm faster then X and
smarter then Y," but "I have these abilities that allow me to do this
one thing which falls into the chink in their plan. If they'd done
something else, they might have won."
Exactly! Which is the source of lots of fun
stuff and I think that is what's coming back into the great comics.
Well, I'm pleased to hear that you'll be here for 50
issues or more.
Definitely. I constantly get rushes of ideas.
So do you have to throw out some of the ideas, or do
you just put them into issue #51?
Actually, I have to keep throwing them away
because I keep getting them. There's just so much I can do before I get
to that story, so I'll leave the next story until the end. So some of
them probably will never be seen.
Well, there's always hope...
Next Week: More with Grant Morrison!