This interview originally appeared on the MANIA site.
MANIA: I figure there's not a lot of advance warning on what they're going to do with the characters who are in JLA, such as Superman's new costume and powers.
Grant Morrison: I'm getting surprises all the time. But that's the cost and benefit of working on the book.
Now you said you were going to upgrade their costumes and technology; if you change the Leaguers significantly, then will the people who are doing the individual books have to go along?
Grant Morrison: Well, there isn't much I can do to affect the individual books. I don't know if I can change costumes of people like that, but with the new characters coming out I've got more control, so I can do the type of design that I'm looking for.
Still the classic costumes will bethere, but we're getting a lot more futuristic, and as we're getting into the twenty-first century I want to aim for a more futuristic look. That's what I'm trying to influence in Justice League.
Okay, I'm real anxious to hear how you would do that visually; would everyone have big complex wrist watches, or helmets.... ,
Grant Morrison: Well, I designed one of the first every characters to wear a jacket. He wore street clothes and the comic was based on that design. So that kind of got into mainstream comics, the idea of super heroes wearing jackets, and that kind of took over to where everyone got a jacket, trenchcoat or whatever. Now we're starting to get back to the Silver Age sort of costume, I think that's what we'll see with the new take of designs which will go closer to the original ideas of original super hero costume designs. I got a vision of where we're headed visually; they're a lot more fluid looking then we've had for the last ten years.
Some people will still have their standard costumes: the Flash, for example.
Grant Morrison: The Flash is a very classic costume, that still stands up because it's so simple and it's so well designed.
And J'onn J'onnz' costume couldn't really be simplified a lot further. He could have one strap over the shoulder instead of two. And as you say, with the new members like Plastic Man, Green Arrow and Aztek, you have a bit more freedom to reinterpret them.
Grant Morrison: Also, because the Justice League has been so successful, I'm getting more freedom anyway. Because I'm basically, undeniably the biggest seller. So I think that some people are starting to think that I've done something right and it's getting easier to do, some things that have been a little tricky to get approval to do to the character.
Green Arrow, for one, is so young you could really take him any way he wanted.
Grant Morrison: Yeah. I'm thinking to make him more like his dad.
So he'll be having continual disputes with Zauriel, the new Hawkman?
Grant Morrison: Well, I kind of like the idea that he starts out being this laid-back, meditating sort of young guy, and the more he sees of the world, the more he actually ends up becoming like Oliver Queen.
Well, in his own book Oliver started moving more toward the calm center at the end of his run.
Grant Morrison: No, I think he'll be more like the Green Arrow from the old Justice League. The jive-talking hothead.
The only caustic one of the old League.
Grant Morrison: Yeah.
Now on the other hand, on the Flash, you'll be working there for 12 issues. And that's coming up and you'll have to be starting on that soon, is that not so?
Grant Morrison: Well, I've finished the fist one and getting ready to start on the second. I wrote it in two days. It was the fastest comic in my life. Usually it takes up five days to do these things, but with Flash it was two days.
Why's that?
Grant Morrison: Because it was the Flash, I just get into the whole velocity thing and I just wrote the comic really fast. That's the atmosphere that Flash; he's caught up with motion. In fact, because I worked on it so fast I really plan to do the rest of them the same way, and try and capture the same feeling.
So you'll be writing the entire year, and by the month of June you'll hopefully be done?
Grant Morrison: Hopefully. I'd like to be finished before ten o'clock tonight.
Well, what do you have coming up
Grant Morrison: Well the first issue is called Emergency Stop, and that's when we cripple the Flash. He's up against a villain called the Suit, a supervillain costume. This villain made a lot of super suits, and he just got the idea to make the ultimate super suit and put everything into this, and some people even said that it had developed a life of its own, because it took so much of his power and efforts. So this ultimate suit is stolen by this guy, the criminal. He gets caught, gets fried in the electric chair and this suit escapes.
There's nobody in it.
Grant Morrison: Basically it's a haunted costume. And has a hunger for the Flash. In the first one it manages to convince him that it was dead but through the use of super speed and time travel, he does this little tricky thing and defeats it, but again he's crippled in the process, so that's where we're starting off from.
Oh, no. The fastest wheelchair alive, but still. Do you have any particular place you are hoping to aim the series so that you hand it back off the Mark Waid at a certain point?
Grant Morrison: We've thought everything out. As I said before, we're pretty much going to do three multi-issue stories. The first one is a thing on the Flash being crippled, which we're working on now. And about Flash getting a new costume.
What kind of costume is that?
Grant Morrison: Made from condensed speed force.
Oh, good heavens.
Grant Morrison: He has to make it because he's crippled. He's still crippled and he thinks of what he can do and he condenses speed force in his body and to support himself.
On a costume in which he can summons at any moment, so he doesn't need the ring anymore.
Grant Morrison: Yep. It's just a weird and immaterial material.
Whereas before, when he was running, there would be lightning bolts crackling off, now that's all there is.
Grant Morrison: And also with this thing he's more aerodynamic when he's running, because the costume changes shape to accomodate his speed.
That sounds like a lot of fun, so that's going to be early in your run.
Grant Morrison: Yeah, that's going to be the first issue. Then we're doing a story in which we call the Human Race and it's going to be a race story. It's been ages since the Flash was really in a footrace.
Not since Superman.
Grant Morrison: I'd like to do the race with Superman, I don't know if that's going to happen given the changes in Superman. But there's definitely going to be a race and it's going to involve the entire population of the earth. Little idea we had was there comes a point when the human race has to put all its kinetic energy into helping the Flash, and we're in abig race, a waving the flag thing.
That's a race against an alien being?
Grant Morrison: Yeah.
Wow, that echoes the end of Justice League 4 in which the Justice League wasn't able to stop the Martians in time, but once they were properly informed and inspired, common people could stop them, because the Martians are vulnerable to fire and everyone's got a lighter or some matches.
Grant Morrison: And everyone can run, at least a little bit. That is the lot of it.
Wow, okay. There's Emergency Stop, The Human Race (which is an excellent title, by the way) and after that is what?
Grant Morrison: Some one-issue stories. We're going to do one which is just the young guys in the Justice League, a real escape from the superheroes and we're going to go one with Flash, Green Lantern and Green Arrow kind of hanging out and what happens mostly is them just drinking and hanging out with his pals.
But apart from that we're got the end of this thing called the Black Flash. It's kind of what happened after Savitar was bumped off into the Speed Force and sort of corrupted and tainted it and created this personification of the Dark Side of the Speed Force which is a skeleton in a Flash costume.
We have this thing where he's chasing after the Flash on the cover ,which is kind of a neat run there. The Black Flash escapes from the Speed Force and comes after the Flash and he has got a friend who gives up her life to save him and then we throw the Flash into the Dark Side of the Speed Force to get her back.
Because the Black Flash is unleashed on Earth, time starts to run down, as velocity is measured by time and everyone is slowing down until one day it just absolutely stops and the Flash as to get back into the Speed Force. The last part of it the Flash returns and he's affected by this complete slowing down to the point to where he's only as fast as you and me, but everyone else is so slow that he's still the fastest man alive. And he has to restore the Speed Force with just a normal man's speed.
Without calling his JLA buddies, because that would be cheating.
Grant Morrison: Yeah, and they would be slowed down too. It's all down to the Flash on this one.