Grant Morrison needs no introduction. If you’re reading comics and you haven’t heard of him, rush to your local comic book store and grab a copy of Batman: Arkham Asylum, or The Invisibles, or his work on Animal Man. There is something about his work, it’s bigger than you or I, but it takes the notion of story and treats it like a character in and of itself. The psychedelic and incomprehensible are common place for Morrison and he just might change your outlook on life itself if you’re not too careful.

To call his work in comics prolific might be underselling it. He’s had a huge impact on the industry and has routinely broadened the scope of the storytelling capable in comics. I’m a gigantic fan of his work, and recently sat down with Grant to talk about his newest comic from Legendary “Annihilator.”

Washed-up Hollywood screenwriter Ray Spass is caught in a downward spiral of broken relationships, wild parties and self-destruction. Out of luck and out of chances, he’s one failed script away from fading into obscurity. Little does he know he’s about to write the story of his life. As his imagination runs rampant, Ray must join forces with his own fictional character Max Nomax on a reality-bending race to stop the entire universe from imploding – without blowing his own mind in the process.

Standard Morrison insanity, but with an odd twist. Morrison believes this to be his most grounded story yet, and after speaking to him I’m inclined to agree.

Bloody-Disgusting: “Annihilator” seems to be about the Hollywood writer experience, being paid to be weird, but also being under someone else’s thumb. How did your own experiences in the world of being a writer for hire inform the creation of Ray Spass? 

Grant Morrison: Yeah. Well by extension as I’m sure you can imagine I’ve spent ten years, probably more writing five Hollywood screenplays. I’ve been paid for them but not one thing has ever been produced. I’ve seen it from the inside and I wanted to expose the mechanisms, how stories are told, how they are regarded, and also the people that make films.

Usually I write about myself and my own life, but Ray Spass is informed by people I’ve met. It’s strange to write a character who’s not so much like me. But Hollywood informs the whole thing.

BD: And how much did your own experiences inform the creation of Max Nomax?

GM: As a writer and someone who’s been injected into writing in the past. He was easy to do. I’ve written a lot of characters like Max Nomax but the archetype rebel poet, the criminal genius, the mastermind, the lover of the artist. I wanted to go back to what was the original of that guy. What could you say to him? What could you do to him?

Who are all the dark men who have been haunted by him, and how have they informed the idea over the years. I wanted to go back to that.

BD: With the brain tumor, we’re seeing the bending of reality through his fiction becoming reality, you’ve always been a strong proponent of that idea that our creations are just as real as we let them to be, why deal with it now?

GM: Well it’s a theme of mine I love coming back to but in the past I’ve tended to tell stories where we weren’t quite sure if a character wasn’t hallucinating. In this case Max Nomax is much more real than Ray Spass is. That’s what’s quite simple. We’re going to tackle these basic science fiction ideas in a metafictional way.

It becomes quite clear, quite quickly that Max Nomax is real and that Ray Spass is actually genuinely remembering something from another part of the universe.

BD: You’ve been quoted calling “Annihilator” a love story, is it between a man and his creation?

GM: It’s a love story between two guys. Essentially it’s a buddy movie. It’s a love story but the female character doesn’t get introduced until issue three. Although you do see a photograph in issue one. But she comes into it and kinda changes everything. That was my chance to talk about how the ways Hollywood looks at women and objectively women. It’s my take on that. The love story is between a man, and a man, and a woman.

BD: The story deals with characters that are trying to conquer death for love, isn’t the answer the art and/or act of creation?

GM: Well it has a lot to do with the giant computer character that runs the world. It revolves around the antagonism created by that device. That’s what it revolves around for Max. I don’t want to say too much.

BD: With the exception of Multiversity you’ve recently got away from superheroes but with your focus on your own characters they too become super in their own way, has your notion of the superhero as modern myth changed or evolved to include regular people like Ray Spass?

GM: Yeah, I mean it always has. As I’ve said before, the mundane for me is equally fantastic. It’s as imaginative as anything else. Ordinary things are so much more psychedelic that psychic cosmic experiences. I’ve kind of always wanted to look at that area.

I’ve done stuff like The Invisibles, which is much more about people living in dreams than the real world. With superheroes I do love those things, and I do love that they can talk in big bold terms about archetypal feelings and emotions. I haven’t done much superhero stuff in a while and even “Multiversity” was written years ago.

My work is now about not so much ordinary people but at least mortal people.

BD: How much freedom are you granted in your stories, and why do you think so many people find them grand and sometimes incomprehensible, do they ever feel that way to you?

GM: Well no, but only in the sense that reality is incomprehensible. When you picked up your first “Justice League” comic when you were ten years old, that was incomprehensible too, but it was really sexy. Incomprehensibility is part of the joy of it all for me. And ultimately things are a bit incomprehensible and you read them a few times and you get it. I mean people didn’t understand Final Crisis when it hit, and you give them a few years and now it’s considered a classic.

Attitudes change. I just have to do what I enjoy doing. Fortunately for me it’s been very successful so I’m allowed to get away with stuff. I’m getting away with it because it sells really well.

In comics I haven’t had anything changed on me. I’ve been allowed to do whatever I want. But in movies, yeah. I’ve had chapter three of the Hollywood nightmare story. I’ve had ten months of notes that change things until the original idea doesn’t exist. In some cases those notes are brilliant and they make you a better writer and often cases the notes are just ridiculous and cycle around themselves. In Hollywood there is so much money, there can be hundreds of millions of dollars involved, when you’re making a comic it’s not as expensive to produce so you can get away with stuff. Hollywood is like a machine, it has to work like one, and stories have to be built in a certain way. I find that fascinating because I want to learn new techniques and tricks but at the same time it can be very weighing when stories are ground down and passed through hundreds of different hands.

Generally things don’t necessarily improve with notes. I’ve worked with really smart people in Hollywood that make things a hundred times better after ten drafts but my god, ten drafts, I can’t do it.

Frazer Irving’s work is stunning in it’s scope.

BD: Ray’s work seems to inspire his reality, and in doing so a story he writes starts to tell itself with him as a character, how do you approach being meta-textual in your comics, and is it always something you strive to do?

GM: The reality of it is that this has all happened before Ray, and he is intuiting something much bigger than himself. It’s not so much that he’s creating it by thinking about it but it’s already there and he’s coming across it and believing that he’s made it up.

He’s absolutely a conduit to something bigger. We’re in the world of fiction and in the world of a writer’s fantasy but Nomax comes from a real place. Ray is a lesser being, and he just happens to be plugging into a much bigger reality that he really has no concept of.

BD: Finally, what is it like to have Frazer Irving bring the world of “Annihilator” to life, he seems to play with light and dark in perfect harmony with the script, did you two work together closely to create the final pages?

GM: He was perfect. I really wanted to do a story for him, so when “Annihilator” was written I sent it over to Frazer and he agreed to do it. I couldn’t be happier, this is some of his best work. I can’t imagine anyone else doing it.

Absolutely he plays with light and dark. He makes the characters act. Frazer can do an entire scene using hand gestures and you know what’s going on. So he has this ability and he combines it with this photo realistic style it looks exactly like I pictured it.

Hollywood’s got this way with light. Each page Frazer captures that strange orange light that Hollywood creates through some mechanical filter that creates these beautiful colors. He gets it in every scene, especially in the next couple of issues. You really see that light and it becomes really important to the story. That light makes Hollywood even more fantastical than the space station which is quite grounded.

“Annihilator” wasn’t a difficult project, it was a story I wanted to tell and I was able to get the actors I wanted to create something that’s been so great on every level of the team. I couldn’t say there has been a moment where I wasn’t enjoying myself doing this book.

Annihilator #1 hits comic shops today from Legendary, don’t miss it.

The book is spectacular.