Although most eight-year-old interviews don’t hold up very well, I have to agree that Spiros Xenos’ chat with Grant Morrison, during Armageddon Pop Culture Expo in Melbourne, Australia, was the exception, on a number of levels. For example:
On The Dark Knight Returns: Yeah… but with Dark Knight, they never even believed it was going to sell. These guys, they just don’t understand. It’s always the same, it’s not just Time-Warner. As writers, we have to know what’s going on, because our lives depend on it.
On his DC Vertigo masterpiece The Invisibles: I can sit there and technically do you a great Justice League comic, but the stuff I like the best is something like The Invisibles, which is a different thing altogether, it’s more like what I want to do.
On Chris Ware’s brilliance and Fantagraphics: I really like Chris Ware formally, he’s formally brilliant. The black humour is at a pitch where I can enjoy it just for the sheer nastiness of it, the black depth of it.
On Love and Rockets: I read it when it first came out but then it no longer seemed relevant after a certain point.
On editors: The editors are convinced that everyone is just like them, and that’s the way it’s always been. And the horror is, it has to be said, that these editors are geeks, and they’re frightened to engage with the real world and talk to people because they feel slow and ashamed of themselves…
March 6th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
“Yeah… but with Dark Knight, they never even believed it was going to sell.”
Then why did DC buy the cover for Previews and Advance Comics (Capital City’s equivalent at the time)?
Leave the marketing history lesson to folks who know better, Grant.
March 6th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
Or maybe they just wanted to cut their losses and thrust it on the public with bombastic ads like the summer block buster they originally percieved it to be rather than on its own merits?
March 6th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
Or, probably because RONIN (though great) was a flop, sales wise. Was PREVIEWS really around at the time? Anyone got a scan of that cover?
And spot on about Chris Ware - formally brilliant, but damn hard to love because of the constant misanthropy.
March 6th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
The listing at mycomicshop.com indicates Previews and Advance Comics debuted in 1989.
If that’s the case what would be the equivalent back in 1986?
March 8th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Advance Comics was first published with the December, 1997 issue. Previews was later. I have misremembered. Both distributors did, however, have equivalents at the time of DKR’s publication. Damned if I can recall their titles, though.