Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Can't be arsed!

Although the Tearoom of Despair tries to have something to say three times a week, sometimes we just can't be arsed.

Fortunately, we can always nick something from 1990 Grant Morrison, writing his Drivel column in Speakeasy magazine #107:

LIVING A LIE

If any of you bothered to read the latest issue of ‘Amazing Heroes’ you will have come across a rather intriguing editorial. This editorial offered a dozen or so points of evidence which proved fairly conclusively that all the writers in British comics are actually only two people. According to ‘Amazing Heroes’ there is the guy who writes ‘Judge Dredd’ and there is the guy who does post-modern things to DC superheroes. Pointing to the undeniable similarity of names like Pat Mills, Pete Milligan, Alan Grant, Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Jamie Delano – who “doesn’t quite fit the theory but you know what I mean” – the ‘Amazing Heroes’ editorial staff make the startling claim that all these people are, in fact, one single person. Preposterous, isn’t it?

Except that it’s true.

I can’t go on anymore, living this vile lie. I confess, I confess. I am Neil Gaiman. I am Alan Moore. I am Jamie Delano and Pat Mills. ‘Grant Morrison’ is only another of my fictional alter-egos. I am also the richest man in Britain and I work a 24-hour day. It’s all true. What more can I do? I promise to wear a hair-shirt and regularly flagellate myself in front of a blown-up photograph of Cannon and Ball. So the thing is, now that you know I’m Alan Moore, don’t you think you should all rush out and buy ‘Doom Patrol’? It’s only selling 34,000 copies you see, which really isn’t what we’ve come to expect from the author of ‘Watchmen’ and ‘The Killing Joke’… and ‘Sandman’, and ‘Hellblazer’, and ‘Marshal Law’ etc etc.

So, now that we know who writes all the British-based comics, I think we deserve to be told the name of the person who writes all those awful American-based comics. This person is an affront to human intelligence, and I demand that we find him now and feed him at once to a herd of ranting Rottweilers.

* * *

And for good measure, here is 1990 Warren Ellis in the same magazine, writing a review of The Agent, a long-forgotten Marvel comic by James Hundall and John Ridgeway:

Mummy bought me this big comic. It's got James Bond in, only he's called something else. Pictures are by some old man, done with his toenails. I am five, and the comic Mummy bought me is crap.

* * *

I don't know who owns these words, although the copyright probably belongs to Morrison or Ellis or Speakeasy or somebody. Fuck it, give them to Mick Anglo.

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