Me and Morrison: Looking at the writer for the first time

It was one of the Zenith interludes that changed the way I read comics. The one with Cloud 9 and Spook falling into a mirror. That was the first time I ever bothered to look up the writer's name and make a conscious effort to follow their work. 

I had been a fan of particular artists and characters for a long while, but I never really worried who actually wrote the things. Who cared about something like that? It was a different story with artists and I had definite favourites from a very young age - I knew my Bollands from my Gibbons, obviously. But I didn't care about who was responsible for the plot and the words.

But those six pages of prime Zenith was so good, with their hints of an alternate universes where superheroes became strange pop stars, and my 12-year-old self desperately had to know more about this "Grant Morrison" guy.

This proved to be a phenomenally good decision, because following Morrison's witty, smart and sexy comics over the next thirty-plus years has been ridiculously rewarding. 

After taking note of the writer's name, I followed them as far as I could. Morrison's stories were soon showing up in American comics, but I had absolutely no access to any of that stuff and there was no internet, so the Doom Patrol and Animal Man comics would have to wait. All I had was the 2000ad.

To this day, I remain hugely fond of the entire Zenith story, and Steve Yeowell's constantly shifting and line-prefect art. I liked how it could be really mean and nasty, and then pull a twist out of its glorious arse at the last milli-second, and make everything okay. 

After the Zenith, the first things I could find by the writer were in the galaxy's greatest comic. The wicked sense of humour in the early Future Shocks, and then the Summer Offensive, (which always felt more like Mark Millar's baby, to be honest). The Rian Hughes-illustrated Really and Truly is a candy-corn delight, and Big Dave was very, very funny, but his Judge Dredd comics were not good.

Morrison wasn't the only creator I started following at around the same time, but he was the very first and inspired me to read more of that Moore guy who did DR and Quinch, or quickly figure out that the only real Dredd was John Wagner Dredd.

I still read everything Morrison does to this day, to varying degrees of enjoyment. I went hard on the Invisibles in the 90s, I still miss the regular dose of Batman they gave us in the 21st century, and was chuffed beyond words by that clip I saw of him showing up in the Teen Totans TV show the other day.

I didn't know I'd still be following their work when I flipped back six pages to look at that credit box back in 1987. All I knew was that I really liked the way this writer was thinking, and was ready and willing to follow their path, and hope for the best.