Morrison & Vallely: BIBLE JOHN: A Forensic Meditation (part 1-2)

[jlroberson]

Say, just how many comics has Morrison written for with the word "Crisis" in the title anyway?

From 1991, a work that will most likely never be reprinted, Grant Morrison and Daniel Vallely's BIBLE JOHN. This was Morrison in his seriously-on-psychedelics phase(and that will actually become very relevant in a later part), not long after ARKHAM ASYLUM, so you'll see some shared elements with that. Apparently it's said that the artist had some kind of freakout issue with this, and so destroyed the artwork and quit comics. (previously he'd done the first issue of Mark Millar's SAVIOUR, another lost and unfinished gem)

I suppose it makes some sense. This comic has something...about it. And one gets the feeling that Morrison was trying to do a magic ritual through it. One also senses this was Morrison trying to do his version of what Moore was in FROM HELL: using a murder as a dissection of a city, in this case Glasgow. But his approach is quite different: as a documentary, with few if any "characters." Which has to do with a murderer characterized mainly by his absence.

The Bible John case itself is one of Glasgow's most famous unsolved murder cases. Whomever he was he killed three women, connected only by the fact that they were all having their period when they were killed. Right now they have a suspect(who is already locked up for murders) they think might have done it but haven't proven it yet. It's possible he might have killed as many as 48 women over the years, if it is him.

So now that I've scanned my CRISIS collection, you get to see it, or at least a portion. Here are excerpts from part 1 and 2. VERY hard to choose the pages here. I will be posting more parts. So, from Fleetway's CRISIS #56 and 57: enjoy(or whatever....)








You might think that man's face you see is Morrison, because it does look a lot like him(he wasn't a baldy then). And Morrison actually does show up later in the comic. But in fact that's one of two images the police put out of his possible appearance. Perhaps the weird coincidence appealed to Morrison.




To be continued.
(c)1991 Grant Morrison & Daniel Vallely.
(PS if interested: This week's LULU.)

Tags: creator: grant morrison, creator: daniel vallely, title: crisis, publisher: fleetway

Comments

[halloweenjack]

The rumour is that Vallely destroyed most of his work after this collaboration and left the comic industry.

So, kind of like Al Columbia and Big Numbers--only Columbia didn't leave the industry, of course, just went in a completely different direction artistically.

Speaking of Moore, a lot of this writing reminds me of a self-critique of Moore's regarding some of his work on Swamp Thing, that descriptions like (from memory) "torn cotton wool daubing the slashed wrists of the sky" (he's describing a sunset) were a bit, shall we say, purple.

[jlroberson]

Well, keep in mind he was still young and very, very stoned.

Supposedly Vallely went on to become a photojournalist in the first Iraq War:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Vallely

...and is a musician. It appears too he was in Morrison's band, the Fauves, at one time.

[jlroberson]

PS--An example of said band I finally managed to locate here(as there's also an Aussie band of the same name now):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuUUkPCZTBg

Not too bad, actually. And Morrison sings pretty well. (Better than he speaks--try to wade through that accent, just try)

Update: and someone else called RAB who is not yet set up to comment here passed this on to me, another song, "Hello Cruel World," which they describe thusly:

"One of my favorite tunes. The lyrics sync up perfectly with Flex Mentallo and certain parts of The Filth and The Invisibles. And it's Beatleriffic!"
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ulric.kennedy/Spirophone/Hello_Cruel_World.mp3

[stubbleupdate]

OK, his voice is pretty deep, but it's not hard at all to work out what he's saying.

It's just a bugger that people keep on interrupting him.

[jlroberson]

When I met him he spoke so quietly I couldn't make out anything through his accent. He's easier to understand when he's speaking to a room, though.

[halloweenjack]

I really liked that second song. It's too bad that the Spirophones site seems to be defunct.

[psychopathicus_rex]

That's pretty intense, all right. I think I can understand why it was never collected - I doubt it's the sort of thing that you would really want to re-read much.

[jlroberson]

Yeah, but having now made a .cbr of it for my own use, it reads a lot better in one place start to finish.

[psychopathicus_rex]

I can understand how it would. It's basically a tone poem; there's not much in the way of story or suspense to draw a reader back into it.

[jlroberson]

That's exactly what it is. I find it works very well, actually, with Aphex Twin. It reminds me a little of Moore's later THE BIRTH CAUL and Eddie Campbell's adaptation of it, other examples of how to integrate poetic thinking into comics. A largely unexplored approach.

[psychopathicus_rex]

It's unexplored for a reason, though - comics is still largely a serial medium, and tone poems work best, I think, when viewed as a whole, not when spun out. Graphic novels are a better way to go in terms of poetic thinking, I'd say - either that, or in little nuggets, surrounded by somewhat more conventional storytelling.

[jlroberson]

Well, but you're still reading it line by line--you can't read anything all at once; so that's just a matter of pacing, isn't it? There are many ways to think of sequence besides just thinking of it in terms of events. I'm thinking of McCloud's term "aspect-to-aspect."

[psychopathicus_rex]

Well, here's what I mean, basically - there are three basic things that serial entertainment (be it comics, TV shows, a series of movies, whatever) depends upon - character, plot, and suspense. There are plenty of other elements, of course, but it's arguably these three things that are responsible for the success of the serial medium. Character is probably the most immediately important one - comics as we know them wouldn't exist without a stable of popular characters that people relate to, and want to read the continuing adventures of. That failing, however, there's always the plot - a really good, engaging plot can keep people coming back for more even if the characters are weak as custard. And if BOTH of those are crap, then there's always the old tried and true - suspense, the cliffhanger, the nail-biter 'ending'. The characters may be cliched as hell and the plot may be a wheezing rehash of every cliche in the book, but gosh, they're dangling off the cliff, and the bad guy's on top with a shotgun; what are they gonna do? Chances are at least a FEW people will want to know the answer to that one, even if it proves to be extremely stupid.
Tone poems, on the other hand, are a tad iffy on all three of those categories. Tone poems are all about TONE, about manipulating mood through words and pictures - they're like those avant-garde films that are a series of one non-sequitor after another, or a piece of music that tries to lull you into a peaceful stupor or work you up into a frenzy. They're not really concerned with characters or plot, and suspense is rarely much of a factor.
Let's take as an example 'Batman: Arkham Asylum', also by Morrison. That definitely has characters - the main one is right in the title - but it's not so much concerned with the characters themselves as it is using them to create a mood and examining the things they represent. There's a little bit of plot, but not much - the loonies have taken over the asylum, and want Batman to come in, he does, wanders around a bit, gets into a fight, a psychiatrist psychoanalyzes him and winds up lashing out at one of her patients, we get backstory on Arkham itself, and then Batman leaves. That's it. The inmates are still in charge, the staff is still being held by them, and Bats has pretty much accomplished nothing except to rattle his own mind a bit. As for suspense, what there is of it largely depends on 'where is all this going?', and when it ultimately goes nowhere in particular, the suspense fizzles out pretty quickly.
Now, this doesn't mean that the story isn't GOOD. On the contrary, it's a classic, but it's a classic as a graphic novel, as one big chunk of mood that one can devour in a single sitting. If it had been a miniseries, I doubt that it would have done anywhere near as well, despite the fact that it DID have the rudiments of everything it needed to succeed. Bible John has NONE of those things - as plot, it concerns itself with stuff that's already happened, which it tells us about from the very beginning, thereby killing the suspense; the only 'character' is the killer himself, who we know nothing and CAN know nothing about, and his victims, who are dead and therefore cannot progress further in the story. It still works, but it works due to the feel of the thing, and while I'll certainly read the next installment, there's nothing about the first one that necessarily left me demanding more, which is a rather significant flaw in a serialized story. I like it, but I think it would work better as a GN.

[jlroberson]

All good points, but do you mean a distinction when you say GN in terms of format/structure or are you using it in the genre way some do these days? If the former, I agree, which is why I think it works better all collected than it did as a serial. I do recall the episodes, as a serial, seemed to have a drifting sameness to them, but gain a rather interesting cumulative effect as a "book." Like a huge painting gradually accreting into place, much like the Identikit metaphor Morrison uses.

As far as "suspense," well, remember, one of the things that made FROM HELL special was how they negated the mystery right away, showing you their Ripper from the outset and therefore making the work more about examination than mystery.

I think you may want the term "narrative," by the way, where you have "serial." And a narrative can take many forms and can emphasize varying mixtures of character, plot and theme, but can also exclude or de-emphasize two of them and favor only one. For instance, that's how we get "character studies." This one is an example of the thematic, which is the most difficult and the hardest to make accessible.

I likened it already to Throbbing Gristle and Aphex Twin in music(the kind of music Chris Morris used as background in JAM would be ideal), but also thinking of the way ambient music, like Eno, works. Doesn't progress so much as whirl around and around. Which is not inferior, but rather, different.

I'm curious as to your opinion of THE BIRTH CAUL or SNAKES AND LADDERS. Actually, Eddie Campbell also has lots of short pieces that could be said to be in the same ballpark as this too in their tone. (But I think Eddie is our equivalent of a poet)

Come to think of it, I seem to recall Morrison once said "The Pyjama Girl" by Campbell was an inspiration for this.

[psychopathicus_rex]

I do indeed mean GN as in format/structure. I occasionally use it the other way, too, for purposes of convenience (there are people to whom the terms 'trade paperback' and 'collected edition' mean nothing), but in this case, I'm going for the other one.
I could be wrong, but I think 'narrative' can refer to ANY kind of writing, whether serialized or not, whereas I'm talking about one particular kind, the kind that is spread out over multiple installments, for which the term 'serial' or 'serialized' seems rather a natural. I agree with you regarding the thematic being difficult, but that would seem to support what I'm saying - if you want to do something that tricky, you don't want to take the chance of the reader's attention slipping away over multiple installments. As an example from another medium, I would submit 'The Circus of Dr. Lao', by Charles G. Finney (which if you haven't read it, by the way, is an excellent read). It's unusual for a novel in that it's very loose in terms of plot and character; it's mainly a study in theme, episodic structure and innovative tangents - yet it is precisely because it's a novel that it works; the self-contained format supports it. If I'd had to read it in several installments, I doubt I would have gotten past page ten, simply because it IS so weird and unorthodox, and I wouldn't be sure if it would pay off or not. The fact that the whole thing is together in one piece makes you want to continue and see where it goes, and it DOES pay off.
I'm afraid I can't give my opinion on 'The Birth Caul' or 'Snakes and Ladders', because I haven't read them - or, if I have, I can't recall doing so, which amounts to the same thing. As for 'From Hell', I've only seen the movie, which I understand is quite different from the original (although I didn't think it was too bad).

[jlroberson]

>>I'm afraid I can't give my opinion on 'The Birth Caul' or 'Snakes and Ladders', because I haven't read them - or, if I have, I can't recall doing so, which amounts to the same thing. As for 'From Hell', I've only seen the movie, which I understand is quite different from the original (although I didn't think it was too bad).

To the last: oh good GOD no. No, don't do that to yourself. Find a copy somehow. Maybe even the library has one. Read it. You'll see.

As for the former, you can find them in a great book called A DISEASE OF LANGUAGE. Highly recommended.

[psychopathicus_rex]

*shrugs* I'm pretty forgiving when it comes to these things. I'm even a semi-defender of the 'League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' movie, which I fully understand was utter crap compared to the book, but at least it was reasonably entertaining. Still, I will check out 'From Hell' when I get a chance, and the others if I ever run across them.

[jlroberson]

Or Throbbing Gristle. This in particular:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMbG4PP9iJA

[nezchan]

Man, I haven't heard Throbbing Gristle in ages.

[jlroberson]

You may need some of this as well then:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQgOvL7kFFw