Well, it's official - Interview with Grant Morrison confirms new Dynamic Duo ID's

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

(Sadly it's not the pairing from my icon, but you can't have everything)

From new interview with Grant Morrison at IGN here

IGN Comics: So let's talk about the new team of Dick Grayson and Damian. What's their dynamic like?

Morrison: There's just real friction between them. Damian doesn't respect Dick Grayson at all, and Dick Grayson is kind of this consummate superhero. The guy has been Batman's partner since he was a kid, he's led the Teen Titans, and he's trained with everybody in the DC Universe. So he's a very different kind of Batman. He's a lot easier; He's a lot looser and more relaxed. At the same time Damian is pretty hard to deal with. The characters are just amazing fun to write. Sparks fly all around them.

IGN Comics: You've said this is all part of the greater Batman story you're telling. I'm assuming you knew you wanted to bring Dick and Damian in once you took Bruce Wayne off the map with RIP and Final Crisis. I think some fans are wondering why you didn't want to tell the story of how Dick assumed the mantel of the Bat?

Morrison: I wanted to just come in – I know some fans don't like this approach – but I like to just come in when the story is underway and the fun has started. I thought that background stuff could be taken as read. Tony Daniel's dealing with those details in Battle for the Cowl, and the basics have been laid down. Apart from that, everything you need to know about the intervening time and how Dick and Damian got together gets explained over the next year of Batman and Robin anyway. It's all in the story. I just didn't want to front load it with expository material, because I wanted to jump straight into action with the characters, to be honest.

For legality, a couple more upcoming JG Jones Batverse covers

Comments

[moneyless_jew.insanejournal.com]

But Buddy survived Animal Man. He survived the arrogant villain Morrison made HIMSELF out to be. That was Morrison musing about creativity and the writer's impulse, and not painting himself in the best light. But Buddy persevered. Morrison also wrote Buddy and the family with exceeding fondness in 52.

IMO, no one is trying to sell Damian as "better" than Dick or Tim. Damian simply THINKS he is, and has been proven wrong before by the rest of the Batfamily coterie. If Morrison had wanted to sideline Dick and Tim in favor of Damian, Tim would not have stayed Robin in major storylines leading up to Final Crisis, and Dick would not be Batman. Damian is not BETTER, he is simply DIFFERENT. He is not funny and accomodating like Jaime, who is a great character, but he is different. Just because Damian does not follow the same well-worn "let's be a family" track of all the other kids in the cave, doesn't make him a bad character or unworthy.

And don't tell me Grant Morrison is part of some great corporate swindle against the creators. Like many before him, he simply took a writing job. The fact is hundreds of people have written Batman, Robin, Superman, Supergirl, the Huntress, Wonder Woman, Catwoman, Barbara Gordon since their original creators. You might just as well attack Mark Waid or Gail Simone for perpetuating the same supposedly-evil system. But we don't see people trashing them, or Neal Adams, Moench, Dixon, etc for taking the job and co-opting "others' creations" - for example, I doubt the old guard planned on Barbara becoming Oracle, but it was a good idea. He's just another writer, like all the rest.

If your point of view is so nihilistic as to believe that there are no good, mainstream popular comic book writers, and that it is all a cesspool of overrated hacks ruining what has come before and no creator past the year 2000 deserves any benefit of the doubt or creative allowance, then I must ask two things: What do you think people said about the people who introduced Tim or Cass or Stephanie once, and why are you sitting here arguing with me about the merits of this when you already decided I'm wrong and there's no hope for anything in comics?

[box_in_the_box.insanejournal.com]

Thank you for summarizing why I LIKED that Animal Man storyline.

He's just another writer, like all the rest.

My point exactly. Most writers, in ANY medium, are simply BAD. That being said, no, I don't think Morrison is actively involved in a "corporate swindle," but by the same token, I think it takes huge fucking balls to complain about not being as much creative freedom as you'd like with a character that YOU DIDN'T EVEN CREATE.

If your point of view is so nihilistic as to believe that there are no good, mainstream popular comic book writers [...]

They're out there; they're just incredibly rare - Sturgeon's Law - and basically, I've adopted a stance of "guilty until proven innocent" with regard to the quality of their work. Sometimes, I've been pleasantly surprised, but most of the time, not.

And it's hardly just COMIC books that I'm pessimistic about, because as far as I'm concerned, the rise of vast massive anti-talented egos like Stephenie Meyer, Ann Rice and Laurell K. Hamilton show that most of popular fiction as a whole has descended to levels that even Sturgeon would have found depressing.

And why are you getting so obviously pissed off over the fact that I don't unconditionally love everything about comics? If our positions were reversed, I'd probably be getting a Mod Note for adopting a tone as "aggressive" as the one you're showing right now.

And there is hope, but it's always temporary. With any writer, there's a limited window of time, right after they've learned their craft enough not to make rookie mistakes, and right before they start being burned-out old hacks, when they produce good work. It's always a limited window - no writer is worthwhile forever - but what's sad is, more and more, I see writers who are making rookie mistakes at the SAME TIME that they're turning into burned-out old hacks. With rare exceptions, once a writer becomes a Name Brand, they're worthless.

[moneyless_jew.insanejournal.com]

I don't want you to unquestionably adore comics. I don't unquestionably adore comics. But I don't understand what purpose this is serving or what message it is supposed to get across. All I'm saying is, this has got to be exhausting for you. You seem to approach virtually every single storyline and writer with an accusatory eye. It seems like there can be irony, no authorial intent without it being automatically deemed an offensive assault on the existing audience. And sure, I agree, there are creators who hold us in contempt. But I take them example by example - I don't indict, say, the whole of Dan Slott or Peter David's work just because I dislike their involvement with OMD/BND or the current downturn on X-Factor. Even Mark Millar did Swamp Thing. Good writers make bad choices sometimes. Then they can make good choices again. It is not Good or Evil. You're right, it's not absolutes, but I think you're distilling creators to that.

Let's not forget that Waid, Simone, etc., all s_d darlings, are also "Name Brands" at this point. Yet we do not shun them. Why? Because brand or not, people think they are good. So if it's arrogant for Morrison to want creative latitude on an established character, why is it then editorial's fault if, say, Christopher Priest wants more latitude on Cap and the Falcon and doesn't get it? Why isn't Priest an arrogant SOB too? Or Gail on Wonder Woman? Keith Giffen and John Rogers(?) doing Blue Beetle - what if they want to do something radical with Booster Gold? Why isn't that arrogant as well, just like Morrison? Who among us is the arbiter for good writers and bad writers, which ones deserve freedom and which don't? It's not me - is it you?

[box_in_the_box.insanejournal.com]

All I'm saying is, this has got to be exhausting for you. You seem to approach virtually every single storyline and writer with an accusatory eye.

I believe that the best way to approach any text is with an adversarial relationship to it.

Let's not forget that Waid, Simone, etc., all s_d darlings, are also "Name Brands" at this point. Yet we do not shun them.

Speak for yourself with Waid, and ever since Gail became a name brand, I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop. She's not as big a name brand as Millar, Morrison or Bendis, though, which probably helps for now. And quite frankly, I don't give a shit whether the rest of s_d shuns them or not, because my tastes are my tastes, and are not dictated by you or anyone else.

So if it's arrogant for Morrison to want creative latitude on an established character, why is it then editorial's fault if, say, Christopher Priest wants more latitude on Cap and the Falcon and doesn't get it?

Because the editors didn't create the characters, either. You seem to proceed from the assumption that I'm inclined to let ANYONE off the hook here. If judging two different writers by the same standards means that I'm forced to find fault with one writer whose work I like, or else forgive the faults of a writer whose work I don't like, I will dissect the shit out of a writer I (used to) like, pretty much every single time, rather than offer any amount of forgiveness for anyone.

[moneyless_jew.insanejournal.com]

But I think by approaching every writer as an enemy you're closing yourself off to a lot of things. Let's look at Geoff Johns - a lot of people didn't like him because of Infinite Crisis. Or Teen Titans. No more Young Justice, I want Impulse, why is Kyle Rayner not the main GL anymore. Yet he brought both Bart and Kon back. He did Blackest Night and JSA. All three items were popular not just in the mainstream, but in this relative community. So that's both good and bad work in some people's eyes. So IMO, there's no easy, absolute judgment to necessarily be rendered - about him, or a lot of other writers.

I don't want to dictate your tastes. But you seem to be indicating that if I "tolerate" (i.e., like) any of the work of Morrison or Bendis or Waid or Johns, I am a party to some kind of heinous literary or character crime, that I am siding with "the man" and that I simply don't understand the characters well enough - when it might simply be a case of people seeing the characters differently from you, and neither person's viewpoint being an absolute, irrevocable truth. I don't side with anybody. I just like what I like. Nobody is being hurt by that.

Look, your feelings are your feelings. I just don't see how this amounts to "voting with your dollar" when you make it clear you refuse to invest. Then you're not the consumer anymore. It seems to make you miserable and that saddens me.

[box_in_the_box.insanejournal.com]

So that's both good and bad work in some people's eyes. So IMO, there's no easy, absolute judgment to necessarily be rendered - about him, or a lot of other writers.

As somebody who enjoys the Lantern War, I'll agree that writers can be bad on one project and good on the next, often because not all writers are suited to all projects, but the more popular a writer gets, the more skepticism they must be viewed with, because eventually, it inevitably leads to I DON'T NEED MY WORK EDITED syndrome, which tends to coincide neatly with when a writer sucks. In order to prevent that, or to help writers who can recover from that, we MUST make it clear to the writers that it's THEIR job to convince US that their work is worthwhile, and the fact of the matter is, the MAJORITY attitude among comics creators is that they are ENTITLED to our purchases, to the point that guys like Dan Slott actually say, "Come on, you OWE it to us to give us a chance." No, fuck you, creator, you are ALWAYS an OPTIONAL expense, even if you've written the greatest story ever.

[moneyless_jew.insanejournal.com]

"I don't need my work" edited syndrome is the fault of a weak editorial dept and a faulty model on the part of the EIC. Many of the so-called stuck-up writers at DC have indicated a lot of editorial interference and meddling from Dan Didio, leading to some bad books and bad ideas. Writers you dislike had to convince him not to kill off Dick Grayson. Even Dan Slott had to convince Joe Quesada to keep Gwen Stacy dead. There's writer's arrogance, but when you view them as default arrogant I think you're doing yourself a disservice and missing out on potentially good material. Case in point: Dan Slott's Mighty Avengers is a lot of fun, and Bendis is now doing his first good Avengers arc in quite a long time.

[scottyquick.insanejournal.com]

Yet he brought both Bart and Kon back.

Well, he did break them in the first place.