Grant Morrison is a true star in the comic industry. The Scottish scribe got their start working in the United Kingdom comic scene before getting recruited by DC Comics during the British Invasion. Since then, Morrison has put out some of the greatest stories in the medium, gaining the type of fame and fortune that most comic creators can only dream. Morrison has told some of the most important stories with the greatest heroes of the DC Multiverse (and Marvel, but they only spent a few years there, with relatively few titles written) in an almost 40 year career. However, they aren’t just an amazing superhero writer, they’ve put out numerous non-superhero books over the decades.
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Morrison was one of the stars of early Vertigo, helping pioneer mature readers comics in the ’90s. Since they began their American career waaay back in the late ’80s, they’ve given readers some amazing non-superhero comics. These are the ten best of that number, showing how great a writer Grant Morrison can be.
10) Seaguy
Morrison went to Marvel in 2000, and after putting out one of the best X-Men runs ever, they left the publisher because of editorial problems in 2004. They returned to DC and immediately put out three Vertigo series, all of which are on this list. Seaguy was the most interesting of them. Working with artist Cameron Stewart, Morrison gave readers a comic that fit the mold of their Doom Patrol book, a Dada-inspired story that pit the titular hero against the forces of Mickey Eye, the most popular character on their world. This is a wildly humorous book, with a message about the corporatization of fiction underneath all of the jokes. Stewart’s cartoonish artwork fits wonderfully with the tone of the book, capturing the chaos of Morrison’s script, and the horror under all of the saccharine lies.
9) Vimanarama
Vimanarama, by Morrison and Philip Bond, was another of the books written after Morrison returned to DC. This book was all about Ali, an Indian living in England. His life isn’t exactly great, and his impending arranged marriage is a source of anxiety. When he meets her, it’s love at first sight, and things start to look up, until one of his relatives opens a path to the center of the Earth, unleashing monsters on the planet. The world’s only hope are the Ultra-Hadeen, but their arrival makes everything worse, as Ali’s bride is somehow part of an ancient prophecy. Morrison dug into Indian mythology, specifically the Vedas, for this one and gives readers an awesome little yarn about a man stuck in the center of myth coming to life and how he deals with it. It’s big sci-fi action with an amazing emotional core, a funny, harrowing story that is one of their best works.
8) Mystery Play
Morrison did a lot of great work at Vertigo in its early days, and one of their most underrated works is The Mystery Play, with artist Jon J Muth. The story took place in a small down on its luck British village, as they put on a series of “mystery plays” — allegorical medieval plays taken from the New Testament — in a plan that is torpedoed when the man who plays God is killed. Detective Sergeant Frank Carpenter comes to town, and along with local reporter Annie Woolf, is pulled into a caper more complex than he could imagine, causing him to lose his grip on reality. This is Morrison at their most philosophical, with Muth’s gorgeous art bringing it all into sometimes horrifying life. Books like this are why Vertigo became a legend, a unique reading experience that holds up decades later (it’s usually printed with Sebastian O, which is another lost Morrison story that is better than most people remember).
7) Nameless
Nameless is cosmic horror at its finest. Morrison and artist Chris Burnham follow the titular Nameless, an occult detective pulled into an apocalyptic situation as an unknown object makes it way towards Earth. He’s recruited to help save the world, and exposed to the most horrific situations imaginable as he tries to unravel the mystery of what’s heading towards Earth and what happened when they encountered it. This twisty, turny narrative, informed by Morrison’s own occult beliefs and Gnostic Christianity, can be a bit much for some readers. It uses cosmic horror in the best way you can imagine, with Burnham’s amazing pencils rendering some of the most frightening scenes imaginable. It’s one of those books you can read multiple times and it keeps getting better every time, a specialty of Morrison’s.
6) Annihilator
Sci-fi and comics have always went together perfectly, and Morrison has created some peak sci-fi comics over the decades. Annihilator, by Morrison and Frazer Irving, was published by Legendary Pictures, a film production company, and saw Morrison taking on the world of Hollywood. The book follows a drug-addled screenwriter as he tries to finish his next major work, as his reality unwinds around him. Is he writing fiction or is it all real? This is mindbending Morrison at their finest, keeping readers guessing across the length of this six-issue series. Irving’s art is amazing, bringing it all to life perfectly. One gets the idea that this was meant to be a movie at some point, and it feels like the perfect sci-fi film put on the page.
5) Kill Your Boyfriend
Grant Morrison’s career is filled with must-read comics, and one of the most underrated of their oeuvre is easily Kill Your Boyfriend, with artist Philip Bond. This mid ’90s story is basically Morrison and Bond doing Natural Born Killers in the UK at the height of rave culture. A school girl meets a wild teen rebel she’s attracted to immediately, the two of them going on a wild crime spree through Great Britain. This is bratty Morrison to the core (long time Morrison fans know what I’m talking about), a story about young love, drugs, and murder. It’s not a serious crime book, but a fun romp through ’90s UK culture. It’s a book that most fans have forgotten over time, but it’s a brilliant one-shot (it’s sometimes collected with Vimanarama, and it makes a great one-two punch of snapshots of specific eras in UK culture).
4) The Filth
Morrison is known for using real world ideas in their books. Their ’90s work were ultimately utopian, as the scribe believed that things were getting better as the new millennium dawned Of course, that optimism was unfounded, as the events of the ’00s starting with 9/11 were a massive backslide. The Filth, with artist Chris Weston, played into that. This story followed members of the Hand, a group that violently enforced the status quo, keeping the population under the control. This story is the anti-Invisibles, following a member of the Hand through their terrible actions as he discovers the truth behind it all. Morrison went wild with this one and it truly fits the title of the comic. This book is filthy in every way, and yet it’s also full of big concept ideas that are textbook Morrison goodness. Weston’s art is amazing. It can go from a man feeding his cat to giant sperm attacking people in LA without missing a beat (both of these things happen in the book, by the by, and they both look amazing). His realistic, detailed style fits this book perfectly, a cherry on an already amazing cake.
3) We3
Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely are one of the greatest writer/artists duo of the last four decades, and Morrison’s return to DC in 2004 saw the two of them teaming up for one of their most beloved works. We3 tells the story of a trio of stolen pets — Bandit the dog, Tinker the cat, and Pirate the rabbit — who are made into weapons by the government, and then freed by one of the scientists who worked on them. Morrison and Quitely described this book as a “Western manga”, which definitely fits, and it has some of Quitely’s most artwork ever. This book has it all — amazing characters, eye-popping actions, and so much emotion — and it’s been beloved since it dropped 21 years ago. It’s comic perfection and if you’re not crying at the end, then you might not have a soul.
2) Flex Mentallo: Man of Muscle Mystery
Flex Mentallo: Man of Muscle Mystery is technically a superhero book; Flex is a superhero and debuted in Doom Patrol. However, the book isn’t actually a superhero story, but it’s one about the effect comics can have on someone’s life. When a friend of Flex’s disappears, the “Hero of the Beach” goes after him, as comic creator Wally Sage decides to kill himself. This story is a semi-autobiographical story of the power of creation and effect it can have on a life. This Morrison and Quitely classic was out of print for years as DC was sued by the Charles Atlas estate (Flex is based on those old hero of the beach stories that comics of the ’60s and ’70s were full of), but has since come back, allowing a whole new generation to rediscover this classic. This is everything you could want from a comic, and more people need to sing its praises.
1) The Invisibles
The Invisibles is Morrison’s ’90s opus, with the scribe digging into everything they loved and who they were to create one of the wildest comics ever. The book, with artists Jill Thompson, Steve Yeowell, Phil Jimenez, Chris Weston, Philip Bond, Frank Quitely, and many more, tells the story of the Invisibles, a cell of freedom fighters from the Invisible College, and their battle against the Archons of the Outer Church, Lovecraftian nightmares that rule the Earth through their human servants. This is a comic full of sex, drugs, violence, ’90s pop culture, the occult, dance music, and so much more. Morrison creates some amazing characters across the book’s six-year three volume run, pitting them against the most mindblowing plots you’ll ever experience. This is a near-perfect work, and a book you’ll never forget.
What’s your favorite non-superhero Morrison comics? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
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