Comic book icon Grant Morrison is one of a handful of writers who so consistently utilize the strengths and weaknesses of the comics form within his narrative that it is difficult to imagine some of the work in live action.
Well, difficult for the audience, maybe. During a conversation with Morrison about his Syfy series Happy! (based on a comic by Morrison and artist Darick Robertson), the writer said that he has ideas to adapt nearly all of his comics, should the opportunity arise.
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“Most of the work that I’ve done has been more science fiction-oriented or pretty wild or specifically designed for comic books,” Morrison admitted. “At the same time, I still believe I know how to do an Invisibles TV show, I would know how to do a Filth TV show. I think all of these properties could be adapted to another medium, and Happy!‘s just the first one in. It’s something they could get their hooks on, it’s something that can kick down the doors a little bit. It’s been great because it’s such a small story — it’s not tackling The Invisibles or some of the longer works that I have done. It’s something that we can build on, we can take the basis of, and turn it into the basis of this whole world, which it now is.”
The Invisibles and The Filth are a pair of high-concept stories that Morrison worked with between 1994 and 2003. The Invisibles featured the work of numerous artists, but The Filth was all done with Chris Weston.
Weston had done some work on The Invisibles, to which The Filth was considered something of a spiritual successor.
While The Invisibles is a sprawling epic that loosely follows the doings of a single cell of The Invisible College (a secret organization battling against physical and psychic oppression using time travel, magic, meditation, and physical violence), The Filth is more laser-focused, centering on Greg Feely, a cat owner and frequent masturbator (yes, that’s important) who is secretly a member of a shadowy organization called The Hand, which endeavors to keep society on the chosen path.
The Invisibles has been optioned twice — once for TV and once for film — but neither yielded anything concrete.
Happy! airs on Wednesday nights on Syfy.
