Superhero comics are filled with fights between heroes and villains, but those written by Grant Morrison are just that bit more authentic than the rest. As recently revealed via their Substack newsletter, Morrison draws upon real-life martial arts training in choreographing superhero bouts in their comics.
Ever since publishing their first comic stories as a teenager in the 1970s, Grant Morrison has been a comic creator like no other. Subsequent work in American comics like Animal Man and Doom Patrol solidified the writer’s status in the comics medium, and Morrison has gone on to write definitive runs on popular titles like New X-Men and Batman. As a shamanistic practitioner of chaos magic, they famously draw on their real-life experiences when crafting their comics, such as the time Morrison claimed to manifest the spirit of John Lennon for an issue of long-running Vertigo series The Invisibles.
Morrison’s ultimate statement on superhero comics is their 2014 opus The Multiversity. Recently, the writer has been providing annotations for each issue of the series in their Substack newsletter ‘Xanaduu,’ and the most recent installment sees them breaking down the landmark fourth issue, Pax Americana. The issue’s story takes place on Earth-4, a world made up of Charlton superheroes like Captain Atom, Blue Beetle and the Question. Famously, the Charlton characters were going to be focus of Watchmen before it was decided to instead feature original characters, and Morrison uses the issue as an opportunity to analyze Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ classic comic. Morrison’s longtime collaborator Frank Quitely handles the art, carefully orchestrating the pages through intricate layouts. And, according to Morrison’s annotations, they were drawing off their real-life martial arts training in staging the fights seen therein. Says Morrison: “As someone who practised martial arts for many years in the ’90s, I like to choreograph the fights in my comics quite carefully.”
Morrison & Quietly Create the Best Fights in Comics
Quitely is one of Morrison’s best collaborators, and works like Pax Americana show why. Morrison famously does layouts for all of their scripts, and Quitely captures that imagery like no other artist, with the careful choreography of this issue acting as a testament to their collaboration. As a result, the fight scenes in Pax Americana pop off the page, crackling with energy and impact. Morrison further explains their thinking when choreographing the action: “Comic book fights always have big punches and impact shots, but they rarely ever show how these expert superhuman fighters would block and match one another’s moves in an actual bout.” This choreographed approach makes all the difference in the world, giving the fights an added layer of believability, an aspect that seems key to Morrison. “I like to make a point of figuring out exactly how a fight might play out,” the writer elaborates, “and here we see the combatants almost evenly matched before the feral, streetwise Question gains the advantage.”
Pax Americana has gone on to be one of Morrison and Quitely’s most celebrated collaborations, thanks in large part to the added layers of complexity in their work. That level of detail and the application of real-world experience is part of what makes Grant Morrison’s work so special.
