Editor's Note: This Disinformation interview was transcribed by l.pycock@virgin.net>Tiresias of Barbelith Underground, one of the best online communities devoted to Grant Morrison's milieu (and other mind-warping topics).

TITLES
Throughout the interview, covers and artwork flash onscreen, mainly from The Invisibles, and occasionally ones from Doom Patrol, Arkham Asylum and other Grant Morrison comics.

Richard Metzger

Hello and welcome to Disinfo Nation, I'm Richard Metzger. On tonight's show the man responsible for warping more minds of this generation than any other lone individual. He's wanted by the authorities for his frontal assault against reality

(A 'Wanted: Grant Morrison' poster from much earlier on in his career, when he still had hair, flashes onscreen.)

and for various assorted crimes against reason. Lock up your women, it's that charming genius of the comics world, Grant Morrison tonight, on Disinfo Nation.

Disinfo.Con 2000

Richard Metzger
(Speaking to audience.)

I promised it was about to get 'wacky' and that shoe is about to drop. If there is anyone who deserves to be called 'The Heir to William Burroughs' I think it's our next guest. The possessor of one of the most incredible imaginations on the planet and we're incredibly lucky to have him here as The Invisibles winds down to two last issues . . . Ladies and gentlemen I give you, Grant Morrison.

(Applause. Metzger leaves to stage right, Grant Morrison saunters on, trying to look like King Mob overdosing on cool, doesn't quite make it, as a little grin breaks at the corners of his mouth. He heads to the podium, bends to the microphone, then screams.)

Grant Morrison

WOOOOOOOOOW! Here we are! Right! Fuck man, I tell you when I was a kid I read Robert Anton Wilson and all this shit and here we are, we're standing here, talking about this shit and it's real! OK, I'm pissed

(Holds up red beaker.)

and in half an hour I'm gonna come up on drugs, so watch for it!(Audience laughter.)

I guess, I don't know, is there any practising magicians in the audience? Put your hand up if we got any? Yeah? Come on!

(Puts his hand up.)

Bold! OK, a few. OK, by the time we finish this you're all going to be practising magicians. This shit's easy right?

I'm like you right? Basically, why are we here, right? Why are we here, at this time, what's this all about, and by the way this is a Scottish accent so reset the filters and pretend itsh Shean Connery talking to you OK? Double-Oh-Sheven. So, if you can follow me, I'm just gonna talk the way I talk and fuck you if you don't understand me!

The deal is this: I've been writing this comic for the last six years and the weird thing is, like you, like everyone here, we're trying to figure, what's going on? Why do we feel different? Why don't we fit into this world? Why do we think they're not telling us the truth?

So, I went out and I read Robert Anton Wilson's books when I was 20 years old, which is 20 years ago now, and I figure, is this guy bullshitting me? He says we can talk to aliens, we can talk to people from Sirius, is he talking crap? He said Aleister Crowley's got methods for contacting alien intelligences and for changing the world, is he talking crap? So I did it and, no, he's not talking crap!

Right, and we can all do it!

And this is, urr, by way of trying to demolish the counter-culture and replace it with something useful. We're just gonna start here and see where we get to.

When I started doing The Invisibles, which is a comic book for people who don't - who haven't seen the thing, it's a comic book which is kinda my attempt to explain what had happened to me after I'd been abducted by aliens in Kathmandu in 1994 and the only reason I was abducted by aliens in Kathmandu in 1994 was because I went to Kathmandu in 1994 to be abducted by aliens!

(Laughs.)

And it works right!

(Applause.)

And these fuckers, they will turn up!

INTERVIEW

Richard Metzger

Dateline - Los Angeles California. We track Grant Morrison, best-selling comics writer in the world, to his room in the trendy Standard hotel on the Sunset Strip. It was here, against the glittery backdrop of a Hollywood dream factory, where this interrogation took place.

(Onscreen Caption: Grant Morrison - Crimes Against Reason. The interview is done with Richard Metzger in the foreground right, Grant Morrison diagonally opposite and they're sitting by the window or on some sort of balcony and it's night.)

Richard Metzger

First up, what brings you to Los Angeles?

Grant Morrison

Richard Metzger

What do you see right now as your relationship to what's being produced by the Hollywood culture machine?

Grant Morrison

I think what's happening, in my terms anyway, is what I'm seeing is that ideas that were once marginalised that normally I like to play with ten or fifteen years ago in the comics books have become the mainstream culture, the lifeblood of the movies and the TV and the records, everything we watched and listened to, you know?

There's Buffy on the TV, we've got The Matrix in the cinema, Gnostic ideas are burgeoning everywhere, ideas about the supernatural, the occult, the power of magic, the disintegration of reality and they're all come from this place.