Entrevistas  /  Interviews

                                                                JOHN MORROW 

                                            by Jose Carlos Neves

John Morrow is the head of Raleigh, North Carolina-based TwoMorrows Publishing (http://www.twomorrows.com) that produces a multitude of magazines and books covering every aspect of Comics.I first was introduced to TwoMorrows through the magazine COMIC BOOK ARTIST I have ordered from Bud Plant Comics Art some years ago - when I could afford it. The majority of TwoMorrows publications bring us a historical eye over the Comics industry as well as tells us behind the scenes details, deeply and candidly interviweing it's main representatives.So, besides my favorite CBA, it is from TwoMorrows that comes also: The Jack Kirby Collector, the Eisner-nominated Kimota! The Miracleman Companion (see my Interview with its author George Khoury here), I Have to Live With this Guy! (that explores the lives of the partners and wives of Will Eisner, Stan Lee, Joe Kubert, Harvey Kurtzman, John Romita, Gene Colan, Dan DeCarlo, DickAyers, Archie Goodwin, Ric Estrada, Dave Sim, Howard Cruse, Dave Cooper, and Alan Moore - see it's author Blake Bell's Interview at this Site soon); the amazing PANEL DISCUSSIONS by Durwin S. Talon (more than a dozen of the industry's top storytellers talking about what they do the best: aspects of the design of comics, from pacing, story flow, and word balloon placement, to using color to convey emotion, etc) and a lot of other sugestive and elucidative Titles.
To talk a little about this fertile production, Comics in general and Alan Moore, we invited him for the following "questionaire".

 Where did you born, grew up and live today? Age? Are you married? Sons?  What's your academic record? How did you get started?

I was born in Montgomery, Alabama, but have lived in Raleigh, NC for almost 20 years now. My wife Pamela and I have one daughter, Lily. I just turned 40 years old. My academic record is pretty good, actually, and I have a Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts.
In 1989, my wife and I started TwoMorrows Advertising in Raleigh, North Carolina, servicing local and national accounts and non-profit groups with advertising and graphic design services. (The name "TwoMorrows" is a play on our last names(there's two of us!) I'd been a lifelong fan of comics in general and Jack Kirby's work in particular, but had gotten out of comics around the time we started our ad agency. In early 1994, after hearing of Kirby´s death, I dug out my remaining Kirby comics and spent that Spring re-experiencing what had drawn me to Kirby's work years earlier. Thinking that there must still be a lot of fans who felt the way I did, I turned to my wife and asked, "Why hasn´t anyone ever done a newsletter for Kirby fans?" In a moment she may live to regret, Pam said, "Well, why don't you do one?"The result was THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #1 in September 1994, mailed free to 125 people who'd written tribute letters to The Comics Buyer's Guide when Kirby died. TJKC quickly caught on”due largely to word of mouth, and some creative use of the Internet in its early days”and everything snowballed from there. 
We used our extensive experience with graphic design and printing to create a line of magazines both by and for fans of the medium, at a time when I felt comics fandom desperately needed a shot in the arm.

-What  is it that attracted you to writing and/or editing? What  were your influences?

Well, obviously Kirby first of all, but just about every artist and writer whose work I admired in 1960s, 70s, and 80s comics has been an influence of some sort. But we were predominantly designers; the editing/writing came about from necessity in starting to produce the Kirby Collector from scratch. 
But we had a lot of experience writing advertising copy for our clients, so it wasn't too big of a stretch.

-How did you first become interested in comics? What are your earliest memories as far as that goes?

Gosh, probably stopping in small drug stores in the late-1960s with my family, and seeing comics on the spinner racks. I used to do any odd job I could to earn a few cents to buy more and more comics.

-As a child, did you spend a lot of time indoors reading? Comicbooks only? Or mainstream literature, also?

More comics than anything else; most of my literary exposure was assigned reading for school.

-What was the first comic you read that had been written by Alan Moore?Swamp Thing #24, I think (the one with the Justice League guest-starring).

-Did it have a special impact on you? Why?

At the time, I thought the art was kind of strange, but I really liked Bissette's take on the JLA characters, and had enjoyed Wrightson's original Swamp Thing run, so decided to give it a try. I had no idea the writing was as good as it was; I was totally buying it based on the unique art. But the writing blew me away.

-What do you think is his best work, and why?

Oh, I'd have to say my personal favorite is Watchmen, simply because I'd never seen anything in comics so tightly and intricately woven plot-wise. And the combination with Gibbons on art was just a perfect melding of two guys meant to do that book. I can still re-read it today and find stuff I missed the first twenty times I read it.

-What do you think about Big Numbers?  What do you think Alan intended to convey with this very promising story (  Big Numbers is, for me, his  magnum-opus, which has reached  the status of a mythic work )?

I must admit I haven't read Big Numbers. That appeared during the several years I got out of comics, and I'm still working on discovering what I've missed from about 1988-1999

-Do you agree with Chaos theory that our world (and the Universe as a whole, by extension) is ruled by fractals, strange attractors and so on, where a minor alteration  in initial conditions can cause major, and irreversible, alterations in final conditions? Could a comic book ( or a graphic novel, as some describe them )  aspire to detail this complexity of  human existence, common life, the whole Universe, and so on,  as an unique, united system, as AM intended to do with Big Numbers?

Umm... I must've REALLY missed some interesting stuff in BIG NUMBERS. 
<grin>

-What are your thoughts about Watchmen´s innovations in the way it tells its story?

As I said before, it's just such a tightly-woven story. Moore and Gibbons created an entire new world in only 12 issues, and one that I wish could've gone on forever. I really hated the ending when I first read it, feeling it was a bit of a letdown after the big build-up of the first 11 issues. It seemed too easy to just have all the supporting players killed, almost callous. 
But after a lot of thought--and WATCHMEN was a book I gave a lot of thought to--I realized it was the perfect way to end it, maybe the ONLY way to end it. I guess I was expecting a typical super-hero ending, and it's not really a super-hero story. It's a story that just happens to have super-heroes in it, but it's really about the people, and the world situation, and the relationships. It's a book that gets better each time you read it, and knowing the ending doesn't hurt your enjoyment of it the second time through. That's pretty amazing for any comic book.

-Do you think  From Hell could be considered to be a history of the birth of the 20th Century -  with its elements of paranoia, conspiracies and corruption?

I've never really thought of it that way, but I've never claimed to be an intellectual. I saw the book as a fanciful, semi-historical look at a notorious moment in human existence. As a reader, I have to take Alan's interpretation of his research at face value, and assume it's accurate. By doing so, I can let myself get caught up in it as a "thriller", and just enjoy the experience of reading it; I don't have to question the theories presented in it, or spend my time trying to verify what's presented, which would really take away from the enjoyment of reading the work.

-What are your impressions of Brought to Light and its denouncements of the illegal C.I.A. operations around the  world? Do you think comics can be a political instrument -  that  they can appeal to a wide audience for this purpose?

Sure, it's possible to use comics for political means. On some level, it's done all the time, only in a much more subtle way. Stan Lee used to espouse some soft-edged political views back in his 1960s Marvel comics dialogue, although it was never anything as controversial as Brought To Light. I'm sure comics artists, when deciding how to stage a scene or panel, consciously or unconsciously make choices that reflect their political leanings. But in terms of doing comics with overt political overtones, it's been done, and it'll probably continue to be done, but it remains to be seen if such an approach will ever be commercial enough to reach a wider audience.

-AM´s debut in mainstream literature, Voice of the Fire (  it has been just published here in Brazil, if you did not know) - do you think it accomplished it´s intention  to  tell the history of Magic, witchcraft, shamanism and so on,through the history of Northhampton? 

Again, I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I do plan to!

-Movies and music,  but mainly music, can affect us deeply -  arousing  irrepressible emotions.  Poetry  does this, also.  They all can transcend their limitations. What about comics?  Do they have the ability to move people deeply?

Oh, sure. There's any number of moments I remember from comics I've read over the years, which moved me when I read them. 

-Could you mention examples of comics which do this? Would  AM be the pioneer and maybe the main representative of this wider scope of the medium, as a true art form?        

I wouldn't say Alan was the pioneer in creating comics that move people, but he's certainly done his share, and probably on a more mature level than most comics writers. As a child, I was moved when the character Flower died in Jack Kirby's KAMANDI comic, and when Phoenix/Jean Gray died in X-MEN. Reading those stories now, they aren't as sophisticated as much of what Alan has produced, but for the time I was reading them, they were pretty powerful.

-Tell us a little of the history behind TwoMorrows, how you decides for the books and magazines that you have been succesfully publishing all those years, best past publications and upcoming projects.

We've published magazines and books that cover a wide variety of interests over the last ten years. But regardless of what time period or genre we cover, we always try to provide our readers what they want; in-depth coverage of comics history and creators, with a fun, positive slant, in a very professional manner. I know that if we can keep igniting a spark within fandom, and keep readers interested, all the hard work our editors, designers, proofreaders, and contributors put in will be worth it.
Our company slogan is "Bringing New Life To Comics Fandom", and all our publications are geared toward that goal. All our editors are highly motivated fans, each with a true love of comics. An underlying theme of everything we publish is that it should make a positive contribution to the industry, and we should all have fun doing it. When this stuff ceases to be fun, TwoMorrows will cease to publish. That's a big consideration in whether I publish the projects people submit to us for consideration; is it fun?

-Why this kind of publication concerning the Industry from inside, the lives os it's main writers and artists? Have you did some "market-research" to find-out that readers was interested in this?

Basically, George Khoury came to me wanting to do an Alan Moore book. I love Alan's writing. End of story. It's a book I'd want to buy, to learn more about one of my favorite writers. But even if I didn't like Alan's writing, I'd still want to publish this book, because of the enthusiasm George brought to the project. He's as excited about Alan's work as I am about Kirby's, and I'm happy to be able to serve as an outlet for talented people like George to share their dream projects with fandom.

-Who are to you the best comics writers and artists of the Golden, Silver and contemporary Ages? Why?

For artists, I tend to think of teams: Kirby and Sinnott, Adams and Giordano, Swan and Anderson, Byrne and Austin. Sometimes you get two talents together, and the end result is extra special, giving you something you don't get from either artist separately. I really think the team of Mike Sekowsky and Dick Giordano (on Wonder Woman, when she lost her powers in the 1970s and hung out with I-Ching) was one of the nicest combinations in comics history, with Mike's big, bold figures and Dick's delicate inking, which would give it a nice polish. For Golden Age artists, I love Simon & Kirby, Mort Meskin, Jack Cole, and so many others.
For writers, I tend to prefer writer/artists like Frank Miller and Will Eisner. It's fascinating to see them get their full vision on the page visually, without having another artist have to interpret what they want. But for pure writers, Moore's probably my favorite, followed by Kurt Busiek, Neil Gaiman, and several others.

-Have you have been anytime personally with Alan Moore? How was it?

No, George Khoury has had all the contact with Alan. It started when George first interviewed Alan for my magazine, THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #30, a couple of years ago. Alan graciously discussed Kirby, and how Jack's work influenced him; it was quite a nice interview. I guess Alan felt good about the relationship with George, since he worked with him on our book KIMOTA! THE MIRACLEMAN COMPANION, and now our new book.

-I have read somewhere that you are selling yours - to me at least - main title, Comic Book Artist magazine to the also good folks at TopShelf. Is it true? Why? 

We're not selling it; it was editor Jon Cooke's decision, made mainly for financial reasons. He's changing its focus to more modern artists to hopefully increase its circulation, and Top Shelf made him an offer we couldn't match, so we worked it out. But we're still handling sales of all the back issues 
of the first series, including issue #25, which spotlights Alan Moore and the America's Best Comics creators, which just shipped a few weeks ago. Also, we're launching, in November, a replacement for CBA on our schedule. The new magazine is called BACK ISSUE, and will deal with the best comics of the 1970s, 80s, andtoday in a way I don't think anyone's seen before. I'm confident fans of the original CBA will enjoy it, as will newer readers. It's being edited by Michael Eury, a former DC and Dark Horse editor/writer and author of our book Captain Action: The Original Super-Hero Action Figure, and our upcoming biography of Dick Giordano. All the details will be on our website 
(www.twomorrows.com) by the end of July.

-Based in his recent announcement of retirement and so on, what do you think Alan Moore are preparing to bring us, all his readers and admirers in the future? 

Hopefully one slam-bang ending to the ABC universe, the likes of which has never been seen in comics.

-Finishing, what are your considerations about our modest Site and suggestions to improve it? 

I think you're doing a great job. Alan Moore is an amazing writer, and certainly deserves a site like this so his fans will know what's coming up by and about him!

Thanks you so much,Mr.Morrow, and great success to all yourpresent and future projects. Live Long to TwoMorrows!!

WRITE NOW another very good magazine on Writing Comics/Cover by Brazilian Mike Deodato

"ESCREVA JA´" outra excelente revista tecnica da Twomorrows/Capa de nosso Deodato Borges