Grant Morrison on Happy! "the world is a nihilistic hellhole plunging toward screaming entropy, but ... we have hope"

For three decades, Grant Morrison has been the most prominent voice of the avant-garde in the world of graphic novels. His work has redefined every landmark comic book title from Batman and Superman to the Justice League and the X-Men, and he has written more books that redefined the boundaries of the genre than could be comfortably listed here.

While his creative stamp is visible all over the cinematic landscape (The Matrix films borrowed heavily from Morrisons book The Invisibles, and characters and dialogue created by Morrison regularly find their way into the Marvel and DC superhero movies), what has been noticeably (and absurdly, to comic fans) absent is a wholly Morrison-driven project.

On December 6, 2017, that oversight changed forever with the premiere episode of Morrisons first television show, Happy! on SyFy, starring Chris Meloni as Nick Sax, a cop-turned-hitman who finds himself plagued by the desperate, imaginary friend of a kidnapped child: a blue, winged unicorn named Happy the Horse (voiced by Patton Oswalt).

Thomas Negovan: Why do you think Happy! was the story that was the first property of yours that made it to the screen?

Grant Morrison: Its the one that seems least definitive, the one that seems least representative of my work, because it was an attempt to do something I hadnt done, which was a crime genre comic; I had to add my own kind of twist, which was the character of Happy. But I think its because this is the one that condenses everything Ive said. Its a really simple story, but it condenses every other story Ive done its All-Star Superman, its got all of those things, because it ultimately says Okay, we acknowledge the world is a nihilistic hellhole plunging toward screaming entropy, BUT... we have hope. And right now, when people are getting really freaked out and things are seeming quite dystopian and out of control, and spinning even further out of control, hope is reduced to this tiny little unicorn. In some of my other stories, its been Superman and its been the Justice League or its been something, but right now its so down to nothing, its the tiniest last little candle flame. I think Happy just dramatizes that so nakedly as a way of condensing all my themes and all my ideas into something thats primal and simple enough that it actually has this mass appeal.

TN: Understanding that Happy! takes your ideologies and puts them into this crime-story package, where did the inspiration for the story structure itself come from?

GM: I was watching Pop Idol, which was obviously American Idol, the British version, but it was Simon Cowell in his early days before he became a father and mellowed out a little bit, so it was Simon Cowell, the X-Factor, the whole thing, but basically watching those shows where kids would come on and dance their hearts out and sing... and even if they were so bad, he would sit there in terrifying judgement. Cowell would sit behind the desk, and everyone else would kind of let them off gently, but he would always just go youre terrrrrible and at the same time on the internet we had this... its like every attempt to entertain would be met by meh." And that wasnt the only thing that was out there, but there was a sense, there was this tidal wave of absolute disinterest, and the sense of futility in even daring to present your hopeless, misguided efforts to do a tap dance, or to write a story, or to sing a song. So I thought, theres definitely a story here -- the sensation of the critical community and the artistic community being so close that it had become destructive... So I thought, as some way of dramatising this: the idea of the most cynical man on Earth who eventually became Nick Sax, the detective-turned-hitman character, and Happy. But I needed something for them to go up against, and I was listening to The Hollies, they did a couple of psychedelic albums in the 60s, it was like Butterfly or whatever one it is. And theres a song called Pegasus, and it is the most - and Im going to say this as a Hollies fan -- its the most saccharine, sickening, creepy, pedophilic kind of acid song youve ever heard, and I think its about acid, its all about you know Im Pegasus the flying horse, climb on my magic back and well fly away, and theres a middle-eight in there which is about this is just our secret, dont tell mom and dad, dont tell anyone whats been going on here, and its REALLY creepy, so I suddenly thought, whats this Pegasus thing, this pedophilic sense that ties into something here? And that was it. And I guess thats how ideas had formed, a colliding of atoms, and suddenly it was okay, what if this most cynical man on Earth meets this absolutely optimistic super-hyper cartoon animal who only wants to save the day and believes in nothing but the best in us? Oh wow, that would be good, these two would strike sparks off each other, and then from that the story formed. It was that, and the story has this kind of pedophilic element where the evil santa is capturing children. So it all came out of the feelings that listening to that song gave me, thats how ideas can kind of fuse together and start to grow tendrils and they become stories that have to be told.

TN: And was part of that expansion because television is a different medium that afforded that to you, or is it mainly because of the new length of story that you had the opportunity to touch on larger ideas?

GM: Its the length of story, and the possibility of expanding what was already there, which was only four issues and it was really quite tight and condensed because that was all we could do, that was all Darick (Robertson, artist of the Happy! comics) had a window to do but I always loved the characters, I wanted to do more with them. So, when this thing opened up it was just the opportunity to plant the seed and grow something new, the cutting what could come out of this? And being in that writers room, and everyones throwing ideas in, and I was kind of okay, I dont even have to do all this work myself, made it something completely different.

It has mythological qualities, it has all the things I usually try to put into stuff, and which really didnt quite make the cut in the original comic. So this one is interesting because we have this mystical, mythical dimension that starts to infiltrate more and more as the show goes on and to see how people respond to that and then what they think oh my god, its about this.

TN: When I read the first issue of your book The Invisibles, I thought I was getting a kind of straightforward spy story, and I stepped away from it. Then later I read it as an entire series and I couldnt have been more wrong about my preconceptions, because I wasnt familiar at that time with your skill of setting up one expectation and then using that to take your audience places they dont expect. The basic elements you describe above, thats definitely what you get in the first episode. Using The Invisibles as an example where you are looking at something, but then come to realize its like fixating on a mask but the person wearing it keeps changing, how would you explain what Happy! is versus the expectations that you just articulated? People will watch the first episode and think corrupt police, pedophile Santa, an avatar of optimism I know your work well enough to know that Im not not even close to seeing the bottom of the iceberg here.GM: Absolutely, we have created now, for the series, a mythology that didnt exist when the book was originally done, which is kind of for me almost the equal of what we did with The Invisibles... its as big, its as global, it has cosmic tendrils. So there is now that element of the Happy! story. But yeah, initially it was a Christmas story, I wanted it to be super simple, the first season is a Christmas story. It starts off and its hyper violent, and its cartoonish, but halfway through strange mystical elements come in and theres a much deeper delve into the emotions and the backgrounds of the characters and then it changes again, and it becomes... well, there are moments where you burst into tears, and theres kind of manipulation of emotions like E.T. and we kind of wanted to cross a lot of different feelings and ideas in the show, and thats why I keep saying I cant wait for people to see it all together. I want it to be this Christmas thing you can put on every year; its the Scrooge of the 21st century, Its Not A Wonderful Life. Id love to have it be something where people say okay, every Christmas we watch Happy!

Thomas Negovan is an author, art historian, and the founder of The Century Guild Museum of Art in Los Angeles.

Happy! airs Wednesdays on Syfy.Image: Syfy