A few weeks back, I posted a long piece with several multimedia files urging our readers—who for some reason seem to have high IQs and amazingly good taste in music—to tune into the very specific wavelength of Momus, the multi-hyphenate Scottish songwriter, performer, novelist, citizen of the world, and trickster wit cult figure who is sadly still somewhat obscure despite putting out some 30 year’s worth of exceptional music.

If you’re interested, then I hope you’ll read “Poison boyfriend. Tender pervert. Pubic intellectual. Timelord. A brief introduction to Momus,” but I saved one song—my very most favorite Momus number I reckon—for today, Halloween, as it seems the most appropriate.

“Pygmalism” was originally written for Japanese singer Kahimi Karie and appeared on her Momus-produced EP Journey To The Centre Of Me in 2000. The song is written from the point of view of a female who is mind-controlled by an evil male character based on Professor Henry Higgins, the uptight perfectionist who trains Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle to be a “propa lady” in George Bernard Shaw’s stage play Pygmalion. The fictional control freak Higgins is the same character played by Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady on Broadway and in George Cukor’s 1964 movie musical, but the story’s origins come from ancient Greek mythology and Ovid’s narrative poem Metamorphoses where the sculptor Pygmalion falls in love with one of his creations, which then comes to life.
 

 
Whereas Rex Harrison’s Oscar-winning Higgins was merely pushy, in Momus’s retelling of the Pygmalion myth, Herr Professor Pyg is one evil motherfucker:

I only exist for Herr Professor Pyg
As a figment of his huge imagination
Mirror, mirror on the wall
Who is the villain of them all?
The mirror will answer back ‘Narcissus’
I’m your blessing but not your possession
Even what you make can drag you down

Sometimes in the night
I sing the songs Professor Pyg has taught me
Cutting up with scissors
All the stupid sexy clothes he’s bought me

Though my eyes are haunted
Though my memories have been implanted
No ancestors you can trace
An accent from no place invented

The eerie music playing behind this is the soundtrack of a deeply disturbing delirium reminiscent of a particularly evil-sounding Soft Cell track with some DNA swiped from David Bowie’s “All the Madmen.” Karie’s little girl singsong Japanese whisper is the battery acid icing on a cake that will make your skin peel off:
 

 
But as cool as her take on the song is, I actually far prefer the Momus version, which appeared on his album Folktronic in 2002. It’s got the same instrumental backing track (recorded with The Dufay Collective) but Nick Curry’s vocal is just so much more demented sounding than Kahimi’s is and it takes his composition to an even stranger, and much more perverse place. I mean, her blank vocal is pretty fucking out there to begin with, but try this multi-tracked chorus of very bad things on for size:
 

 
It’s easy to see how “Pygmalism” would have inspired comics great Grant Morrison. He’s a huge Momus fan and I can only imagine him playing it on repeat dreaming up the character of Lazlo Valentin AKA Professor Pyg. Wanting to come up with a “genuinely disturbed and disconnected” Batman supervillain was his goal and he achieved this and then some with his revolting Pyg, one of the ugliest characters in all of comics history—and one I hope to see on Gotham soon, I might add—who debuted in the auspicious issue #666 of Batman.

Professor Pyg melts doll masks—Cartoon Head-style, permanent-like—onto his brainwashed, lobotomized, dress-wearing “Dollotrons,” unlucky victims who he seeks to surgically “perfect.” He’s also the inventor of a mind control drug that he sells to the mob to use on prostitutes. The meat cleaver-baring madman leader of the Circus of Strange is not someone who you ever want to come in contact with under any circumstances. No good will come of it!
 

 
DC Direct released a fantastic Professor Pyg poseable figurine (mine’s staring back at me as I type this) and the vile serial killer fights the caped crusader in the Batman: Arkham Knight videogame.
 
More Professor Pyg after the jump…

 
Admittedly I was semi-aware that there was “some” particularly bitter distaste between comics god Alan Moore and Grant Morrison, but that’s about all I knew… until this morning. Now I know a whole lot about the matter—at least I know Alan Moore’s side of the story in minute, excoriating detail—and you will too, if you click over to Pádraig Ó Méalóid’s Slovobooks blog for the extremely long email interview—that Moore claims will be his last—in which the comics mage addresses controversies surrounding depictions of rape in his work, his appropriation of the Golliwogg character, a sort of minstrel doll once commonplace in England (and the trademark/mascot of Robertson’s Jam until 2001) as the Galley-Wag in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier and his loathing for a particular comics author who he describes as a “Scottish cover band.”

The backstory, summarized succinctly at TechnoOccult, more or less begins in the aftermath of a November 2013 appearance in London that Moore made in with biographer Lance Parkin and others, including Méalóid. One attendee, Will Brooker, took to social media and stated his displeasure with the event on Twitter:

Really wish An Evening with Alan Moore hadn’t involved four white people on stage defending the “golliwog” as a “strong black character”

Followed by a short film about a young woman stripping, dressing in “slutty clothes” and killing herself on screen

Followed by Moore insulting Gordon Brown based on mental and physical disability

I then left the venue.

You can watch the video below and form your own opion, but suffice to say, this stirred up reactions across the Internet—you’ll find several of them linked in the TechnoOccult article—and Moore, obviously pissed off by these accusations of racism and sexism, responded with rhetorical guns-a-blazing.

Moore concludes his lengthy essay—it could hardly be considered a Q&A—devoting nearly 5000 words to the subject of why he absolutely hates Grant Morrison’s guts. Stalker, tapeworm, parasite, “feverishly fixated non-entity,” “my own personal 18th century medicinal leech”—these are some of the nicer things Moore has to say about Morrison. It’s daggers out the whole way. I could just pick a random paragraph. In fact that’s what I will do. Eeny, meeny, miny… Moore:

Having removed myself as much as possible from a comic scene that seemed more the province of posturing would-be pop-stars than people with a genuine respect for themselves, their craft or the medium in which they were working, I could only marvel when the customary several months after I’d announced my own entry into occultism and the visionary episode which I believed Steve Moore and myself to have experienced in January, 1994, Grant Morrison apparently had his own mystical vision and decided that he too would become a magician. (It wasn’t until I read Lance Parkin’s biography that I learned that as a result of Morrison’s apparently unwitnessed magical epiphany he had boldly decided to pursue a visionary path of ‘materialism and hedonism’. Could I point out for the benefit of anyone who may have been taking this idiotic shit seriously that this doesn’t sound so much like a mystical vision as it does an episode of The Only Way Is Essex? How does this magical discipline and philosophy differ in any way from the rapacious Thatcherite ideologies of the decade in which Grant Morrison wriggled his way to prominence?) I’m reliably informed that he has recently made the unprecedented move of expressing his dissatisfaction with the superhero industry, if only because there isn’t as much money in it as there used to be, and I imagine that there is a very strong likelihood that he will contrive to die within four to six months of my own demise, after leaving pre-dated documents testifying to the fact that he actually predeceased me.

Ouchy!

Moore continues, wishing that:

”...admirers of Grant Morrison’s work would please stop reading mine, as I don’t think it fair that my respect and affection for my own readership should be compromised in any way by people that I largely believe to be shallow and undiscriminating.”

That’s really throwing down the gauntlet, you might say, when one writer would like another’s readers to fuck the fuck off.

It cannot be said that Alan Moore doesn’t know how to express himself, can it? Read the entire thing—it’s long, but I promise you it’s worth it—at Pádraig Ó Méalóid’s Slovobooks blog.

Last Alan Moore interview?

The Strange Case of Grant Morrison and Alan Moore, As Told By Grant Morrison

Below, “An Evening with Alan Moore” at the Prince Charles Cinema, November 26th, 2013:

 
Thank you Ben Telford!

Painting by Isabel Samaras

In a new interview with Playboy magazine, Grant Morrison claims that Batman and Robin might be part of the “lavender mafia.”

Via Pink News:

Mr Morrison said that Batman was “very plutonian in the sense that he’s wealthy and also in the sense that he’s sexually deviant.

“Gayness is built into Batman,” he said, adding, “I’m not using gay in the pejorative sense, but Batman is very, very gay. There’s just no denying it. Obviously as a fictional character he’s intended to be heterosexual, but the basis of the whole concept is utterly gay.”

The writer also said that this very “gayness” was responsible for the near-universal appeal of the character. “I think that’s why people like it,” he said. “All these women fancy him and they all wear fetish clothes and jump around rooftops to get to him. He doesn’t care — he’s more interested in hanging out with the old guy and the kid.”

On Batman’s nemesis, the Joker, he said: “He’s Batman’s perfect opposite, and because of that he’s as sexy as Batman, if not more so… I quite like him, because he’s a pop star—he’s like Bowie.”

It’s true!
 

 
H/T Joe.My. God

 
Someone has posted the original, longer version of the Disinfo Nation (as the show was called in the UK) episode with my Grant Morrison interview from 2000. This is quite a bit longer than what appeared on the DVD and has some extended clips from Grant’s epic speech at the DisinfoCon. If this is the first time—or one of them—where he told the story of his “alien abduction” experience, I’d imagine that he’s really sick of recounting this tale by now!

When the second series of the show was originally transmitted, I was as pleased as pleased could be that the legal department at Channel 4 let the segment fly without any comments where Grant describes Austin Osman Spare’s theory of sigil magick. To get something like that on network television was a real coup for higher revolutionary mutation, I’d like to think…

The interview was taped at the Standard Hotel in Hollywood. We started on the balcony, but they made us go inside. Those are Andy Warhol print curtains behind Grant, btw.

There’s also a short segment about “The Picture” an amazing drawing/assemblage piece by artist Howard Hallis. Hallis didn’t finish the work until ten years later, when it was first exhibited at La Luz de Jesus gallery in Los Angeles in 2011 as “The Picture of Everything.” It was already a masterpiece back in 2000, and now it’s 5x more detailed and elaborate. Part II is here.
 

 
Nice interview between KCRW host Eric J. Lawrence and Grant Morrison on the five songs that are the most dear to the comics giant. You can read the full transcript on KCRW. 

Tracklist:
1 - The Queen Is Dead - The Smiths
2 - Mogadishu - Baader Meinhof
3 - The Heater - The Mutton Birds
4 - Blue Flowers - Dr. Octagon
5 - Joe Public - The Rutles
 

 
This Saturday night in Los Angles, there’s going to be a special art show hosted by Neil Gaiman and actress Fairuza Balk and produced by Dangerous Minds pal Lenora Claire:

“Illuminate Parkinsons” is a benefit for Becky Hurd’s Illuminate charity fighting young onset Parkinson’s disease

The aim of Illuminate is to raise awareness of Young Onset Parkinsons while raising funds to support Parkinsons charities. The Illuminate Parkinsons International Photography Exhibition has been created by Becky’s best friend and celebrity photographer, Allan Amato. This amazing photographic journey into the world of Parkinsons spans two years beginning in September 17th at Pop tART Gallery. Subjects in the exhibit include Terry Gilliam, Neil Gaiman, Kevin Smith and an assortment of other fascinating people all of whom lent their support to the project.

The initial aim of the Illuminate Parkinsons campaign was to raise £100,000 for Parkinsons charities. So far the campaign has generated over £51,000 since it began with the first Illuminate Ball in Birmingham in April 2010. Since the first ball Illuminate Parkinsons has gone from strength to strength with many new fundraising projects.

Illuminate Parkinsons by Allan Amato
Saturday, September 17th, 8-11pm Pop tART Gallery, 3023 W. 6th St., Los Angeles

 
Via Comics Alliance:

Just what the headline says, people. Grant Morrison performed this song during a recent event at Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles, thanks to the urging of My Chemical Romance frontman (and Umbrella Academy writer) Gerard Way. As Way explained, Morrison was given this song by the spirit of John Lennon, which Morrison communed with in a magic ritual while writing The Invisibles.

I think it says a lot about the wonderfully enigmatic Grant Morrison that the only reason this surprised me at all was that I didn’t know he played guitar. It actually sounds a great deal like a Beatles song…

Recorded at “An Evening with Grant Morrison” at Meltdown Comics in LA on 7/28/11. I’ve had two private performances of this tune, it’s quite something! Enjoy!
 

 
Grant Morrison: Talking with Gods, Patrick Meany’s feature-length documentary about the colorful Scottish comic book writer is now available to watch for free on Hulu. Talking with Gods features interviews with Morrison and collaborators, such as artists, editors and other industry professionals.

Among those interviewed are Dan Didio and Karen Berger of DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint, artists Phil Jimenez, Jill Thompson, Cameron Stewart, Frazer Irving, Steve Cook as well as Morrison co-conspirators Geoff Johns, Mark Waid, Douglas Rushkoff, Jason Louv and yours truly.
 

 
I believe this is a special limited edition DVD cover (only available at Comic Con 2011) for Grant Morrison documentary Talking With Gods. The delightful illustration of the comic’s mage is by Camilla d’Errico.
 

 
(via Super Punch)

 
Thank you kindly for the nomination, Ernesto Verdejo. I do hope that I could live up to this solemn challenge and I am very flattered.

 
Returning once again to revamp the Batman trademark, Grant Morrison, unsurprisingly, manages to infuse his new take on the subject with his signature surreal counterculture concerns, in Batman, Inc. From Wired:

“Batman, Inc. is the idea that we can all be Batman, if we want to,” the acclaimed Scotland-born comics writer told Wired.com by phone. “Batman travels the world recruiting new Bat-men and stamping them with his seal of approval.”

Given the superhero’s straight-edge persona, indefatigable work ethic and bottomless billions, his new Bat-capitalists should be light-years away from the corporate egotists heavily stroked in films like Iron Man 2, whose Tony Stark is a self-obsessed screw-up compared to Bruce Wayne’s solemn justice-seeker.

But you get what you pay for, said Morrison, whose Batman, Inc. debuts Nov. 17. “It’s a natural development, and just shows what we’re into nowadays,” he said. “Playboys who can do anything they want.”

Morrison’s storied run on comics’ timeless human superhero has dragged Batman through the apocalyptic depths of space and time. He killed and rebooted him in Batman R.I.P. and Final Crisis. In Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne, he tasked the Dark Knight with Herculean challenges usually reserved for immortals like Superman.

Patrick Meany’s documentary about the writer, Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods (which I am in), is out now on DVD.
 

 
Read more: Grant Morrison’s Batman, Inc. Births Comics’ First Zen Billionaire (Wired)