Grant Morrison

Our detailed Grant Morrison reading recommendations can be found on our Beyond The Panels Blog: Maybe You're Not Supposed to Understand Grant Morrison

Trying to sum up Grant Morrison is like trying to explain the multiverse in one sentence - it’s impossible. They are known for their bold, high-concept storytelling and metafictional style. With a career spanning decades, Morrison has redefined major characters like Batman, Superman, and the X-Men, blending deep philosophical themes with psychedelic imagination. Their work often challenges the boundaries of the medium.

A Few Essential Grant Morrison Reads

• Animal Man (with Chas Truog) – What starts as a solid superhero run turns into a fourth-wall-breaking, reality-questioning masterpiece. The moment when Animal Man meets his creator (literally) is one of the most famous in comics.
• All-Star Superman (with Frank Quitely) – Some say this is the all-time, definitive Superman run. Morrison strips the character down to his core - pure optimism, kindness, and god-like power - and delivers something timeless, emotional, and awe-inspiring.
• Batman: Arkham Asylum (with Dave McKean) – A dark, twisted fever dream where Batman navigates a madhouse full of nightmares. Less a superhero story, more a psychological horror trip.
• Batman by Grant Morrison — Morrison brought back Damian Wayne, killed Batman (kinda), and redefined the mythos with big, psychedelic, multi-layered storytelling. Collected in three Omnibus collections, this is one of the defining, modern Batman-runs.
• The Invisibles – Morrison’s most Morrison comic. A counter-culture, reality-warping, conspiracy-laced epic that’s part sci-fi, part philosophy, part chaos magic. If The Matrix and punk rock had a baby, this would be it. Their most personal work. 
• Doom Patrol (with Richard Case & Others) – The weirdest superhero team of all time gets even weirder. Sentient streets, abstract villains, existential crises—Morrison turned Doom Patrol into pure, surreal brilliance. One of the highlights of the Vertigo era.
• New X-Men (with Frank Quitely & Others) – Morrison blew up the X-Men status quo and rebuilt it into something modern, dangerous, and socially relevant. This run introduced secondary mutations, Cassandra Nova, and a much edgier, cerebral take on mutantkind. Also: leather jackets. 
• Final Crisis (with J.G. Jones & Doug Mahnke) – Not just a Crisis event—a meta-textual, mythic, dimension-breaking DC epic where evil wins, time collapses, and Superman saves everything with a song. Yeah, it’s Morrison at full power.
• We3 (with Frank Quitely) – Three cybernetically enhanced animals try to escape from a military experiment. It’s beautiful, heartbreaking, violent, and completely unforgettable.
• Seven Soldiers of Victory (with Various Artists) – A massive superhero experiment, featuring seven heroes, seven interconnected mini-series, and no team-ups. Morrison took lesser-known DC characters like Zatanna, Klarion, and Frankenstein and turned them into something epic, weird, and unforgettable.