Disney With Fangs – Grant Morrison on We3

After some extensive searching, I found this archived interview with Grant Morrison in which he discusses the ideas behind We3. The most interesting part, to me, was when he started talking about his feelings about animal rights. Morrison claims that if humanity wants to create a noninclusive identity – i.e., everything that is human can be defined by everything that is not animal – then humanity has to understand animalkind in a way that isn’t concerned with animal cruelty and the mistreatment of nature. That, to me, is the strongest theme in the graphic novel.

2 thoughts on “Disney With Fangs – Grant Morrison on We3”

  1. I thought this interview was really insightful. Mostly because it shed some light on the collaborative process behind creating graphic novels that we read about earlier in the semester. It’s interesting, then, that we give Morrison so much credit for the novel, because I think a lot of the emotion and pathos comes from Quitely’s illustrations. I understand that the concept of the whole thing is really Morrison’s brainchild, but I really like how graphic novels allow other talented artists to contribute to the project, in ways that traditional novels don’t really allow.

    But, I’m a little skeptical of when Morrison says his feelings about animal activism and animal rights are “there in the background and between the lines.” I thought they were quite obvious…

  2. What I like in the interview is how Morrison differentiates We3 from its obvious movie and cartoon predecessors. Unlike those earlier stories of animal odysseys, We3 treats “the animal heroes as animals and not as anthropomorphized representations with human emotions and speech patterns.” Indeed, the whole book is a biological journey, in which the talking cat, dog, and rabbit become less humans with emotions and more animal-like.

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