Invisible Ink
This is like trying to write a letter to Grant Morrison, too late. I wonder what a letter from me would have looked like?
Stephanie Grant from Deakin Hall, Monash University, has a letter in #5 (Jan ’95). I moved into Farrer Hall in late Feb. But she has one of the occult letters the comic periodically received. It’s unlikely I would have written one of those.
I remember seeing #1 of The Invisibles in Minotaur in, um, late ’94 or early ’95. I was intrigued by the cover with that grenade on it, but the title page with Dane yelling “Fuuuuuuuuuck!” was a put off. Perhaps I would’ve written a letter more like this:
I had no problem with using the word; I thought Morrison was perhaps trying to get a rise out of people who did have a problem, like Old Man Green. This was confirmed by my scan of the first—letterless—letter column, which Morrison started with the words “burn this comic”. I thought he was trying to be trendy and provocative and I just wasn’t interested. It looked shallow and immature. So I didn’t buy the magazine and never did.
At the time, I thought the pinnacles of art were Neil Gaiman’s Sandman (then ongoing) and Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. It’s hard to say what I would have made of the comic if I had given it a go. I was a radical atheist back then, but I was also ready for the metaphysical magic that Plato would supply a few years later. I had observed that reality could be sometimes fluid. Perhaps I would have got myself into a much worse mess than I did, seven years later. Or perhaps not.
Judging the posts I made to various newsgroups back then—especially rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated, where Joe Straczynski was running a kind of letter column (not available to the general audience and not published with the work)—I have no doubt that any letter I would have written would have been embarassing.
Anyway, early 1995 involves too much supposition. But what about late 2001? Can I imagine a letter I might have written then? After or while reading Arcadia? A creative writing exercise. (Feel free to join in.)