Luda, Grant Morrison's first novel

[Ignatius_S]

Great OP - looks really interesting and also the perfect gift for a friend's birthday.

Can't actually find this anywhere, is it only published in 'merica or something?

The European release date is 5 October, but it's been surprisingly difficult to pre-order. On the publisher's website, there are links to UK retailers albeit with no option to order.

Amazon are taking pre-orders for a kindle and a paperback version (different cover and personally, prefer the one in the OP.

[13 schoolyards]

It seems Morrison has said on their substack that this hasn't been selling that well, but I would've thought the UK would be a much stronger market for them so there's still a chance it'll turn around.

A decade or two ago "regular" authors were supposedly astonished at how many copies even average comics sold and comic authors moving into books did pretty well just from their fanbase, so I was a bit surprised by this news. But I guess Morrison hasn't been a high profile comic name for a while now, and without regular comic sales to launch off getting a best-seller is a bit tricky.

[Mister Six]

I don't think it helps that much of Morrison's prominent recent work has been superhero-focused, and your average Batman/Superman/Green Lantern reader - even one that loved Damian Wayne or whoever - probably isn't going to be excited to pick up a book about Glaswegian drag queens. A novel some time in the 2000s, when The Invisibles had just wrapped up and Morrison was getting a lot of press around The Filth and such, might have stood a better chance.

Who were the other comic book authors that did well? I can only think of Moore, who had the advantage of being hailed by even the mainstream press as the one visionary in comic books, and Gaiman, who was able to piggyback on Terry Pratchett's name with Good Omens, and shortly afterwards had the massive mega crossover success of The Sandman.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I think Warren Ellis' Gun Machine did quite well, there was talk of a tv series and though I couldn't find any sales figures it's been described as a New York Times bestseller.

[Mister Six]

Ah, yeah, I remembered and then immediately forgot that. I meant to mention that as an example of doing it correctly in the 2000s. Ellis, like Morrison, was probably at the peak of his cult fame at that point. I imagine if he'd released his first novel today (even without the #MeToo stuff) it would struggle in much the same way.

Luda is good fun, by the way. It is perhaps a bit overwritten, although whether that's Morrison or the protagonist at fault I'm not sure. I'm still taking far too long to get through it, but that's entirely down to circumstances in my own life, not a fault of the novel.

[13 schoolyards]

Ellis was the one that I was thinking of - well, actually I was thinking of a few other writers as well like Greg Rucka and Jason Aaron, but then I realised they'd had novel writing careers before comics and now just seem to go back and forth between the two.

There was a real push around the turn of the century by Marvel to bring "mainstream" writers on board - I know Charles Stross almost took on Iron Man, and Charlie Huston was writing various Marvel mini-series for a while. And Ta-Nehisi Coates, of course.

But yeah, back on topic: Luca definitely feels like one for the fans of Morrison's more personal work, and there hasn't been a lot of that for a while so there's no obvious pathway to steer people towards it. I guess the grim reality is that these days very few writers have enough of a baked-on fanbase that they can come back to the fans after a decade and go "this one's for you!"

(especially as I've always had the impression Morrison's more personal work has never been as successful as I'd have liked it to be. It wouldn't surprise me at all if these days he was thought of almost entirely as a superhero guy, with everything else - which to me is the "real" Morrison - generally considered a disposable afterthought, if at all)

[Mister Six]

I think it helps to have a strong public image. Moore's the hairy, bejewelled mage; Gaiman's the touchy-feely, mop-haired goth in a leather jacket; at the time his novel was published, Ellis was riding high on the "grouchy old man with a subscription to New Scientist magazine" persona...

But it's been a while since Morrison was playing up the sexy chaos magician thing, and in any case the sharp-suited wizard thing is awkward because it's stale to those in the know and a harder sell than Moore's hairy wizard look to those that aren't.

Plus, Luda is focusing heavily on drag, and while Morrison's never hidden their past in drag, it's also something that's never been prominent in their public image.