C Scott Run: An interview with Scott Morse

Scott Morse is a busy man. He's an animator and filmmaker who produces top quality work for Dark Horse, Marvel, Oni, DC and Top Shelf, and he still finds time to trek across Yosemite. Ninth Art caught up with him for a quick breather.
25 March 2002

In the serialisation of SOULWIND, he was credited as the literary-sounding CS Morse. As the man behind ANCIENT JOE, he's the very American C Scott Morse. And on his recent series MAGIC PICKLE, he's simply your pal Scott Morse. What next? Scotty M? "I just use all three versions of the name to confuse the masses," claims the man christened Christopher Scott Morse, who says he's simply never been called Christopher - not even by his parents. "It's too hard at this point to pull them into just one name."

It seems 28-year-old California native Morse has too much talent for just one name. An animator, writer and illustrator, he's now adding movie direction to his list of achievements with the live action adaptation of his 1920s New York gangster story VOLCANIC REVOLVER (click here for the Ninth Art review).

"I'm busy as heck working on VOLCANIC REVOLVER, which we're scheduled to begin principal photography on in Montreal in July/August," says Morse. "It'll be my first live-action directing gig, but I'm excited as heck and can't wait to make it happen. We're casting now, and it's exciting. It could still fall apart at any time, so I'm kind of watching with a bit of caution, but it's looking amazingly good."

The movie also features another familiar name from comics, CAGES creator Dave McKean, on production design. "We're approaching the film with a very unique view, skewing the book just enough visually to make it interesting, and adding a whole new layer to the story. It's a very emotional character piece, and we're going to have some amazing visuals as support."

Morse is no stranger to moving pictures, though; he's been working as an animator since 1993, having studied character animation at the California Institute of the Arts. "That was a huge step, as I was forced to toss out everything I thought I knew from high school and actually learn to draw. And I learned film aesthetics, which has been invaluable, along with storytelling in general.

"I've been into animation since I was a kid, but watching stuff in high school, like the popular Disney flicks of the time and STAR BLAZERS and stuff like that, that's what got me thinking I could do it as a living," explains Morse. "I applied at CalArts and fought my way in, and began work soon after."

He's worked with the likes of Chuck Jones and Maurice Noble, and on cartoon series like HERCULES AND XENA, COW AND CHICKEN and I AM WEASEL as well as doing freelance work for everyone from Disney to Fox. "I usually do visual stuff, but sometimes storyboards and writing. I do a lot of design work, backgrounds, characters, color."

However, comics have been a parallel passion for Morse since childhood. "I got into comics when I was in 4th grade. I've been in love with them ever since," he says. "I got into actually making them while in high school, but refined it to the point of showing the public in college. I did a STAR WARS GALAXY trading card back in '93, and that was my break-in, I think.

"I soon started work on SOULWIND, showing it to Bob Schreck at Dark Horse in '95. In late '96, Jim Valentino called me up out of the blue and asked if I wanted to do it at Image, and the timing was right. Jim really broke me into the industry, put me on the map. He wanted to do some great things with Image, and I think he still is doing some great things. He knows his stuff."

SOULWIND probably remains Morse's biggest undertaking in comics to date. Deftly weaving together space adventures, fairy tales and hard-boiled romance, SOULWIND is a stylish and inventive five-volume work that spans space and time.

"I came up with a very cheesy version in high school, and it eventually became the existing book," says Morse. "It's hopefully not my 'magnum opus', but it was a great vehicle to stretch my legs telling a huge story, encompassing different genres, character-types, and storytelling devices. That was my goal... to play, to experiment, to see what works and what doesn't.

"I think it's successful, for the most part, as a story and as a learning tool for me as a storyteller. It helped me explore different ways of looking at things, even established mythological canons... something I'm going to continue with other projects, like ANCIENT JOE."

Will he ever revisit the SOULWIND world? "Everything I wanted to tell from the lives of those characters, I told. ... We don't need to see Nick's adventures in old Europe. We don't need to see Weaver's life before Geraldine. We don't need to see Cernunnos hanging out with Arthur."

That doesn't necessarily mean he's totally done with those books, however. "I'd love to collect the whole thing into one book, but we'll see what happens. I designed the five volumes to stand on a shelf together, and I think the story holds up all right in increments. I'm talking with some folks about how to make the story work for film, but that's a long way off. We'll see what happens. It needs to be done a certain way, or not at all."

SOULWIND gave Morse his bridge from animation into comics, but he wasn't the first or the last to make that transition. From BATMAN ANIMATED's Bruce Timm to HEROBEAR AND THE KID creator Mike Kunkel, the world of animation had provided a rich vein of talent for the comics industry.

"Animation work is drying up because studios aren't buying new projects as readily as they were in the late 90s," explains Morse. "Comics is a great way for creators to get their own visions across, and that's the main draw for animation, film, and comics creators to do them.

"Comics allow the creator to truly have no buffer between their mind and the audience, whereas in film ... there's always lots of hands in the pot. It's all about control. I think that's why I'm doing so many different comics projects these days; to retain my vision, but to also play with different ways of telling stories, without spending a lot of money on the production end to get them out."

Comics have another advantage, too. "Animation's a great way to force-feed delivery to an audience, dictating pacing, etc. Comics, you have to coax your audience into reading a story the way you want them to... you need to trick them into reading at a certain speed, lingering on images for a certain amount of time. If you linger too long on one specific image, sometimes, the flow of the story can suffer. I think that's the real trick with comics, to find that magic pace."

Morse also believes the comics industry is more sophisticated than the animation industry. "There's something for everyone in comics... biography, slice-of-life, action, superheroes, romance, genre pieces, history. Animation, primarily in America, is trite, overly thought out, contrived entertainment aimed at kids. Dreamworks and Pixar are branching out a bit, and foreign and indy work, like the Gorillaz videos and [Richard] Linklater's film [WAKING LIFE], are beginning to become more recognized, and that's great.

"The American studios, however, will always have a hard time breaking away from their fear factors when it comes to exploring the medium. ... With comics, you don't have those fears... books like BERLIN, GHOST WORLD, LOVE AND ROCKETS, LONE WOLF AND CUB, GOODBYE, CHUNKY RICE...these stories would never be greenlit by a Hollywood studio for animation. Film, of course, animation, no way. The mindset isn't there, and it's unfortunate.

"The industry really needs to take a page out of Japan's book... they make great animated films... not just cartoons."

Comics' diversity is certainly something Morse seems happy to take advantage of, as shown by his two most recent projects, MAGIC PICKLE at Oni Press and ANCIENT JOE at Dark Horse. The first tells the story of a pickle genetically engineered to be a super soldier, who is befriended by a dry-witted and inquisitive young girl named Jo-Jo. The latter is the story of a man in a Tiki mask whose relationship with the mythologies of the world is a little more intimate than most of us would want.

"MAGIC PICKLE is for the kids. The trade should be out in June, I believe... and we're doing a 'Basic Training' in the April WIZARD on how to draw produce that was a blast to put together.

"MAGIC PICKLE is really just mindless fun, purely for the laughs and the sheer enjoyment of comics. I've done some great elementary school lectures about the book, with drawing lessons, and the kids have had a blast. They all get it, the boys, the girls, the teachers, the parents. It's amazing to see such a silly character translate to so many different people.

"ANCIENT JOE has more of a serious edge. It's the continuation of the stories from LOUD CANNOLI and the DARK HORSE MAVERICK 2000 ANNUAL, and they'll all be collected to make one big story in the trade, due in July, I think. ANCIENT JOE is about playing with mythologies and making the fantastic seem down-to-earth, as the characters hopefully help get across. It's really about analyzing how a fantastic character views the characters of everyday life in our world.

"I'm having fun with both books, and they were a blast to do simultaneously, giving me a break from each as I would switch off between issues. There will be more of each, but down the line. I'm working on VOLCANIC REVOLVER and some mainstream fully-painted books at the moment, making MAGIC PICKLE and ANCIENT JOE sequels something to think about for 2003."

And when he wants to take a break from comics all together, Morse goes into action man mode. "I've recently gotten into snowboarding and backpacking. Last summer, I went 66 miles across Yosemite with my wife, father-in-law, sister-in-law, and brother-in-law. ... We had an amazing time, seeing things few people get to. I love the outdoors.

"I like to hike with my wife and dig, read, see movies. It's really hard to remove my outside experiences from the realm of research, though. Everything comes back to telling stories, as almost anything is fair game as inspiration.

"Everything's an influence. Everyone I meet, everyone I know, everything I see or experience. I can't limit myself to one style or way of telling a story. That'd be disastrous, and highly uncreative. I want to be a well-rounded artist and storyteller, and therefore, I'm always open to learning. Every new story or project is an excuse to broaden myself."

This may well be reflected in Morse's next major project. Besides a forthcoming ELEKTRA project for Marvel and a mystery project for DC, he's got something very special in the works. "I'm doing a fully painted book for Top Shelf called THE BAREFOOT SERPENT that I'm very excited about... It revolves around the life and films of Akira Kurosawa, and around the concept of suicide, something Kurosawa dealt with on more than one level and a major element of the story I'm trying to tell.

"Visually, I'm approaching it from a highly designed angle, harking back to children's book design of the 40's and 50's... just to juxtapose the heavy content of the story. Look for THE BAREFOOT SERPENT early next year."

And what name should we look for on the shelves? CS Morse? C Scott? Plain old Scott?

"Maybe I'll change it up again soon and go by something completely random. Of course, I'm not gonna tip you off as to what that might be... that'd ruin the fun!"

Andrew Wheeler is a London-based entertainment journalist.

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