It’s possible that this is actually true: in a conversation with a friend of mine who worked as a writer for 2000 AD in the 1990s, he told me that he had created work for them without ever having seen a contract, and that this was not unusual in the business. However, Morrison says that they have no contract with him that proves that they own the strip. 2000 AD, although it broke all sorts of new ground for comics creators in the UK in the late seventies and onwards, is still old-fashioned enough that they own all the rights to everything that they publish.
The powers that be at the comic feel otherwise.
The problem is this: According to Grant Morrison, he and Yeowell own the rights to the strip, not 2000 AD. It was co-created by Grant Morrison and artist Steve Yeowell for UK comic 2000 AD in late 1987, and ran there on and off for five years, over four story arcs, or ‘phases.’ Titan Books, who regularly published collection of various strips from 2000 AD, published five collections of Zenith between 19, although this only covered the story to the end of Phase Three. However, unlike Marvelman, the story of Zenith is comparatively uncomplicated. There are lots of interesting parallels between the careers of Alan Moore and Grant Morrison, and although a lot of people know Moore has a long out-of-print British superhero series, it’s possible that not as many people know that Morrison also does. It seems this is yet another contract dispute from the olden days of “we’ll draw it up later.” Lost Grant Morrison, you say? So what’s the hold up? Well I wrote to our expert on all thing esoteric in UK comics contracts expert Pádraig Ó Méalóid for the details. It ran in about 80 issues of the comic the first three phases were collected in five volumes by Titan Books between 19. Created by Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell, with original character designs by Brendan McCarthy, it first appeared in in 2000 AD #535 in August 1987, and ran for four story arcs, or ‘phases,’ which finished up in 2000 AD #805 in October 1992. Snapping a pic of him and his fellow boothworkers you could not help but notice that they were wearing T-shirts bearing the logo of Zenith, which is, after Marvelman, perhaps the greatest “lost” superhero of UK comics. At last weekend’s C2E2, the Rebellion/2000 AD crowd was out and represented by marketing man about town Michael Molcher.
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