Gideon Stargrave
| Gideon Stargrave | |
|---|---|
| Publication information | |
| First appearance | Near Myths #3 (1978) |
| Created by | Grant Morrison |
| In-story information | |
| Alter ego |
King Mob Gideon Starorzewski Kirk Morrison |
| Team affiliations | The Invisibles |
Gideon Stargrave is a comics character created by Grant Morrison in 1978 for the anthology comic Near Myths, and later incorporated into his series The Invisibles. The character is based on J. G. Ballard's "The Day of Forever" and Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius, which led to accusations of plagiarism from Moorcock.
The first published Stargrave story appeared in Near Myths #3 (December 1978), as part one of "Gideon Stargrave in The Vatican Conspiracy", written and drawn by Morrison. Parts two and three were included back to back at the start of Near Myths #4 (1979), and ended with a teaser panel for "Gideon Stargrave in The Entropy Concerto". Near Myths was cancelled after issue five, before any more Stargrave stories were published, but according to Morrison there were "dozens of unpublished comics and prose stories" which he "wrote obsessively when [he] was 17" which he subsequently found very embarrassing to read, calling it "pretty embarrassing stuff - the work of a seventeen year old who doesn't get out of the house".
Though unpublished, "Entropy Concerto" featured a second version of Stargrave, with a "Beatles '65 haircut and Swinging London vibe" which Morrison says "was much better, in that I can still read the stuff without cringing". In the early 1980s, Morrison and Tony O'Donnell went to London for a meeting with the publishers of Pssst! magazine, who said they wanted to publish Morrison's Gideon Stargrave stories as well as some of their other work. Morrison said "I'd done a new Gideon Stargrave story... it's my favourite one I've ever done in my life and it's never been seen anywhere." Like Near Myths though, Pssst! was cancelled before it was published, leading Morrison to "feel that [he] was some kind of albatross". Stargrave's next appearance was in "Gideon Stargrave in Famine", a two-page comic strip in Food for Thought (a British benefit comic to aid Ethiopian famine relief) in 1985.
...
Wikipedia