From a new interview with Arthur No. 12 cover star GRANT MORRISON, over at Newsarama:

“In today’s world, in today’s media climate designed to foster the fear our leaders like us to feel because it makes us easier to push around… In a world where limp, wimpy men are forced to talk tough and act ‘badass’ even though we all know they’re shitting it inside… In a world where the measure of our moral strength has come to lie in the extremity of the images we’re able to look at and stomach… In a world, I’m reliably told, that’s going to the dogs, the real mischief, the real punk rock rebellion, is a snarling, ‘fuck you’ positivity and optimism. Violent optimism in the face of all evidence to the contrary is the Alpha form of outrage these days. It really freaks people out.

“I have a desire not to see my culture and my fellow human beings fall helplessly into step with a middle class media narrative that promises only planetary catastrophe, as engineered by an intrinsically evil and corrupt species which, in fact, deserves everything it gets.

“Is this relentless, downbeat insistence that the future has been cancelled really the best we can come up with? Are we so fucked up we get off on terrifying our children? It’s not funny or ironic anymore. Everything has changed. ‘Dark’ entertainment now looks like hysterical, adolescent crap…”