Images and press release from the University of St Andrews
Morrissey, the uncomfortable superhero
Singer likened to the Dark Knight in new collection of comic stories
Former Smiths frontman Morrissey is the ultimate comic book anti-hero, according to an expert on the singer’s work.
Dr Gavin Hopps, of the University of St Andrews, suggests that the singer’s “championing of the weak” and moral stance on animal cruelty can be likened to the vigilante tactics of the Dark Knight.
Dr Hopps, author of an academic study on the lyrics of Morrissey, compares the outspoken frontman to Frank Miller’s revisionist Batman in a new collection of comic strips based on the songs of The Smiths.
Writing in the introduction to Unite and Take Over: Comic Stories Inspired by the Smiths, Dr Hopps commented, “When Morrissey appeared in the 1980s, he was a reclusive, celibate, bookish teetotaler, who became an icon of ailing, melancholic introspection. There seems little danger of such a figure...