Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human [Hardcover]

Grant Morrison, comic book luminary, presents a thoughtful dissection of the comic book industry, from its origins to the present. It's not what I was expecting, but it was very interesting, and an analysis worthy of a doctoral thesis. It is, in turns, the biography of the comic book industry, an examination of the sociology of the western world since the depression-era appearance of Superman, autobiography of Morrison himself, and review of how real life and the world of the superheroic are converging.

Morrison begins his book, fittingly, with an examination of what made Superman and Batman iconic when they first appeared. For me, this was fascinating, recognizing that the Superman I knew had started not just as an archetypal hero of strength with bold colors of the daytime, but a symbol of the strength of the individual and middle-American farmers against industry and big business during the Great Depression. On the other end of the spectrum was Batman, a big-city, wealthy hero in the dark of night, whose intellect was his only power. Batman was tested by a series of villains inspired by psychiatric disorders, whom he would physically beat into submission.

From there, the author broadens his scope to track the development of the industry as it is influenced by political and cultural changes such as McCarthyism, heroes from the age of science inspired by Kennedy's presidency, the rise of psychedelia and the drug culture, the gritty vigilantism of the 70s and 80s, the events and repercussions of 9/11, and expansion into the film industry.

At the end, Morrison discusses not just what happens to superheroes as they are influenced by the times to become more realistic and lifelike in comic books, but recognizes a growing movement in the real world for individuals influenced by comic book heroes to do good deeds while donning costumes of their own.

While there was a point in Morrison's autobiographical tale where I found myself not relating to him because of his life-choices, By the end, I understood him as he gained understanding of himself and why he made those choices.

I highly recommend this book as a thoughtful, well-researched and reasoned history and socio-political presentation on superhumans and the creators who chronicle them.

Who should buy Supergods? Some of the negative reviews below are from readers complaining that this book isn't what they thought it was. To clarify: Supergods is partly a history and critical analysis of the superhero concept and partly Grant Morrison's autobiography as an artist. There are dozens, perhaps a hundred pages in the book that analyze key superhero comic book classics (Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, various Golden Age and Silver Age classics), so if you haven't read those yet, start there. Also, in my opinion there's little point in reading a writer's biography if you haven't read some of their best works. For Morrison, the best to start with are Arkham Asylum, All Star Superman, We3, and The Invisibles, (while fans of longer, more traditional superhero series may want to check out his bestselling runs on New X-Men, JLA, and Batman). Readers already well-versed in superhero comics and particularly readers already familiar with Morrison's unique brand of cerebral, trippy, idea-filled fiction will get the most from Supergods.

About half the book traces the history of the comic book superhero, from its creation in the Golden Age of comics through its multiple (and discrete) evolutions in the '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s, and '00s. Morrison analyzes key superhero comics at length, and his dissections of their creative origins, meaning, psychological underpinnings and relation to their times are generally fun and interesting. I sometimes skipped his descriptions of comics I haven't yet read. Morrison brings his best insights to sustained explications of The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen, and although these masterpieces have been analyzed to death by commentators over the past two decades, Morrison's analyses are surprisingly fresh and original. I've read Watchmen half a dozen times and Morrison points out a number of things I never noticed or considered. Which, let's recall, is what important critics do. Unfortunately by the time Morrison gets to the '90s and '00s, he has little negative or truly critical to say about other prominent and/or best-selling superhero works, most of which were written by his friends or colleagues (Mark Millar, Mark Waid, Warren Ellis and others). Although he analyzes their importance well enough, I got the sense that he didn't want to say anything bad about the works of his friends or creators younger than himself.

Morrison's not shy about engaging the works of Alan Moore, though, and Supergods is his most sustained explanation of his relationship with Moore's works. Morrison and Moore are arguably the two greatest living interpreters of the superhero concept, rival gods warring over the same turf who have planted their career-defining flags on the same soil (deconstruction of the superhero and the incorporation of "magic" into narrative)... and Morrison has always seemed uncomfortable, even insecure, about that. I've read a dozen interviews over the years where Morrison casually dismissed or outright insulted Moore and his works. In Supergods, though, Morrison seems to set these petty issues to rest. He admits his praise for Moore's work and maturely articulates what he did and does dislike about some of them, while keeping a bit of the (bestselling, fan-favorite) Morrison/Moore super arch-rivalry intact.

The third string in Morrison's narrative quartet is his autobiography as a comics creator. He recalls his family upbringing in Scotland, followed by a portrait of the artist as a young man and his climb up the ladder of the small but vibrant UK comics scene of the '80s. We get a solid history of when and how he wrote his major works, starting with the "British invasion" of the early '90s under the Vertigo label (a golden age that I, and many comic readers of my generation, fondly recall as practically life-altering in influence). We also get a lot on his travels around the world, his fascinating attempts to make his art influence his life, and his experiments with psychedelics, including an extended description of the (seemingly drug-induced) vision/out of body experience/"alien abduction" he experienced in Kathmandu just as he began writing The Invisibles. Morrison's views on "magic" and "rituals" would get tiresome in the hands of lesser writers, but the fact that he's built one of the most artistically and financially successful careers in comics on those foundations makes his exploration of those far-out concepts hard to dismiss.

As Morrison readers know, the man has a seemingly unlimited supply of ideas that erupt from his brain onto the page, too numerous for him (or us) to begin to explore in depth, and this is the root of his biggest strengths and weaknesses. The pages of Supergods are littered with mostly interesting asides and concepts, whole handfuls of them just tossed out there, but the book can get a bit exhausting, especially because of insightful but fairly long descriptions of comics we either haven't read or don't have in front of us for comparison, like listening to film commentary tracks without seeing the films. Morrison's ardent belief in a few questionable new age concepts may raise some eyebrows (like the ability to heal pets through sheer force of will and a theory on solar radiation and zeitgeist that made even me, a lifelong Morrison reader, shake my head), but again-- it's Grant Morrison. His best works are never easy and I'm willing to roll with some occasional nonsense.

The fourth and arguably most important part of Supergods is the theory Morrison uses to tie this all together. In the illuminating final chapters, Morrison weaves together the lessons from his life, his art, and the superhero, and points out the ways that we, the readers, can begin to apply them to our own art and lives.

In short, Supergods is a summation of Morrison's lifelong artistic journey, a synthesis of lessons learned from years of fearless (and tireless) personal and artistic experimentation. And surprise! The psychedelic enfant terrible, the Johhny Rotten of comic books, has mellowed and matured into one of the sanest, most grounded, most decent, most human voices in the medium. I've never personally thanked a writer in an Amazon review before, but thanks, Grant. I feel truly enriched by your many great journeys and now by Supergods.

Part critical history of comics, part memoir of the writing trade, part mashup of fringe science, pop psychology, and this month's secrets-of-marketing-trends business bestseller, this entertaining, inchoate mess of a book purports to be an essay on superheroes and their significance to us. Of course, significance is in the eye of the beholder when it comes to pop culture, and while experience and common sense may tell us that the detective, the spy, the soldier, and the gangster are fictional archetypes with genuinely universal appeal, the superhero remains, like jazz, an American phenomenon that, in other countries, comes across either as an imitation of the American product, or as something based on such specifically regional imaginative archetypes as to fall outside the "superhero" label altogether. (Harry Potter, anyone?)

Why is the superhero an American rather than a global phenomenon? Morrison doesn't really have an answer for that, but the fun of this story -- and any mythology is all about stories that should've happened -- lies in the telling. Morrison sees the cyclical rise and fall of the superhero comic as a recursive process of imaginative evolution, and devises a four-part structure (like FINNEGANS WAKE) to contain and illustrate the theme. "The Golden Age" and "The Silver Age" are funny and critically astute assessments of the subject, although newspaper comic strips and pulp fiction are simply omitted from the discussion, which leaves out the Spirit, the Phantom, Doc Savage, and the Shadow. This may be only because the author didn't grow up with these characters.

What Morrison dubs "The Dark Age" (1970-1995) sees the rise of "realism" in superhero comics, sparked by Vietnam, Watergate, the '70s economic recession, an aging fandom, and the emergence of Morrison's bête noire, Alan Moore, whose downbeat, ruthlessly logical (and bestselling) stories of superheroes who CAN'T save the world caused a paradigm shift in comics writing. For Morrison, realism cripples the imagination of superhero comics writers, and he preferred to seek inspiration in "situationism, the occult, travel, and hallucinogens," not to mention hundreds of unfashionably goofy superhero comics from the '50s and '60s. His response to realism at that time was the exploration of ANIMAL MAN's metafictional universe, "more real" than our own, and DOOM PATROL, relaunched as a book about superpowered PWDs (Persons with Disabilities) who fought threats to reason and to consensus reality.

"The Renaissance" is, surprise, dominated by Morrison's discussion of his own work: THE INVISIBLES as public self-therapy, the long-forgotten FLEX MENTALLO as mental housecleaning, JLA and NEW X-MEN as superior hackwork, BATMAN AND ROBIN as Adam West and Burt Ward meet David Lynch, and FINAL CRISIS as a deliberately "rambling, meaningless, and disconnected" retort to the success of IDENTITY CRISIS, WANTED, DARK REIGN, and to comics fandom in general. (Morrison makes an interesting distinction between horrific "fans" and hip, literate "readers.") While he can be devastatingly funny, as when he's describing Jimmy Olsen's 1950s adventures in cross-dressing, or the checkered history of Batman on film, he can also be uncomfortably confessional: I learned more than I ever wanted to know about the author's messy personal life, and I can't shake the impression SUPERGODS leaves of an entertaining magazine article, spun out, at the last minute, to the length of a sloppy and rather embarrassing book. A waste of time? No. Just less than the sum of its occasionally hilarious parts.

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