Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, … (2024)

Scottish madman Grant Morrison deploys a slick, witty, rock-n-roll style to his narrative while providing a brilliant, insightful examination of the creation and evolution of the superhero as both mythical archetype and as a reflection of societal mores, attitudes and aspirations.

Good, good stuff.

I loved his artful, breezy prose, an example of which can be seen in this excerpt from his discussion of the creation of Superman and Batman in the 1930's:

“From the beginning, the ur-god and his dark twin presented the world with a frame through which our own best and worst impulses could be personified in an epic struggle across a larger-than-life, two-dimensional canvas upon which our outer and inner worlds, our present and future, could be laid out and explored. They came to save us from the existential abyss, but first they had to find a way into our collective imagination.

As alluded to above, one of the big “what’ve you got there” surprises for me was Morrison’s terrific writing. I've read a fair bit of Morrison’s comic work and I've always thought him a man with talent, but I was stone-cold, flabbergasted by how amazingly engaging his prose was in this work. The man should be crafting novels and I seriously hope he does so because his use of language is addictive and exactly the kind I like.

Now, before I go any further I want to make a point about the subject matter because it’s the only reason this book ends up at a mega strong 4 stars rather than 5. At times, Morrison’s narrative is a bit scattered and unfocused and he doesn’t limit himself simply to describing the core subject of the origin and growth of the superhero and how its changing persona matched the society of which it was born. When he’s on point, his analysis is masterful and his insight is perceptive, piercing and wonderfully deep. The man is an encyclopedia on the comic form and its history and I would love to take a course in which he taught the subject.

Definitely worth the price of admission.

However, in addition to the above, Grant segues and detours about 25% of the book into autobiographical mode where he lays out his own personal history with the comic medium and spends considerable time discussing his own work and years in the industry. These sections read like a rock star biography full of large doses of drugs, sex and rebellion against the status quo. This stuff was pretty fascinating and Morrison’s prose was so breezy that I was thoroughly engaged, but at times it went on long enough to derail the main subject.

Also, Morrison spends some time (maybe a tad too much) discussing his own personal meta-physical, pseudo religious philosophy born of his brush with death. This is supremely entertaining and there are some philosophical insights that are really mind-blowing. However, again the inclusion of these segments and the length of time Morrison spends on them make the overall narrative seem a bit stream of consciousness.

To his credit, Morrison does tie both his personal journey and his philosophy back into the history of comics and the superhero and his discussions of those points do add flavor to the main subject. However, it would be disingenuous to say that everything he discusses on those two topics is on point. Personally, I found all of it interesting and the book could have been twice as long and I would have been just ducky with it, but I still felt the need to make a minor downgrade for lack of subject matter focus.

Despite the segues and narrative regressions that Morrison indulges in, the amount of information and analysis he provides on the comic art form is staggering. Beginning with an analysis of Superman and Batman and their conflicting natures and following it through to the explosion of heroes that ushered in the “Golden Age” of comics. From there, Morrison takes us through the reasons for the decline in the Golden Age heroes and the birth of the flawed, problem-prone hero of the Silver Age typified by characters like Spider-man, the Hulk and the X-men.

Morrison goes on to discuss the pivotal “growth” moments of the medium including, Alan Moore’s Watchmen, Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, Warren Ellis’ The Authority, Vol. 1: Relentless, Pat Mills Marshal Law: Fear and Loathing (Marshal Law, DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earth, Marvel’s Civil War and many, many more). When Morrison focuses on these works, discusses the context of their development and analyzes the impact they had on both the industry and society, he is simply masterful. This is as good as it gets.

Here’s a snippet of his discussion of Pat Mills Marshal Law (another great series by the way):

Where Alan Moore had peered beneath the masks to find frightened, confused, hopeful people very much like the rest of us, Mills found only deviants, perverts, liars and monsters. He saw superheroes as emblematic of regressive reactionary forces and disastrous foreign policy. They were America’s self-delusion, a fantasy of U.S. omnipotence that Mills despised and set about eviscerating with the glee of a revolutionary on a purge. If superheroes were the face of mythic America, Mills planned to rub their noses in the sh*t of real-life America—which he exposed with meticulously researched, coldly delivered info-dump captions detailing a world of CIA dirty tricks, torture camps, denial, vivisection, corrupt politics and ruined lives.

Okay, I feel like I have been waxing on a bit long so I am going to wane this up. This is a subject that I am a huge fan of and Morrison’s treatment of it here is thoughtful, intelligent and very well executed. My minor gripes aside (which really are minor in retrospect), this is the best single deconstruction of the superhero as archetype, role model, and societal mirror that I have encountered and is definitely a worthwhile read.

Finally, I listened to the audio version of this book read by the amazing John Lee and his narration and Morrison’s prose were a perfect match.

4.5 stars. HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!

In the title of Supergods, Grant Morrison seems to be promising an exploration of ‘What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God From Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human’. Does he live up to that promise? No. If you take up this book expecting moral philosophy or some kind of analysis on how the values in our fiction will help us be better humans, boy, are you in for a disappointment.

I have a sulky feeling that the only reason Grant published this book was to take advantage of the predicted upsurge in importance of comics that his pet theories tell him and the reason why publishers went ahead was to cash in on the sudden elevation in the status of pulp comics following Nolan’s reinvigoration of Batman.

So with a serious sounding title and an alluring subject matter, Morrison proceeds to happily serve up a brew of 75 years worth of comic book history, his own bildungsroman and literary criticism on his colleagues and praise for his favorites. The history that he presents is thoroughly colored by his own biases, but at least he never makes an attempt at projecting a dispassionate observer persona. The book is cursory and without focus for the most part; the history is too superficial for an ardent fan and would be way too detailed to serve as an introduction to comics. The analysis that he attempts to bring to the art of story-telling has already been done in much better fashion by Scott McCloud and the evolution of ideas and causal connection to real historical events could also have been better handled by a historian or in conjunction with one. The constant comparisons to Beatles,to Picasso and to Wagner, among others, makes one feel like Morison is trying too hard to fit something that we all know to be a mass product to the exclusive category of High Art.

Almost half the book is about the Golden and Silver ages which saw the birth of Superman and was followed by a burgeoning pantheon of copy-cat heroes like Batman and soon by original and radical version like Captain Marvel. One of Morrison’s pet ideas is the idea of the author inserting himself into the page. He gives a detailed analysis of how this grew in him and of his experiments in sending a 2D version of himself into the comic world to interact with the characters and this makes more and more sense as he himself blends into the narrative of the book in the last two-thirds and the book becomes more an autobiography than a history. Of course, the book becomes a completely psychedelic trip at this point with Morrison using up most of the remaining pages to convince us that he is God’s agent on earth to spread peace and truth. These quasi-religious ideas and Morrison’s long rants about peers soon make the book seem loose and untidy and it just plain comes apart in the last few chapters and all the good impression one might have built up for the book erodes away as the reader struggles through Morrison’s repeated assurances that there is more to the world than what we see and that extra-dimensional super heroes has made him the vessel to reach us through his art. As we close the book, even though we are thoroughly impressed by the force of his language and the wild imaginative scope of his ideas, it would be an effort in credulity to take Morrison or the book too seriously.At the very least, it pointed me to some excellent graphic novels and artists. For that and for the writing style, an extra star.

Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human is part history of comics, part Grant Morrison's autobiography, and part Grant Morrison's opinions on popular comics.

I've had mixed reactions to Grant Morrison over the years. I loved All-Star Superman, 52, some of his Batman work, and Marvel Boy. His X-Men were good and I liked his run on Doom Patrol quite a bit, even though I didn't understand it, and I loathed Final Crisis. I think Morrison is a great idea man but works best when someone is reining him in. When this popped up on the cheap, I was cautiously interested.

First off, the subtitle is misleading. Maybe the first 40% of the book is actually "What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human" and even that is debatable. It's mostly comics history with snide remarks from Grant Morrison.

The rest of the book is Grant Morrison's autobiography with plenty of potshots at Alan Moore, Watchmen, and pretty much every popular comic from 1984 on. I find it interesting that Morrison didn't insult anyone that could have an adverse effect on his career, only Alan Moore and a bunch of dead guys.

There's lot of talk about Morrison's life of drugs and jet-setting when Arkham Asylum took off and lots of twaddle about putting himself in the 2-D world of comics. I remember reading years ago that Morrison was writing a book about his experiences while writing The Invisibles. I'm guessing a lot of that material found its way into Supergods.

Just to make it clear, I'm not sh*tting all over this book. There were interesting bits of information to be had but there were a lot fewer in the second half, when it became a meeting of the Grant Morrison fan club. Also, I'm really curious about what he's doing on Green Lantern so I guess the joke is on me at the end.

Morrison covers the big crossover events in the home stretch and then it's on to recommended reading, which curiously includes Watchmen. He hypes Astro City so he scored some extra points there.

At the end of the book, I'm still conflicted about Grant Morrison. He's part interesting figure, part full of his own bullsh*t. If you're already a member of the cult of Morrison, you'll probably enjoy this. If you already suspect Morrison isn't the messiah of modern comics, this will add more fuel to that fire. 3 out of 5 stars.

Cribbed notes from my wine-fueled raving at book club:

Imagine you have a crazy friend who loves hopscotch. Grown-ass man, but he loves hopscotch, makes you play it every time you go over to his house. This is his deal, you know this about him. One day, your friend calls you up and says, "Hey, come over to my house, let's play basketball." And you go over to his house, and he actually wants to play basketball! You guys play two whole quarters of a basketball game.

But then at halftime, your friend says: "SURPRISE! WE'RE GONNA PLAY HOPSCOTCH!" That's Grant Morrison, who wrote 200 pages of a quasi-academic pop psychology book about super heroes before verging into "I was abducted by aliens in Katmandu and taught how to see in five dimensions." That's not even the crazy part, really, because everyone who has ever read a Grant Morrison comic book, interview, biographical sketch or napkin scribbling knows he was abducted by aliens in Katmandu. The surprising part is this -- why did he write the 200 pages of pop psychology first?

Basically, Supergods rickrolls you. Or, as Katie said in many fewer words: "BAM! Fifth dimension."

“Things don’t have to be real to be true”

One of the most interesting and best comics writers, Grant Morrison, has produced a chronicle of comics from their inception in the late 30s to the present day, along the way talking about superheroes and their effect on our culture as well as providing a look into his own turbulent life from quiet teen to superstar writer. “Supergods” is throughout a fascinating look at this wondrous creation, the superhero.

For me, a huge fan of comics and superhero comics, the book was great fun to look at the inauspicious beginnings of the genre, the creators Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel and Bob Kane and the oft forgotten Bill Finger, through its various incarnations through the years. Morrison goes through the book chronologically and devotes the first chapter to an extensive look at the front covers of “Action Comics #1” and “Detective Comics #27”, the first appearances of Superman and Batman respectively, setting the tone of the book as an in-depth look at Morrison’s two favourite characters in comics.

He divides the evolution of comics into different “ages” from the Golden Age, Silver Age, Dark Age, and Renaissance Age (which we’re currently in), and I won’t go into detail as to every age but suffice it to say for those who believe Morrison wasn’t detailed enough, I found him more than adequately explaining the relevant heroes and writers of the time in the context of the era and its effect down the line on future writers, innovators and characters.

Morrison could quite easily have written a memoir of his own life in this book but chooses to occasionally throw in tidbits of his autobiography amidst the intricate pontificating upon superheroes. We find out about his modest childhood and his journey into comics through endless writing and drawing and sheer persistence before landing a job with 2000AD and from there to DC’s “Animal Man”. There are some gossipy bits thrown in like an anecdote of Glenn Fabry biting Karen Berger’s ass during a party welcoming the British Invasion of writers and artists to America, as well as a glimpse into why Morrison’s relationship with Marvel soured following the dissolution of “New X-Men” (it also might explain why Marvel didn’t allow Morrison to use any of the covers of their comics for reproduction in this book, unlike DC who did) though Morrison’s breakup with protégé Mark Millar is ignored (unlike in the documentary about Morrison “Talking with Gods” where he says if he was in a car and saw Millar on the street, he’d change course and accelerate).

Then there’s the vast wealth of information scattered throughout the text like a shotgun that fires genius like buckshot onto the blank page. Morrison stayed up writing for 50 hours straight before ransacking his teenage dream diaries to get into the mindset and create the nightmarish imagery to write “Arkham Asylum”, a book he wrote in 1 month. He gave to Neil Gaiman a book with a story called “The New Mother” by Lucy Lane Clifford that set him onto the path of creating “Coraline”. Jim Lee is a Princeton Physics graduate. He also provides an explanation for Warren Ellis’ series “Planetary” which I’d read recently, baffled – it’s an abstract reckoning between “good” imagination and “bad” imagination. He also explains the even more baffling “Final Crisis” book he wrote a few years ago – it was a story of a bad story devouring a good one. Who knew?

One of the best chapters in the book is “Hollywood Smells Blood” which goes into great detail about Batman’s on-screen adaptations which for me began with the Adam West TV show but Morrison goes back to 1943 when Batman had his own TV serial. This part of the book was utter hilarity and showed Morrison’s strengths as a comedic writer in the description of these early serials. One of my favourite passages describing Robert Lowery’s Batman of 1943: “This wrinkled costume he wore would be unable to stop a lit cigarette let alone a slug from a .45. With his pitiful fighting skills, which relied on clumsy haymaker punches and off-balance lunges, Lowery’s Batman could expect a crime-fighting life span of three weeks, with a career ending abruptly the moment any half-trained yellow belt tae kwon do novice punched him in the head.” (p.333)

And his teardown of Joel Schumacher’s Batman films is equally hilarious.

Morrison occasionally lost me such as when he described in painstaking detail his journey to Alpha Centauri where he saw beings of another dimension and spoke with what we call Gods. He really does believe this happened and I totally respect him for it, but I feel the story loses some of its impact when he begins it by telling you he swallowed a ton of hash before the aliens stepped from the walls. Some might also criticise his views on comics such as his excellent interpretation of Alan Moore’s “Watchmen” which he does not hold in the same high regard as many of his peers do – he felt it was too self-referential and knowing.

As long as this review’s been, I haven’t tapped the surface of the content of this book. I’ll just say that any comics fan would love this book as it’s written by one comics fan for others. It’s full of knowledge and views on comics that are well worth reading, it feels like you’re eavesdropping on the most interesting conversationalist you’ll ever meet. And his writing style too is of such shockingly high quality, you’ll be astonished of his vocabulary and descriptive abilities.

I was glad also to know that my favourite of Morrison’s books – “All Star Superman” – is also his favourite and his anecdote of meeting the real-life Superman is also included here. He finishes the book with a powerfully inspiring message of hope and optimism that I dare anyone to feel cynical about, it’s so purely expressed and beautiful. So I’ll end it here, urging you the reader to pick up this book and see the superhero through Grant Morrison’s eyes.

In Morrison’s own words that end this book “There’s only one way to find out what happens next…”

I confess that I only know Grant Morrison mostly from his Batman comic books but I know that he has quite an impressive body of work under his belt but I have yet to find time to actually read them for myself. Nevertheless, I wanted to read Supergods the moment I have learned about its existence so I proceeded to obtain an online copy and then start to contentedly read it for at least five or six weeks every night since. As far as first impressions go, the book doesn't exactly ease you into its narrative, and arguably not at all as the pages progress (but you pretty much have a vague idea that it's going to be remotely challenging right from the introduction piece itself).

Still, for any comic book aficionado, this will be incredibly engrossing to peruse through, especially when you are able to contextualize Morrison's understanding and appreciation of the comic book world, including its most inconsequential yet surprisingly impactful moments, with that of your own.

The thing about Supergods that makes it unique from most publications written about comics is that it's also a semi-autobiographical examination of the comic book world where Grant Morrison more or less places himself as the focal point. I think this is the real draw of the book for me; I have read at least four non-fiction works about the rich history of comics (and I only enjoyed two of them, to be quite honest) and Morrison's contribution to this arena is hefty in a way that never lends itself as a mere wasteful exercise on the ABCs of the comicverse (arguably, perhaps, since he still does the formulaic Golden, Silver, Dark and Modern Age shtick about comics BUT always in the context of his personal experiences as oppose to just informational analysis). A bit indulgent at times, yes, since there are portions in this book that simply did not appeal or matter to me but only because of my own limited scope of understanding as to why such topics should be discussed about comics in the first place. It should prove a challenge then for anyone who plans to read this book that they must first acquaint themselves with at least the very basic factoids about comics.

I believe that the enjoyment of this literature is measured on how much you would consider the quality of the writing as well-balanced with the length of the book. This is really up to a reader's prerogative. I think that the most hardcore and knowledgeable comic book fanatic will consider the quality and length to be absolutely superb. However, I would characterize myself somewhere in the medium spectrum when it comes to knowledge and yet my enjoyment and interest are definitely higher so while reading Supergods, I believe I thoroughly ate up some parts of the book readily while I had a slightly lukewarm treatment toward the others.

For example: My favorite part of the book has to be Morrison's thoughtful and lush analyses on Alan Moore's masterpiece Watchmen (and, to a lesser extent, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns). As someone who considers WATCHMEN my most favorite graphic novel of all time, I'm very welcoming when it comes to any substantial essays that analyze, deconstruct and explore the graphic novel's themes, characters, symbol and meaning. Morrison's accounts, even with his criticisms of the author Moore himself (which are actually light-hearted and well-intentioned), are wonderful to behold. His writing on Watchmen's cultural signficance and mainstream impact on comics since is one of the best I have ever read to date (and trust me, I have collected and read A LOT) especially when he actually points out how a lot of readers and critics have the tendency to either put Watchmen in a pedestal excessively or completely disregard it altogether as overhyped trite. I agree wholeheartedly on that point very much.

He essentially does the same thing with Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and its accomplished legacy on how Batman stories should be written in order to come up with an emotionally and intellectually nuanced literature. In addition to this, my second favorite aspect of the book is how Morrison formed an antithesis examination between Superman and Batman (a common pathology, really, but his delivery is very refined compared to most books or essays I've read about the contrasting qualities between Superman and Batman).

The strongest aspect of Supergods has to be the fact that it is indeed autobiographical, and if you are interested in Grant Morrison not just as a writer but also has a comic book fan since his childhood then this book will help you get a better sense of his tastes, sensibilities and preferences. There are great moments where I truly made a connection with his thoughts and words on paper such as these lovely quotes:

"I'd found my way into a separate universe tucked inside our own, a place where dramas spanning decades and galaxies were played out across the second dimension of newsprint pages. Here men, women and noble monsters dressed in flags and struck from shadows to make the world a better place. My own world felt better already. I was beginning to understand something that gave me power over my fears"

"We live in the stories we tell ourselves. These stories are not afraid to be hopeful, not embarrassed to be optimistic, and utterly fearless in the dark. The best superhero stories deal directly with mythic elements of human experience we can all relate to, in ways that are imaginative, profound, funny and provocative. We should listen to what they have to tell us."

"I wanted more from my fictions. Naturally contrary, I'm tired of hearing about what superheroes would be like if they were real, only for it to be exactly the same as us at our worst: venal, corrupt, bemused and stupid. Realism had become confused with a particularly adolescent kind of pessimism and angry sexuality that I was beginning to find confining."

RECOMMENDED: 8/10

Grant Morrison’s saga of the superhero from its birth to its many tomorrows is a welcome breeze wafting from an endless summer somewhere in the future where we will all become superbeings. Welcome to me, at least, who, like the author, grew up absolutely enthralled by comic books.

And like Morrison, I’m tired and bored with the dystopian, snarling pretenders in tights who masquerade as superheroes these days. I’m no Pollyanna or prude afraid of the dark – I’ve spent a fair share of my career writing about dark worlds present and future – but there’s still that kid in me who grew up believing in Stan Lee’s admonition that “with great power comes great responsibility.” Too many superheroes have mistaken their shirking of responsibility for a punk rebellion against authority.

The contrasts between the Green Lantern and Captain America movies highlight this problem. Hal Jordan allows himself to be convinced – all too easily – that he doesn’t deserve the ring he’s been given by a dying hero. His acceptance of his role finally comes rather perfunctorily, as a necessity for the final act, rather than from any real desire to live up to his destiny. Not so with Steve Rogers, who is untiring in his efforts to shoulder more responsibility than his weak frame can handle.

Morrison thinks superheroes are archetypes of aspiration, untiring and, in the end, always undefeated. His book chronicles the pop culture history of this archetype in many of its manifestations, not just in comics but also in similar trends in music and fashion. I’ve read many of the comics he calls upon as exemplars, and I loved reading another author’s heartfelt and deeply illuminating appreciation of these works.

Heartfelt is the key word for this book. Grant Morrison is laying it bare, confessing to his love of the good guys, and using biographical moments to back it up. Even if I were inclined to disagree with his analysis – and I am surprisingly on the same page for the majority of it – I could never argue with his passion and love for the writers and artists whose work consumed by childhood.

I do, however, have a geek critique. Even though Morrison admits that he couldn’t give a shout out to all his favorite comics stories, I still would have liked to have seen more attention given to Steve Englehart for his Secret Empire saga in Captain America and his Detective Comics collaboration with Marshall Rogers, both of which I feel are keystones worth mentioning in the evolution of the superhero in the ‘70s and early ‘80s. But I can’t complain too much – he does give proper attention to Starlin’s Warlock, after all.

This is probably the best book to give to someone who hasn’t read comics in a long time and might be looking to rekindle their interest in the men and women of tomorrow. It’s also a great introduction for Jungians and archetypal psychologists who have yet to turn their analytical gazes to the primordial pop culture pool in which our culture swims.

There is this interesting mental phenomenon, which you have probably experienced, called paradoelia. Briefly put, it is when our brains find a pattern where there is no pattern, making us believe that we see something that just isn't there. It's why every now and then, someone sees Jesus in a water stain in their basem*nt. Or there's a cloud that looks almost exactly like a dragon. Or when you wake up at four in the morning, and you're squinting against the light and the toilet looks like a face and it's laughing at you STOP LAUGHING AT ME!

Um. Right.

Humans are meaning-seekers. Whether it's a song or a painting or a piece of toast, we want to find meaning everywhere we can. We are experts at it, world-champions, even when there is no meaning to be found.

When we turn these marvelous pattern-seeking brains towards places where there is meaning, well, that's where things get interesting. Grant Morrison is a master pattern-seeker, which is probably what has helped him become one of the most interesting and important writers of the modern age. His area of interest is not philosophy, however, or literature or world affairs. He does not dissect the works of great masters of classical art or intricate mathematicians. Grant Morrison's passion is something that many people believe they should give up by the time they leave their teens.

He loves superheroes.

That's probably the only real point of overlap between me and Morrison, which is a pity because he seems like someone with whom it would be awesome to hang out. In the nearly seventy years since the dawn of the superhero, very few people have done as much thinking about them as Morrison has, nor have they followed the complex interrelationship between the superheroes and the world that brought them to life. Supergods attempts to answer a question that seems simple, but turns out to be mind-bendingly complicated: what do superheroes mean?

He starts where it all began, with Action Comics #1 in 1938 and the debut of Superman. He spends several pages discussing the iconic cover alone - from its composition to the promises it makes to the reader - and uses that as a guide to all that will come after. The cover "looked like a cave painting waiting to be discovered on a subway wall ten thousand years from now - a powerful, at once futuristic and primitive image of a hunter killing a rogue car."

Superman, who began his career as a protector of the people against the corrupt and the powerful, would be joined by Batman, who prowled the night looked to avenge a crime that could never be avenged. Together, they embodied the hopes and fears of their readers. They spoke to our nobility and our need to see that justice was done. They spoke to that haunting voice that told us that some things can never be made right. They were us, writ larger than life and yet printed on pulp paper and sold for a dime.

Together, Batman and Superman formed a template that nearly every other superhero would either conform to or react against. Over the next seventy years, superheroes would undergo massive changes - become light and dark, be parodies of the real world and terrible reflections of it. They would be funny, they would be grim. They would explore uncountable hyper-realities that were normally confined to the acid dreams of mystics, and they would face the most mundane and everyday problems that bedevil the man on the street.

Over the course of the book, Morrison looks at the history of superhero comics, charting their changes and mutations and looking for the underlying meaning behind each new iteration of the art. He tracks it from its pulp and populist origins, through the wartime years when the People's Heroes suddenly became agents of propaganda, the age of the Comics Code, which forced writers to go to more and more ridiculous lengths to come up with stories, and the era of the realistic, where the heroes tried to cope with the problems of the readers' world.

He looks at the iconic moments in superhero publishing, such as the explosion of creativity brought about by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby at Marvel Comics, the editorial guidance of visionaries like Julius Schwartz, who sought to make comics a tool of education, and the masterstrokes of creators such as Alan Moore and Frank Miller, whose singular contributions to the genre are still reverberating clearly today.

Interlaced through all of this is Morrison's own history, both as a reader and a creator of superhero comics. Much like the superheroes that he loves, Morrison gives us his secret origin as a young reader of comics, moving into a creative adolescence that found him searching for his own identity as both a creator and as a person. Like many of his heroes, he changed costumes and modes, went for a grittier, punk look for a little while, and proceeded to reinvent himself as one might reinvent a half-forgotten character from a title that was cancelled years ago.

As the history of superheroes intersects with his, the narrative becomes less a creative examination of how comics have evolved and more a story about how he evolved with comics. Not only did he become the equivalent of a rock star comic book writer, he managed to reach across the boundary between comic books and real life, crossing from one to another as one of the world's first fictionauts.

It's hard to overstate how much thinking Morrison has done on this topic, or how far he is willing to go to defend the heroes that he has not only grown up with but who have made his fortune for him. He sees superheroes not as a pleasant diversion or a corrupting force or as an unnecessary fantasy, but rather as in imperishable idea. They are a meme, a reflection of ourselves - both who we think we are and who we wish to be. Over the decades, Superman and Batman and Spider-Man and the X-Men and all of their costumed comrades have raised generations of readers and instilled in them some of the highest values to which we aspire. Despite being derided, dismissed, and very nearly outlawed, there has been something about the superheroes that has called out to us, and we cannot help but respond.

In an age where fiction and reality are nearly interchangeable, and where the imagination can produce something real in almost no time at all, perhaps it's time to stop thinking about the superheroes as entertainment for nerds and children. Perhaps it's time to see what the heroes have to teach all of us.

When I read a book, I like to do the author the courtesy of taking it seriously in the terms in which it's presented. So when Grant Morrison offers a history of comic books shot through with scattered observations about metaphysics, cultural history, comparative religions, and psychology, my impulse is to take those observations seriously and evaluate them as such.

On that basis, I simply can't get behind his "reality as useful fiction," which, whatever he might think, owes a lot more to his absorption with comic books than his reading of Nietzsche or Dzogchen. His musings are often facile and misinformed, drawn from the smorgasbord of culture on the basis of what entertains and inspires, with little concern for the facts of the matter. And even as someone with an apophatic commitment, I still have the old-fashioned belief that there are facts of the matter.

When you peer behind the curtain at an artist's creative process, you often experience something of a disappointment. A great work like "The Invisibles" speaks for itself, and attempts to account for it simply diminish its scope. Many artists understand this and refuse to entertain questions about the origin or meaning of their work, but Morrison is surprisingly willing to play this game. Often, his work is concordantly diminished, as the stage mechanics of what seemed like divine inspiration come to light.

I get the sense that he gave in to the temptation to write this novel-length self-analysis because it gave him another outlet to elaborate and play with his public persona. As I read Supergods that increasingly seemed like his primary commitment, as little else binds this book together.

Morrison presents a roughly-chronological and fragmentary history of superhero comic books, offered in breathless drive-by analyses of whatever topic catches his interest for two or three pages. It consistently reads like he narrated the entire thing into a tape recorder, and an intern typed it all out.

Supergods occasionally delivers a top-rate insight, but it's too fragmentary and disorganized, too incoherent in style and subject, to qualify as guilty pleasure. Mostly I feel relieved to be done with it.

Morrison's more or less epic history and commentary on the world of the American superhero from the late 1930s' debuts of Superman and Batman to the release of The Avengers movie. An absolute must-read for likes of the genre with an in depth analysis decade by decade of the likes of Jerry Spiegel, Joe Schuster Gil Kane, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Chris Claremont, etc etc. With some biographical content, the defining of the comic book 'ages', a look at censorship, the impact of 9/11 etc. nothing is left un scrutinised. 8 out of 12.

Supergods is part comics history, a pinch of Morrison memoir, and a huge chunk of the social study of comics on society. Is it a book that only people who enjoy comics will love? I say no.

Supergods is separated into 4 sections based on the comics of that "era". We start with the classic Golden Age of Superman and Batman's first appearance in comics. Morrison does a fantastic job of explaining the huge impact that these kind of super heroes had on a world that was spiraling into darkness. The Great Depression had America in a stranglehold, and the rest of the world was caught in the ripples it caused. Superman and Batman came along in at a time when the comics market was flooded with pulp crime heroes. Morrison doesn't dwell on just these two characters, although they are the main focus.

The Silver Age was a trippier time for comics in the United States. Morrison takes on a trip, no pun intended, through this age explaining how the Comics Code Authority changed the way the medium was perceived by the public. Superheroes were on the way out. Sales were falling into the gutter following the end of World War II. Marvel and Stan Lee changed all that. Morrison explains how the explosion of the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man put superhero comics back into the mainstream. Comics were starting to become cool again. While Marvel would take ahold of the industry, DC was preparing to overthrow them.

The Dark Age, an age not officially recognized by collectors or the industry in general, is a time where the comics became more real, in Morrison's opinion. He spends his time relishing over the great ideas that creators like Frank Miller and Alan Moore used to advance comics into new territory. Morrison once again states that he's not the biggest fan of Moore, but he recognizes that he's one of the most important creators in the history of the medium. He even discusses the history behind the creation of his own "Dark Age" book, Arkham Asylum. He also gets into the world of Image comics during this period. One thing I found astounding was that he wrote three issues of Spawn and claimed he could have lived off those royalties alone. He stated that McFarlane paid ten times as much for his freelance work as Marvel or DC would offer.

The Renaissance, another unrecognized era term that Morrison uses, is everything post "dark and gritty" comics until now. This is where we get into the meat of his work and his "memoirs". We find out about all his Flex Mentallo, Invisibles, JLA, X-Men, Seven Soldiers, and All Star Superman details. The most important thing I wanted to read about was the truth behind Final Crisis. Unfortunately, he only spent about four paragraphs on the subject. He never mentioned any of the rumored DC editorial interference in his work or the problem with delays due to JG Jones slowness. There's plenty more discussed in this area mostly involving his fellow European creators. We get some great stories about Mark Millar and Warren Ellis. Morrison is definitely not afraid to name drop. The other aspect I was disappointed with was that Morrison never really gets into what the future may hold for comics. He seems to stick more the future of comics in film and television.

All of these "eras" contain tons of insightful information that I had no idea about. I must have highlighted two or three dozen passages on my Kindle. I found the facts, or behind the scenes, stuff to be the most interesting. I found Morrison's take on these books, creators, and ideas to be fun, as well. However, he has the habit of getting long-winded in his descriptions. Sometimes, he will just carry on about a subject for many paragraphs without any type of point or conclusion behind his "rant". He also uses the old "More on that later" scenario too often. He'll start to talk about something and say "but more on that later". I understand he's referencing something from a future section of the book, but I felt he could have used a little variation in how he led into these future topics.

Supergods is a fun book even for people who are not fans of Morrison's work. The only part I could see them spacing out would be when Morrison goes on his crazy rant on how he experienced the fifth dimension. It's going to put a lot of people off. They might think of him as some of-his-rocker crazy person. He even takes the time to mention that you might think he's crazy, and that you might be right. People also might be put off about his opinion on some creators. He takes a couple stabs at Brian Bendis, a couple at Alan Moore, and one giant cut at Rob Liefeld. While I agree with some of these, especially Liefeld, I don't know how well people are going to take it. I already read an article on a comics site where the writer went on a tirade about Morrison's negative opinion on Alan Moore. The writer of the article admitted to not reading the book but only receiving the quote via a third party. If he would have read the book, he would have seen the whole chapter where Morrison performs literary fellati* on Watchmen.

In the end, I definitely recommend this book to Morrison's fans. They will absolutely love it. Comics fans will find the book very interesting, but may misunderstand some of the stuff Morrison is trying to express. If you're someone who isn't into the medium, I'd suggest checking out the first chapter for free via Amazon's Kindle service or checking it out from the library first. If you're interested in learning more about the medium and history without reading faceless article on wikipedia or jumping into random comics issues, BUY THIS.

Супербоги — это очень глубокое погружение в важный пласт современной поп-культуры от автора кучи знаковых графических романов про мужчин и женщин в трико. Метанасыщенность текста — нет слов, у меня случился терминальный овердоз референсами: добавил себе в ридлист ровно двадцать один тайтл. Правда, 90% из них изучу на уровне “статья в вики”, стараюсь быть реалистом.

Где-то во второй половине книги в субъективный анализ супергероики и чистый энциклопедический контент совершенно внезапно залетает автобиографический психодел: месиво из оккультизма, шаманизма и мескалиновой радости, поданное как проповедь. Разгон неистов настолько, что ты просто сидишь и радуешься самому факту существования таких вот людей, которые спустились в самый ад и вернулись обратно, чтобы нарисовать для тебя комикс. Не знаю стоило ли оно того, но спасибо.

3.5 stars

Part autobiography and part history of the superhero this is all literary flair. Grant Morrison writes an interesting and captivating non-fiction work with heavy elements of metafiction included. As a result the end product is a book which is as informative as it is entertaining.

While most people would not associate a graphic novel writer with great literature ability Grant Morrison here demonstrates that he is a writer. His work is full of beautifully composed prose and draws on a variety of quotes, images and references. As such the finished product contains much literary power, with some of Morrison's phrases being particularly notable in their poetry.

The one fault for me with this work was in Morrison's tendency to leave the superhero for long periods to talk about his drug taking, alcohol fuelled lifestyle and spiritual journey. For a book that was supposedly meant to be about superheroes it did seem as if the author did at times turn the attention solely on himself which was a detour from the interesting nature of the superhero material he was discussing.

Grant Morrison however was at his best when he was talking about the superheroes which was about seven eighths of the entirety of this novel in my estimation. He discussed the birth of the hero with Superman in Action Comics no. 1 and the rise of other costumed characters like Batman. He discussed the rise of the superhero worlds and what that meant and means for our three dimensional reality. He analysed the nature of how these heroes represented ancient ideas and archetypes of the old gods and mythologies. He mentioned the characters involved in creating the superhero filled world, from the likes of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee to the more contemporary Alan Moore and Frank Miller.

Speaking of which I view Miller's work in reinventing Batman as more important than Moore's Watchmen. Certainly Watchmen is a technically amazing graphic novel and receives a lot more applause from all critics for its scope and ideas (ironically it concludes with an idea which Morrison points out requires the audience to believe that the most intelligent man on the planet would do the stupidest thing. ) However I would argue that Miller's ideas have been more influential in defining the struggles of heroes. Whereas Watchmen stands on its own for me and has fewer of its ideas incorporated into modern comics/graphic novels.

Finally Grant Morrison concludes with looking at the transference of the hero to the screen. Which he uses to look at his biggest argument across the entire book: that superheroes are representative of old and grand ideas and as such can transfer across universes. He points out that while many people struggle to figure out whether those heroes trapped in their paper worlds have become real identities we are like them. We can be the superheroes. An idea which whether you accept it or not is intriguing in its way.

I do recommend this as a book for anyone interested in superheroes to read. You may even gain a glimpse at the workings of the graphic novel or comic business as well. But I'm sure whatever you find in this you won't be too disappointed.

Let me start by saying that the only previous book of morrison's that I read was arkham asylum many many moons ago. I enjoyed it, but I got out of mainstream comics around the time he began writing them.... So, there weren't many preconceptions coming into this. I bought it for the title, primarily.

For me, this book ranged from interesting (the initial sections on the history of the silver and golden ages), to boring (the early personal history of the author), to annoying (his constant belittling of his paying audience, his rampant egotism, his complaints of having to retreat back to the "super hero books" because that's where the money is after saying he has made half a million off of one book alone. Drop the starving artist schtick. You're wealthier than most everyone reading your books...), to batsh*t crazy (magic spells, talking to superman at sdcc, Robbie Williams, Kathmandu).

All in all, it read like a well-written undergrad term paper that was written by someone with severe ADD. Once past the first two sections, the narrative thread is simply all over the place and is often more difficult to read than it should be. It all-too-often feels unedited, unrevised, unprofessional.

My problem is how to rate it. I find myself waffling. There are whole sections of the book that I would probably grant four stars. There are great ideas and really fascinating thoughts. Yet there are sections I would give one star to - either because they are uninteresting or else flat-out obnoxious. Instead of the fantastic subtitle of the book ending with the words "being human," it should have ended with "being Grant Morrison.". And that, in the end, is what left it at two stars for me. What was billed as an examination of literature and culture became autobiography of the worst kind.

As I read more of his work, maybe I will find that this man is the genius he claims to be. As it is, this book left me cold and unfulfilled.

This is your brain on drugs. I've always had a love hate relationship with Morrison's comics. When he's good, he's very good (All-Star Superman) but, when he's bad, he's bad (Final Crisis). This book suffers a bit from being unfocused in it's approach. It can't seem to decide if it is a history of comics, a biography or a manifesto on his philosophy and approach to writing. What you can expect though is a very educated and literate discussion on all things Morrison. His digressions into his various drug experiences and occultism is interesting and give you a insight into his inspirations but you have to really dig for it sometimes. If you're willing to work your way through the book (and you might want to have a book about world religions handy) it is a good read but it is not, in my opinion, for the casual reader.

A combination of biography and analysis of superhero comics with a dash of nutso. Grant Morrison is allowed to be nutso. The products of his nutso are wonderful. He strays a bit towards the end with an oddly-placed chapter on movies but otherwise it's a crazy hellride that I would recommend to comics fans or people who want to make more sense of the superhero cultural phenomena.

On a more personal level, I'm glad to have a better understanding of the origin of Morrison's Invisibles series, which keeps a warm place in my heart, and which inspired me to read more deeply across many fields. I feel inspired again to expand my horizons!

A good friend got me this as a birthday present, knowing how much I like Morrison's work, and I was finally able to schedule a read.

FIRST TIER REVIEW
Who would be interested in this book? A good question, because it really is THREE different (but not unrelated) books in one - so any indicator I give should be tempered by that knowledge. The majority of the book would be of interest to fans of Grant Morrison's work in superhero comics (duh), and those interested in an (admittedly) subjective and eclectic overview of the history of superhero characters/comics in general, and how they relate to both movements in popular culture (including their cinematic representations) and resonances in general Jungian myth. Those interested in a behind the scenes view of 90's era comic authors (including the "Vertigo Revolution") and a small amount of backstage gossip might also find something here (to a much lesser extent than the preceding). And those with an interest in altered states of consciousness and modern occult theory may find some small reward as well.

SECOND TIER REVIEW
But is it any good? Yes. There are flaws (see Third Tier) but nothing major - Morrison makes a good case for the continuing popularity and cultural importance of the figure of the super-human, while giving you lots of juicy history and visionary thought to chew on. Neither academic (seemingly to the annoyance of some other reviewers), nor an overly gushing, masturbatory fan-boy exercise (Morrison loves his comics, but is an intelligent, informed individual and while we don't share the exact same critical approach or values, he is critical when needed - so this does not read, like any number of other modern books on comics, like a blog essay re-purposed) and it was nice to experience the occasional shared memory (he name drops Jupiter Jones at one point, and mentions the same use of Percy Shelley's poem "Ozymandias" in an AVENGER's issue that I fondly recall). Also serves, if some notes are taken at pertinent points, as a nice tour through the general high-points of the history of super-hero comics that could give the non-initiated a sold checklist of works to examine (and provides the context for appreciating them).

THIRD TIER REVIEW
Grant Morrison is one of my favorite comic books authors - just as the wave of followers that burst onto the scene following the floodgates opened by Alan Moore and Frank Miller were beginning to (to my tastes at least) curdle into crude, less talented takes (middle-brow high-falutin' pretension, and crude sadism, respectively) on the potentials created by those two figures , he arrived with others in the "British Invasion". And while everyone oohed and aahed over Neil Gaiman (who, outside of his canny reinvention of some basic DC concepts, I've always found a little too twee & calculated for my tastes), I found in Morrison someone who both loved and respected old superhero comics for their weirdness and sense of awe, while being actively interested in updating and returning them to the strange, inventive cheap entertainment designed to blow the minds of adolescents that they should be (while I, myself, was in college at the time, I could still appreciate that frission) . Bizarre but Noble, Smart but Unpretentious - and most of all, fun!

Here is not the place to go into the ups and downs of that ride, suffice it to say that he's one of the small handful of superhero comic authors I still regularly check in on, having abandoned (with small exceptions) The Marvel and DC Universes sometime in the early 90s after a slow motion drop in quality, and exhaustion from too many "events" (which, as it turned out, were only going to increase after I was gone). It was obvious from the subtext to some of his most popular titles (ANIMAL MAN, DOOM PATROL, THE INVISIBLES, SEVEN SOLDIERS) that Morrison had very specific and attuned ideas about the modern superhero, and this book finally lays a lot of that out in long-form.

So, as I said, this book is really 2/3 of one book and another 1/3 of another (which itself manifests in two distinct forms). That larger part is obvious from the subtitle - as I said above, this is Morrison's telling of the history of super-hero comics from the beginnings (he doesn't concern himself with literary precursors from the genre or pulp magazine fields, except in passing), examining how the main characters (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, Spider Man, The Fantastic Four) debuted, their form, image and presentation and how those aspects resonated into and with the popular culture, and how those figures also called up mythic associations in the minds of children and the general public. You also get some straight ahead history of the business here (Siegel and Shuster's screwjob by DC, the start of Marvel Comics, etc) and after the main figures are examined and superheroes become ubiquitous, the book moves on to charting the various "Ages" in comics, and the waves of creative innovation and corporate meddling as they occur in chronological order. Morrison doesn't cover EVERYTHING that happened (that's not really the point) and its important to remember that his focus is on superheroes, not comics in general, and only - more or less - the Marvel and DC Universes. Given this flexibility, he waxes rhapsodic about characters (The Silver-Age Flash, Dr. Strange) and creators (Jack Kirby, Jim Starlin, Roy Thomas, Steve Englehart, Steve Gerber, Don McGregor) he loves, while savvily reinterpreting various eras (his take on Silver Age DC is fascinating - "No longer shackled to the rules of social realism, the stories themselves were liberated to become what a generation of young readers demanded: allegorical super-science-fiction about how it felt to be twelve" - and I found the attention he pays Marvel 70's era books, and Kirby's DC work, to be most gratifying. Also, he does a nice job of contextualizing the later "Dark Era" of post-Moore/Miller comics as having a precursor in the "relevancy" comics of 70s DC and Marvel). As we move into the late 80s and the arrival of WATCHMEN and DARK KNIGHT, he summarizes the vast sea-changes the field went through, continuing on into the British Invasion (Vertigo), the Image Era, etc. and so forth. Parallel with all this is careful (but not exhaustive) noting of the appearance of superheroes in other media (TV, film). By this point, the overall theme is occasionally teasing out the mythic hiding in the dress of modern, "realistic" super-heroes and charting what he sees as a "back and forth" between various factions - fans versus companies, older readers vs. younger, the established universes vs. independent creations.

The second aspect of the book (and appropriate for a man who wrote himself into the DC Universe and nearly died by writing himself into THE INVISIBLES) is Grant Morrison's own biography, chronologically placed within that larger narrative: growing up reading superhero comics; becoming an intelligent, well-read, Straight Edge student with pretensions at being in a band, entering into comics writing, success and then mega-success (with ARKHAM ASYLUM), creating satisfying challenging work while partying around the world with his millions, a mid-life crisis (on Earth Prime!) and resultant life-changing experience that allows him to reinterpret his work.

The third aspect of the book, smaller still, is that "life-changing experience" (not unfamiliar to readers of THE INVISIBLES) explicated on at length - what Maslow called a "peak experience" (here ushered in by stress and large-scale psychedelics use) in which Morrison had a vision of the totality of the universe which allowed him to recommit himself to his work and life by providing a larger context for both. Readers of Robert Anton Wilson, Terrance McKenna, Timothy Leary, and varied occult thinkers may recognize some parallels.

I found the entirety of the book enjoyable and came out the other end with a general feeling of re-invigoration. But then, this book was pretty much exactly what I would have wanted from Grant Morrison and I'm a fan - those unfamiliar with him or his work may find it it at turns interesting, intriguing, frustrating and baffling. He points out interesting minor details (how the Golden Age Batman seemed to endlessly face villains based on chemical assault: gases, poisons, drugs), entertains heady ideas (The DC and Marvel Universes as living, growing entities), and charts the dangerous dance a product of myth, designed for children, faces when it attempts to follow its audience into adulthood and "relevancy", while reflecting the popular culture (Space Age dreams abandoned, "My ward is a JUNKIE!", the pure capitalism of the 80s, etc.).

There are some minor flaws. Morrison occasionally indulges his penchant for humorous similes and asides at the expense of his pacing and drive. It's still funny (on Kim Basinger as Vicki Vale in BATMAN - "another victim of late 80s cosmetic artistry...matte orange neon lipstick, and foundation so thick you could bury your dead in her face.") but counterproductive at times (however, his small memoir about the *extremes* of Nerd culture he's witnessed at signing and conventions is very funny indeed!). There are occasional points where the chronology becomes muddled or he approaches a topic or event redundantly, from two different directions and so re-introduces it again (but that's on his editor). Given the bad blood between him and Alan Moore (and yet given how Moore is an inescapable and monumental figure in the field he's covering) he does a good job extolling the virtues of the man's amazing work, while being unable to resist getting in some petty sniping (his cranky complaint about WATCHMEN reads like sour grapes, but then he redeems himself by calling back to that criticism in a way that undermines and undoes it, but still trashes Moore's 1963 project). His bio can, at times, be the slightest bit too revealing - I've always known that Morrison had a love of surface, shallow, popular culture that I don't share, but the occasional mention of him utilizing his new-found ARKHAM ASYLUM wealth by essentially embracing an 80's Yuppie lifestyle, while understandable, was still distasteful. Even, bless him, his enthusiastic confessional about his transformative experience (which, to his credit, he does not try to proselytize about and is capable of conceiving of as possibly only subjective) suffers a bit in context - is it any surprise that a man who rejected his father's working class ethos and is over-indulging in psychedelics when arriving at a mid-life crisis undergoes an experience which essentially not only reminds him that he has purpose in the world and is connected to everyone, but which also absolves him of previous inaction? The event itself, while profound, seems to me the same event that many deep, eclectic thinkers (from Crowley on down) experience when they push themselves past a safety zone and the subjective/objective merge - an important message to themselves from themselves, the mind talking to the mind and giving itself a new context to live in within the world. Which must be amazing, personally, but should inspire creativity, not take its place (as I said, though, Morrison does seem to grasp that). That all may seem harsh and I don't mean it to. I love Grant Morrison's work and much of it is some of the most important, moving, consistent and personally resonant comics I have ever read in my life - and if he needs to have been abducted by omni-dimensional trans-time beings from higher dimensions to produce it, that's okay by me!

Those interested in the primary narrative of the book may find, as the "Big Two" Universes begin to choke on their bloated continuities into the 80s and mythic resonance succumbs to capitalistic drives, that even the savior-level event of Moore and Miller's work seems quickly swallowed by the backlashes, corruptions and pandering to adolescent tastes. Here, Morrison feels he needs to not only note every "Big Change" in the field but also to "quasi-justify" it in terms of popular culture/creator's intentions or mythic resonance (perhaps partially motivated by desire to honor his format, or just to ego-stroke his creator friends) - and this becomes something of a problem. Nothing can really justify or ennoble the crass stupidity of the Image era, or Marvel and DC's endless ping-ponging of "Event Spectacles" and as I read about purportedly monumental, important events in superhero history that barely registered in my memory (like Blackest Night) I started to doubt his argument, as the cord seemed stretched pretty thin. This culminates in Morrison's ultra-enthusiastic explication of the scene-changing! shock-n-awe! arrival of Warren Ellis' THE AUTHORITY (which manifested after I'd stopped reading most superhero comics, so I never bought it), which he spends pages championing and raving about, only to weakly admit that the book never caught on as it should have and didn't have the generational impact and sales it deserved.

But in truth, I also give him credit for NOT doing certain things - while he mentions the various works he produced, and discusses the inspirations or motivations behind them, he doesn't spend an inordinate amount of time on his own work (although his explication that the Superman side-storyline in FINAL CRISIS, seen in SUPERMAN BEYOND, was essentially about "Superman Vs. The Blank Page" was revealing) and doesn't give away any of his prime moments, which I found quite nice, but still a tiny bit disappointing (specifically, I would have loved for him to have delved into the masterful climactic act of trans-psychic surgery he performed on the DC Universe in SEVEN SOLDIERS when he removed the rotten Swamp Thing/Moore-Solomon Grundy/Zor Vertigo-era "heart" that was poisoning the DC Universe's narrative, allowing the essence of Kirby's Mister Miracle to return to ascendancy by escaping the grave itself!). Perhaps he just grasped that this was a book by him about superhero comics and not a book about HIS superhero comics. And his parallel commentary on the history of superhero film and television was also more interesting than I expected - I'm not sure anyone had done it from this perspective before.

So, in the end, a worthwhile read that will remind the old and young alike of why superheroes matter, where they came from and why they should keep going.

So you grow up next to a doomsday weapon. Its existence has changed the structure of the life in your town, now defined by the American military base on Scottish soil bringing guarding the bombs and bringing in the artifacts of an alien, American, life. You watch your father’s impotent marches against the looming darkness those bombs. Your nightmares are apocalyptic and oh-so-plausible. And your mother’s a science fiction fan. What to do?

The healthy mind finds ways to cope, and Grant Morrison folded his coping mechanism into a very successful career as a comic book writer. As he put it right up front:

“The superheroes laughed at the Atom Bomb. Superman could walk on the surface of the sun and barely register a tan . . . In the shadow of cosmic destroyers like Anti-Matter Man or Galactus, the all powerful Bomb seemed provincial in scale. I’d found my way into a separate universe tucked inside our own, a place where dramas spanning decades and galaxies were played out across the second dimension of newsprint pages. Here men, women, and noble monsters dressed in flags and struck from shadows to make the world a better place. My own world felt better already. I was beginning to understand something that gave me power over my fears.
Before it was a Bomb, the Bomb was an Idea.
Superman, however, was a Faster, Stronger, Better Idea.
It’s not that I needed Superman to be ‘real,’ I just needed him to be more real than the Idea of the Bomb that ravaged my dreams.”

I totally get that, in the shock-of-recognition sense. We need stories to make sense of our world, and at least since Shakespeare, many smart authors and other life forms have known that these stories are constructed. (Like the lady said, "it’s turtles, all the way down"). Spiderman performed a somewhat similar role for me, once upon a time. (By once-upon-a-time, I mean “early 1970s,” which is oddly synchronistic to when Morrison was dealing with the bomb. My fears were more quotidian. I did not really learn to fear the bomb until the 1980s, and I’d found Star Trek by then).

There’s a second thread in this book that is plausible, but I lack the background to judge; an attempt to recapitulate the Big Stories told through the comic superheroes. Morrison, smartly, starts with Superman and Batman, and suggests they embody two of the major themes of western literature, viz:

“Superman was of the day; Batman was of the night and the shadows. Superman was the rational, Apollonian; Batman was Dionysian. Superman’s mission was the measured allotment of justice; Batman’s, an emotive two-fisted ask-questions-later vendetta.
Superman began as a socialist, but Batman was the ultimate capitalist hero, which may help explain his current popularity and Superman’s relative loss of significance. Batman was a wish-fulfillment figure as both filthy-rich Bruce Wayne and his swashbuckling alter ego. He was a millionaire who vented his childlike fury on the criminal classes of the lower orders. He was the defender of privilege and hierarchy. In a world where wealth and celebrity are the measures of accomplishment, its no surprise that the most popular superhero characters today – Batman and Iron Man – are both handsome tycoons. The socialist and the socialite, the only thing Superman and Batman could agree on was that killing is wrong.” (25-26).

Some Batmen, some Supermen, some times, I’ll grant, but I don’t have a firm enough grasp on the irreducible core of either character to really judge that. But it’s a fascinating thesis I would have loved to have developed a bit more; these two stories pulling us two different ways; towards the better angels of the light and all we could be, and towards the demons and the vengeful dark. The fact that Barack Obama made a joke that he was born on Krypton slides into this delightfully. But he does not prove his thesis.

These two threads come together gloriously in his discussion of Alan Moore. Again, I haven’t read Miracleman, where Moore apparently really takes the superhero in the modern world apart, but I’ve read The Watchmen three times and see more in it every time. And this, this is a brilliant encapsulation of what it did:

“The ‘Watchman on the walls of Western civilization’ was how the late novelist Kathy Acker generously and somewhat hyperbolically described Alan Moore . . . With Watchmen, Moore delivered a devastating ‘follow this’ to American comic-book superheroes. In its clinical artistry and its cold dissection of self-serving US foreign policy decisions in the guise of an alternate history of superhumans and masked crime fighters, it was delivered directly to the heart of DC Comics itself and allowed to detonate there in the heart of the Man. Watchmen was a Pop Art extinction-level event, a dinosaur killer and wrecker of worlds. Buy the time it was over – and its reverberations still resound – the equation was stark for superhero stories: Evolve or die.” (195).

Then we have a brief detour into Morrison’s own psychedelic-fueled quest for meaning and connection, which resolved in a way that I quite liked (the revelation that we’re all, literally, sprung from the same seeds strikes home). It seems to have turned an awful lot of readers off, though, perhaps because he uses the L word. Ah, the puritanical kids today.

A criticism that I’m inclined to agree with – though I would need to re-read the book to be confident asserting – is that the book is a little self indulgent, lengthwise. There were parts I started glazing over, and if a book about superheroes can’t keep my attention on the bus, it may be rambling a bit.

But honing would have been hard. The book is crammed with random pieces of great writing, viz: “When he inevitably erupted from the grave eight months later, Superman came complete with a mullet, which he’d presumably picked up in hell.” (325) and (on what happened when he announced at SDCC that he was leaving Marvel for DC) “As notice was given, one attendee sprang up from his chair like a Ping-Pong ball fired across a crowded Bangkok nightclub and ran out of the room, all the way to the Marvel booth with his news.” (359). I read that while my husband was watching a football game, and I’m glad he’d seen the same Henry Rollins show I did so I didn’t have to explain in too great of detail.

He does a great job of wrapping it all up. He goes home to write the final superhero story the book covers:

“I wrote my personal best story of the world’s greatest superhero, for my favorite artist to draw, overlooking a loch where Trident submarines still sailed in all their stately satanic splendor, with black bellies full of hellfire sufficient to blind and vaporize me in a fraction of a heartbeat, even as it liquefied the ancient stones of my walls, cracked Scotland in half, and turned the world into a refrigerated postnuclear litter tray. I wrote it scant miles from the former American navy base, where my parents had protested, where Dad had been arrested, and where American comics had arrived in Scotland with the sailors and submariners. It felt like ground zero, the center of a web of coincidence and personal mythology that was as ordered and symmetrical, as self-referential, as an issue of Watchmen.”

I have not read All-Star Superman, even though it’s in my local library and I have picked it up a time or two. For all that I love the idea of the loving solar hero, I rarely connect to their stories. Like Spike said of Buffy, I like a little monster in there. But I’m gonna give it a try now.

I can’t say that I’m a huge Morrison fan. The last thing of his I read, Batman: RIP, totally mystified me. While I read comics as a teenager and now have a pull list at my local comic book store, http://dangerroomoly.com/, my reading is sporadic and stopped almost entirely for 20 years. (I did not know, for example, that there had been a crisis on infinite Earths until well after the fact.) Thus, when I went to the web to see what I’d missed in the backround reading for Batman: RIP and saw this: http://www.comicvine.com/myvine/dr__m..., I just had to shake my head. I’ve read about half of those, and it took me years to do it.

But I like him, and this book made me like him more. Definitely worth the time.

I loved this book! Partly an autobiography, partly a high-level comic book history lesson, partly a series of in-depth critical reviews and essays about various iconic comic book works from the 80’s, 90’s, and 00’s. Intelligent, articulate, and meaningful observations on an often under appreciated art form from one of it’s most daring auteurs. Highly recommended to classic and modern comic books aficionados.

I have to be honest – I’ve always found Grant Morrison to be fantastic at creating concepts, but his actual writing in comic books always left a bit to be desired. I fully acknowledge that this may have been more to a lack of available space or a miscommunication with artists than actual ability, yet his work tended to feel rushed near the endings and often discombobulated.

However, it goes without saying that he is a master of the medium, wildly appreciated, and a student of the art, and so when I discovered he had written a nonfiction book exploring the industry, revealing his back story, and philosophizing about the nature of two-dimensional characters and their eternal lives, well, I couldn’t buy the book quickly enough. I knew I wanted to know the man’s thoughts on a first person basis.

Furthermore, I found myself excited by the notion that finally I would experience Grant Morrison unbound, unfiltered, and unfettered by a page count or panel limit.

If you’re in a hurry and you’d like to stop reading now, I’ll leave you with this – if you love intelligent (and sometimes trippy) conversation about comic books or super heroes, you will not be disappointed in this book.

Still reading? Good. Let’s dig deeper.

I enjoyed every aspect of this book. Morrison started by explaining his own love of comic books and where that love began and why it persisted. He then moved into a brief history lesson of the industry that I found riveting. I’d heard most of it before, but he put it in his own words so entertainingly that it felt fresh (though I did learn a few new things such as Jack Kirby punching out neo-Nazis). He then focused on pinnacle characters and important eras. Finally, he delved deeply into his own storyline and how it intermingles with the stories he writes.

Morrison is clearly a smart man – and after reading Supergods I do wonder if he is a genius on some level. Interestingly enough, I never would have thought this without reading Supergods. You see, in Supergods, Morrison pontificates about chaos magic, fiction suits (I love this idea), and the possibility of these characters existing on a plane of reality all their own. He discusses at great length his own mindset and philosophies behind different eras of his professional life. Suddenly, past work that I had dismissed as overreaching and poorly executed had to be perceived in a new light.

For example, I distinctly remember feeling that Final Crisis became a jumbled mess near the end with no sense of plot. Lo and behold, Morrison stated in Supergods that he meant for Final Crisis to lose any semblance of story, for he intended to convey that evil had won so greatly in that work that even a story could not be allowed to continue unmolested.

But that may be the problem with Supergods. If it takes a large volume of nonfiction work to explain past storylines and elucidate upon them, then perhaps the storylines don’t stand on their own. Maybe Supergods illustrates a weakness rather than enforces strengths.

On the other hand, however, having read Supergods has now made me approach Morrison differently with new readings. For example, I just read Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne which is an offshoot of Final Crisis for fans in the know. In the past, I would have balked at the notion of Batman traveling through time first as a caveman, then as a pilgrim, then a pirate, and so forth. But, now having an inclination towards Morrison’s leanings and themes, I completely accepted it simply as a work of Morrison. In fact, with the dark, serious nature of Christopher Nolan’s Batman earning global appeal, I am actually glad someone like Grant Morrison has been willing to play up the sci-fi element of a character who regularly rubs shoulders with human lightning bolts and cops wielding magic rings. I’ve been reluctant to read Morrison’s Batman over the last five years because of his psychedelic tendencies, but now I really want to check out the opus of a man clearly dedicated to the beauty and wonder of the super hero, and this is specifically a result of having read Supergods.

Is this a good thing? I don’t know, but it is my reality when it comes to the work of Grant Morrison.

Supergods was at times trippy and, quite honestly, when it comes to his personal life, a little crazy, but overall it was overall extremely enlightening and a joy to read. I recommend all lovers of super heroes and comic books give it a try. You’ll look at the industry, its characters, and the Grant Morrison himself with a new appreciation.

I really wanted to like this book. But despite my initial enthusiasm, I ultimately found myself struggling to finish it.

I've been a comics fan for 35 years, and am fairly well versed in the classic super-hero books. The book begins as an exploration of the super-hero, covering territory that is well known to anyone with a passing familiarity with comics history.

There really isn't anything new on the historical front. The book is divided into four parts, Golden Age, Silver Age, Dark Age, and Renaissance. The emphasis is generally on the myths rather than the myth makers, and the scope means he is covering so much territory that he doesn't have a lot of time to spend on any given area. So the first two parts cover territory that has been very well covered before, in much greater depth. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, Captain Marvel, the Schwartz revivals, the Marvel Age.

The only thing original to these sections are Morrison's riffs on his interpretations of the effects of the characters on their readers, which, frankly, aren't that ground breaking. But they do lay the groundwork for the third and fourth parts of the book, in which the focus of the book increasingly turns towards the autobiographical. The Dark Ages covers the O'Neil/Adams runs on Batman & Green Lantern/Green Arrow, as well as Marvel's experimental '70s years. And it covers Morrison's youth and the role some of these books played in his childhood/teens. We get a small glimpse as well into the British scene, but not extensive. We move on to cover Morrison's entry into said British scene, as well as Moore and Miller's breakthrough mid-'80s works at DC (and we learn that Morrison thinks very little indeed of Watchmen). We learn about Morrison's breakthrough at DC and how he and his pals were responsible for the critical success of Vertigo and how Morrison gradually came to live the life of a modern counter culture writer, jet-setting around the world like a rock star and imbibing more drugs than Keith Richards.

In short, the book lacks focus. What begins as a not terribly original review of the super-hero gradually becomes instead an autobiography of Grant Morrison, and how learned to immerse himself in that world. Which is not at all what the publisher's back cover blurb would lead you to believe.

I've read and enjoyed Morrison's work in comics--Animal Man and JLA are particular standouts in my opinion, as well as several of his Batman arcs. But he's also done some stuff that totally missed for me (Final Crisis), and this book falls squarely into the latter category.

I started out thinking this was going to be a fantastic book. The well-reasoned critical discussion of comics history (for example, I had never thought to do an in-depth artistic analysis of the Action Comics #1 and Detective Comics #27 covers) and its relation to the contemporary culture that influenced it is terrific for many chapters. Everything was going smoothly... until Grant Morrison was born.

Once Morrison reaches an era where he can access his own memories, he immediately inserts himself into the story (as he famously did during his run on Animal Man). The book becomes comics history as autobiography, relying too heavily on the books Morrison read and liked, the work he did, and the work his friends created. Once Morrison starts telling us about his experiences with psychedelic drugs, the book delves into the questions of philosophy alluded to in the subtitle (What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us about Being Human). At this point, the book becomes a weird hodgepodge of sociology, history, and Eastern philosophy. Though not exactly what I expected, Supergods is still well worth reading.

I could almost forgive Morrison for the merely half-brilliant book if he hadn't been so loose with his description of the multimedia rundown of Superman's end-of-the-century escapades. He claims the mulleted version of Superman "hung on grimly until 2000," but Clark actually got a haircut in time for his wedding in 1996. (He also carelessly says Superman Returns came out in 2007, not 2006.) It might seem like I'm nitpicking, but it's a detail like that that makes me wonder if there are any other typos or misrememberings I'm not picking up on. I'm not claiming this to be true, but I'd believe that Morrison would rely on his vast knowledge of comics for facts and dates instead of rigorous fact checking. Though he is clearly grateful for the opportunity to be in the comics business, it's fairly evident that his healthy ego is the lens through which the entirety of comicdom is viewed. I wonder if Morrison felt this was really the only way to tell his life's story, by showing early comics to be his ancestors in a de facto family tree, and his ideas, comics, and predictions as his descendants. Morrison has woven himself into the fabric of comics, the medium that birthed him, as the ultimate product of the masters and the driving force of change and predictor of future trends from the '80s onward.

Anyone who comes here looking for a safe, quiet, dry history of comic books and superheros is going to be disappointed - but then again, if you're a comics fan you probably already know the name Grant Morrison, and you know to prepare for weirdness.

Supergods starts off strong as a mythological and psychological history of the very concept of the superhero, up until the point where the author himself enters the story and it becomes an autobiography. I can't really fault Morrison for not extricating himself from his subject, because I understand where he's coming from. For those of us with serious comic book addictions, the history of our heroes reads as an alternate history of the 20th Century. For instance, when I think of the significant events of the 1970s, I come up with Vietnam, Watergate, the Energy Crisis, and the Kree-Skrull War.

But I digress, and so does Morrison. His self-examination comes to a peak with his period of psychedelic and shamanistic experimentation, culminating (spoiler warning) in a play-by-play of his mystical, multi-dimensional alien abduction experience. He admits the experience was probably just a case of temporal-lobe epilepsy, but that doesn't negate the effect it had on his views on art and the world.

He gets back on target as he brings his history into the modern era of Big Event Comics and an exponentially increasing number of superheros in the movies. As an examination of one tiny, under-appreciated genre of pop-art the book is fascinating, but Morrison has a deeper argument to make: a moral as it were. Our stories have a lot to say about who we are, but the feedback loop works both ways, and the stories we choose to tell ourselves have a direct effect on how we develop as human beings. That we in the present age choose to tell ourselves superhero stories gives Morrison a lot of hope for the human race and its aspirations to become something better.

VERDICT: ~ 2.45 stars, not rounded up.

First 1/3 = 3.45 stars
Middle 1/3 = 1.1 stars
Last 1/3 = 2.8 stars

PROS: The first part (origins of Superman, BatMan, Wonder Woman, etc) was pretty good, but could have been deeper.

CONS: Wanders far off topic. Too many esoteric comic titles.

UNFORGIVABLE SINS: Barely and insufficiently illustrated.

REVIEW: Had Morrison stuck with what he had going in the first 1/3 of the book, it would have ganered a 3.5-4 star rating. Alas, it devolves into tales of his own drug use, travels, existential woo-woo experiences, and nonsensical ramblings (apparently he can look at a coffee cup and magically see the universe in 5 dimensions).

Morrison spends too much time on obscure comics most people have never heard of (and which he never bothers to show us), while ignoring many relevant titles. The last part improves a bit; Morrison partially gets back on topic and covers some newer comics and superhero movies.

This book would have benefited greatly from FOCUS on the promised topic, and at least 10 times more illustrations. The cover promised an "analysis of what superheroes can tell us about ourselves and our culture," but rarely (and barely) goes there.

Also see Kelly's excellent review of this book at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

A book about comics and superheroes needs more than a sparse handful of small black & white illustrations. I don't want to read pages and pages of words about various comic artists' styles; SHOW US INSTEAD!

Grant Morrison's self-indulgent work needed a tremendous amount of editing and shaping before this saw print. He garbles elements of his own history along with that of the comics field. His observations are interesting but in the end, I have no idea what the point of the book was. It certainly had little to do with the book's subtitle. Since I was there at the beginning of his meteoric rise in American comics, I bring a certain perspective to this and wish he addressed more about tose early days when story trumped grand ideas. For example, he totally ignores his co-written run on Flash, knocking his collaborator Mark Millar only for their efforts on Swamp Thing. He also totally glosses over what should have been the brilliant FINAL CRISIS but instead ignores how DC sabotaged his planning so the book stopped making sense around page three of issue one. I was deeply disappointed by this effort.

I'm gonna quit reading this because frankly, I have too many books to read (and don't get me started in the TV shows I have to watch) and I'm not that much of a fan of superheroes. And everyone that is, probably already knows the book and has read it.
I found some interesting things, but also a lot of information about comics I have never heard of.
I have to say that listening to Morrison speak so highly and passionately about his love for comics upped the book, even though I'm not that interested in the subject matter.
I'll probably get back to this at some point.

A massive, wide-ranging dissection of comic history and trends. Morrison is honest about his favourites, brilliantly acerbic about those that left him wanting. It's more than anything a book about DC comics (not my faves). He goes deep with his own history and journey as a writer, delves into his excess and spirituality and philosophy and how he feels all that connects to his art and process.

A fun mix of history, critical analysis of comics, and Grant Morrison being a mad person. A little bit long maybe but a great read.