REVIEW: Supergods

Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us about Being Human.

Written by Grant Morrison

First published in 2012

Supergods

·         The whole of the work is Grant Morrison’s summary of the Golden Age, Silver Age, Dark Age and Renaissance of American comics, with his personal history and life-changing experiences interlaced with the narrative starting with the Silver Age/Dark Age.

·         A minor detail is that Grant Morrison overlooked that Mary Marvel mistakenly says “Captain Marvel” like Captain Marvel Jr. to become a hero, when she also says “Shazam” like Billy Batson except it’s to invoke goddesses for powers instead of gods like Captain Marvel.

·         A lot of American comics’ writers seem to be British by the influences that Grant Morrison states helped shaped American comics by the Dark Age.

·         He includes his details on his interpersonal relationship with the characters Animal Man and Superman, who are real people to him that happen to live in the DC Universe.

·         Periodically, Morrison includes pictures to tell his commentary, like the cover of Action #1 which he commentates on how people may react to seeing Superman for the first time during the early days of the Golden Age.

·         Jack Kirby is a consistent influence to Grant Morrison given his constant praise of Kirby’s creations showing up in his commentary or how cosmic comic events are constantly linked to Kirby by Morrison.

·         Morrison also happens to be responsible for a good number of Final Crisis and Countdown, which I happen to not very much, which he sees as art which I mostly vary in agreement save for the end of Final Crisis and the characters fighting the blank of the screen, ie their Armageddon.

·         Morrison also includes “real life superhero” phenomenon of real people in his final statements of both the original and paperback versions of Supergods. He uses this as justification that heroes are amongst us and how the line between fantastic heroic flare and real life is blurring. However, given my own knowledge of real life superheroes I don’t completely agree with this as real life superheroes do not necessarily help real causes as much.

·         Morrison includes a good number of Mark Millar titles to talk of the Dark Age and Renaissance where heroes are seen in a negative light. This may have been due to their previous friendship which let Morrison view his work more.

·         Despite talking of a good number about American comics, Morrison left out Will Eisner’s The Spirit in his book, who I see just as influential as Jack Kirby in using comics as an art medium.

·         The paperback book included commentary on Astro City and the Reeve’s Superman movie that were left out in the original print. Both were really good though I knew all the information of them already.

·         Overall, Morrison’s book Supergods was very informative of the history and culture of Comics. I would compare it to be the Sophie’s World of the Comic world, where as we go down the life of Morrison ‘s quest to becoming the known comics writer he is today do we also learn of the complete history of American comics and how it changed the more than half a century American hero comics have been around.

Bibliography

Morrison, Grant. Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us about Being Human. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2012. Print.