Grant Morrison's Supergods - Digested!

We’re all Busy People On The Go these days (yes! My brain has been infected by the’lexicon’ of daytime TV) and perhaps you don’t have the time or inclination to wade through the 400 plus pages of Grant Morrison’s new tome Supergods (although you should, it’s rather good.) So here’s our digested version of the book!

Part 1: The Golden Age:
Superman was created in 1938. Grant Morrison was born in 1960. Blah blah. Origin of superheroes. Good stuff about 1940s man of mystery Red Bee. He’s got a natty costume and a crimefighting bee compadre called Michael! (People will be crying out for a Red Bee collection after this. I know I am.)

Part 2: The Silver Age:
Round-up of the excesses of DC’s silver age doolalliness – Jimmy Olsen was a gender bender before it became trendy apparently. Morrison starts his relentless sniping at Alan Moore…

Part 3: The Dark Age:
Morrison’s self-mythologising really gets underway. Contains a nice recap of his local newspaper strip Captain Clyde then he gives us the impression he was doing 2000AD a huge favour by gracing its pages with his (completely genius) superhero strip Zenith. Then the usual malarkey about his forays into voodoo sorcery – and the revelation he did some of this in drag.

Part 4: The Renaissance:
Kicks off with another account of his visitation by extraterrestrials – familiar to anyone who was hooked on the letter column in The Invisibles. Leads into a mind-twisting claim that quantum theory says the universe is a ‘hologram’ which may also mean fictional universes are as ‘real’ as our own. Or summat. (I didn’t really understand this bit, obviously...)There’s also a rather Brit-centric account of how Morrison and his pals reinvigorated the industry while Rob Liefeld didn’t know what he was doing but earned more money than everyone. Muses that he ‘ruined’ Magneto, touches on his run-ins with former Marvel supremo Bill Jemas and reminds us (and DC Comics) that his one-time pal Mark Millar compared Paul Levitz to a paedophile. Lively!

Finishes with an account of ‘real life’ superheroes wherein he coins the inspired term ‘supervestism.’

This section also features some side-splitting writing. Grant Morrison sure has a nifty turn of phrase. Here are some highlights!

On his one-time protégé Mark Millar;

“I met Mark Millar when he was eighteen year old in 1988. He turned up at the door to interview me for the comics fanzine Fantasy Advertiser…Soon we were speaking on the phone every day usually for four-hour stretches, in hysterics. I suppose I was flattered by his attention and this ability to find everything I said funny, so I overlooked the potential for disaster in our unequal partnership.”

Pithy yet powerful!

The chapter Hollywood Sniffs Blood sees Morrison display his talent for comedy writing as he appraises big-screen superhero adaptations. This one is my favourite;

“The 1949 serial Batman and Robin, cheaper and seedier yet, features a remarkably dissolute performance by actor Robert Lowery. Both he and Robin have a thuggish, sizzled, and aggressive air. There was something of late-period Dean Martin in Lowery’s languid routine. With his tousled hair and hooded yes, his was a grown-up, manly, and possibly alcoholic Batman in early middle age, while Johnny Duncan’s Robin evoked a broken-down rent boy long past his best, delivering each of his lines in a frightening, lobotomized monotone.”

He also reflects on the rise of the ‘nerd culture’:

‘The geeks were in the spotlight now, proudly accepting a derogatory label that directly compared them to degraded freak-show acts. Bullied young men with asthma and shy, bitter virgins with adult-onset diabetes could now gang up like the playground toughs they secretly wanted to be and anonymously abuse and threaten professional writers and actors with family commitments and bills to pay.’

That sounds familiar…(looks around…)

Supergods’ part-biography part-history approach makes for an enjoyable and illuminating read. Morrison’s done his best to write about what he considers the most influential superhero work of recent years, and Peter Milligan and Warren Ellis get a decent look in, without relentlessly banging on about his own work.

It’s also a reminder of how innovative some of his writing has been. The Invisibles was a compelling series (which fell to pieces a bit towards the end) while Zenith and Animal Man set new standards for what was possible with the genre. Not everything he’s done has been great – I never made it past issue three of The Filth – but at least he’s tried to keep things unpredictable.

Let’s hope his Red Bee reboot isn’t far off…