Supergods : What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God From Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human

Amazon.com Review **Amazon Best Books of the Month, July 2011**: According to *Supergods*, *Superman* comics say less about Superman than they do about Clark Kent. Superman was conceived as a symbol of strength and individualism for the Depression-era middle class--perhaps a more compelling portrait of the era than much literature of the time. But this is just one of the many superhero mythologies author Grant Morrison unpacks to give colorful historical and cultural context. Morrison, a prolific comics storyteller with a career spanning 20 years writing for both Marvel and DC Comics, may be the world's most qualified superhero scholar. (Morrison's reinvention of the Man of Steel, the *All Star Superman* series, is arguably the best comic of the past decade.) But *Supergods* isn't a book that appeals strictly to fanboys. Like his comics, Morrison's prose is swift yet powerful, and it's the broader strokes of the *Supergods* narrative that resonate most. The book succeeds at being a great history of comic books over the past century, but it's an even more convincing exploration of humankind as a whole. *--Kevin Nguyen* Review *Praise for SUPERGODS *"Grant Morrison is the antimatter to the often mundane world of comics - SUPERGODS is the finely tuned death-ray. Far beyond deconstruction, it exposes, challenges, invigorates and detonates everything we know about this modern mythology. SUPERGODS gives meaning to the fictional worlds we create and live within and helps us make sense of the madness within ourselves through the four-color world of the super hero." --Gerard Way, lead singer of My Chemical Romance and author of The Umbrella Academy. "Excellent ... engrossing ... Morrison is a skilled word magician, seeking creativity in a cosmological dimension." --Publishers Weekly "Morrison is ideally suited to the task of chronicling the glorious rise, fall, rise, fall and rise again of comic-book superheroes. As thorough an account of the superhero phenomenon as readers are likely to find, filled with unexpected insights and savvy pop-psych analysis. Those who dare enter will find the prose equivalent of a Morrison superhero tale: part perplexing, part weird, fully engrossing." --Kirkus # 1 in Wired's "10 Books That Will Fry Your Mind This Summer" "Grant Morrison has a hell of a tale to tell: The graphic novelist who co-created Batman's twisted game-changer Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth tripped on psilocybin mushrooms, fought movie execs to keep the Joker in high heels and reaped the benefits of going 50 hours without sleep in order to better access his unconscious. Subtitled What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human, this trippy autobiography-cum-critical essay gathers up the deep thoughts and otherworldly hallucinations experienced by the comics writer." --Wired.com NPR's "Summer High Fliers" "Grant Morrison is one of the world's leading experts on comic books, and he draws on his entire body of work in Supergods, charting the history of superheroes from the very beginning. Morrison places the figures we all know -- Superman, Spider-Man, the X-Men -- in a broad cultural context, invoking art history, science and mythology to explain why we are so fascinated by the superhuman." --NPR.org **Praise for Grant Morrison** “Grant Morrison is one of the great comics writers of all time. I wish I didn’t have to compete with someone as good as him.”—Stan Lee “Grant’s whole body of work inspired me.”—Gerard Way, My Chemical Romance “I suddenly realized that everything that I’m trying to say in my nonfiction work, and in some of my fiction work, had been so beautifully and so imaginatively expressed in the work of Grant Morrison.”—Deepak Chopra From one of the most acclaimed and profound writers in the world of comics comes a thrilling and provocative exploration of humankinds great modern the superhero The first superhero comic ever published, Action Comics no. 1 in 1938, introduced the world to something both unprecedented and Superman, a caped god for the modern age. In a matter of years, the skies of the imaginary world were filled with strange mutants, aliens, and Batman, Wonder Woman, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, and the X-Menthe list of names as familiar as our own. In less than a century, theyve gone from not existing at all to being everywhere we on our movie and television screens, in our videogames and dreams. But what are they trying to tell us? For Grant Morrison, arguably the greatest of contemporary chroniclers of the superworld, these heroes are powerful archetypes whose ongoing, decades-spanning story arcs reflect and predict the course of human Through them we tell the story of ourselves, our troubled history, and our starry aspirations. In this exhilarating work of a lifetime, Morrison draws on art, science, mythology, and his own astonishing journeys through this shadow universe to provide the first true history of the superherowhy they matter, why they will always be with us, and what they tell us about who we are . . . and what we may yet become. NATIONAL BESTSELLER • What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Iron Man, and the X-Men—the list of names as familiar as our own. They are on our movie and television screens, in our videogames and in our dreams. But what are they trying to tell us? For Grant Morrison, one of the most acclaimed writers in the world of comics, these heroes are powerful archetypes who reflect and predict the course of human existence: Through them we tell the story of ourselves. In this exhilarating work of a lifetime, Morrison draws on art, archetypes, and their own astonishing journeys through this shadow universe to provide the first true history of our great modern myth: the superhero. Now with a new Afterword The sun god and The dark knight Lightning's childl The superwarrior and the Amazon princess The explosion and the extinction Superman on the couch Chemicals and lightening The fab four and the birth of the marvelous Superpop Infinite earths Shamans of Madison Avenue Brightest day, blackest night Feared and misunderstood Fearful symmetry Zenith The hateful dead Image versus substance King Mob : my life as a superhero Man of muscle mystery What's so funny about truth, justice, and the American way? Respecting authority Hollywood sniffs blood Nu marvel 9/11 The day evil won Iron men and incredibles Over the event horizon Star, legend, superhero, supergod? Outro: 'nuff said. Morrison Draws On History, Art, Mythology, And His Own Astonishing Journeys Through This Alternate Universe As A Comic Book Writer To Provide The First True Chronicle Of The Superhero.