In Review: Grant Morrison's Supergods

I had shied away from Grant Morrison's new prose book about the history of the superheroes. This was not because I don't like superheroes as such, more that I have not really enjoyed Grant Morrison's take on them and assumed the book would make me feel similarly. In fact I could not have been more mistaken. Needing/wanting some holiday reading, I took the plunge, bought the book and immediately became hooked.

This book is so much more than just a chronological history of the quintessential American genre. It deftly weaves Morrison's unabashed love for the comics medium with memories of growing up, the emergence, at least intellectually, into adulthood and the cultural and historical significance of things going on in the world at any given time. And surprisingly, he shows us that the fortunes both in reality and within the fiction of superhero comics often mirrored those events. And so, as Grant Morrison recalls how his mother cried as first, JFK, then brother Booby and Martin Luther King were assassinated, the superheroes became darker, and the "flower people" awoke from the often drug-induced haze of hippydom, awareness growing that there was something dark and brooding "at the end of Penny Lane". There is the sad and so often repeated story of Corkerhill Rail Station where Grant's family had moved to, resplendent with its award-winning flower arrangements, its model village appearance and the prospect that with a few years, architects would have swept it away to replace it with "concrete crack houses", done by men with "no understanding of romance, only function".

As Morrison's narrative sweeps us through the decades, these constant cultural references take us along on the ups and downs, the optimism constantly crushed by pessimism and reality. But most of all, what comes through is Morrison's unconditional love of comics, and of superheroes in particular. His love of The Flash, the effect of discovering Captain Marvel, Adam Warlock and Marvel Comics, the power of comics to move us, astound us, a love letter to the medium. He gives us a new appreciation of people like Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Steve Englehart, Jim Starling and all the others who have stamped their mark on the medium.

Anybody could read this book and find something to enjoy, regardless of whether they like comics or not. And who wouldn't after reading this? Quite simply one of the best books I have read in a long time. Thank God we've got people like Grant Morrison waving the flag for our favourite medium.