Review: Supergods

UPDATE (16th July 2011) : This review was written after reading a publisher's proof of the book, which are often subject to revisions before the book is published. After flicking through the finished product it appears that there's a lot of different stuff in there that probably make a lot of this review moot. I'll probably review it again at some point. That's all!

SUPERGODS - OUR WORLD IN THE AGE OF THE SUPERHERO

by Grant Morrison

Jonathan Cape, 2011

At least three years since it was first announced, Grant Morrison's Supergods - Our World in the Age of the Superhero will finally tear open its shirt and burst on to the shelves of your High Street bookstore on July 19th. Part whistle-stop history of superhero comic books, part autobiography, Supergods is, at least here in the UK to judge by that frankly awful cover, cocked and locked on a thoroughly mass-market target; aimed squarely at the hipsters and cool kids who enjoyed Iron Man and The Dark Knight but wouldn't know, or care to know, the finer points of difference between a Don Heck panel and a Jim Aparo one. Its a welcome change from the usual 'inside baseball' tactic taken by most books about comic books and, given that summer 2011 might be superheroes last hurrah in the mainstream for a whle after the 'lacklustre' box-office takings of the Thor and Green Lantern movies, a timely one. If ever there was an ideal window of opportunity to unleash this book on an unsuspecting public, its right NOW!

As Morrison slogs toward the end of Supergods, he writes about how the book itself came to be. Originally planned as a collection of interviews over the years, his literary agent convinced him to write the book as it is now, a curious mash-up of individually skewed comic-book history and autobiography. He name checks Lester Bangs, the vitriolic, stream of conciousness heart and soul of Sixties and Seventies' Rolling Stone magazine, and Nick Kent, Bangs' punk-rock British counterpart, as twin inspirations. Their pedigree is impecable, and their signature free-wheeling, Gonzo style seems the ideal fit to chronicle comic-books own 'punk rock' years; the dark, 'relevant', Bronze Age Seventies and beyond.

But this book was not written by Bangs or Kent. Nor was it written by the hallucinogenic, leather trousered millenial punk Grant Morrison of the year 2000. The Grant Morrison of 2011 is a different, all together more placid and thoughtful animal, an acknowledged master of the form who can pick and choose his projects with minimal editorial interference. Though he's always there, leering in the background like Jax-Ur or Quex-El in one of those tormented Phantom Zone group shots, its not the specter of Bangs who looms large over Morrison's Supergods. Rather the General Zod of Morrison's literary influence seems to be the altogether more grown-up, wry and reflective Nick Hornby, chronicling with obvious fondness the cultural detritus of his youth through a lens of spikily amusing autobiography.

After casting a peculiarly microscopic eye over the covers of the ur-texts, Action Comics #1 and Detective Comics #27, Morrison swiftly dispatches the history of comic-book's Golden and Silver Ages in a few brief chapters and moves on to the period he's really interested in, the post-Stan Lee 'Dark Age' of 1970's Marvel. Morrison's focal points here are suitably left field for a mass-market history of superheroics, with page after page waxing lyrical on Steves Englehart and Gerber, Kirby's 'Fourth World' cycle, Jim Starlin and Don McGregor. Its in their whacked out 'cosmic' comics that Morrison finds his own storytelling roots, their drug crazed and mind-expanding stories and art a vital escape pod from his crushingly lonely adolescence. Morrison pokes fun at O'Neill and Adams' 'socially relevant' Green Lantern/Green Arrow, while clinically disecting every moving part of Roy Thomas' 'Kree-Skrull War' in a busman's orgy of superlatives. How many histories of America's bastard art encompass comprehensive write ups of McGregor's Killraven and Jungle Action runs? I'll tell you how many soldier. One. This one.

As Morrison moves into the Dark Age of the eighties and the full flowering of his own career. there's plenty of the acid-tinged prose, self-aggrandising and dark humour of yore, though by the time the chronicle reaches arguably his creative peak in the pre-Millenial 90's, the infamous 'alien abduction' and cosmic Mesa episodes are relayed with a mixture of mild embarassment and "Well, that's how I interpreted it at the time" asides. Morrison's life story is an engaging one, the archtypical outsider welcomed in, but its almost as if the process of chronicling his formative years has resulted in an acute awareness of his priveleged position, and a desire to go to great lengths not to burn too many bridges (except those leading to Mark Millarville and Alan Moorechester of course...). The result is faintly bizarre and unconvincing praise heaped on Brad Meltzer's excrable Identity Crisis and Geoff Johns equally unpalatable Infinite Crisis, whilst boiling cauldron's of scorn are poured on Marvel's entire output from 2001 onwards, including his own New X-Men. Morrison lays Moore's Watchmen bare as a dry, staid exercise in logic bolted to a ludicrous conclusion, but reserves his fiercest critique for ex-BFF Mark Millar. Like a simmering stock-pot of bitterness, Morrison reduces Millar's best-selling Civil War down to a tale about an old-school bust up between super-heroes in the Merry Marvel Manner, and lays the blame for all the 21st Century's ills at the feet of Millar and J G Jones' Wanted.

But I wish Grant Morrison had written this book ten years ago... There, I've said it now.

The prose never quite crackles and sets on fire as it feels like it should, retreating safely to shelter just as the Magic Lightning is about to strike. Supergods is undoubtedly better written, more commercially viable and more palatable for its target audience than if Morrison had written it at the height of his Invisbles-fuelled, magic powers, but its also less free-wheeling, less thrilling and less batshit crazy than the best of his work of that period.

Of course, this is an entirely selfish critique. We, you and I, dear Deep Space Transmissions reader, are clearly not the intended audience for this book. It's defiantly, explicitly even, written for the more casual fan, a populist ready reader on comic book history for those who know little of it and would be literally bored to death by Men of Tomorrow's tales of Jewish gangsters and the Depression-era pulp business. It's a mass market history of superheroes that's COOL. And you won't read a better one all year...

Thanks to Random House for the proof copy!