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Jump to navigationJump to searchSupergods: Our World in the Age of the Superhero by Grant Morrison (view source)
Revision as of 14:33, 22 July 2012
, 14:33, 22 July 2012no edit summary
|summary=A superlative study of graphic novels - plus some needless musings and drug-taking later on. Shame, as it spoils a very important academic volume.
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Consider the super-hero comic. Borne out of a need to create cheap and franchise-friendly content for newspapers in America, it's grown into a billion-dollar industry, with Hollywood jumping on the bandwagon of several major characters now their FX have finally caught up with the printed page. Disposable? - once upon a time, yet now collectable to the tune of a million dollars or more. Frivolous? - probably, yet not exclusively now, if ever so. At one point here, they are just one product of the infinitely powerful imaginary system each of us carries in our brain, and at the other ""''ethereal, paper-thin constructs of unfettered imagination""''.
Such a dichotomous fabric of our culture, whether low- or high-brow, deserves academic study, and such we get here. Histories of Superman, Batman et al have been given us before, but never from someone who has made the creation, adaptation and furtherance of such franchises their bread and butter for so long. Morrison's insider knowledge (added to a brilliant erudition) lends veracity and authority to a volume such as this.
