It begins as a fairly straightforward primer, detailed and informed enough to let you feel knowledgable but not so stuffed with minutiae and trivia as to deter a newcomer. That would be a tremendous shame, because Supergods is perhaps the most satisfactory potted history of the American comic book industry I've ever read (and I've read just about all its competitors) while also offering a brilliantly incisive, if very personal, appreciation and analysis of the most important comic books or graphic novels – call 'em what you will – to be published in the past 30 years. That's not to suggest that big is necessarily bad, it's just that it takes a certain amount of commitment to pick this up in the first place, and I suspect that the average reader – those not already hooked on comics or aware that Grant Morrison is one of the finest writers, if not the finest writer, working in comics today – will find it too much of an ask. Even my nearly bottomless interest in, and affection for, comics and those who write and draw them began to ebb a little over nearly 500 pages. It is also a big book: big on ideas, big on ambition, perhaps too big in terms of length. Part history of comics, part memoir, part slightly loopy philosophical work, Supergods is an unusual book. And if there's no room for all that fun stuff in your comic books, when and where can you unload? So if you are writing comics, and you have a sophisticated and original mind, these days you have no outlet for all those ideas about the plight of mankind, or how punk rock changed your life, or what transcendental meditation might achieve for Batman. There isn't really a lot of space left for complicated ideas and eloquent wordplay. Two will be about how they get to bump into each other before they can have a big old punching party, and a couple more will be dedicated to tying up the loose ends after the last big fight. Maybe four pages will be devoted to setting up why they need to be punching each other.
Most comic books run to just 20 pages now, at least eight of which will feature giant panels with images of super-types punching each other. It works, kind of, but those of us who grew up with the great writers of the 1970s and 80s – Don McGregor, Doug Moench, Steve Englehart and Steve Gerber (all of whom receive name checks in Grant Morrison's Supergods) – miss having more words, actual written ideas pasted alongside the pretty pictures. The current vogue in the world of what used to be known as "four-colour funny books" is for bold blockbuster concepts told with big pictures and as few words as possible. I f you haven't read a comic book recently, here's a "heads-up".
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