As one of the world’s leading comics writers, with titles including All-Star Superman and Justice League to his name, Glasgow’s Grant Morrison was the perfect man to write a history of superheroes. But Supergods covers a lot more than the world of pen and ink. Here, he explains how he first became hooked on comic heroes, and what the superhero means to the world post-9/11 GRANT MORRISON
W hen I was eight my mum, who was a big fan of science fiction in all its forms, took me to see 2001: A Space Odyssey three times in one month. It was a profound thing to see. The second time I was so freaked out by the Stargate sequence that I couldn’t watch. I made my teddy bear watch instead. Even as a kid I was totally into it. I didn’t mind that there were 20 minutes of apes at the start and guys just talking for an hour and half after that – it was just compelling. It’s up there with the Sistine Chapel as one of the greatest things humans have ever made.
In terms of the film’s influence, the cosmic dimension was what I took from it more than anything else – the idea that there is a state that can be reached and then surpassed that takes us into a much bigger and more encompassing, holistic view of the universe and of life and death. Having that rubbed in at such a young age haunted me. I found that same stuff in Jack Kirby’s work such as New Gods – a real sense of the ineffable and of things beyond the veil. That point of being on the edge of comprehension fascinated me even then. Now I try to embody that in my characters and situations. My mother was also a fan of comics, though it was my granddad, who was a riveter on the Clyde, who first brought them into the family. My first exposure to the superhero idea was when I saw a Marvelman comic, aged about three. I read comics like every other kid read them; they were really cool but at that age everything is: a flower on a stick or a caterpillar is cool. It was only when I became the classic withdrawn teenager that comics became an absolute obsession.
I loved the old Flash comics, which were
THE STORIES NOW HAVE TO BE ABOUT GRIEF AND LOSS AND JOY
AND HOPE AND THINGS
very trippy with these bizarre far-out stories. They also really influenced me as a kid. Flash looked the best and represented a lot of cool stuff: lightning bolts and speed and energy and coffee. He seemed like the true hero of modernity. A lot of the superheroes, like Flash, don’t even need a great backstory. If you look back to the early Zorro film, which influenced Batman, Zorro just turns up and starts kicking ass. There’s no indication why he became Zorro or why he chose to dress like that. The modern approach to comic superheroes only came in later, when adults started to ask dumb questions like, ‘Why would he do that? How could he afford to do that?’ These are really stupid questions to ask of fantasy,
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but people did ask them, and then try to answer them. A superhero doesn’t really need a major motivation, though the best ones tend to have something big going on: Batman’s parents or Superman losing an entire planet so he has to protect this one. And a superhero needs to have a good silhouette; they need to be distinguishable. After World War II, the popular comics were about crime, war, romance and horror. Superheroes vanished because they had been created for one purpose, which was to serve as heroes during the depression. They’d look after the poor and protect the weak. During the war they became patriotic, but after that they had no reason to exist. We’d just fought a war without superheroes and they suddenly started to look a bit ridiculous. Superheroes didn’t really become popular again until the late 50s, when there was a resurgence of the pioneer spirit. America started looking forward again, with Kennedy and the space race. Superheroes had the ‘right stuff’. They slotted quite nicely into this new optimism.
More recently, there’s been an onslaught of superheroes, starting with the first X-Men movie in 2000. This stuff that was once kept behind closed doors, and seen as the preserve of collectors or hobbyists, now belongs to everyone. What interests me is the way that the superhero is trying to claw its way into reality. There are now people who dress up like superheroes and try to fight crime. As an idea, the superhero seems to be getting stronger and more persistent. It almost demands that we connect with it.
THAT PEOPLE FEEL
The only way to make things in comic books real is to make comic books about real things. That’s not to have Superman sitting on the toilet or Batman doing his taxes, but dealing with the feelings we all have. The stories now have to be about grief and loss and joy and hope and things that people feel – something meaningful and not just punch-ups.
The fears are what it’s all about. When I was doing Justice League, the writing was all about how you can marshal these forces of the human imagination against your depression, and against your fears for the world. It was very therapeutic for me. I feel better about life now, but I still use my characters to talk about the way I feel, and we feel, collectively. Moreso after 9/11, in that dark world that followed where kids were cutting themselves and the soldiers were dying. 23 Jun–21 Jul 2011 THE LIST 29