NATIONAL BESTSELLER • What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human
Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Iron Man, and the X-Men—the list of names as familiar as our own. They are on our movie and television screens, in our videogames and in our dreams. But what are they trying to tell us? For Grant Morrison, one of the most acclaimed writers in the world of comics, these heroes are powerful archetypes who reflect and predict the course of human existence: Through them we tell the story of ourselves. In this exhilarating work of a lifetime, Morrison draws on art, archetypes, and their own astonishing journeys through this shadow universe to provide the first true history of our great modern myth: the superhero.
Now with a new Afterword
Supergods
What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human
1 of 1 copy available
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
July 19, 2011 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780679603467
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780679603467
- File size: 5681 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from May 9, 2011
A Scottish playwright and comic book writer, Morrison (Arkham Asylum) traces the rise of superheroes from the 1940s golden age to the comics industry of today. This excellent survey of pop deity origins begins with "the ur-god and his dark twin," Superman and Batman. As Morrison sees it, "archetyped, pop-mythic tales of superpowered heroes and villains" soared into our collective imaginations in an explosive fashion. Superman, "the personification of a thrusting industrial tomorrow," had a primal impact. Soon there was a pantheon of gods and figures from legend and myth: Hawkman ("an avatar of hawk-headed Horus"), the Flash ("the Greek god Hermes") and Captain Marvel, whose magic word, "Shazam," was an acronym: Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, Mercury. When writers brought the superhero gods down to Earth and gritty real life (as in Watchmen), Morrison went back to basics: "I decided I would plant my flag in the world of dreams, automatic writing, visions and magic." The second half of this engrossing book covers his own comics career while also probing his personal psyche. Morrison is a skilled word magician, seeking creativity in a cosmological dimension.
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