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Tuesday, July 19, 2011

‘Supergods,’ by Grant Morrison - Review - NYTimes.com

‘Supergods,’ by Grant Morrison - Review - NYTimes.com: If anyone should be up to the task of rediscovering the magical essence that has inspired nearly 75 years’ worth of superhero storytelling, it is Grant Morrison, a Scottish comics writer and author of “Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God From Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human.”

Alongside genre-redefining talents like Frank Miller (the writer and illustrator of “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns”) and Alan Moore (the writer of “Watchmen”), Mr. Morrison, 51, is one of several revered comics figures who, beginning in the late 1980s, dragged the medium into the modern day.

In his own work Mr. Morrison has brought a mythological and metaphysical approach to superheroes. His wonderfully imaginative mini-series, “All-Star Superman,” originally released by DC Comics from 2005 to 2008, regarded the Man of Steel as a 21st-century Hercules, performing trials on a cosmic scale for the wonderment of his mortal admirers. His “Final Crisis,” however, was a rambling, baffling attempt to construct a unifying narrative for DC (and to include seemingly every character in that publisher’s pantheon). It created a lot of question marks in the thought bubbles above readers’ heads.