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I AM. I AM SUPERMAN
A famous story has Eric Clapton, the artist
formerly known as God, going into a club and
seeing Jimi Hendrix for the first time, where
upon Clapton's stunned reaction was, "What
do I do now?" I always imagine that to be
the reaction of the creators of American com
ics in the late '80s, when a horde of British
writers led by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and
Grant Morrison showed up and started taking
over, ripping up tired old conventions and
injecting the funnies with a potent cocktail of
mature dialogue, punk attitude and thematic
psychedelia that gave us such groundbreaking
comics as Watchmen, The Sandman and The
Invisibles, all books that we funnybook fans
inevitably shove into
our friends hands as
proof that "comic
books aren't just for
kids!" For those of us
who'd become bored
with the same old
tired hyperthyroid
punch-'em-outs in
mainstream com
ics, suddenly here
were heroic stories
with brains, funnies
that challenged us,
and—perhaps most
importantly—comics
our girlfriends read,
too.
For those who
aren't familiar
with these writ
ers, I'll give you an
example of what
the Glaswegian
punk shaman Grant
Morrison does for a
living. In his break
out title, Doom Patrol, he took a fourth-tier
DC comic about a misfit superhero team and
introduced a hero with 64 different person
alities, each with a different superpower;
revealed a loving gay relationship between
two bad guys who happened to be a talking
gorilla and a brain in a jar; created a team of
villainous Dadaists who sucked Paris into a
painting; and gave us Danny the Street, a hero
who was literally a street (philosophy profes
sor Steven Shaviro used Morrison's work as the
jumping-off point for his amazing and highly
recommended collection of essays on post
modernism, Doom Patrols).
And that's just one book. Since then,
Morrison has emerged as one of the top com
ics writers in the industry, lending his unique,
mind-expanding perspective to projects that
range from the ridiculous (Animal Man) to the
sublime (New X-Men, Superman). Morrison is
the Elvis Costello of comics—even his throw
away ideas are spun gold; not always success
ful, perhaps, but smarter than funnybooks
have any right to be.
What makes Morrison's work so powerful
is not a rejection of the traditional superhero
idiom but the embrace of its potential. In that
way, it's punk as punk was always intended,
not as a condemnation of institutions but
of their failures. While mainstream comics
had for decades worked hard to humanize
their heroes, giving them mundane problems
and soap-opera crises, Morrison views super
heroes as exemplars of something greater,
more "super" than "man." Heroes are heroes
because they step up, go beyond, do what all
of us would do if we could. That gives their
stories power to inspire us and imbues them
with life beyond their creators, injecting them
into the collective unconscious as surely as
myth.
This is the point behind Morrison's
remarkable book Supergods: What Masked
Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants and a Sun
God from Smallville Can Teach Us About
Being Human (Random House, 2011). Part
history of superhero comics, part autobiogra
phy and part Joseph Campbell-esque medita
tion on the resonance of archetypes, the book
examines a lifetime spent in the company
of men and women who save the world in
their underwear, how they contributed to his
extraordinary life as
writer, musician and
intrepid explorer of
higher conscious
ness and how we all
might do the same.
While Morrison's
analyses of comics
heroes (Superman
as socialist hero vs.
Batman as defender
of capitalism, the
paradox of Wonder
Woman as both femi
nist ideal and fetish
object, DC's pater
nalism vs. Marvel's
radicalism) have
all been expressed
many times before,
the author infuses
his narrative with a
curiously effective
mixture of wide-eyed
gee-whiz and know
ing cynicism that's a
real pleasure to read.
Moreover, Morrison works with a wide canvas,
continually working his subject into the con
text of history and pop culture at large, imbu
ing his discussion of funnybooks with a proper
appreciation of them as cultural artifacts and
touchstones of modern Western civilization.
This sounds a bit pompous, but Morrison's
enthusiasm and accessibility make it work.
More importantly, Morrison uses his own
experiences as a scenester, musician, occult
ist and journeyman writer to build his thesis
about the idea of superheroes, if not always
the execution, as an archetypal lodestone
toward the development of our potential.
Simply put, if stories and myths inspire us to
greatness, then stories and myths about ideal
ized figures who fight for the greater good
and never give up should inspire us most of
all. Rather than viewing superheroes as mere
wish-fulfillment fantasies, Morrison asserts, we
should be looking at just how good the wish
is and how we might fulfill it. As a template
for living, aspiring to work for justice and the
common well-being isn't half bad.
Word: It has been a while since I've posted
anything about poetry in town, but it does
happen all around us. Athens Word of Mouth
is an open-mic poetry event held on the first
Wednesday of every, month at The Globe (on
the corner of Lumpkin and Clayton). Local
poets are invited to come do their thing this
Wednesday, Sept. 7, when the featured reader
will be Bob Brussack. For details, check out
their website: www.athenswordofmouth.com.
John G. Nettles
Wow Open
Sunday!
7am-4pm
Featuring quiche by the slice and
including our usual breakfast yummies!
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SEPTEMBER 7, 2011 • FLAGPOLE.COM 11
