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Move over, monotheism as we knew it. Led by the indestructible Superman, superheroes have irrevocably metamorphosed into the spiritual paragons of our multimedia existence.
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That's the thrusting thesis of celebrated comics writer Grant Morrison's debut book, Supergods, out Tuesday stateside. It functions both as Morrison's revealing personal memoir, as well as a riveting critical and cultural history of superhuman archetypes that have evolved into pop and philosophical powerhouses.
"It offers a glimpse into the stories and lives of the people who created these superheroes, as we enter the age of superhumanity," Morrison told Wired.com by phone in the extensive interview below. "I'm hoping the flying kids of the future will read Supergods as a story of their role models, and the dreams we had about them, before they actually became real."
Morrison and artist Rags Morales are spearheading this pantheistic cultural shift in September by rebooting Action Comics and Superman, the supergod of Supergods, for a post-millennial generation swimming in exponential technological change.
It's the keystone of DC Comics' ambitious campaign to re-create its gods and monsters for a century that might as well be light-years away from the milieu of World War II, when comics came to power as lowbrow "paper creations originally designed to entertain children and servicemen, but which have developed dimensions beyond that," said Morrison.
Those added dimensions include blockbuster films like Zack Snyder and Christopher Nolan's forthcoming Man of Steel, coming next year, as well as immersive virtual realities like Batman: Arkham City, out Oct. 18. They also include same-day digital comics, an obvious concession to a wireless communications future where print no longer carries the same cultural capital. But even digital comics have a long way to go before they can catch up to their supergods, whose limitless possibilities demand more flexibility and creativity.
"It's always a mistake whenever new technology comes along, and an old form tries to translate," Morrison said. "It's like film a century ago, where directors were simply re-creating the look of a play in a theater, rather than moving the camera around. So far, online comics have done the same."
For his part, Morrison is thinking, and working, both inside and outside the faltering comics industry. He splits time between his native Scotland and beckoning Hollywood, which is finally warming to the writer's game-changing work. His original script for Barry Sonnenfeld's dinosaurs-versus-aliens blockbuster Dominion is in the can, and Morrison's still hard at work adapting his mind-frying comics like We3 and more for Generation Imax. It's just a matter of time before his sweet acid satire Seaguy or once-unfilmable epic The Invisibles make the jump to the big screen. Or he proudly follows in the footsteps of comics compatriot Neil Gaiman and writes one of the best Doctor Who episodes of all time. In fact, he's already got one lined up.
"I've been trying for a while to come up with my own ultimate version of a Doctor Who story," he said. "But I couldn't say anything because that would give it away."
Wired.com gets deep with Morrison on digitalism, pantheism, why humanity might be a planetary cancer and much more in the conversation below. Turn on your mind, relax and float upstream into the superheroic pantheon.
Meet the New Gods, Better Than the Old Gods
Wired.com: Reading Supergods, I came away with the sense that Superman and Batman are ready to step into the void left behind by the aging Abrahamic gods, now that our new century is moving beyond them.
Grant Morrison: Yeah, absolutely. At least with superhero characters, we know they're not real. [Laughs] That takes away some problems of the old legends. And they do fill the gap in a secular culture, because they open up dimensions of the cosmic and transcendent, which is stuff legends usually have to deal with. It's not so much that they are new versions of the gods, because the gods were always just our eternal qualities. Superman possesses the qualities of the very best man we can imagine at any given time. In that sense, he's divine. Batman is representative of our dark subconscious, who nevertheless works for the good of humanity. They embody the same ideals.
Wired.com: Superman and Batman, as you note in Supergods, function as a powerful yin-yang foundation, the light and the dark, the socialist and the capitalist. As divine figures, do you think they're capable of being extracted from our earthly politics?
Morrison: I think so. They've existed for so long now that they have survived all kinds of political and national systems. The heroes of the late '60s were troubled cosmic seekers or macho prototypes, and nothing like the kind of mythic, iconic superheroes we have now in this post-celebrity age. So they have constantly changed with the times.
Wired.com: The last time I wrote about Action Comics, Superman renounced his American citizenship and I never saw so much hate mail in my life.
Morrison: Well, I can't speak for David Goyer but it was an interesting thing to do, and it showed that Superman can still inspire that depth of feeling. Superman should stand for America's mythic and pioneer qualities. I feel that there is truth to that. But there is definitely more to him. He appeals to people around the world, so he's really more of a global symbol these days, and that seems a more provocative and poetic way of writing him. That sort of suits the way I would approach him, although I like to deal with universals – love and hate, fear and peace – rather than making political points. It certainly showed that people are keeping an eye on Superman, and feel proprietary towards him. What I am trying to do with Action Comics is perhaps provocative in similar ways, because I'm looking back at the original Superman as a champion of the oppressed, and not necessarily a figure of law and order or patriotism.
Wired.com: He's a champion of the universal oppressed. He was born on another planet, and raised in America. But he belongs to the universe.
Morrison: Yeah, absolutely. He represents something good about America, in the sense that he became the naturalized immigrant par excellence. America has a grand tradition of "Give me your huddled masses...." And Superman comes from outside of that world, and eventually decides to stand for those principles. But he's not from America. He showed up in a boat from a grander world. [Laughs]
Set the Controls for the Heart of Superman
Wired.com: As Supergods explains, you were inspired by the sheer velocity of Superman's first appearance in comics. How are you revisiting that concept in your run on Action Comics?
Morrison: In Supergods' first chapter, I was inspired by Action Comics No. 1 not as a piece of historical nostalgia, but as a living, dynamic object. It was incredibly modern in its presentation. No one even knows who this character is, and he's not even introduced. You just see him on the cover smashing up a car. Then the story opens with him flying through the night carrying a gagged and bound woman under his arm! [Laughs] And the reader is constantly trailing behind him, which I loved. No one can keep up with him. Jerry Siegel's narrative and Joe Shuster's art suggested extreme motion, covering vast spaces. Superman could leap for miles in the space between two panels, and nothing in print was really edited or cut like that back in the day. These guys were using video-editing techniques in comics.
So I really tried to develop that with artist Rags Morales in my run on Action Comics. I felt we had to honor its spirit with something very kinetic. So in the first issue, Superman doesn't stop moving: He starts on the first page and doesn't rest until the last, and hopefully most of them will be like that. We're just trying to find ways of making that work over the first few issues, and develop techniques to achieve that feeling.
Wired.com: I'm probably not alone in being very excited about your run on Superman, because almost every comic you've written has convincingly evolved the medium. But the Man of Steel seems tricky, because you've already set the bar so high with All-Star Superman. Are you feeling that bar while writing Action Comics?
Morrison: I felt it was important to not try to do anything similar, because it had been done with complete effect in All-Star Superman. And also that was a story from the end of Superman's life, so it had a solemnity, majesty and a sense of completion of architecture. Action Comics is much more visceral, featuring a much younger Superman at the start of his career. So I really wanted to put a young man's energy into it, rather than the more contented feel of All-Star Superman. A tiger instead of a pussycat. [Laughs]
Wired.com: Aside from being an engrossing memoir about your life and career, Supergods is also a riveting cultural history of comics' evolution. It's a brilliant entry point into the history and philosophy of the medium. Was that the plan?
Morrison: Well, I started out thinking that I was just going to tell the story of superheroes beginning with Superman, and carrying through to the present day. But that turned out to be a much greater task than I imagined. [Laughs] I mean, a lot of the book was cut. The Golden Age section was probably four times the length. But I wanted to tell the story of superheroes in a way that would be relatable to people who weren't really invested in them as fans, whether they'd only seen them in the movies or on TV movies or remembered them from the comics. And I wanted to tell that history as the story of a child growing up to adulthood. The Golden Age is primitive and childlike, the Silver Age is on the verge of adolescence and transformation, the Dark Age is very adolescent and interested in sex and politics, and the Renaissance of last 20 years have seen comics clean up their act, cut their hair and get a nice girlfriend. [Laughs]
And I also felt that adding my personal dimension would appeal to those people who weren't totally interested in comics, so that they could read about what happened to someone who was utterly overwhelmed and immersed by comic book ideas. Once I arrived at the idea of mapping the stages of my own life onto the ages of comics, I realized that their whole history could be told as a human story, which is why the book is very conversational. It was a way to hopefully make those who aren't too interested in comics feel like there was someone in the room with them, walking them through history and pointing out some of the fabulous and eccentric characters and creators involved. That opened it up, and I don't think it has really been done before. And having been offered to do a new Action Comics at the end of a book which starts with the original in 1938 created this fabulous circle, you know? It was great to have that symmetrical closure handed to me by an amazing piece of luck.
Of Fractal Comics and Immersive Possibility
Wired.com: So what comes after our current renaissance?
Morrison: Well, we can all see that comics are going down, which has provoked an interesting response. We're now seeing wilder and more interesting comics that are less like movies. The superheroes of comics have quite clearly taken flight and migrated to the screen. They've migrated also into reality, in the form of real-life superheroes created by medical and technological advances, and other ways in which we cannot even predict. But it may well be that we're reaching the end of comic-book superheroes, who are moving into digital media. The comics business is not performing the way it used to. All the action is in the new world.
Wired.com: That seems like a good point to bring up DC Comics' new plan, which is not only to reboot its series, but also deliver same-day digital comics, which is smart. Not only does it open up new revenue streams and subscribers, but it also concedes that the future belongs to digital comics. Do you feel something is getting lost in that technological transition?
Morrison: We're trying too hard to re-create comics on the digital screen, and I think that's a mistake. I think there is a lot more we could be doing. Digital comics should become a much more fractal experience, where you can use hypertext to get character histories at the press of a button, or be able to play sections of the story in game form or whatever – something. And I'm sure someone is already working on how to do that right now. Certainly, I'm thinking along those lines, but there is a lot of interesting work to be done to create comics for that medium.
Wired.com: I can definitely see it as being an amalgamation of the traditional comics format and an immersive virtual reality like Batman: Arkham Asylum.
Morrison: Something like that would be great, or something where you could jump in and out of games and characters. But there's a long way to go. One problem, especially in the online space, is that people don't want to pay for content, which affects revenue streams and ultimately undermines the professionalism of the material. So we'll see what happens.
Of Monotheism, Pantheism and Mass Extinction
Wired.com: One thing I love about the Supergods thesis is that, by accepting these heroes as our new superhuman ideals, we're pulling away from monotheism and perhaps even, through superheroes, upgrading the more realistic pantheism of antiquity.
Morrison: Yeah, I think it's natural to get away from that, because monotheism came from a specific region in the desert, from a bunch of cultures who discovered written language around the same time. And really, in monotheistic culture, the book is the god. The actual text, whether that's the Bible, Koran or whatever, inserts its instructions and commands into your brain like a programming code. And that was an interesting way of looking at the world, where a singular force was in charge. But pantheism is more like real life. We don't have to believe these things actually exist, and I don't think sophisticated people ever have, now or in the past. As I've said before, these gods are just our eternal human qualities. There's always love and hate in the world. But no one hates all day, every day. Well, maybe some do! I've seen the internet! [Laughs]
Wired.com: Yeah, I wouldn't be too sure about that one.
Morrison: But you know what I mean. The quality of hate always exists, just like the quality of being 16 always exists. As individuals, we only get to be 16 for 12 months in our entire lives but 16-ness doesn't go away. There are millions of people who are 16, and all that means, right now on the planet, and there always will be. So that quality is equally a god. These aren't beings, spirits or essences. They're just that part of the human experience which is timeless and always available. People can always fall in love, or become angry. So it's really quite practical to step away from the notion of heavens and hells and personify these greater elements of the human experience, so we can study them and get to know ourselves a bit better. You know, Flash, like Hermes before him, is a messenger god of communication and electricity, although he's more modern so you'd probably have to add coffee and Red Bull. [Laughs] What superheroes have done is give these ancient qualities a new dress so we can recognize ourselves again.
Wired.com: An extension of that migration to pantheism is that we might resituate ourselves cosmically, as not a bunch of races but one human race, on one planet of many in a universe. Which is more healthy than suffering the delusion that we are the one true whatever created by the one true whoever.
Morrison: I think so. We need to re-enchant the world, which is what magic is all about. It's easy to forget the wonder that we live in, and I think it's important to remind people of that, and stoke their interest in the world around them. If you wanted to believe in a monotheistic god, then that god would surely be the universe, as it's grown from the Big Bang until now. If there had to be one, it's the living, conscious emergent universe that we live in, which puts us in a very privileged place because we study it and give it meaning. We're the part of "God" that likes to catalog, symbolize and work things out, to draw and make music about the world around us, in order to understand it better. And that's why I think we're pretty cool. We should always remember that, but not exalt ourselves above all our life forms, because we don't really know what else is out there in the universe.
Wired.com: How do you square our evolution toward cosmic consciousness with our alarming consumption and waste of our planet's resources? If we're resituating ourselves as cosmic beings, we probably should be more conscientious about exhausting what, for our purposes at least, is a declining store of finite resources.
Morrison: My positive view of it is that maybe we walked ourselves into the darkness. We're consuming resources in the same way a caterpillar consumes its resources, by devouring the leaf that it lives upon. If we are part of a natural, emerging process, then maybe that process knows what it is doing. Maybe the way humans are fusing with technology is part of the growth, and we may not manage to exhaust the planet. The planet is a big thing. It has survived several massive extinctions, and still managed to come back. Of course, it's not the planet that we have to worry about. It's us. But we're turning into something else, and I can see the bleeding edge of that transformation in the way we're bonding with our communications technology.
But, you know, I'm willing to consider the bleak alternative. Maybe humans are a kind of planetary cancer, something that's gone wrong. Maybe we're all of us vile monsters, including our moms and the Dalai Lama. I think that's a way of looking at humanity that came about after World War II, an existentialist, nihilistic view which has persisted for a long time, helped along by the media. And it may not be true. We still don't know. But that doesn't mean that we all shouldn't campaign and do our best to use resources intelligently. That doesn't mean we stop being political, but it should always be taken into account that self-lacerating guilt isn't improving anything either.
I've been accused of encouraging apolitical apathy by some critics but they're generally people who have no intention of getting up off their own arses to make things better anyway. I agree that oil companies should be brought to account if their plans to rape the Antarctic affect our future well-being but I have a feeling that much larger processes are working themselves out. The self-aggrandizing idea that humans are somehow different from the rest of the natural world continues to cause us no end of problems.
Who-Ray for Hollyweird!
Wired.com: Speaking of raping the Antarctic, let's talk about Doctor Who! But seriously, with "The Doctor's Wife," Neil Gaiman (above) has written what has consensually shaped up to be one of the best episodes ever. I know you've already done Doctor Who comics, so my first thought was, "When are they going to ask Grant to write one?"
Morrison: Oh God, yeah. Obviously, I'd love to do it. I've been a huge fan of the show all my life, and I particularly love what Steven Moffatt has done recently. He's sort of created the ultimate Doctor Who, a very interesting modernization. I've been enjoying it, and I'd love to do an episode. I've even got one all worked out. [Laughs] I've been thinking about it for a while, as you do, but no one has approached me yet. We'll see. Who knows?
Wired.com: Can you tell me anything about it, without spoilers?
Morrison: No, I actually couldn't, because the concept is pretty great. I'll tell you one day if nothing ever happens with it. [Laughs] But tell Matt [Smith] when you talk with him that I'm a big fan. I love what he's been doing with the character.
Wired.com: What about the other film projects you're working on, Sinatoro and Dominion. Can you tell us anything about those?
Morrison: Yeah! I just finished the Dominion script for Barry Sonnenfeld. I sent it in last week. I was really pleased with it. It's the most fun I've had in a long time. So that's going really well. Hopefully, it's still on track for next year.
Wired.com: What about the We3 film? I really want to see that movie.
Morrison: Well, it's still ongoing and we have a new, big-name director attached. But as usual, I think it's going to be one of those things where once Dominion is under way, everyone will pay attention to my other projects and We3 will suddenly leap ahead of the queue. For so many years, people in Hollywood just haven't been able to get its tone, even though I always explain the tone as "Steven Spielberg." [Laughs] It's quite simple. It's just a big, weepy adventure with cyborg animals! But I think its time will come. But I've seen it get close so many times that I don't want to make any predictions.
Wired.com: I think the performance of these recent superhero films shows that Hollywood desperately needs a risk-taker like yourself.
Morrison: It would be nice. I think we've seen that there's a chance for more experimentation in entertainment media. Joe the Barbarian is also continuing to make its way around, so hopefully it will have a chance too. I think that would really make for an interesting film. But again, I honestly think it will all have to wait until Sonnenfeld's film is signed and sealed until everyone says, "Maybe we should check out this guy's other stuff."
Faith in the Unfilmable
Wired.com: Then you'll have the Alan Moore effect, where all of sudden every one of your comics is being turned into a film.
Morrison: Yeah, I'd love to see a Seaguy film myself.
Wired.com: Me too! With any luck, your films will be treated better – some of the films they made out of Moore's comics were not the greatest.
Morrison: I thought V for Vendetta was pretty good, apart from a few missteps. And Watchmen was so faithful, although it was an ambitious and probably impossible task. I think in the future that film will be regarded as a cult classic.
Wired.com: Yeah, its faith in the comic will probably ensure that. When I interviewed Zack Snyder, we looked at his storyboard notebook and Watchmen alongside each other, and he showed me how he pretty much stuffed the comic's panels into his film.
Morrison: He even faithfully re-created the original posters that Dave Gibbons drew in 1985 to promote the series. He absolutely lovingly re-created them with CGI and the actors, and they were perfect, you know? Down to the exact angle that Ozymandias was sitting in his chair.
Wired.com: Would you want that level of faithfulness in adaptations of your comics? Or since it's a different medium, would you want a different approach?
Morrison: It would probably have to be. The comics are sort of locked in the past, and movies have a different kind of sensibility, so there probably would have to be a flexible translation. Adapting some of my work would be easier than others, because some of them have that blockbuster feel. But comics like Seaguy might be a bit harder. However, I do think Zack Snyder would make an amazing Seaguy film. It would make for a great paranoid movie in the style of Patrick McGoohan's The Prisoner. But I don't think anyone has quite caught on to it yet, although it could be quite creepy, what with all the sentient bubble gum and talking animals. I would love to see that done someday. Maybe someone will even make a decent film out of The Invisibles! [Laughs]
See Also:- Grant Morrison's Batman, Inc. Births Comics' First Zen Billionaire
