Supergods was published by Spiegel & Grau in 2011, and it is Morrison’s only prose book — a hybrid of comics history, autobiography, and occult philosophy that reads like no other book about the medium.
The first half is a history of superhero comics organized around Morrison’s central thesis: that superheroes are not mere entertainment but sigils — magical images that embody humanity’s deepest aspirations. Superman, created in 1938, represents the New Deal dream of benevolent power; Batman represents the dark underside of that dream; the Marvel heroes of the 1960s represent the anxieties of the atomic age; the British Invasion of the 1980s (Moore, Morrison, Gaiman, Ellis) represents postmodern self-consciousness. Morrison reads each era’s superheroes as expressions of the collective unconscious, and the argument is persuasive because Morrison knows the material intimately and writes about it with genuine passion.
The second half is Morrison’s autobiography — from their childhood in Glasgow (reading comics during their father’s absences, absorbing the counterculture through older siblings) through their career in comics (the breakthroughs of Animal Man and Doom Patrol, the psychedelic excess of The Invisibles, the mainstream triumph of JLA and All-Star Superman) to the present. The memoir sections include Morrison’s account of being abducted by aliens in Kathmandu — an experience they describe with complete sincerity and incorporate into their theory of fiction as a technology of consciousness.
Collecting Supergods
First edition (Spiegel & Grau, New York, 2011): Hardcover with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $15–$40
- Signed copies: $30–$80
- Paperback edition: $8–$15