I think I picked up this book by Grant Morrison at the comics exhibition at the British Museum. I have read a few comics by Morrison, like Joe the Barbarian and All Star Superman. I enjoyed both.

So in the post-script to the paperback edition, he describes Supergods as a subjective history. Ah ha ha ha ha. I wish that was somewhere on the cover.

Basically, it starts innocently enough, with a blast through various ages of comics, golden, silver, dark etc. Which all seemed very reasonable and well researched. I haven’t read a lot of the old comics, something that I should perhaps rectify someday, and it was a nice background to the comics I read today. I recognised some of the comics in there that made me a fan as a kid and teenager.

And then everything went a bit batshit. Little did I know that Grant Morrison likes to think himself as some shaman, who can invoke various presences to help him in life. Drawing sigils and the like and even spiritually healing his cat. Seeing visions of both Jesus and Superman in equal light, he says he channels them into furthering his work.

That’s where he lost me.

Somewhere in the last third of the book, it is a diversion into Grant Morrison’s weird as fuck biography. If there’s anything that is underplayed, it is his reliance on chemical aids in all these weird ass shamanic experiences.

And that’s when I got annoyed as I didn’t trust anything he said about the previous years of comics’ ages that I had read. He says shamanic, I say woo and utter nonsense. The last 150 pages were painful. Just drawn out drug trips and his opinion on films. I wanted more of the history, less of the subjectivity. Just such weird ass nonsense, dressed up as…who the fuck knows.

Anyway, I thought I was reading a completely different book. I wish I had been reading a different book. 2/5 stars for mostly wasting my time and wondering if I should give Grant Morrison any more of my money.