If you haven't read a comic book recently, here's a "heads-up". The current vogue in the world of what used to be known as "four-colour funny books" is for bold blockbuster concepts told with big pictures and as few words as possible. It works, kind of, but those of us who grew up with the great writers of the 1970s and 80s Don McGregor, Doug Moench, Steve Englehart and Steve Gerber (all of whom receive name checks in Grant Morrison's Supergods) miss having more words, actual written ideas pasted alongside the pretty pictures.
Most comic books run to just 20 pages now, at least eight of which will feature giant panels with images of super-types punching each other. Maybe four pages will be devoted to setting up why they need to be punching each other. Two will be about how they get to bump into each other before they can have a big old punching party, and a couple more will be dedicated to tying up the loose ends after the last big fight. There isn't really a lot of space left for complicated ideas and eloquent wordplay. So if you are writing comics, and you have a sophisticated and original mind, these days you have no outlet for all those ideas about the plight of mankind, or how punk rock changed your life, or what transcendental meditation might achieve for Batman. And if there's no room for all that fun stuff in your comic books, when and where can you unload?
The answer, it seems, is here. Part history of comics, part memoir, part slightly loopy philosophical work, Supergods is an unusual book. It is also a big book: big on ideas, big on ambition, perhaps too big in terms of length. Even my nearly bottomless interest in, and affection for, comics and those who write and draw them began to ebb a little over nearly 500 pages. That's not to suggest that big is necessarily bad, it's just that it takes a certain amount of commitment to pick this up in the first place, and I suspect that the average reader those not already hooked on comics or aware that Grant Morrison is one of the finest writers, if not the finest writer, working in comics today will find it too much of an ask.
That would be a tremendous shame, because Supergods is perhaps the most satisfactory potted history of the American comic book industry I've ever read (and I've read just about all its competitors) while also offering a brilliantly incisive, if very personal, appreciation and analysis of the most important comic books or graphic novels call 'em what you will to be published in the past 30 years.
It begins as a fairly straightforward primer, detailed and informed enough to let you feel knowledgable but not so stuffed with minutiae and trivia as to deter a newcomer. For those who want more detail there's an excellent reading list at the back. Morrison dismisses the claims of ownership recently made by the early creators or their families to work published by the big companies. The argument is, in effect: "these creators couldn't wait to get published and they knew what they were signing up for." I disagree with him to some extent, but it's a complex and tricky issue, so it's just as well he doesn't expand on it too much, because the fun really starts later on. He writes with understanding of what it is that makes each of the more successful characters work, and sums up well the contrasting house styles of the big companies, Marvel and DC, detailing the rise in the 60s of the hip, funky, faux-counter-culture Marvel as the stodgy mainstream DC lost its readers.
As befits the man responsible for overhauling so many of the Golden Age heroes for DC (including Superman and Batman), Morrison rejects the usual narrative of comic-book history: that the 1940s and 50s represent a golden age, followed by a silver age in the 60s, then a bronze in the 70s and mid-80s. Morrison renames the latter period the "dark age", which I prefer bronze, with its association with third place, always seemed to me to devalue what was an explosion of brilliant work.
Morrison's book hits maximum velocity when he writes about the things he knows most about because he was there. He gives an account of the importance and influence of the British writers who invaded America after cutting their teeth with 2000AD, and he's good, too, on the indie scene over here. This fresh new wave of creators each one with a complex relationship to the characters and the industry that had meant so much to them as kids is beautifully described. The boom that Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Frank Miller helped to create, those sophisticated storytellers with a grasp of the full potential the medium offered, is recounted with all the heady rush of excitement it deserves: comics weren't for kids any more. But Morrison is also ideally placed to turn his gaze on the aftermath and the countless lesser imitators that followed.
It's a subjective take, and although I'd agree with most of what he says, after a while the author's pet peeves begin to show through and grow a little tiresome. Moore, in particular, is mocked rather churlishly for his announcement that he was leaving the world of superhero books having delivered Watchmen, only for him to return years later when, as Morrison surmises, his publishing venture Mad Love had failed to hit it big with readers. Yet Supergods contains perhaps the most acute analysis of Watchmen I've ever read. Not just how radical it was, and how much of a game-changer it became, but how it works in terms of layout, design, the book's remarkable structure and pace and complexity many of which qualities reveal themselves only after several readings.
Morrison writes with clarity about his own not inconsiderable contribution to grown-up comic books the meta-fiction of Animal Man, the delightful surrealism he brought to Doom Patrol and the boundary-bursting ambition that underpins (and in my opinion rather spoils) The Invisibles. These passages are funny and veer successfully between self-deprecation and a recognition of his own brilliance.
But, as the title suggests, this book is not just about comics and superheroes on the printed page. It shifts again to detail Morrison's fearless exploration, via hallucinogens and occult rituals, of the multiverse.
The problem here is that for a sane sceptic, even one who is fascinated by psychedelic transports brought about by such immersive decoctions as DMT, this section of Supergods, which might have been the most memorable, is in fact the dullest. It's not dissimilar to listening to someone giving a long description of their dreams. Shaving your head before dragging up in full fetish gear and wolfing down a magic mushroom omelette may well open the door to another realm, or give you access to demons and guardian angels. I have never tried it so I can't say with absolute certainty. But I am pretty sure that what Morrison was experiencing and is describing is a cross between a nervous breakdown and a common-or-garden trip.
Despite its faults the length and the occasional self-indulgence this is a likeable, amusing read. It is a showcase for a writer who really is one of the greats, one of the true originals still working in comics on a regular basis. But I expect that the definitive book about Morrison's work and his contribution to the world of comics will have to come from someone else, someone with a little distance and perspective. I just hope for his sake it's not Alan Moore.
Jonathan Ross's first comic book, Turf, will be published in September by Titan Books. To order Supergods for £13.99 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846 or go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop
