Morrison is a deeply passionate writer - when he enthuses, it is completely infectious when he disdains, it is downright virulent. The book is a love letter to this curious breed of technicolor spectacle that, Morrison maintains, reflects our idealized dream-self. Superheroes as they exist on the comics page can disappoint - Morrison's true subject is the Superhero that exists in our collective cultural psyche. Supergods is less a history of the superhero genre than it is a meditation on the Superhero, Writ Cosmic. Over the years, the guy's chronicled the comic book adventures of everything from lantern-jawed lawmen to universe-conquering caterpillars, with the odd (the wonderfully odd, let it be noted) sentient, transvestite city street thrown in for good measure.

But note how he allows his Underoos kicker to deflate what's gone before it's a tip of the cowl to the glorious goofiness bound up in the whole notion of spandex-clad mesomorphs who fight for what's right. He's never been one to shy from the gleefully grandiose: As you start that sentence above, for example, you can practically hear alarums and excursions. That line, from the first chapter of comic-book writer Grant Morrison's Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human, is Morrison all over. 'In Superman, some of the loftiest aspirations of our species came hurtling down from imagination's bright heaven to collide with the lowest form of entertainment, and from their union something powerful and resonant was born, albeit in its underwear.' Your purchase helps support NPR programming.

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