Marcus Berkmann writes the Bookends column for this week’s issue of The Spectator. Here it is for readers of this blog:
Of all the great cultural shifts of recent years, the rise to respectability of American comics may be the strangest. Once, Superman, Batperson and the like were just lowbrow trash for kids, but
while some of us were looking in the opposite direction they acquired legendary status and became the cornerstones of Western civilisation. Now every other new film features a superhero, backed up
by astounding special effects and a marketing budget that could start a small war.
Excellent timing, then, for British comics author Grant Morrison to produce Supergods: Our World in the Age of the Superhero (Jonathan Cape, £17.99), a hefty and authoritative overview of the genre. Morrison has been steeped in comics since childhood, and stares menacingly out of the back cover as though looking for a white cat to stroke.
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