Has AnybodyRead SuperGods or The Boy Who Loved Batman?

[Major Comma]

I am thinking about picking up both of these books.
Any opinions would be welcome.
Thank You .

[Patrick Gerard]

I am thinking about picking up both of these books.
Any opinions would be welcome.
Thank You .

Supergods is nice. Haven't found time to finish it but it does dissolve from insane loving memoir into Grant doing somewhat catty pop cultural reviews. He eviscerates Shumacher's Batman & Robin. You may think that's redundant but, geez, I felt BAD for Shumacher just reading it. See: the part about whether the whole thing was an elaborate bet to get the future governor of California tospraypaint his buttocks silver.

It's also interesting how much Grant DOESN'T see himself as an academic but as a blue collar guy from Glasgow. He may be kinda hands on for an academic but it's hard for me to process a blue collar guy running around in a dress, embracing PETA, trying random drugs to see what it's like, marrying a runway model, and traveling to the far east on a spiritual quest. He sees himself as a man of the people and I can see where the desire to reconnect with that and his parents' blue collar socialism has led his career to where it is, has led to what we're getting in ACTION COMICS.

[Patrick Gerard]

It's interesting how Grant evolves like David Bowie or Madonna, from a kid who is raised in constant terror of nukes, to timid, self-conscious writer, to glam rocker, to red light district druggie, to quasi-shaman, to the paternal figure who pats his groupies on the head and sends them on their way, to politically progressive authority figure, and now in his current "blue collar guy"phase. I think the book comes from his "man of the people" persona and tries to recontextualize things but you can see the evolution there.

His thoughts on the Authority are interesting. He sees that as wish fulfillment of the highest order and thinks Millar took all the wrong lessons from it, that Millar is this kid who was maybe a bit damaged by being in Grant's shadow so long and became shaped wholly by the desire to get attention and be independent to a point where he traded in his ideals for shock value. There's at once an admiration of his talent, horror at how he's used it, and a sense of being responsible for creating the monster by keeping Millar buried in his shadow too long.

You gotta track down the promotional interviews Grant's done on the book because they flesh out things more fully, for example his perhaps too kind reading of Identity Crisis in the book, tempered with interviews where he admits he gave Brad a pass because he liked him as a person but finds the content horrific and the reliance on rape in super-hero stories to be horrific.

[RachelEvil]

Supergods was quite interesting.

[Major Comma]

Thanks for the comments on SuperGods .
Has anybody read the other book,The Boy Who Loved Batman?
Looking for opinions on that one too.

[Major Comma]

The Boy Who Loved Batman was written By Michael Uslan.
It is about how his Love of Batman led to him acquiring the rights to the iconic franchise eventually led to the Bat films we know of today .
Maybe somebody saw him at Comic Con?