Grant Morrison and the Superhero Renaissance: Critical Essays

251 Pages·2015·17.38 MB·English

by  Darragh Greene, Kate Roddy

Grant Morrison and the
Superhero Renaissance
This page intentionally left blank
Grant Morrison and the
Superhero Renaissance

Critical Essays

Edited by
Darragh Greene
and Kate Roddy

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

Jefferson, North Carolina
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Grant Morrison and the superhero renaissance : critical essays / edited by
Darragh Greene and Kate Roddy.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-7864-7810-1 (softcover : acid free paper)
ISBN 978-1-4766-2233-0 (ebook)

♾

1. Morrison, Grant—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Superheroes
in literature. 3. Comic books, strips, etc.—History and criticism.
4. Graphic novels—History and criticism. I. Greene, Darragh,
editor. II. Roddy, Kate, editor.

PN6737.M67Z64 2015
741.5'9411—dc23

2015024433

BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

© 2015 Darragh Greene and Kate Roddy. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.

On the cover: Colored illustration of woodcut from Isagogae breues et
exactissimae in anatomia humani corporis by Jacopo Berengario da Carpi,
1523 (National Library of Medicine)

Printed in the United States of America

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
Acknowledgments

The initial versions of many of the essays contained in
this volume were first presented at the conference Grant
Morrison and the Superhero Renaissance in 2012 at Trinity
College Dublin. We would therefore like to express our
gratitude to the Long Room Hub, the School of English,
and, in particular, Prof. Darryl Jones, for their financial and
organizational support of the event.
We would also like to thank Dr. Dara Downey, Dr. Graham Price, Dr. Edel Semple, Triona Kirby, John Dillon, and
Hector “Rafael” Guerra for their invaluable comments and
suggestions on earlier drafts of this collection.

v
Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction
Darragh Greene and Kate Roddy

v

1

Part I: Formal Analysis

“And so we return and begin again”: The Immersive/
Recursive Strategies of Morrison’s Puzzle Narratives
Chris Murray 17
“Screw symbolism and let’s go home”: Morrison and Bathos
Kate Roddy 43
The Writer and “the Writer”: The Death of the
Author in Suicide Squad #58
Roy T. Cook 64
“Let me slip into someone more comfortable”:
The Imaginary Adolescence of the Superhero
Keith Scott 82
Parasitic Signifiers: The Invasiveness of Language in
Grant Morrison’s Comics
Clare Pitkethly 100

Part II: Thematic Analysis

From Shame into Glory in The Filth
David Coughlan

“The Jungian Stuff ”: Symbols of Transformation
in All-Star Superman
Darragh Greene

vii

115

131
viii Table of Contents

The Dark Knight and the Devil: Demons and Demonology
in Batman, 2005–2013
Schedel Luitjen 150
“Our Father, Who Art in Gotham”: The Life, Death
and Rebirth of Batman
Nicholas Galante 166
Fallout Boys: Paranoia, Power and Control in Morrison’s
Cold War Superheroes
Muireann O’Sullivan 183
“Morrison Inc.” and Themes of Benevolent Capitalism
Emmet O’Cuana 205
Bibliography 223
About the Contributors 235
Index 237
Introduction

Darragh Greene
and Kate Roddy

Who Is Grant Morrison?

If you have picked up this volume, then you probably do not need to
be told who Grant Morrison is. His powers as a self-publicist are second
only to those as a creator of mind-bending, genre-reconfiguring comics;
he is quite simply the most successful writer working in comics today.
Since the 1980s, Morrison’s serialized superhero comics have defined and
radically redefined the superhero archetype for our culture. His distinctive
yet diverse work addresses both topical and universal themes in science,
spirituality, politics, and art, and his stylistic innovations serve to produce
comics of tremendous depth, power, and brilliance.
Within the field of comics, Morrison has spearheaded a more than
reactionary movement away from the “grim and gritty” antiheroes of the
mid-to-late 1980s (defined, above all, in the works of Alan Moore and Frank
Miller), by effectively engineering the reconfiguration of the core values of
the superhero. In his works, he asks readers to consider the superhero’s
transformation from cheap-print ephemera of lowbrow entertainment to
enduring, vibrant, and ever-meaningful cultural object. Moreover, he has
worked to transform and reinvent the idea of the superhero and imbue it
again with hope and meaning, by using it to combat the particular fears of
the present cultural moment.
One of the greatest strengths of Morrison’s work lies in his incredible
mastery of over seventy-five years of comics history, a knowledge that
encompasses all but forgotten characters and titles that he revives in his
own works. Yet Morrison is more than a comics antiquary: as we will see,
he views himself not only in relation to a venerable, vanished past of comics
production, but as an architect of a new age.

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