How We Will Become GOD – The Philosophy of Grant Morrison – Wisecrack Edition

butter. But unlike his younger self when he wrote Animal Man, the more mature Morrison became more optimistic. In Flex Mentallo: Man of Muscle Mystery, Morrison once again used metafiction as a means to explore questions about our own purpose. Just as Morrison sees reality as having a three-tiered structure, with his Fifth Dimension imps at the top, the 2D comic book characters at the bottom, and us in the middle, so too does Flex Mentallo's story unfold. on three levels of reality. There's the cartoon world of Flex Mentallo, the "realistic" world of Flex writer Wallace Sage (an avatar of Morrison himself), and yet a higher reality inhabited by superheroes more real than those of its writers or aliens. of the fifth dimension.

In the story, it is revealed that superheroes, rather than simply being a figment of the imagination of writers like Wally, were actually the beings who created Wally's entire world, after which they retreated into the imagination, seeding our culture with superhero stories in anticipation. of the day when mere mortals are

will

ing to be like them. As a result, humanity just needs to resolve its uncertainty about whether superheroes are real or not and decide to believe in them. Here, Morrison suggests a much more worthy purpose for our existence. We are supposed to discover our ultimate purpose in the pages of comics and realize the idea of ​​Superman, embody it in ourselves.

For Morrison, the medium of comics and the plot structure of superhero stories are so closely related in our culture because they are both parts of the same pattern that explains everything else that exists. Recognizing this pattern, Morrison writes his own autobiography Supergods in the style and structure of an archetypal superhero story, including a secret origin in Glasgow, the call to adventure atop Kathmandu, and a death and rebirth in the that provides the hidden knowledge that he acquired. on his hero's journey to the comics community. And while that hidden knowledge is slowly explored in his comics, it's in Supergods where he's most explicit about what makes humanity itself a "supergod." We can already see that humanity has all the attributes of comic book superheroes or even pagan gods.

While Mercury carried messages at the speed of thought to the Roman gods, we have instant interconnectivity through the Internet. While Heimdallr's all-seeing eyes could spy on all nine realms, our satellites can zoom anywhere on Earth. Like Superman, we have flown faster than a speeding bullet. Humanity, seen as a whole, is already a “supergod”. As long as no future frames appear on the film reel, we are not “becoming” this supergod; We always are. This era of human history is simply his secret origin story about how he gains his superhuman powers, but all of his ongoing adventures and endless battles to come are already written, published, printed, and on the shelves of some higher dimension. . comic book store If humanity is this superorganism with all these cool superpowers that is supposed to act according to the simple morality of a superhero, whose entire story is structured like a superhero story, and who lives in a cosmos constructed like a comic book, then humanity Morrison's obvious conclusion is this: humanity's purpose is to be a superhero.

It's for this reason that Morrison calls Smallville's Sun God "our greatest idea to ever exist as a human species." Not because Superman was the prototype that all other superheroes would be based on, but because he is the model that humanity's super-god must

become

, all-powerful and all-good, all at the same time. This is the summary of Morrison's

philosophy

, best articulated by Jor-El to his only son regarding the essential truth about man and Superman, and not about humanity within the comics, but about the humanity that reads the comics: "You have given them an ideal to aspire to, embody their highest aspirations.

They

will

run, they will stumble, they will fall, they will crawl and they will curse, and finally... they will join you in the sun, Kal-el.