Reddit reviews Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human

I just read about this in Grant Morrison's book Supergods! Here's the excerpt where he touched on it:

>"...the real insight into Superman's distinctive look arrived much later, when I discovered some photographs of circus strongmen in the 1930's. There among the taut tent guy ropes and painted caravans at the country fair was the familiar, faintly disturbing overpants-belt combo, here worn by men with handlebar mustaches, pumping dumbbells in their meaty fists and staying bullishly at the camera. Finally it made perfect sense. the solution to the riddle of the ages was here all along in the boring old past, where no one had bothered to look. Underpants on tights were signifiers of extra-masculine strength and endurance in 1938. The cape, showman like boots, belt, and skintight spandex were all derived from circus outfits and helped to emphasize the perfomative, even freakshow-esque, aspect of Superman's adventures.... Shuster had dressed the first superhero as his culture's most prominent exemplar of the strongman ideal, unwittingly setting him up as the butt of ten thousand jokes."


The book is full of stuff like that, and Morrison does have a way with words, even if he does tend to enjoy the sound of his own prose a little too much.

This is from his book about superheroes and comic books (and occasionally tripping balls). It's really good, if anyone is interested.

Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human https://www.amazon.com/dp/0812981383/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_-mPGDbX1HWSSM

Grant Morrisson (the author of this comic) is most definitely a psychonaut. I highly recommend his book SuperGods and the documentary Talking with Gods (sorry I don't have a link to the full movie).

It's from Supergods, an excellent read and I highly recommend it

If you're looking for an interesting secondary source that analyzes superhero narratives, you might try Supergods by Grant Morrison.

https://www.amazon.com/Supergods-Vigilantes-Miraculous-Mutants-Smallville/dp/0812981383/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502159481&sr=8-1&keywords=supergods

Boom. Like a magic trick.

I'm not sure, I actually haven't read the book yet - I was waiting for the paperback because I read an interview when the book first came out where Morrison said the Paperback would have extra content.

You can check out the table of contents at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0812981383/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link

>From what I can tell, superpowers to you are using classical quantum mechanics to make humans do things normal things humans can not do

Not really. I used that as an example. I also have a model which exploits classical QM's prime competitor, the De Broglie–Bohm theory, as well (an introduction can be found here and here). Although, those are hypotheses for a mechanical explanation as to how they operate. As far as a definition for "superpower" as used here, the definition "an extraordinary physical or mental ability which is not attributable to a miracle or magic". The cited examples being, well, such examples.

Granted, there will obviously be some overlap between Superhumans and miracle workers, prime example being the Spectre who is (in the DC metastory) the angel of God's wrath, and magic, Etrigan the Demon and Zatanna are two prime examples of that, but I am only considering non-miraculous and non-magical characters.

>Humans have already control quantum mechanics to an extent. I can turn an entire city into ash with my finger. I can know every almost every thought from other humans. I can move faster than the speed of sound. I do all of these through modern technology. I see no difference between a human using technology to do great feats or using some power.
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>From what I see, we already live in a time of superhumans (Ubermensch?), magic, and miracles. You are going to have to be more specific on what you are asking then.

Grant Morrison makes, more or less, the same point in Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human.

>As such, the church has already set measures to deal with such things.

Tbh, I figured as much. I am more curious as to how the Church would conceptualize such a phenomena, not how the church would handle it.

Supergods by Grant Morrison is about basically the same thing.

I wish I had snippets of him talking about exactly that, but he seems to ramble for long periods around the subject. I can definitely point you in the direction of some Morrison rants regarding the 5th dimension.

http://smodcast.com/episodes/grant-morrison-bat-bard/

http://www.amazon.com/Invisibles-Book-One-Deluxe/dp/1401245021/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1416181375&sr=8-3&keywords=invisibles

http://www.amazon.com/Supergods-Vigilantes-Miraculous-Mutants-Smallville/dp/0812981383/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1416181390&sr=8-1&keywords=supergods&pebp=1416181392529

The basic gist of Morrison and his writing is that he believes he was kidnapped (or just borrowed) by 5th Dimensional Beings after completing a mystical challenge in Kathmandu. He was shown our world from a 5th dimensional perspective. He compared it to watching black and white television... what seems real to us now is just a television show... in reality there is brightness and vividness beyond all comparison, but we have to collectively as a species be prepared to make the jump to get there.

In Supergods and the Fatman on Batman podcast, he goes in depth about his Kathmandu experience and how it shapes his thought processes. In Invisibles, that experience is put on paper in comic book form. It is the story of a group of "good guys" that realize from a 5th dimension perspective that there is no good and evil... It is all just a group of people trying to make the jump to hyperspace. From Invisibles: this is what a fourth dimensional being able to traverse time and space would see in people:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-k72hbxx5F8M/T8fqJpSOEPI/AAAAAAAAAbE/2eXmfuEmzvs/s1600/invis012322.jpg

The trail is every instance of a person in their lives.

Little bit of a rant, but I find his writing amazing, and as hokey as his "experiences" sound, there is definitely part of me that believes that something happened.

neveraculous - Never except in case of a drastic chain of events which change the rules

and the item