Supergod

[The NZA]

 

From an essay written by Warren Ellis at the time of publication: Supergod is the story of what an actual superhuman arms race might be like. It’s a simple thing to imagine. Humans have been fashioning their own gods with their own hands since the dawn of our time on Earth. We can’t help ourselves. Fertility figures brazen idols, vast chalk etchings, carvings, myths and legends, science fiction writers generating science fiction religions from whole cloth. It’s not such a great leapt to conceive of the builders of nuclear weapons and particle accelerators turning their attention to the oldest of human pursuits. Dress it up as superhuman defense, as discovering the limits of the human body, as transhumanism and posthumanism.

 

and yeah, Space Cowboy: this is Ellis' latest in a spiritual sort've trilogy, as he defined it: Black Summer, No Hero, and then this. 4th issue just came out (1 to go) and so far i'm liking this one best.

 

preview at the site

[Iambaytor]

Has anyone else noticed that Black Summer and Irredeemable are like the same book?

 

So yeah, read this since the beginning, glad to see it's finally wrapping up. Probably my favorite non-franchise Ellis book so far and one of the few I'd actually buy. I picked up a pack through demonoid that had a lot of his stories and I shit you not it had the entire run of Preacher on it. I laughed so hard I nearly cried.

[The NZA]

Ellis/Ennis is like the new Cacpcom/Konami

 

cool - how's Iredeemable, though? Black Summer kinda dropped the ball for me.

[Panch]

DAMMIT, YOU STOLE MY THREAD! I was gonna make this one last night. I'm loving this so far. I wish it was an ongoing and finishing up with issue 5.

[Iambaytor]

It's an incomplete concept, it wants to be something great but it just can't seem to find its feet. It does however present a Superman allegory that is a truly terrible being and does so better than a million Homelanders, John Horus', Red Son Superman's, etc.

 

Black Summer dropped the ball in a big way, like a lot of Ellis books really, builds you up and then just kinda ends on a shitty note.

[The NZA]

agreed, espeically with stuff like Black Gas etc. i really hope this one holds up, its mostly done and still solid.

 

Panch - if you want another Ellis book that i cant find anywhere & needs a thread...check this one out!

 

[Panch]

This has been pimped to me before and I've actually seen in at the store. It's been a while, but I'll try to track it down again. So what do you think about Supergod? I really wanna see these characters more. Like if they had there own universe and stuff. It's a different take on superheroes or Superman in general.

[Benz]

Shit... looks good to me from the preview... Might have to buy it sometime.

 

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[The NZA]

panch - preview sets it up; the superhumans really aren't given too much of a personality, its more plot-based: why they were created by their respective culture, and what it did as a result. they're all pretty interesting, but the indian and iraqi/american ones are the most compelling for me so far, almost kinda sad there's only one issue left to explore these concepts...this kind've work is really putting Ellis > Ennis for me here. Ennis does his spoof/take on superheroes, and it has its moments in The Boys, but a lot of it feels recycled since Hitman, for me.

 

Now, putting this up with Ellis' others in this kind've "trilogy"...Black Summer starts from the Watchmen like premise of what would happen if a nearly omnipotent superhuman had a political agenda. No Hero does that also, but with a team, and while it's all about their corruption...

the ending brought home the balance they held, and how important that was in keeping monsters potentially worse than them in line.

 

Both fine angles to do a mini on, though i agree with Baytor that Ellis doesn't always close them strong (Millar's way worse here, granted, and i think No Hero ended far better)...but this book asks a deeper psychological question of "Why would we want superheroes?", and answers this in a universe where they can only be created artificially with staggering military budgets. You know the outcome from the 1st page, but working backwards through flashbacks, Ellis is saying a lot more about people/cultures than these characters.

when the first/british one actually addresses the scientist, this holds a lot've weight as a result.

- really am intrigued by this one, and i do hope it closes consistently, if not strong.

[Iambaytor]

I know it's a superhero book, I recognize objectively that that is exactly what this, but when I read it that's not the way I see it. It is literally a book about superheros but I think the "God" in the title takes precedence over the "Super" aspect. There's a lot of "man yelling at the heavens for answers" going on in here and I think the religious aspect plays a far larger role in this book than the heroes aspect and I think that's why every single one of the supers are given no personality, they're all aloof and detached and I think that's supposed to be an allegory on man's relationship with God, it's entirely objective and thus so are we the readers' relationships with the supers.

 

All in all, it's a much better analogy than 5 different variations of God constantly jacking off, I'm feeling the Ellis>Ennis thing too here, but I think comparisons to The Boys are a tad unfair (though, fair enough with the recycled Hitman stuff, though he's been good enough to keep it fairly light) I do however see a comparison to...

 

<If you are Panch, Logan, ASC, or (and especially) JZA you should stop reading now. Here's some porn. Go nuts>

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...to Preacher

 

 

Ennis' one serious take on the whole Man/God business seemed more like a man who blames God for not existing, Ellis' take is much more nihilistic and rational, his narrator is one of many characters that seeked to fill a void not occupied by a God in their eyes, they are people with Ennis' mindset that seem to hate God for not existing and thus want to make their own version and he seems to have come full circle to what I've gathered is Ellis' idealogy: If there is no God then why complain about it or try to make one of your own? I mean, I'm not saying Supergod>Preacher as the characters aren't as fleshed out, there's no dynamic or chemistry, nor even half as many memorable moments, and the thing is only 5 fucking issues after all. But I think that the thought process behind this is much stronger than Preacher's was. Now, commence flame war.

[Thelogan]

<If you are Panch, Logan, ASC, or (and especially) JZA you should stop reading now. Here's some porn. Go nuts>

 

Oh shit! TittiHEY!

 

I've always liked Ellis more than Ennis. Blow me. If a hamster is shown in an Ennis story, I know exactly what will eventually happen to it. That disappoints me.

 

That said, I've been sitting on this entire "trilogy".

[Iambaytor]

Oh shit! TittiHEY!

 

I've always liked Ellis more than Ennis. Blow me. If a hamster is shown in an Ennis story, I know exactly what will eventually happen to it. That disappoints me.

 

That said, I've been sitting on this entire "trilogy".

 

Eh, good point, I should've known you'd understand this better than them (Don't tell them that Preacher isn't the book by which all other books are judged, it seems to drive them into a feeding frenzy)

 

I think the two of them pass the baton, Black Gas and Crossed were essentially the same book but it's pretty clear who was the winner there, but as I get older I do tire of a lot of Ennis' shtick. Honestly I think that's a big part of why I like Hitman more than most of his other stuff, DC's Nazi-like censorship kept it from being 50 issues of buttfucking jokes.

[Jables]

Dude, Hitman was 50 issues of just shy of buttfucking jokes, and though it's showing me more depth than I previously attributed to it the more I read, it's no Preacher. That's the comparison I take exception to as opposed to any other. Fuck, at this point there's many stories that surpass Preacher in my book.

 

On topic, just read Black Summer, which was odd, getting No Hero off Ebay and ideally by the time I'm through that Supergod'll be collected somewhere.

[Maldron]

Alright. Read the last issue. Didn't like the "Fuck you we're ending it now" bit.

[Iambaytor]

The ending was no less than I'd expect from Ellis, better than a lot of his endings though.