You must understand this..

"Somewhere, in our darkest night, we made up the story of a man who will never let us down and that seemed worth investigating." - Grant Morrison via Wired

Many are fine..

Would anyone care to look at my incredibly annotated Superman shelf?

For Thomas..

Champion of the sun..

Someone has come to my blog by Googling the phrase "every single thing in the solar system".

This is awesome to me.

You know what else is awesome?


JEMMA!
Artist extraordinaire and SuperFriend, Jemma Salume drew this for me for my birthday.
If you're having a hard time even processing all of the awesome that's taking place, what you are seeing is me (chrishaley) riding on the back of a dragon in my rock 'n roll star-powered sparkle pants with my best friends Scott Pilgrim and All Star Superman after having just defeated God in a game of checkers.

I am certainly one of the luckiest people around to have friends like this.
Friends who are able to fully grasp my awesomeness.
Jemma is the best.

This is what I believe.

This seemed like an important day to post this.

I know this is going to seem silly to some of you and like too much information for others, so bear with me. I'm not trying to tell you what to do or how to think, I'm just telling you about myself.

Whether you've known it or noticed or not, I'll tell you that I've been going through some "stuff" lately.
And to be honest, there are times when it seems that my entire life has just been a series of "going through some stuff" moments.
The details aren't really important, and the full extent of these "moments" are unknown to even those closest to me.
There have been times when these "moments", or what amounts to the "contents" of my life, have left me with a kind of sadness that I would not wish on anyone.

But..

I have always found my way out of those times, and I am very thankful for that.

More than anything else, there has been one constant in my life, that, in my expert opinion (as I am the world's foremost expert on myself), has instilled in me an unshakable belief that no matter how dark it is or how bad things seem, there is always a way.
That there is always hope.

For my 28 years, that constant has been Superman.

I've tried, ultimately in vain, for years and years to explain what it all means to me. Not just what the character or idea of Superman means, but what he represents to me.

It hasn't been until these last few months that I've really started to understand what I'd previously only felt.
This is due in large part to the work and words of the first person I've ever heard who I feel like understands exactly where I've been coming from all these years.

I've basically pulled the most personally important (to me) quotes from Grant Morrison's recent interviews with Newsarama and strung them together in the way that I feel my brain has retained and latched onto them. (All bold emphasis is mine, not necessarily Grant's.)
I hope you'll take the few minutes to read it.
Last time for a while, I promise..



I see Superman in this series as an Enlightenment figure, a Renaissance idea of the ideal man, perfect in mind, body and intention.

...if we live by imitation, does it not make sense that we might choose to imitate the angels, the gods, the very highest form of being that we can imagine ? Instead of indulging the most brutish, vicious, greedy and ignorant aspects of the human experience, we can, with a little applied effort, elevate the better part of our natures and work to express those elements through our behavior. To do so would probably make us all feel a whole lot better too. Doing good deeds and making other people happy makes you feel totally brilliant, let’s face it.

So we can choose to be the astronaut or the gangster. The superhero or the super villain. The angel or the devil. It’s entirely up to us, particularly in the privileged West, how we choose to imagine ourselves and conduct our lives.

My own work has been an ongoing attempt to repeat the magic word over and over until we all become the kind of superheroes we’d all like to be.



It’s a pretty high–level attempt by some smart people to do the Superman concept some justice, is all I can say. It’s intended to work as a set of sci–fi fables that can be read by children and adults alike. I’d like to think you can go to it if you’re feeling suicidal, if you miss your dad, if you’ve had to take care of a difficult, ailing relative, if you’ve ever lost control and needed a good friend to put you straight, if you love your pets, if you wish your partner could see the real you...All Star is about how Superman deals with all of that.

In today’s world, in today’s media climate designed to foster the fear our leaders like us to feel because it makes us easier to push around. In a world where limp, wimpy men are forced to talk tough and act ‘badass’ even though we all know they’re shitting it inside. In a world where the measure of our moral strength has come to lie in the extremity of the images we’re able to look at and stomach. In a world, I’m reliably told, that’s going to the dogs, the real mischief, the real punk rock rebellion, is a snarling, ‘fuck you’ positivity and optimism. Violent optimism in the face of all evidence to the contrary is the Alpha form of outrage these days.

I have a desire not to see my culture and my fellow human beings fall helplessly into step with a middle class media narrative that promises only planetary catastrophe, as engineered by an intrinsically evil and corrupt species which, in fact, deserves everything it gets.

Is this relentless, downbeat insistence that the future has been cancelled really the best we can come up with? Are we so fucked up we get off on terrifying our children? It’s not funny or ironic anymore and that’s why we wrote All Star Superman the way we did.

What I hope is that people take from it the unlikelihood that a piece of paper, with little ink drawings of figures, with little written words, can make you cry, can make your heart soar, can make you scared, sad, or thrilled.

That piece of paper is inert material, the corpse of some tree, pulped and poured, then given new meaning and new life when the real hours and real emotions that the writer and the artist, the colourist, the letter the editor translated onto the physical page, meet with the real hours and emotions of a reader, of all readers at once, across time, generations and distance.

And think about how that experience, the simple experience of interacting with a paper comic book, along with hundreds of thousands of others across time and space, is an actual doorway onto the beating heart of the imminent, timeless world of “Myth” as defined above. Not just a drawing of it but an actual doorway into timelessness and the immortal world where we are all one together.



My grief over the loss of my dad can be Superman’s grief, can trigger your own grief, for your own dad, for all our dads. The timeless grief that’s felt by Muslims and Christians and Agnostics alike. My personal moments of great and romantic love, untainted by the everyday, can become Superman’s and may resonate with your own experience of these simple human feelings.

In the one Mythic moment we’re all united, kissing our Lover for the First time, the Last time, the Only time, honouring our dear Dad under a blood red sky, against a darkening backdrop, with Mum telling us it’ll all be okay in the end.

This is what I believe in.
And that's why I voted for Barack Obama.
Because I believe in Superman, and because I believe in him..
I believe in myself.
I believe in hope.
I believe that we can be the people we've been waiting for.
I believe that if we're willing to, that every one of us can make a difference.

What I'm trying to say..

I immersed myself in Superman and I tried to find in all of these very diverse approaches the essential "Superman–ness" that powered the engine. I then extracted, purified and refined that essence and drained it into All Star's tank, recreating characters as my own dream versions, without the baggage of strict continuity.

In the end, I saw Superman not as a superhero or even a science fiction character, but as a story of Everyman. We're all Superman in our own adventures. We have our own Fortresses of Solitude we retreat to, with our own special collections of valued stuff, our own super–pets, our own "Bottle Cities" that we feel guilty for neglecting. We have our own peers and rivals and bizarre emotional or moral tangles to deal with.

I felt I'd really grasped the concept when I saw him as Everyman, or rather as the dreamself of Everyman. That "S" is the radiant emblem of divinity we reveal when we rip off our stuffy shirts, our social masks, our neuroses, our constructed selves, and become who we truly are.

Batman is obviously much cooler, but that's because he's a very energetic and adolescent fantasy character: a handsome billionaire playboy in black leather with a butler at this beck and call, better cars and gadgetry than James Bond, a horde of fetish femme fatales baying around his heels and no boss. That guy's Superman day and night.

Superman grew up baling hay on a farm. He goes to work, for a boss, in an office. He pines after a hard–working gal. Only when he tears off his shirt does that heroic, ideal inner self come to life. That's actually a much more adult fantasy than the one Batman's peddling but it also makes Superman a little harder to sell. He's much more of a working class superhero, which is why we ended the whole book with the image of a laboring Superman.

He's Everyman operating on a sci–fi Paul Bunyan scale. His worries and emotional problems are the same as ours... except that when he falls out with his girlfriend, the world trembles. - Grant Morrison via Newsarama

My reason for sharing this with all of you is that I feel like Grant Morrison is not only giving you an excellent explanation of why Superman is the best and greatest superhero, but also because he's bringing up the themes that I was trying to come to terms with and expound upon in my Responsible Adult = Secret Identity post back in July.

It is my belief that if something I was thinking on my own is lining up with something Grant Morrison thinks, then I am doing something intrinsically right in the universe.

You maybe can't imagine..

From Benjamin Birdie via CBR : Morrison and Quitely told what is in many ways the ultimate Superman story. It shows us what he stands for in every moral degree. It shows us the world he fights for in every level of detail. It is an exacting, inspiring, and poignant accomplishment in the realm of Superhero comics. Almost fable-like in its directness and simplicity at times, but as emotionally in depth as any contemporary work of literary fiction. “All Star Superman” is, in its primary intent, “just” a Superhero comic. But like its subject, it has landed in a medium not completely prepared for how remarkable it could be, and thus has irrevocably changed it for the better.

The best birthday present ever.

I wish I could explain to you how incredible this last issue of All Star Superman is.
The title of this, the last chapter of the greatest Superman story ever was "SUPERMAN IN EXCELSIS".
Every time I read those words it makes my eyes well up.

It really felt like that comic was a birthday present just for me from Grant Morrison and Superman.

And not just A birthday present, but the best birthday present I could possibly receive.. which is (of course) the kind of birthday present Superman would give you.

I'm getting all silly and worked up about it.. and I don't mean to, as I'm sure there's only so much a person can take of me getting excited and ridiculous and hopeful over a comic, but I mean, it was as though everything in it was there to make me feel not just like the glass is half full, but that the glass is all full. 

And not just that the glass is all full, but that things being "glass all full" all the time is possible.. that ANYTHING is possible if we're willing to run and stumble and fall and rise to the challenge.

And, it's like, you don't need the whole story, or even whole pages, or any kind of context in some cases and it's like.. just single panels are unbelievable and say so, so much.

It's like the more times I read it, the more powerful it all becomes.

From Jon Morris : "Superman's dearest friends represent everything he loves about humanity: Perry White is the dogged pursuit of unfettered truth, Lois Lane is love and passion, Jimmy Olsen is integrity and daring, Cat Lombard is - as her namesake implies - the satisfaction with the temporal world and Steve Lombard - god bless Steve Lombard, falling to his knees in the middle of the apocalypse to beat back to life the dead heart of a man he spent every waking moment of his own life terrorizing and belittling - is that unchecked sentimentality that we hide behind pride and arrogance."

I don't think I'll ever forget these words as long as I live..

But you know I just ain't the type..

- Grant Morrison has pitched All Star Superman as a movie. Well, I mean, sorta.

- Grant Morrison! Interviewed on a boat!

- Geoff Johns writes a Supergirl I like! Gary Frank makes it all look fantastic!

- Rick Astley is James Bond! I've already got my ticket.. and a new wallpaper.

- More on the new Red Sonja!

- More on the animated Wonder Woman movie!

- As awesome a comic list as there is likely to be!

So don't leave..

All Star Superman #10!
This week!
Not much of a post, but I mean, what else do I need to say?

Grant Morrison made me cry.

"Yeah, see, Superman sees the best in us, including Luthor. And that’s why he’s sad or confused sometimes, because he also sees us messing up, being angry and jealous and self-destructive. He sees the best, he thinks human beings are amazing, and he wants us all to rise up to his level, become superhuman and go off into space or whatever, but his ideals are constantly running up against basic human problems and inadequacies, including his own.

And I think that’s what makes him great. He just keeps tirelessly trying to make things better, to be a role model for everyone. People take him for granted – he’s always dealing with characters who think he’s an idiot, or irrelevant or who just don’t like his plain morality and can’t see that he’s just a genuinely good guy slightly hampered by a fear of forcing his ideas on people." - Grant Morrison on Superman via Newsarama

England's got a new queen..

Reasons To Keep Living
All Star Superman Vol. 2 will be here in August.
Unless it's running behind schedule.
If that happens, you'll just have another reason to continue living a little longer.

Until you kiss me...

The Weekly Crisis has a great piece up on Michael Turner and his fear of feet. Enjoy it as I did.

Also, in case you missed it, last week was the Best Week Ever for comics.
All Star Superman and Scott Pilgrim.
In the same week.
Tons of other great stuff, but really, those two are all I need to mention for you to understand how great it was. If I were a better artist I'd try to draw a picture of the two of them together. They'd probably be high-fiving or something similarly awesome. (Author's note : If you're a great artist and you just read that, you've just read my Christmas wishlist.)

Oh, speaking of awesome Superman team-ups, check out what Jon Morris drew for me!

SUPERMAN AND DEVIL DINOSAUR!
He said it was the weirdest request he'd ever received and there was no way he could turn it down. I win.

So, Rich tells us DC is killing Bruce Wayne, having him come back as a New God in the Fifth World, and be replaced as Batman by Jason Todd as designed by Alex Ross.
That sentence was so insane it could only have come from the mind of Grant Morrison.
And since this is apparently all part of Grant's masterplan, I'm willing to trust him and not get angry with rage over the idea of them killing Batman.
Good luck with the rest of the fanboys though, Grant.

Devastated by the news...

I'm sick.
I'm stuck at work.
I feel terrible.
No art today.
But, there is this..


YES!

Put the entire squad on red alert!

From this week's All Star Superman #8..

Is it wrong that I wish my hair looked exactly like that?