Supergod

Supergod #1-5

by Warren Ellis, Garrie Gastonny

Praying to be saved by a man who can fly will get you killed! From Warren Ellis, the creator of THE AUTHORITY and PLANETARY, comes the most horrifying superhero comic you’ll ever read! When scientists build messianic super-humans to save the world, no one thought about how these heroes would do it – or even if they’d want to. So begins the apocalyptic tomorrow, when supermen kill us all and end the world just because we wanted to be rescued by human-shaped things from beyond Science itself!

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Science Fiction, Comic Book, Superheroes, Graphic Novels Comics, Fiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Warren Ellis is the award-winning writer of graphic novels like TRANSMETROPOLITAN, FELL, MINISTRY OF SPACE and PLANETARY, and the author of the NYT-bestselling GUN MACHINE and the “underground classic” novel CROOKED LITTLE VEIN, as well as the digital short-story single DEAD PIG COLLECTOR. His newest book is the novella NORMAL, from FSG Originals, listed as one of Amazon’s Best 100 Books Of 2016.

The movie RED is based on his graphic novel of the same name, its sequel having been released in summer 2013. IRON MAN 3 is based on his Marvel Comics graphic novel IRON MAN: EXTREMIS. He is currently developing his graphic novel sequence with Jason Howard, TREES, for television, in concert with HardySonBaker and NBCU, and continues to work as a screenwriter and producer in film and television, represented by Angela Cheng Caplan and Cheng Caplan Company. He is the creator, writer and co-producer of the Netflix series CASTLEVANIA, recently renewed for its third season, and of the recently-announced Netflix series HEAVEN’S FOREST.

He’s written extensively for VICE, WIRED UK and Reuters on technological and cultural matters, and given keynote speeches and lectures at events like dConstruct, ThingsCon, Improving Reality, SxSW, How The Light Gets In, Haunted Machines and Cognitive Cities.

Warren Ellis has recently developed and curated the revival of the Wildstorm creative library for DC Entertainment with the series THE WILD STORM, and is currently working on the serialising of new graphic novel works TREES: THREE FATES and INJECTION at Image Comics, and the serialised graphic novel THE BATMAN’S GRAVE for DC Comics, while working as a Consulting Producer on another television series.

A documentary about his work, CAPTURED GHOSTS, was released in 2012.

Recognitions include the NUIG Literary and Debating Society’s President’s Medal for service to freedom of speech, the EAGLE AWARDS Roll Of Honour for lifetime achievement in the field of comics & graphic novels, the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire 2010, the Sidewise Award for Alternate History and the International Horror Guild Award for illustrated narrative. He is a Patron of Humanists UK. He holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Essex.

Warren Ellis lives outside London, on the south-east coast of England, in case he needs to make a quick getaway.

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 3 out of 5]

over the years there have been a lot of high-quality comics exploring the scarily world-wrecking potential of super-powered types taking over the earth. what would happen if the Justice League was actually in charge of our stupid world - and if their roll call included a host of disturbed egomaniacs - or, just as problematic - actual people. ones with typically flawed personalities, unconscious desires, unrealized ambitions.

Squadron Supreme, Kingdom Come, The Authority, Supreme Power, and of course Watchmen have all done a fine job exploring this fascinating idea.

one of my favorite writers, Warren Ellis, revisits this idea in Supergod. the specialness here is that the world-wrecking super-berserkers are the insane products of equally insane authoritarian regimes, i.e. the real world nations of today. well at least according to Ellis.

it is a fairly amazing book: smart, witty, gruesome, full of anger and despair and dark humor, tragic, determinist, apocalyptic. happy times occur as as each nation's superhero attempts to take down the berserk Super God of India named Krishna, who's intent on making the best of possible worlds - no matter the cost. the End of All Things has seldom been this fun of a ride. Humans Off Earth Now!

Ellis does something a little different here, at least different from what I described in the first paragraph. these supergods are not remotely human in their construction, let alone in their motivations. they are indeed "gods", of the old school... unknowable, inexplicable, inhuman, with powers beyond imagining. Ellis' decision to describe their individual powers in only the most obscure and ambiguous of terms only adds to their bizarreness and to the mystery of why and how they are doing the things they do. and what they are doing is, basically, destroying the world as we know it.

above all, Supergod is a pitch black comedy about Ragnarok. terrible, stupid mistakes are made and everyone suffers. lol, right? yikes. America and India suffer the most in this death farce, but Ellis saves some of his caustic stabs for China, England, Iran, the Soviet Union and later Russia. eventually he loses control of his narrative but the story remains darkly enjoyable despite the increasingly berserk chaos on the page.

thanks, Dave, for the great gift.

__________

Super Template Action!

* Superman: Jerry Craven
* The Fantastic Four, or in this case, a fungal Fantastic Three: Morrigan Lugus... yuck
* Captain Atom, supernatural version: Malak Al-Maut
* Iron Man? Rocket Red? Red Tornado? The Vision? The Original Human Torch? who knows, probably none of them: Novaya Goraj & Perun
* is there even a template for a being that can apparently transmute all elements into whatever he desires?: Krishna
* is there even a template for a being that can manipulate living matter in order to create giant weapons made of human flesh?: Maitreya... yuck
* is there even a template for a being who can switch and adjust time streams and reality itself, and who breaks through the fourth wall just to mock and threaten poor little you, dear reader?: mark monday Dajjal

[A.J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Y’know I actually quite liked this for a Warren Ellis book. It was truly batshit insane though, and I know I have said comics are crazy or insane before, but this one is beyond apeshit. This is an Avatar book too, so buyer beware. Basically, a superhuman arms race that leads to an apocalyptic tomorrow, with Ellis’ thoughts on belief, human nature, and governments flowing through every page of this book.

The story follows a scientist who recounts how these superhumans ended up destroying the world, with 3 pretty great issues of buildup before one of the most satisfying endings to a book commences with 2 final issues that will blow your socks off. Really enjoyed this. Gonna check out the other two, No Hero & Black Summer, in this Transhuman Trilogy by Ellis.

[Sam Quixote · Rating 5 out of 5]

A professor talking to a recording device sits beside the Thames River as all of London lies in burning ruin, the river choked with corpses, the sky a fiery red. This man is telling us how things got to this point, how the world ended for humans because we put our faith in gods, or superheroes - Supergods.

Warren Ellis has been writing some really interesting books in the last few years about the nature of superheroes and riffing on new ways to portray them in comics. I highly recommend checking out "Black Summer" and "No Hero" before coming to "Supergod" as you see a master writer working his way through some pretty fantastic ideas before coming to this, a culmination of sorts, and the best superhero book you'll read this year.

In this world humans build superhumans who are real representations of their own gods such as a real life, superhuman Krishna, complete with blue skin, who was created to save India. He does this by murdering 90% of the Indian population and burning down most of the structures, recreating a cleaner India thus "saving" it.

China creates a god who goes on to turn people into structures; Russian creates a god who becomes a killing machine; the UK creates a strange god with three heads that spreads love and chaos through spores; and America creates the worst one of all...

I won't go into each country's version of their saviour but suffice it to say, Ellis' imagination shows you some pretty amazing creations - and then faces them against each other. The battlescenes and the actions of these gods are incredible, in fact just imagining this story is a feat few writers could achieve but Ellis not only does it but does a great job of realising it as well. Garrie Gastonny's artwork is also brilliant and he brings each of these strange gods/monsters to life beautifully/horrifically.

"Supergod" is an utterly brilliant superhero comic that mixes in the space philosophy ideas Ellis writes about in "Planetary" with the awesome visions of superbeings in "The Authority" and the mix is a very heady book that's gripping, horrific, thoughtful, and unforgettable. Reading this was enormous fun and confirms Warren Ellis as one of the most interesting writers in comics today.

[47Time · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story has the main character, surrounded on all sides by ruined buildings, give a well-informed account of the events that led to the end of the world. The British had a secret space program since after the Second World War. Their first space launch created strange results: the three astronauts were fused together by an alien fungus, confounding the scientists who begin worshipping the creature. They called it Morrigan Lugus.

Meanwhile, India developed a clone named Krishna with godlike abilities and the imprinted desire to save India. Unfortunately, it decided to do it by killing some of its population. Pakistan launched its nuclear arsenal to kill the clone, but their target redirected the missiles back to their source. The explosions plunged the planet into nuclear winter.

Other countries had their own superhuman projects: Iran created Malak Al-Mauk, Somali Puntland created Rastafari, China had Maitreya, the US had Jerry Craven, Russia had Novaya Goraj and then Perun. They were all very destructive and impossible to control, with the exception of the US and Russian superhumans who were sent to fight other superhumans. Their inhuman way of thinking had little concern for human life, but their fights were spectacular. The battle that seemed to seal the Earth's fate was the one where the Moon was destroyed. Krishna built devices to clear the air and make the planet livable again, but it was all destroyed with Dajjal's self-detonation, along with humanity's chance to survive.

[Zedsdead · Rating 4 out of 5]

The cast of gods

Morrigan Lugus, UK - England fired three astronauts out into deep space and left them there for a while to see what would happen. They returned fused together with alien mycological mass, a mycological computer on a meat substrate. It sporulates viciously and communicates through sound, radio waves, and pheromones, which drive those who come in contact into rampant sexual behavior.

Krishna, India - Genetically engineered human clone equipped with an artificial intelligence agent, an idiot-savant machine sentience which can fabricate technological enhancements for its "human" mount using tailored, metal-excreting bacteria. Manipulates/creates inert matter.

Malak al-Maut, Iran - Mystery power source. Excretes radio waves. Possibly in contact with something unnatural. Disassociates atomic bonds in proximate space, rendering things into loose piles of atoms by walking past them. Krishna's antithesis.

Jerry Craven, USA - An air force officer cyborged on the brink of death, using miniaturization technology and stem-cell budding points on a crude artificial nervous system. He's kept in a fake idealized small American town under the Sonoran desert. Robocop meets The Truman Show.

Maitreya, China - A subject enveloped by scanning tunneling microscopes wired into his visual cortex, forced to meditate upon his own atomic structure until he could perceive the quantum foam of every particle of his being birthing and annihilating under the uncertainty principle. Uses humans as biological clay.

Dajjal, Iraq (American security firm) - Sees time through tactical perception, a result of "exotic engineering". Perceives emergent timelines. Conscious, without sanity, careens toward the zone in his vision with the most open pathways.

Perun, Russia - New-generation technological superhuman body operated by the remains of a dead cosmonaut brain and four cloned sub-brains.

Supergod reminds me of Warren Ellis's "Orbiter", in that it feels like the cliff notes version of an actual book. There are four or five volumes worth of story here, packed into one.

One big plothole involves Jerry Craven.

--"We always knew he'd be the death of us."
--"The worst one of all."

Why? He's incidental, just another random result of the superhuman arms race and the hubris of the most powerful of the world's governments. Ellis builds him up with all this dramatic foreshadowing and nothing comes of it. This is one of the things that makes Supergod feel unfinished.

The entire thing is narrated by a British scientist to an American peer while the world burns around him. It's dictated dryly, matter-of-factly, and then it's over. VERY interesting and beautifully illustrated, it's an essay on the destructive nature of the human drive to have something greater than itself to worship.
----------------------------
SECOND READ:

Asked directly "What are you for?!", one of the gods responds:

I am for that thing in your genome that demands it. I am for that thing which keeps you animals alive. I am, at most, a slice of monkey suspended within the stuff of universal intelligence.

You are a monkey in nice clothes.

In the harsh environment you refer to as a habitable planet, group behaviors are required to survive long enough to procreate. Since you are stupid monkeys, you have no natural affinity for group altruism. And so you have evolved a genetic pump that delivers pleasant chemicals to your monkey brains. One that is triggered by awe and fear of an anthropomorphism of your environment. Earth mothers. Sky gods. Bits of bush that catch fire. Interesting-looking rocks. An oddly shaped branch. You're not fussy.

When your brain does this idiot work, you stop in front of that bump or stick and consider it fiercely. Other monkeys will, like as not, stop next to you and emulate you. Your genetic pump delivers morphine for your souls. You have your fellow monkeys join in, perhaps so they can feel it too. Perhaps because you feel it might please the stick god to have more monkeys gazing at it in narcotic awe.

The group must be defended, because as many monkeys as possible must please the stick god. And you can continue to get your fix off praying to it. You draw up rules to organise and protect the group. Two hundred thousand years later, you put Adolf Hitler into power, because you are, after all, just monkeys.

I am a thing born of lies. You lied about needing to explore space. You lied about needing an edge in your arms race. Ultimately, I believe you lied about your need for a Messiah figure to consider.

I am your STASH.

This is Supergod 's thesis statement.

[Stewart Tame · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loves me some Warren Ellis. So the various nations get caught up in an arms race to build their own superhumans. What could possibly go wrong? Since the story begins near the end and is told mainly by flashbacks, you get a glimpse of how it all ends (Hint: not well.) The entire story is contained in one volume, and a sequel seems highly unlikely--though I suppose I shouldn't bet against Ellis like that. Anyway, lots of fun with Ellis' usual blend of mind-blowing concepts and over the top action. The cover is misleading--deliberately provocative, even--as no scene even remotely like it appears within.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Avatar Press may as well be my second home at this rate. While I might not always be up for their output of balls-to-the-wall, author carte-blanche approach to comics, I can definitely appreciate their desire to cater to their readers.

So I recently finished reading Alan Moore's run on Miracleman and since I've got the attention span of a hamster with a caffeine addiction and an Energizer battery up its bum, I figured I may as well have gander of one of Warren Ellis contributions to the "superheroes suck" formula.


O.o

Okay to be fair, it's not as bad as that, but Ellis certainly doesn't skimp on the idea of superheroes as horror stories. Basically back in the early 2010's Avatar Press gave Ellis the freedom to write a trio of superhero stories as he saw fit. Each story dealt with superheroes from a different angle.
- Black Summer, which dealt with Superheroes being too moral.
- No Hero, which dealt with Superheroes who have no morals.
- And Supergod, which dealt with Superheroes who were amoral.

The premise of Supergod is simple. The world is fucked, both metaphorically and literally. The end of the world came and went. Humanity is all but dead with small pockets of people living out the last of their days in underground bunkers waiting the end. The story follows Simon Reddin as he sits at the bank of the heavily polluted Thames and speaks into a recorder for the benefit of his friend over in America. We never see this friend and given the state of the world, part of me thinks Reddin is just speaking out his last will and suicide note instead.

Reddin tells us the story of how we got here. How Britain sent three astronauts up into space and they came back fused with alien fungi into a triple-headed being. How the countries of the world went from nuclear weapons to producing their own superhumans. How India put together their creation Krishna. They task Krishna with saving India. So he starts by obliterating 90% of the country's population. What follows is a line of dominoes that fall one by one as the world reacts to Krishna and send their own superhumans into the fray.

The artwork by Garrie Gastony is colourful, vibrant and horrifying in all its nightmarish glory. The action scenes are decently choreographed with plenty of varied concepts and designs. Each of the superhumans are distinct with no overlap. The violence is both visceral, creative and nasty in all the ways that a good horror comic should feel.

The story is engaging in that "morbid curiosity, let's watch the car crash" scenario. The world is already fucked, so the question becomes what caused it. And Ellis doesn't disappoint. Each step of the way, we see the events that come to pass as a result of Krishna's arrival. And with each country reacting in kind, the situation gets more and more terrifying.

At its core, Supergod is a cosmic horror story in all but name, with the only exception to the rule being that the horrifying alien entities are manmade. Simon pretty much functions as any Lovecraftian narrator would, giving us the story as the lone survivor sitting on the front doorstep to oblivion. He's worn-down, cynical with no hope left, just trying to get through his last bottle of booze and the details of his final moments. The main attraction though are the superhumans and while some lack a lot in the character department - some of them are even mute - they make up for in sheer creativity and design.

Krishna is the central figure for most of the book, a silent blue-skinned figure made from nanotech. While he doesn't talk, his presence in the comic and the shit he does to fulfil his task is both awe-inspiring and horrifying too.



Jerry Craven is the second most frequent superhuman and is basically the most human of the group, if only because he used to BE human. A former pilot whose plane crashed due to government interference, Jerry's corpse was fished out and resurrected with a nuclear reactor in his chest. But the process brought Jerry back wrong. Jerry is probably the most well-developed of the superhumans if because of what little humanity he has left and the fact that despite the inhumanity around him, he just wants to help.



And then there's Dajjal, the superhuman from Iraq. Dajjal is unsettling in a lot more a meta-way, created through a process where it is able to see multiple timelines at once. Not only this but it exists in multiple timelines, sees the all the strands of possibility as they exist all at once. Which means it can do this;


Oh fuck, he saw me.....

I won't spoil all the rest of them because the entire list would be too deep into spoiler territory. And half the fun of this book is seeing what an absolute mad lad Warren Ellis in terms of creative nightmares.

But not all of the story is top-tier. This is essentially a cosmic horror story at its core, which means that the ending isn't sunshine and rainbow farts and given that this is a story about the end of the world, you have to be of a particular mindset to enjoy this. In addition there's a couple of moments where Ellis gets on his soapbox and voices his opinions through one of the superhumans. Given that Ellis is an atheist and the soapbox moment isn't all that subtle, you'll twig to it pretty quickly. It's not a dealbreaker but I understand how that can get under some peoples' skin.

Supergod for me was a good solid story that did something I'm always game for. It took a tired old concept (superheroes) and reexamined them in a different way. It's grim and brutal, doesn't pull its punches, sometimes preachy but overall an engaging horrifying read.

[Nick · Rating 1 out of 5]

No idea why this tryhard piece of shit has any positive reviews. Whats the point of this comic? That weapons of mass destruction are bad? The hubris of science? Theres very little depth to it. Its really just an excuse to have superhumans with religious sounding names battle each other. The art is mediocre generic American comic book art. The way it is written is very very cheesy. Its all "ohhhh maaan I'm gonna smoke this joint and tell you about what a cool secret scientist I am and how the world got totally destroyed man." Ok, yeah, very impressive, you are a super cool nihilist dude, this world is super bleak, I get it. But it doesn't live up to any of that hype.

Idk. A lot of the story takes place in India and Krishna is one of the most powerful Gods in the story. So you'd think it would appeal to me on that basis alone. But none of the "Gods" are given interesting cultural context, besides the 2 panels which explain their origins. They all behave more or less similarly, and aren't reflective of the mythologies they derive from. I found it online so I guess it was worth reading for free. Its just superhuman battle porn and not very well done at that. Very dull reading.

Another problem with it is that there is pretty much no mystery or anticipation. We know from panel 1 how its going to end.

My friend had this to say about it: "It has this stupid trope of "oh something really cool has happened, trust this exposition, cause you're about to read about it". It comes off as very smug. Everything is trying to be omg so epic, and it just doesnt live up to it. They cant just let a story happen and have cool stuff happen and let the reader decide how to feel about it."

also yeah thats another problem. A lot of things just had no point or went nowhere. Like it tells us all about a somali and a venezuelian god operation, and then randomly they just explode and that story arc is over. Then there are a few gods who it tells us all about, but who never do anything except die. DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB SO FUCKING DUMB.

[Ariel Acupan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting take on religion, human flaws and on how the world could end. It could make you question morality and why do people do the things they do. The constant search for what to believe in order to be saved was so twisted in this series that only a very sick mind would've created this (sorry Ellis, but for me that's a compliment :) ). Just for the argument raised: "What if the gods we(humans) made to save us, turns out to be the one who'd kill us?" almost make me give it a 5 but the ending was so not the one I picture in my mind. hahaha :P

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This could be viewed as a conclusion to Warren Ellis' superhero trilogy for Avatar Press (I'm including Black Summer and No Hero). while I would argue Black Summer ended on a slightly optimistic note, and No Hero is downright cynical, Supergod is his bleakest work in the genre. Essentially, using the cover blurb, humanity learns not to pray to its superheroes as if they are gods for salvation.

The premise is that over a 70 year period the world's government started trying to create superbeings, or transhumans. It began with a British experiment involving practically unshielded space flight in the 1950s, to the Soviet Union in the 1960s, an U.S. cyborg made in the 1970s, and then India, Iran, China, etc. But, what happens when the being escape their creators, and begin to shape the world the way they see fit? The answer is disaster.

A lot of interesting concepts are introduced, as far as how superbeings might view the world, and what they would do with it. As the same time I think it can be said that like Bill Willingham's The Pantheon, the message here is that humans need to rely on themselves on not on a higher power.

[Michael Emond · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love Ellis and was expecting some good things about this book after the rave reviews I read here. This is one of those times I must scratch my head and wonder what the other readers saw in this bleak, over the top book. This idea and the story Ellis wrote would have worked better as a short 30 page comic. Dragging it out over 5 issues (and packaged in one graphic novel) made for some pretty dull reading. After the first page the premise and conclusion are already laid out...Earth has been destroyed because the key nations of the world each invented their own omni-powerful superhero. Each one more disgusting and horrifying than the next. Each one capable of destroying the world. The reason I hate this book is the same reason I don't like the zombie craze - I like my stories with a bit of hope this story offers none and becomes preachy without being interesting.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lately I've determined that narration (or "telling" rather than "showing") is a Bad Thing in comics - why waste the power of a visual medium? Why irritate the reader with a non-display of what you're trying to convey? Why slow them down when you want to create energy, action and impact?

All this is relevant to Supergod, as a way of emphasizing how surprised I was at how well Ellis' narration of this tale worked.

I'm also surprised how much I enjoyed the "birth of superhumans" narrative. I think infusing it with the unique and amazing characteristics of each country's personality helped immensely - making this feel like a fresh new story - of the moment. Hopefully it will age well too, as a reflection of some long-term cultural norms.

While I'm thrilled to read some more Ellis (given it sounds from his blog that he's going to abandon comics for the foreseeable future), it's tinged with sadness that he won't give usher visions like his best work (and this isn't quite his best).

[Iantony · Rating 3 out of 5]

First time I heard about this graphic novel, I was excited, really excited. I've read some of Warren Ellis works so my expectations are high.

This graphic novel is an example of an excellent idea and excellent beginning with not so good ending. The main idea of this graphic novel is really interesting, really. It's not about a real God or mythological Gods, but instead several superpower countries are going on arms race, creating their own version of 'God'. As the story goes on, things are getting weird and weirder...

Generally it's still a well written graphic novel so you may not find it disappointing. The art is also pretty good, at the very least it could relate and tell the story well. Not my favorite kind of comic book art, but good enough. I'd still recommend this especially to comic book readers whom got bored reading graphic novels/comics from the big two.

[Redfox5 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a feeling that I wasn't going to like this book, and I was wrong!

It actually had a good plot, well I kinda wish Krishna had been talked about more. He made the most sense, being created to make India a better place. So he removed the things that were causing pollution in Inida, which just happened to be us.

The other gods made less sense, I'm not sure why it was decided that the UK would have a Supergod that grows fungi and causes people to wank off to it, that was just weird.

But overall, it was a decent read. And the artwork was pretty cool.

[Ross Alon · Rating 3 out of 5]

The ideas are intriguing, but the story is too grim, too staight forward and not as thought provocing as other Warren Ellis stories.
A miss for me.

[Mark Desrosiers · Rating 4 out of 5]

"A mycological computer on a meat substrate" -- that's the triple-headed mushroom-covered supergod the Brits created. Similar supergods are also created by India, China, Russia, Ethiopia, and America, with varying results (America's is just a basic superpowered soldier with little imagination). Warren Ellis's narrator-scientist is smoking weed and drinking from a flask throughout, and I suspect so was Warren while writing, such is the variable quality of this apocalyptic tale. The crazed realist artwork by Garrie Gastonny makes it work though, especially the wordless climax, which I includes a Cthulu stitched together from countless moaning humans.

[Peyton F · Rating 4 out of 5]

A coworker loaned this one to me, and I got to say, I enjoyed it.

I didn’t review it last year simply because I forgot that Goodreads was a thing, but I had recently read Warren Ellis’ “Planetary,” a story that examined the history of superheroes, leaning into things like Gun Fu, Kaiju, and even Tarzan and other Pulp archetypes. I think Ellis as a writer is really into history. So much of his stuff offers these timelines for events and offers worldbuilding for things. “Supergod” is a historical retelling of an alternate history, in which the Arms Race during and after the Cold War wasn’t with Tanks and Drones, but super-humans, and everything that could go wrong, does.

The Supergods aren’t human. They’re beyond humanity. They lack anything that tethers them to this Earth. Ellis grapples with how different cultures would justify creating these super beings, and I think it aligns itself with pastiches of Superman, Doctor Manhattan, and the X-Men more so than Spider-Man or Batman. They lack a lot of the stuff that would make you go “oh, there’s a redeemable quality here.” One controls spores and is 3 beings in one giant statue. Another is a representation of an Indian deity. There’s one that is a “Standard American Boy” whose powers aren’t really explained, and there are several glowing individuals capable of massive destruction and making reality their own sort of play doh. Each one looks intriguing.

Despite the engaging art, full of interesting details in the designs of these characters, I think that the way the story is presented doesn’t really help me. It’s told through narration by one British scientist. There isn’t many times throughout the work where characters speak to one another, instead, it’s this narrator monologuing with art of various actions these supergods take. A concept like this, that brings commentary to these godlike beings, could’ve benefited from it being examined as the arms race was happening. Perhaps, had this book been 12-18 issues instead of 5, we could’ve seen more boots on the ground stuff, full of dialogue and a greater examination of these people. Rarely in these graphic novels do I want to see more, but this certainly could’ve benefited from being a Planetary-level narrative.

I hope my coworker would be down to share the other two in this trilogy, as I think that this was pretty fun, but I want to see the other two’s way of telling the story. I’m partial to no overlayed narration instead of what we had here.

[Guilherme Smee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Esse quadrinho é um desperdício de um conceito muito bom, mas que aparece diversas vezes dentro da obra de Warren Ellis que é o fato da "morte de Deus" e a vontade de superá-lo a partir de invenções humanas. Às vezes Ellis acerta no uso desse conceito, como em Transmetropolitan ou em Excalibur, e ainda em Planetary, mas neste Superdeus que era para ter a "desconstrução de Deus e dos Super-heróis" como principal orientador da história, ele acabou se perdendo. Fez uma narrativa grandiloquente demais, megalomaníaca demais, com ares épicos para ser desenvolvida dentro de um espaço mínimo. É como se fosse contar uma trilogia dentro do espaço e escopo de um conto: acaba não funcionando mesmo porque está inadequado com o suporte. Já os desenhos de Garrie Gasthonny são bastante competentes e as capas desenvolvidas pelo brasileiro Felipe Massafera, talvez sejam a melhor parte desta publicação. Aparentemente Superdeus faz parte de um trilogia desenvolvida por Ellis com o intuito de fazer uma "desconstrução dos super-heróis". Mas se todos eles forem nessa pegada, prefiro evitar a fadiga.

[Jorge Schumacher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Uma HQ com uma premissa interessante, que trata sobre religião e natureza humana. Porém a execução deixou a desejar. A história é um tanto arrastada e a opção de utilizar um narrador para contar toda a história pelo seu ponto de vista não foi a mais feliz.

[Logan Young · Rating 2 out of 5]

The cover of this one made me interested because of it's mix of cheesiness and edge-lord-ness. The story was pretty boring, though.

[Crowei · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can I be offended by a piece of literature and still give it three stars? Cos I was offended by this. I mean really what was the point of this?

[Jesús · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the weirdest readings I have made, no doubt

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This wasn't the best thing I've ever read, but it was SO COOL.

[Leah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Warren Ellis is fucked up

[Akshay · Rating 4 out of 5]

A terrifying thought experiment about gods, science, and the end of humanity.

Warren Ellis's Supergod is not really a superhero comic. It is what happens when the superhero fantasy is stripped of its comforting assumptions and pushed to its most horrifying logical conclusion:

What if humanity actually succeeded in creating gods—and those gods had no reason to love us?

Originally published by Avatar Press as a five-issue series, with art by Garrie Gastonny, Supergod presents a world destroyed by an arms race in superhuman creation. Ellis frames the story as a post-apocalyptic confession: British scientist Simon Reddin recounts the chain of events that led from scientific ambition to global catastrophe.

The premise is quintessentially Ellis. Governments and scientists do not create superhumans because they have carefully considered the ethical consequences. They create them because they can—and because someone else might do it first. The superhero becomes an extension of the nuclear arms race: another weapon in the endless competition for technological and military supremacy.

What makes Supergod particularly disturbing is Ellis's insistence that a genuinely superhuman being would not necessarily be a better version of us. It might be something fundamentally different.

That idea sits at the heart of the book. Traditional superheroes, even enormously powerful ones, tend to remain psychologically human. They have human emotions, human morality, human desires and, crucially, human limitations. Ellis asks what happens when those assumptions disappear. His superhumans are not simply stronger humans. They are post-human entities whose perception of reality may be incomprehensible to their creators.

This is where the title becomes especially effective. The word Supergod suggests that humanity has achieved divinity through science. Yet Ellis turns the religious idea inside out. A god does not have to be benevolent simply because human beings worship it. Nor does something deserving worship necessarily have any obligation to answer our prayers.

The book therefore becomes a dark meditation on religion as well as science. Humanity wants salvation, and it attempts to manufacture a savior. But the result is closer to Frankenstein than to the Messiah. The creators confuse power with goodness and transcendence with morality.

Ellis's greatest strength is his ability to turn abstract philosophical questions into spectacularly grotesque images. Supergod is full of scientific nightmares, monstrous bodies and apocalyptic destruction. Gastonny's artwork complements the writing with imagery that makes the book feel less like conventional superhero fiction and more like cosmic horror.

The visual imagination is deliberately excessive: these are beings that should never have existed, and the art repeatedly reminds us of that fact.

There is also a distinctly British, sardonic quality to the narration. Reddin's voice combines scientific detachment, black humour and exhausted fatalism. He is not recounting the apocalypse with heroic grandeur; he is essentially explaining how humanity managed to destroy itself while sounding almost annoyed that anyone is surprised.

That narrative choice is important because Supergod is much more interested in ideas than conventional character development. This can be both its greatest strength and its principal weakness.

Readers looking for emotionally complex heroes and villains may find the characters comparatively thin. The story sometimes feels like a philosophical lecture illustrated with extraordinarily violent images. The international superhuman arms race is consequently more important than individual personalities.

Different nations produce their own versions of godlike power, reflecting different ambitions and fears. The implication is bleak: change the flag, change the laboratory, change the ideology—the underlying human impulse remains the same.

And that is ultimately what makes Supergod more unsettling than its monsters.

The monsters are not really the point.

Humanity is.

Ellis attacks the fantasy that technological progress automatically constitutes moral progress. We repeatedly assume that if something becomes more powerful, it will also become wiser, kinder or more responsible. Supergod refuses that comforting equation. Science can give us extraordinary capabilities without giving us the wisdom to use them.

The book also works as a savage deconstruction of superhero mythology. Superhero stories traditionally ask what a good person would do if given extraordinary power. Ellis asks a more disturbing question:

What if the thing with extraordinary power doesn't share our definition of "good"?

That question makes Supergod surprisingly relevant beyond its original superhero context. Its concerns—artificial intelligence, biotechnology, weapons technology, scientific competition and the possibility of creating entities whose capabilities exceed our ability to control them—belong to a much larger tradition of technological caution.

Still, the book is not flawless. Ellis sometimes pushes his cynicism so hard that subtlety disappears. The relentless grotesquerie can become numbing, and some of the philosophical ideas are presented more forcefully than they are explored. Readers who want a carefully constructed emotional narrative may find the work cold.

But Supergod is not trying to be comforting, subtle or emotionally reassuring.

It is trying to make the superhero fantasy feel dangerous again.

That it succeeds so well is its greatest achievement.

Verdict

Supergod is a savage, intelligent and deeply unpleasant examination of what happens when humanity's desire to create saviors collides with scientific ambition and military competition. It takes one of the oldest superhero fantasies—what if humans could become gods?—and replaces wish fulfillment with existential horror.

It is not Warren Ellis's most character-driven work, nor is it necessarily his most accessible. But as a conceptual piece of science fiction, it is remarkably effective. The book's central idea lingers long after the violence and spectacle have faded:

Creating something more powerful than humanity does not mean creating something better than humanity.

For readers interested in dystopian science fiction, cosmic horror, philosophical superhero stories or Ellis's darker work, Supergod is well worth reading.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐✨

Best described as: superhero fiction rewritten as a technological apocalypse.

[Francois Arsenault · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fairly standard fare for Warren Ellis. The creation of superbeings of superthings through science as allegory is ground he's covered often and better. It still holds interest as the scale of it is quite impressive and Ellis never writes anything if he doesn't have anything to say. The idea of the future is his big thing and he's always quite elloquent about it.

Unfortunately, his choice of having the whole thing completly narrated by a single guy after everything is done keeps it from being truly engaging. I understand how it allows him to cover everything he wanted to in a fairly concise manner but it does keep things fairly superficial.

The art is in the usual Avatar style I'm not crazy about. Perfectly competent and clear but lacking a certain undefinable quality to make it pop. Felipe Massafera still has to be commended for being able to handle such big scenes and ideas.

All in all, probably for established fans of Ellis.

[William Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Avatar Press seems to be the alce where all the subversive or iconoclastic comic book talent goes to write out their most perverse fantasies. It's the cmic book equivalent of Studio 54, a place where anything goes and things get done just to see if they can get away with doing them.

So if you're looking for substance in anything they publish, you'll be sorely disappointed. Supergod may have come the closest in that regard, being a very transparent allegory for nuclear war destroying mankind. The writing is entirely expository from the first person perspective and makes for a really trite read. We don't get anything out of it except a few great character concepts which could have blossomed into much, much more had they been used in, say, a creator-owned Image book instead of this slim volume of self-indulgent doom and gloom.

Best part was the artwork, and even that suffered from anemia which needed quite a bit of help in post-production from the coloring.

Writing: D
Art: C

[Venus Maneater · Rating 5 out of 5]

re-read on June the 26th 2017.

IMO this comic makes a beautiful Anti-Superhero triptych with two of Ellis' other works; No Hero and Black Summer. Try to read them all in one sitting.

[Tracy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh, meh.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strange tale of superhumans, godlike beings, the end of the world, the arms race, and the human race being turned into compost for mushrooms to grow in.