He had me at "Shazam!" Grant Morrison, the comic book writer and author of Supergods, rubbed the magic lantern of my memories and re-ignited my lifelong love affair with comic books. He helped me recall being a young boy and placing a dime and two pennies into a vending machine to fetch the latest issue of Superman. And the times as a college student, rummaging through cardboard boxes at a used comic book store to find old editions of Batman and the Fantastic Four. More recently, thanks to reading Supergods, I've invited my 12-year-old son to join me in paging through the 300-plus yellowing comic books I have stored in the basement.

Like me, Morrison is a comic book aficionado, and his passion for comic superheroes bursts through the pages of his book, subtitled "What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human." Supergods is an examination of the evolution of superheroes and how they symbolize the changes in our culture, and it begins, appropriately, with the debut of Superman in 1938, a time when people were longing for a hero who could fight the forces of evil bent on world domination. On the two-dimensional pages, the criminals were Brainiac and Lex Luthor, but in real life, the villain was Adolf Hitler. In the turbulent 1960s, the superheroes developed an anti-authority edge, as seen in the popularity of Spiderman and The Incredible Hulk. By the 1980s, as society settled into a great malaise, the comics turned darker, typified by the rise of anti-heroes like the X-Men and Watchmen.

But Supergods doesn't just offer us a reflection of ourselves throughout our recent history; it tackles important social issues such as feminism, illustrated in the comic book form of Wonder Woman and the Invisible Girl, and diversity in the guise of Black Panther and Storm. Morrison also notes with insight and irony how comic books, once considered subversive to youth, are now a reliable source of income for Hollywood.

Supergods is an enjoyable read for both rabid comic book fans who want to take a trip down memory lane and casual readers who want to understand how these colorful, sometimes crude books offer us a glimpse at how far we've come as a society. In Morrison's words, comic books "tell us where we've been, what we feared and what we desired, and . . . speak to us about what we could be."

An illuminating, if occasionally biased history of the most American of icons—the superhero—as told by one of comics' most prominent writers.

Morrison (Absolute All-Star Superman, 2011, etc.) is ideally suited to the task of chronicling the glorious rise, fall, rise, fall and rise again of comic-book superheroes, from Superman's auspicious beginning as a Depression-era symbol of the power of the individual to Wolverine's rise to prominence in a more morally ambiguous era. The author has the fan credentials (growing up "on the dole" in his native Scotland, superhero stories were his favored means of escape); the professional credibility (having authored hugely successful runs on fan-favorite titles like Batman and JLA as well as critically acclaimed runs on lesser-known books like The Invisibles and Doom Patrol); and the intellectual capacity (his close-reading critique of superhero motivations and mores reads more like a dissertation than an all-ages historical narrative). Unfortunately, his insider status hamstrings his efforts when he reaches the "Dark Age" of superhero comics—the same period in which he entered the field. Personal relationships with certain luminaries (including Mark Millar and Warren Ellis) color his commentary, and an unfulfilling experience writing Marvel's New X-Men gives rise to a vendetta that spurs him to dismiss that company's recent efforts as pale imitations of DC Comics' more inventive large-scale superhero event stories—tales that Morrison himself has had a big hand in crafting. Biased commentary aside, this is as thorough an account of the superhero phenomenon as readers are likely to find, filled with unexpected insights and savvy pop-psych analysis—not to mention the author's accounts of his own drug-fueled trips to higher planes of existence, which add a colorful element.

For serious comics aficionados only, but those who dare enter will find the prose equivalent of a Morrison superhero tale: part perplexing, part weird, fully engrossing.

Who better than Morrison to tell us how the superheroes of yesterday were slicked up to become the superheroes of today? His Batman: Arkham Asylum is reportedly the best-selling original graphic novel (GN), having sold a half million copies. For GN fans who want to dig a little deeper.

A Scottish playwright and comic book writer, Morrison (Arkham Asylum) traces the rise of superheroes from the 1940s golden age to the comics industry of today. This excellent survey of pop deity origins begins with "the ur-god and his dark twin," Superman and Batman. As Morrison sees it, "archetyped, pop-mythic tales of superpowered heroes and villains" soared into our collective imaginations in an explosive fashion. Superman, "the personification of a thrusting industrial tomorrow," had a primal impact. Soon there was a pantheon of gods and figures from legend and myth: Hawkman ("an avatar of hawk-headed Horus"), the Flash ("the Greek god Hermes") and Captain Marvel, whose magic word, "Shazam," was an acronym: Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, Mercury. When writers brought the superhero gods down to Earth and gritty real life (as in Watchmen), Morrison went back to basics: "I decided I would plant my flag in the world of dreams, automatic writing, visions and magic." The second half of this engrossing book covers his own comics career while also probing his personal psyche. Morrison is a skilled word magician, seeking creativity in a cosmological dimension. (July)