The Myth of the American Superhero PDF Download
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Author: John Shelton Lawrence
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 0802825737
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 429
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Book Description
As the nation seems to yearn for redemption from the evils that threaten its tranquility, the authors maintain that Joseph Campbell's monomythic hero is alive and well, but significantly displaced, in American popular culture.
Author: John Shelton Lawrence
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 0802825737
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 429
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Book Description
As the nation seems to yearn for redemption from the evils that threaten its tranquility, the authors maintain that Joseph Campbell's monomythic hero is alive and well, but significantly displaced, in American popular culture.
Author: Sean Guynes
Publisher: New Suns: Race, Gender, and Se
ISBN: 9780814255636
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 300
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Book Description
Contextualizes the history of race within comic books and the unspoken whiteness that overwhelms American superhero narratives.
Author: Allan W. Austin
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477318968
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 393
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Book Description
Taking a multifaceted approach to attitudes toward race through popular culture and the American superhero, All New, All Different? explores a topic that until now has only received more discrete examination. Considering Marvel, DC, and lesser-known texts and heroes, this illuminating work charts eighty years of evolution in the portrayal of race in comics as well as in film and on television. Beginning with World War II, the authors trace the vexed depictions in early superhero stories, considering both Asian villains and nonwhite sidekicks. While the emergence of Black Panther, Black Lightning, Luke Cage, Storm, and other heroes in the 1960s and 1970s reflected a cultural revolution, the book reveals how nonwhite superheroes nonetheless remained grounded in outdated assumptions. Multiculturalism encouraged further diversity, with 1980s superteams, the minority-run company Milestone’s new characters in the 1990s, and the arrival of Ms. Marvel, a Pakistani-American heroine, and a new Latinx Spider-Man in the 2000s. Concluding with contemporary efforts to make both a profit and a positive impact on society, All New, All Different? enriches our understanding of the complex issues of racial representation in American popular culture.
Author: Robert G. Weiner
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786453400
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
For more than 60 years, Captain America was one of Marvel Comics' flagship characters, representing truth, strength, liberty, and justice. The assassination of his alter ego, Steve Rogers, rocked the comic world, leaving numerous questions about his life and death. This book discusses topics including the representation of Nazi Germany in Captain America Comics from the 1940s to the 1960s; the creation of Captain America in light of the Jewish American experience; the relationship between Captain America and UK Marvel's Captain Britain; the groundbreaking partnership between Captain America and African American superhero the Falcon; and the attempts made to kill the character before his "real" death.
Author: Jeffrey K. Johnson
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786465644
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
In the less than eight decades since Superman's debut in 1938, comic book superheroes have become an indispensable part of American society and the nation's dominant mythology. They represent America's hopes, dreams, fears, and needs. As a form of popular literature, superhero narratives have closely mirrored trends and events in the nation. This study views American history from 1938 to 2010 through the lens of superhero comics, revealing the spandex-clad guardians to be not only fictional characters but barometers of the place and time in which they reside. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.
Author: Jeff Yang
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 159558398X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 202
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Book Description
A collection of comics featuring Asian American superheroes by Asian American artists is organized by such themes as girl power and ordinary heroes with supernatural powers.
Author: J. Richard Stevens
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 0815653204
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 406
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Book Description
Since 1940, Captain America has battled his enemies in the name of American values, and as those values have changed over time, so has Captain America’s character. Because the comic book world fosters a close fan–creator dialogue, creators must consider their ever-changing readership. Comic book artists must carefully balance storyline continuity with cultural relevance. Captain America’s seventy-year existence spans from World War II through the Cold War to the American War on Terror; beginning as a soldier unopposed to offensive attacks against foreign threats, he later becomes known as a defender whose only weapon is his iconic shield. In this way, Captain America reflects America’s need to renegotiate its social contract and reinvent its national myths and cultural identity, all the while telling stories proclaiming an eternal and unchanging spirit of America. In Captain America, Masculinity, and Violence, Stevens reveals how the comic book hero has evolved to maintain relevance to America’s fluctuating ideas of masculinity, patriotism, and violence. Stevens outlines the history of Captain America’s adventures and places the unfolding storyline in dialogue with the comic book industry as well as America’s varying political culture. Stevens shows that Captain America represents the ultimate American story: permanent enough to survive for nearly seventy years with a history fluid enough to be constantly reinterpreted to meet the needs of an ever-changing culture.
Author: Marco Arnaudo
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421409534
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 218
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Book Description
Translated for the first time into English, The Myth of the Superhero looks beyond the cape, the mask, and the superpowers, presenting a serious study of the genre and its place in a broader cultural context.
Author: Anthony Mills
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135014361
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 226
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Book Description
Stan Lee, who was the head writer of Marvel Comics in the early 1960s, co-created such popular heroes as Spider-Man, Hulk, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Thor, and Daredevil. This book traces the ways in which American theologians and comic books of the era were not only both saying things about what it means to be human, but, starting with Lee they were largely saying the same things. Author Anthony R. Mills argues that the shift away from individualistic ideas of human personhood and toward relational conceptions occurring within both American theology and American superhero comics and films does not occur simply on the ontological level, but is also inherent to epistemology and ethics, reflecting the comprehensive nature of human life in terms of being, knowing, and acting. This book explores the idea of the "American monomyth" that pervades American hero stories and examines its philosophical and theological origins and specific manifestations in early American superhero comics. Surveying the anthropologies of six American theologians who argue against many of the monomyth’s assumptions, principally the staunch individualism taken to be the model of humanity, and who offer relationality as a more realistic and ethical alternative, this book offers a detailed argument for the intimate historical relationship between the now disparate fields of comic book/superhero film creation, on the one hand, and Christian theology, on the other, in the United States. An understanding of the early connections between theology and American conceptions of heroism helps to further make sense of their contemporary parallels, wherein superhero stories and theology are not strictly separate phenomena but have shared origins and concerns.
Author: Allan W. Austin
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477318976
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 393
Get Book
Book Description
Taking a multifaceted approach to attitudes toward race through popular culture and the American superhero, All New, All Different? explores a topic that until now has only received more discrete examination. Considering Marvel, DC, and lesser-known texts and heroes, this illuminating work charts eighty years of evolution in the portrayal of race in comics as well as in film and on television. Beginning with World War II, the authors trace the vexed depictions in early superhero stories, considering both Asian villains and nonwhite sidekicks. While the emergence of Black Panther, Black Lightning, Luke Cage, Storm, and other heroes in the 1960s and 1970s reflected a cultural revolution, the book reveals how nonwhite superheroes nonetheless remained grounded in outdated assumptions. Multiculturalism encouraged further diversity, with 1980s superteams, the minority-run company Milestone’s new characters in the 1990s, and the arrival of Ms. Marvel, a Pakistani-American heroine, and a new Latinx Spider-Man in the 2000s. Concluding with contemporary efforts to make both a profit and a positive impact on society, All New, All Different? enriches our understanding of the complex issues of racial representation in American popular culture.
