Download or read book Capitalist Superheroes written by Dan Hassler-Forest and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The blockbuster superhero movie: popular entertainment or capitalist propaganda? This book investigates the 21st-century superhero's underlying political agenda.
Download or read book The Political Christopher Nolan written by Jesse Russell and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-05-26 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout his films, Christopher Nolan champions the Anglo-American Neo-Liberal world order. Nestled within this order, his characters are free to undergo their ludic creation of little worlds of selfhood.
Download or read book Supergods written by Grant Morrison and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning with Schuster and Seigel's adolescent creation of Superman in 1938, Grant Morrison charts the history of the superheroes to their modern, multiplex incarnations.
Download or read book One Star Squadron 2021 1 written by Mark Russell and published by DC Comics. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who you gonna call? One-Star Squadron! Meet DC’s superhero team where heroism meets capitalism. This ragtag group of heroes led by Red Tornado is here to provide service with a smile. All you must do is send a request via their on-demand hero app and they’ll answer any call. Whether it’s a children’s birthday party or an alien invasion, no job is too small or too big! Brought to you by Eisner nominee Mark Russell (The Flintstones, Wonder Twins, Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles) and Eisner winner Steve Lieber (Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen), you’ll want to invest early in this one-of-a-kind miniseries that promises a story filled with heart, heroism, and humor.
Download or read book The Superhero Reader written by Charles Hatfield and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2013-06-14 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite their commercial appeal and cross-media reach, superheroes are only recently starting to attract sustained scholarly attention. This groundbreaking collection brings together essays and book excerpts by major writers on comics and popular culture. While superhero comics are a distinct and sometimes disdained branch of comics creation, they are integral to the development of the North American comic book and the history of the medium. For the past half-century they have also been the one overwhelmingly dominant market genre. The sheer volume of superhero comics that have been published over the years is staggering. Major superhero universes constitute one of the most expansive storytelling canvases ever fashioned. Moreover, characters inhabiting these fictional universes are immensely influential, having achieved iconic recognition around the globe. Their images and adventures have shaped many other media, such as film, videogames, and even prose fiction. The primary aim of this reader is twofold: first, to collect in a single volume a sampling of the most sophisticated commentary on superheroes, and second, to bring into sharper focus the ways in which superheroes connect with larger social, cultural, literary, aesthetic, and historical themes that are of interest to a great many readers both in the academy and beyond.
Download or read book Comic Book Crime written by Nickie D. Phillips and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2013-07-15 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Superman, Batman, Daredevil, and Wonder Woman are iconic cultural figures that embody values of order, fairness, justice, and retribution. Comic Book Crime digs deep into these and other celebrated characters, providing a comprehensive understanding of crime and justice in contemporary American comic books. This is a world where justice is delivered, where heroes save ordinary citizens from certain doom, where evil is easily identified and thwarted by powers far greater than mere mortals could possess. Nickie Phillips and Staci Strobl explore these representations and show that comic books, as a historically important American cultural medium, participate in both reflecting and shaping an American ideological identity that is often focused on ideas of the apocalypse, utopia, retribution, and nationalism. Through an analysis of approximately 200 comic books sold from 2002 to 2010, as well as several years of immersion in comic book fan culture, Phillips and Strobl reveal the kinds of themes and plots popular comics feature in a post-9/11 context. They discuss heroes’ calculations of “deathworthiness,” or who should be killed in meting out justice, and how these judgments have as much to do with the hero’s character as they do with the actions of the villains. This fascinating volume also analyzes how class, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation are used to construct difference for both the heroes and the villains in ways that are both conservative and progressive. Engaging, sharp, and insightful, Comic Book Crime is a fresh take on the very meaning of truth, justice, and the American way.
Download or read book Bending Steel written by Aldo J. Regalado and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2015-07-16 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound . . . It's Superman!" Bending Steel examines the historical origins and cultural significance of Superman and his fellow American crusaders. Cultural historian Aldo J. Regalado asserts that the superhero seems a direct response to modernity, often fighting the interrelated processes of industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and capitalism that transformed the United States from the early nineteenth century to the present. Reeling from these exciting but rapid and destabilizing forces, Americans turned to heroic fiction as a means of explaining national and personal identities to themselves and to the world. In so doing, they created characters and stories that sometimes affirmed, but other times subverted conventional notions of race, class, gender, and nationalism. The cultural conversation articulated through the nation's early heroic fiction eventually led to a new heroic type--the brightly clad, super-powered, pro-social action heroes that first appeared in American comic books starting in the late 1930s. Although indelibly shaped by the Great Depression and World War II sensibilities of the second-generation immigrants most responsible for their creation, comic book superheroes remain a mainstay of American popular culture. Tracing superhero fiction all the way back to the nineteenth century, Regalado firmly bases his analysis of dime novels, pulp fiction, and comics in historical, biographical, and reader response sources. He explores the roles played by creators, producers, and consumers in crafting superhero fiction, ultimately concluding that these narratives are essential for understanding vital trajectories in American culture.
Download or read book The Cinematic Superhero as Social Practice written by Joseph Zornado and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-11-06 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes the cinematic superhero as social practice. The study’s critical context brings together psychoanalysis and restorative and reflective nostalgia as a way of understanding the ideological function of superhero fantasy. It explores the origins of cinematic superhero fantasy from antecedents in myth and religion, to twentieth-century comic book, to the cinematic breakthrough with Superman (1978). The authors then focus on Spider-Man as reflective response to Superman’s restorative nostalgia, and read MCU’s overarching narrative from Iron Man to End Game in terms of the concurrent social, political, and environmental conditions as a world in crisis. Zornado and Reilly take up Wonder Woman and Black Panther as self-conscious attempts to reflect on gender and race in restorative superhero fantasy, and explore Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy as a meditation on the need for authoritarian fascism. The book concludes with Logan, Wonder Woman 1984, and Amazon Prime’s The Boys as distinctly reflective fantasy narratives critical of the superhero fantasy phenomenon.
Download or read book Working Class Comic Book Heroes written by Marc DiPaolo and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2018-04-19 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contributions by Phil Bevin, Blair Davis, Marc DiPaolo, Michele Fazio, James Gifford, Kelly Kanayama, Orion Ussner Kidder, Christina M. Knopf, Kevin Michael Scott, Andrew Alan Smith, and Terrence R. Wandtke In comic books, superhero stories often depict working-class characters who struggle to make ends meet, lead fulfilling lives, and remain faithful to themselves and their own personal code of ethics. Working-Class Comic Book Heroes: Class Conflict and Populist Politics in Comics examines working-class superheroes and other protagonists who populate heroic narratives in serialized comic books. Essayists analyze and deconstruct these figures, viewing their roles as fictional stand-ins for real-world blue-collar characters. Informed by new working-class studies, the book also discusses how often working-class writers and artists created these characters. Notably Jack Kirby, a working-class Jewish artist, created several of the most recognizable working-class superheroes, including Captain America and the Thing. Contributors weigh industry histories and marketing concerns as well as the fan community's changing attitudes towards class signifiers in superhero adventures. The often financially strapped Spider-Man proves to be a touchstone figure in many of these essays. Grant Morrison's Superman, Marvel's Shamrock, Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta, and The Walking Dead receive thoughtful treatment. While there have been many scholarly works concerned with issues of race and gender in comics, this book stands as the first to deal explicitly with issues of class, cultural capital, and economics as its main themes.
Download or read book Why Superman Doesn t Take Over The World written by J. Brian O’Roark and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-17 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do heroes fight each other? Why do villains keep trying even though they almost never win? Why don't heroes simply take over the world? Economics and comics may seem to be a world apart. But in the hands of economics professor and comic book hero aficionado Brian O’Roark, the two form a powerful alliance. With brilliant deadpan enthusiasm he shows how the travails of superheroes can explain the building blocks of economics, and how economics explains the mysteries of superhero behavior. Spider-Man's existential doubts revolve around opportunity costs; Wonder Woman doesn't have a sidekick because she has a comparative advantage; game theory sheds light on the battle between Captain America and Iron Man; the Joker keeps committing crimes because of the Peltzman effect; and utility curves help us decide who is the greatest superhero of all. Why Superman Doesn't Take Over the World probes the motivations of our favorite heroes, and reveals that the characters in the comics may have powers we dont, but they are still beholden to the laws of economics.
Download or read book Superman by Grant Morrison Omnibus written by Grant Morrison and published by . This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 680 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grant Morrison, one of the greatest storytellers of his generation, weaves the history of Clark Kent's early days in Metropolis in this Man of Steel cornerstone of the DC Universe! Collecting the entirety of Morrison's epic saga, this New 52 era Superman omnibus celebrates and explores new facets of the Superman mythos. The compelling and deliberate Superman stories in this collection showcase his quintessential character and determination in a world that doesn't know what to make of him. A milestone in The New 52, this omnibus is jam-packed with action, adventure, shocking secrets, parallel Earths, deadly encounters with the Anti-Superman Army, Brainiac, Metal-zero and so much more! Collects Action Comics #0-18 and Action Comics Annual #1
Download or read book Marvel Comics written by Sean Howe and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 569 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The defining, behind-the-scenes chronicle of one of the most extraordinary, beloved, and dominant pop cultural entities in America’s history -- Marvel Comics – and the outsized personalities who made Marvel including Martin Goodman, Stan Lee, and Jack Kirby. “Sean Howe’s history of Marvel makes a compulsively readable, riotous and heartbreaking version of my favorite story, that of how a bunch of weirdoes changed the world…That it’s all true is just frosting on the cake.” —Jonathan Lethem For the first time, Marvel Comics tells the stories of the men who made Marvel: Martin Goodman, the self-made publisher who forayed into comics after a get-rich-quick tip in 1939, Stan Lee, the energetic editor who would shepherd the company through thick and thin for decades and Jack Kirby, the WWII veteran who would co-create Captain America in 1940 and, twenty years later, developed with Lee the bulk of the company’s marquee characters in a three-year frenzy. Incorporating more than one hundred original interviews with those who worked behind the scenes at Marvel over a seventy-year-span, Marvel Comics packs anecdotes and analysis into a gripping narrative of how a small group of people on the cusp of failure created one of the most enduring pop cultural forces in contemporary America.
Download or read book Comic Books and the Cold War 1946 1962 written by Chris York and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conventional wisdom holds that comic books of the post-World War II era are poorly drawn and poorly written publications, notable only for the furor they raised. Contributors to this thoughtful collection, however, demonstrate that these comics constitute complex cultural documents that create a dialogue between mainstream values and alternative beliefs that question or complicate the grand narratives of the era. Close analysis of individual titles, including EC comics, Superman, romance comics, and other, more obscure works, reveals the ways Cold War culture--from atomic anxieties and the nuclear family to communist hysteria and social inequalities--manifests itself in the comic books of the era. By illuminating the complexities of mid-century graphic novels, this study demonstrates that postwar popular culture was far from monolithic in its representation of American values and beliefs.
Download or read book The Rise and Reason of Comics and Graphic Literature written by Joyce Goggin and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These 15 essays investigate comic books and graphic novels, beginning with the early development of these media. The essays also place the work in a cultural context, addressing theory and terminology, adaptations of comic books, the superhero genre, and comic books and graphic novels that deal with history and nonfiction. By addressing the topic from a wide range of perspectives, the book offers readers a nuanced and comprehensive picture of current scholarship in the subject area.
Download or read book How to Be a Business Superhero written by Sean Wise, BA, LLB, MBA and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-09-02 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fun and accessible guide offers super advice for business success. Top venture capitalist and self- proclaimed ?comic book geek? Sean Wise reveals how to create a winning business persona through valuable strategies from great comic book icons. In this engaging and insightful guide, Wise takes readers on a guided tour through the world of superheroes and their lessons, directly relating them to essential business tactics people need to master in order to succeed in today?s workplace. Featuring modern-day examples of business icons who best illustrate superhero strategies?as well as cautionary lessons from infamous supervillains?this is the book for anyone who dreams of donning a cape instead of a suit, taking an oath instead of swearing at the copier, and seeing the big picture instead of getting mired in the daily grind.
Download or read book Babbling Corpse written by Grafton Tanner and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2016-06-24 with total page 107 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the age of global capitalism, vaporwave celebrates and undermines the electronic ghosts haunting the nostalgia industry. Ours is a time of ghosts in machines, killing meaning and exposing the gaps inherent in the electronic media that pervade our lives. Vaporwave is an infant musical micro-genre that foregrounds the horror of electronic media's ability to appear - as media theorist Jeffrey Sconce terms it - "haunted." Experimental musicians such as INTERNET CLUB and MACINTOSH PLUS manipulate Muzak and commercial music to undermine the commodification of nostalgia in the age of global capitalism while accentuating the uncanny properties of electronic music production. Babbling Corpse reveals vaporwave's many intersections with politics, media theory, and our present fascination with uncanny, co(s)mic horror. The book is aimed at those interested in global capitalism's effect on art, musical raids on mainstream "indie" and popular music, and anyone intrigued by the changing relationship between art and commerce.
Download or read book The Productive Body written by Didier Deleule and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2014-03-28 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Productive Body asks how the human body and its labor have been expropriated and re-engineered through successive stages of capitalism; and how capitalism’s transformation of the body is related to the rise of scientific psychology and social science disciplines complicit with modern regimes of control. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault cited Guéry and Deleule in order to link Marx’s diagnosis of capitalism with his own critique of power/knowledge. The Productive Body brings together Marxism and theories of the body-machine for the goal of political revolution. ,
