Download or read book Superhero Bodies written by Wendy Haslem and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2018-11-20 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the history of the genre, the superhero has been characterised primarily by physical transformation and physical difference. Superhero Bodies: Identity, Materiality, Transformation explores the transformation of the superhero body across multiple media forms including comics, film, television, literature and the graphic novel. How does the body of the hero offer new ways to imagine identities? How does it represent or subvert cultural ideals? How are ideologies of race, gender and disability signified or destabilised in the physicality of the superhero? How are superhero bodies drawn, written and filmed across diverse forms of media and across histories? This volume collects essays that attend to the physicality of superheroes: the transformative bodies of superheroes, the superhero’s position in urban and natural spaces, the dialectic between the superhero’s physical and metaphysical self, and the superhero body’s relationship with violence. This will be the first collection of scholarly research specifically dedicated to investigating the diversity of superhero bodies, their emergence, their powers, their secrets, their histories and their transformations.

Download or read book Uncanny Bodies written by Scott T. Smith and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Superhero comics reckon with issues of corporeal control. And while they commonly deal in characters of exceptional or superhuman ability, they have also shown an increasing attention and sensitivity to diverse forms of disability, both physical and cognitive. The essays in this collection reveal how the superhero genre, in fusing fantasy with realism, provides a visual forum for engaging with issues of disability and intersectional identity (race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality) and helps to imagine different ways of being in the world. Working from the premise that the theoretical mode of the uncanny, with its interest in what is simultaneously known and unknown, ordinary and extraordinary, opens new ways to think about categories and markers of identity, Uncanny Bodies explores how continuums of ability in superhero comics can reflect, resist, or reevaluate broader cultural conceptions about disability. The chapters focus on lesser-known characters—such as Echo, Omega the Unknown, and the Silver Scorpion—as well as the famous Barbara Gordon and the protagonist of the acclaimed series Hawkeye, whose superheroic uncanniness provides a counterpoint to constructs of normalcy. Several essays explore how superhero comics can provide a vocabulary and discourse for conceptualizing disability more broadly. Thoughtful and challenging, this eye-opening examination of superhero comics breaks new ground in disability studies and scholarship in popular culture. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Sarah Bowden, Charlie Christie, Sarah Gibbons, Andrew Godfrey-Meers, Marit Hanson, Charles Hatfield, Naja Later, Lauren O’Connor, Daniel J. O'Rourke, Daniel Pinti, Lauranne Poharec, and Deleasa Randall-Griffiths.

Download or read book The Posthuman Body in Superhero Comics written by Scott Jeffery and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-10-11 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the concepts of Post/Humanism and Transhumanism as depicted in superhero comics. Recent decades have seen mainstream audiences embrace the comic book Superhuman. Meanwhile there has been increasing concern surrounding human enhancement technologies, with the techno-scientific movement of Transhumanism arguing that it is time humans took active control of their evolution. Utilising Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of the rhizome as a non-hierarchical system of knowledge to conceptualize the superhero narrative in terms of its political, social and aesthetic relations to the history of human technological enhancement, this book draws upon a diverse range of texts to explore the way in which the posthuman has been represented in superhero comics, while simultaneously highlighting its shared historical development with Post/Humanist critical theory and the material techno-scientific practices of Transhumanism.

Download or read book The Modern Superhero in Film and Television written by Jeffrey A. Brown and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-11-10 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hollywood’s live-action superhero films currently dominate the worldwide box-office, with the characters enjoying more notoriety through their feature film and television depictions than they have ever before. This book argues that this immense popularity reveals deep cultural concerns about politics, gender, ethnicity, patriotism and consumerism after the events of 9/11. Superheroes have long been agents of hegemony, fighting for abstract ideals of justice while overall perpetuating the American status quo. Yet at the same time, the book explores how the genre has also been utilized to question and critique these dominant cultural assumptions.

Download or read book Super Bodies written by Jeffrey A. Brown and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2023-08 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of the art in superhero comics and how style influences comic narratives.

Download or read book The Superhero Costume written by Barbara Brownie and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-19 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Costume defines the superhero, disguising and distinguishing him or her from the civilian alter ego. The often garish garb expresses a hero's otherness and empowers its wearers to seek a primal form of justice. This book provides the first interdisciplinary analysis of the superhero costume and investigates wide-ranging issues such as identity, otherness, ritual dress and disguise. Analysis focuses on the implications of wearing superhero costume, exploring interpretations of the costumed hero and the extent to which the costume defines his or her role. Using examples across various media (comic books, film, and television) with case studies including The X-Men, Watchmen, real-life superheroes such as Phoenix Jones and Pussy Riot, and audience activities such as cosplay, The Superhero Costume presents new perspectives on the increasingly popular genre. A lively and thorough account of superhero fashions throughout history, The Superhero Costume will be essential reading for students of visual culture, popular culture, fashion and cultural studies.

Download or read book Superheroes and Identities written by Mel Gibson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-22 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Superheroes have been the major genre to emerge from comics and graphic novels, saturating popular culture with images of muscular men and sexy women. A major aspect of this genre is identity in the roles played by individuals, the development of identities through extended stories and in the ways the characters inspire audiences. This collection analyses stories from popular comics franchises such as Batman, Captain America, Ms Marvel and X-Men, alongside less well known comics such as Kabuki and Flex Mentallo. It explores what superhero narratives can reveal about our attitudes towards femininity, race, maternity, masculinity and queer culture. Using this approach, the volume asks questions such as why there are no black supervillains in mainstream comics, how second wave feminism and feminist film theory may help us to understand female comic book characters, the ways in which Flex Mentallo transcends the boundaries of straightness and gayness and how both fans and industry appropriate the sexual identity of superheroes. The book was originally published in a special issue of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics.

Download or read book DC Super Heroes Busy Bodies written by David Bar Katz and published by Downtown Bookworks. This book was released on 2014-10-21 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fourth title in the best-selling DC Super Heroes concept board books series (in addition to ABC 123, COLORS & SHAPES, and OPPOSITES), this cool and colorful book teaches budding super hero fans about their bodies, actions, and clothing using DC's beloved characters and classic art. From Superman's eyes (with their awesome X-ray vision) to the Flash's fastest-in-the-world feet, this unique concept board book helps little ones to identify all of their powerful body parts. They will also learn about actions (Aquaman swims; Batman swings; Wonder Woman jumps) and items of clothing illustrated by DC's popular super heroes.

Download or read book Arrow and Superhero Television written by James F. Iaccino and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2017-10-11 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of new essays focuses on The CW network's hit television series Arrow--based on DC Comic's Green Arrow--and its spin-offs The Flash, DC's Legends of Tomorrow and Supergirl. Comic book adaptations have been big business for film studios since Superman (1978) and in recent years have dominated at the box office--five of the 11 highest grossing films of 2016 were adapted from comics. Superheroes have battled across the small screen for considerably longer, beginning with The Adventures of Superman (1952-1958), though with mixed results. The contributors explore the reasons behind Arrow's success, its representation of bodies, its portrayal of women, its shifting political ideologies, and audience reception and influence on storylines.

Download or read book Supersex written by Anna Peppard and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2020-12-08 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2021 Comic Studies Society Prize for Edited Collection From Superman and Batman to the X-Men and Young Avengers, Supersex interrogates the relationship between heroism and sexuality, shedding new light on our fantasies of both. From Superman, created in 1938, to the transmedia DC and Marvel universes of today, superheroes have always been sexy. And their sexiness has always been controversial, inspiring censorship and moral panic. Yet though it has inspired jokes and innuendos, accusations of moral depravity, and sporadic academic discourse, the topic of superhero sexuality is like superhero sexuality itself—seemingly obvious yet conspicuously absent. Supersex: Sexuality, Fantasy, and the Superhero is the first scholarly book specifically devoted to unpacking the superhero genre’s complicated relationship with sexuality. Exploring sexual themes and imagery within mainstream comic books, television shows, and films as well as independent and explicitly pornographic productions catering to various orientations and kinks, Supersex offers a fresh—and lascivious—perspective on the superhero genre’s historical and contemporary popularity. Across fourteen essays touching on Superman, Batman, the X-Men, and many others, Anna F. Peppard and her contributors present superhero sexuality as both dangerously exciting and excitingly dangerous, encapsulating the superhero genre’s worst impulses and its most productively rebellious ones. Supersex argues that sex is at the heart of our fascination with superheroes, even—and sometimes especially—when the capes and tights stay on.

Download or read book Bodies in Flux written by Barbara Braid and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-08-26 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume discusses fluidity of the post-human bodies on various cultural and social examples – from the cyber relations to others and to self, through fragmented, prosetheticised, monstrous or augmented body, to the dis/utopian fantasies.

Download or read book Death Disability and the Superhero written by José Alaniz and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2014-10-15 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Thing. Daredevil. Captain Marvel. The Human Fly. Drawing on DC and Marvel comics from the 1950s to the 1990s and marshaling insights from three burgeoning fields of inquiry in the humanities--disability studies, death and dying studies, and comics studies--José Alaniz seeks to redefine the contemporary understanding of the superhero. Beginning in the Silver Age, the genre increasingly challenged and complicated its hypermasculine, quasi-eugenicist biases through such disabled figures as Ben Grimm/The Thing, Matt Murdock/Daredevil, and the Doom Patrol. Alaniz traces how the superhero became increasingly vulnerable, ill, and mortal in this era. He then proceeds to a reinterpretation of characters and series--some familiar (Superman), some obscure (She-Thing). These genre changes reflected a wider awareness of related body issues in the postwar United States as represented by hospice, death with dignity, and disability rights movements. The persistent highlighting of the body's "imperfection" comes to forge a predominant aspect of the superheroic self. Such moves, originally part of the Silver Age strategy to stimulate sympathy, enhance psychological depth, and raise the dramatic stakes, developed further in such later series as The Human Fly, Strikeforce: Morituri, and the landmark graphic novel The Death of Captain Marvel, all examined in this volume. Death and disability, presumed routinely absent or denied in the superhero genre, emerge to form a core theme and defining function of the Silver Age and beyond.

Download or read book Tony s Superhero Story written by Anthony Santilli LMFT and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2021-10-22 with total page 45 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Tony’s youth, he loved to swim with dolphins and fantasized about visiting a magical place called the Water Kingdom in the deep waters of the ocean. The dolphins taught Tony the martial art of waterbending that allowed him to control and bend water. Tony’s passion for dolphins, waterbending and the Water Kingdom continued into his teen years. Even though Tony was a talented waterbender, he felt confused about his identity, specifically as a gay teenager. Tony was targeted by a bully for being gay. Due to his insecurities, the traumas of being bullied and his inability to heal, Tony succumbed to depression and despair. Tony attempted suicide by drowning. He survived his drowning attempt, but lost his ability to waterbend. At his lowest point, Tony sought support from a Magical Healer who helped him heal. Newly empowered, Tony began his superhero quest, using water magic to reignite his passion for dolphins and to find the Water Kingdom. Will Tony be able to use his water magic to swim again with the dolphins and visit the Water Kingdom?

Download or read book Your Superhero Body written by Candace Calms and published by Balboa Press. This book was released on 2019-01-09 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Help your children gain trust in their bodies and in their natural ability to heal, and help them learn about the mind-body connection with this book, which depicts the body as a superhero with superhealing powers. A child goes to bed feeling sick, but his superhero body is ready for battle. The superhero has gained extra strength by spending time outside playing and grounding. The superhero recruits healthy food sidekicks to fight against invaders, and they work all night as a team to kick them out. A muscly broccoli, sensei celery stalk, blueberry brothers, and strawberry twins amp up the superhero’s fighting power. After a long night of battle, the superhero body and the fruit-and-veggie sidekicks defeat all the invaders, and the child wakes up feeling better.

Download or read book Hero Maker 12 Weeks to Superhero Fit written by Duffy Gaver and published by St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 2020-04-21 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A breakout training and fitness book by Hollywood trainer and former Navy SEAL, Duffy Gaver, featuring the tried and true workouts used by movie stars like Chris Pratt and Brad Pitt. Former Marine sniper and ex-navy Seal, Duffy Gaver is the unsung hero of Hollywood. As a master trainer to the stars, he has transformed the bodies of actors such as Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pratt, Scarlett Johanson, Brad Pitt and many others. He is a Hero-Maker. He gets the most out of his clients by making them rethink their lives. For Duffy, the fitness industry sells a myth: it's all about the latest and greatest fads. Back in 1965, Larry Scott won the first Mr. Olympia. There was no Nike. No thermogenic products. No supplement industry. How did he do it then? With his will, his discipline, his desire. The things that big businesses can't manufacture. The first four minute mile, the first iron man triathlon, and the first world's strongest man all took place before 99% of today's companies even existed. What does this prove? None of this stuff is necessary. Inside Hero Maker, Duffy Gaver shares the knowledge and motivational sit-downs that get his stars to take hold of their own bodies. None of these stars bought their way to their impressive physiques; they earned it with old fashioned work and dedication. He will tell you what you need to do to look super heroic, and he will show you how you too can do this if you put yourself to the task. Inside, you will also find some of his game-changing workouts to help get you there.

Download or read book What is a Superhero written by Robin S. Rosenberg, PhD and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-09-19 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is a superhero? Everyone knows, right? And yet everyone seems to have a different answer. In this innovative collection of essays, renowned psychologist Robin Rosenberg and comics scholar Peter Coogan explore this question from a variety of viewpoints. With essays from scholars and commentaries by the writers and creators themselves, What is a Superhero? is the first volume to provide a true synthesis and reflection of the state of superheroes in our society today.

Download or read book Keywords for Comics Studies written by Ramzi Fawaz and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Across more than fifty essays, Keywords for Comics Studies provides a rich, interdisciplinary vocabulary for comics and sequential art, and identifies new avenues of research into one of the most popular and diverse visual media of the twentieth and twenty-first century. In an original twist on the NYU Keywords mission, the terms in this volume combine attention to the unique aesthetic practices of a distinct medium, comics, with some of the most fundamental concepts of the humanities broadly. Readers will see how scholars, cultural critics, and comics artists from a range of fields-including media and film studies, queer and feminist theory, and critical race and transgender studies among others-take up sequential art as both an object of analysis and a medium for developing new theories about embodiment, identity, literacy, audience reception, genre, cultural politics and more. To do so, Keywords for Comics Studies presents an array of original and inventive analyses of terms central to the study of comics and sequential art, but traditionally siloed in distinct lexicons: these include creative or aesthetic terms like Ink, Creator, Border, and Panel; conceptual terms like trans*, disability, universe, and fantasy; genre terms, like Zine, Pornography, Superhero, and Manga; and canonical terms like X-Men, Archie, Watchmen and Love and Rockets. Written as much for students and lay readers as professors and experts in the field, Keywords for Comics Studies revivifies the fantasy and magic of reading comics in its kaleidoscopic view of the field's most compelling and imaginative ideas."--