'Nuff Said: American Graphic Media

Great tidbits Christian Bale auditions for Batman Begins in Val Kilmer's batsuitfrom the new Nolan Batman trilogy DVD/Bluray collection coming out.  Nolan's take on Batman realized the character's iconography could drive the story.  Nolan's Batman films became a commentary on the character's relationship to popular culture.  These behind the scene elements will be great for those of us thinking about how the filmmakers chose to adopt and detach elements of Batman's long history for these films.

I'm a fan of Joss Whedon.  Why deny it?  Everything about Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. reminds me of Whedon's best work. Buffy (and Angel) were all about the ensemble.  Get the right people together and magic happens.  Whedon and his collaborators have a knack for finding the right people. This is core of his success.  The real focus of his project is not the adventure so much as the falling in love with the characters.  Once he has you in love with the characters, you come back week after week to see how the heroes will change. I'm looking forward to it.

Carbonerdious, a new documentary about the intersection of culture and identity is an exciting development. To me this resonate with my exploration of the kaleidoscopic nature of culture linked to comics.  Looking forward to seeing this completed. 

The book inspired by American Graphic Media: The History of Superhero Comics in the United States is being put to use in that class. Feeling good about seeing the benefits of our scholarship helping students in the classroom.

A great independent project from Robert Garrett's XMOOR Studios. Check it out

I'm presenting at Doctor Who: Walking in Eternity , the 50th Anniversary conference exploring the impact of this iconic science fiction franchise.  I'm drawn to Doctor Who as an extension of my research into superheroes. As you probably know, the superhero is a uniquely U.S. contribution to the comic medium. Created in 1938, comics as a medium were well established around the world, but the superhero genre was something new.  Created at a time of U.S. global ascendency, the genre evolved and expanded rapidly.   As John Shelton Lawrence and Robert Jewett argue in The Myth of the American Superhero the American mono myth derives from “tales of redemption” that secularise Judaeo-Christian dramas of community redemption that have arisen in the United States. For U.S. audiences, Doctor Who could be understood as a hero whose adventures and outlook corresponded to the struggle of communal redemption associated with the superhero tradition, but relat...

What makes the Arkham franchise so successful?  The answer is easy, the producers concentrate on what is the most iconic about Batman and return to it over and over again.  I risk repeating myself, but this is a point worth noting.  This semester I'm doing the first run of a new course inspired by my constant musing about the intersection between the real and imagine city in comics.  My Comic Book City course leans heavily on first identifying the major theoretical arguments linked to urban development in the United States. Then we chart how those ideas are integrated into the comic medium. The creators working on Batman need not understand the theory, they nonetheless must engage with them.  Moreover, those that successful do so, essential tap a node societal investment, they will draw attention and generate engagement.