I'm sold on the idea of a critical anthology about superhero comics in the United States. Part of the reason I am so high on the project has everything to do with teaching. As a history professor, I am always looking for ways to get students interested in history.
Much of that innovation (if you want to call it innovation) is to consider different material for historical analysis. Music, movie, television, and political cartoons have found their place in the academy. Yet, as I began teaching comic books as part of my U.S. history classes I realize this uniquely American creation, the superhero comic, has not gotten the kind of academic examination other pop culture receives on a regular basis. There is not much available for classroom use. When I and my colleague William Svitavsky created American Graphic Media, we recognized gaps in the literature that needed filling and wanted a collection like the one we are creating for weekly reading assignments. While we found some great books, we didn't find a collection of essay that could be used throughout the semester, written by scholars and discussing comic books in ways we believe they could be discussed. When you turn a critical eye toward the literature written about comics you can see that much of this earlier scholarship has been focused on the creators and iconic characters, rather than the genre itself. Yet, we know that the comic genre has demonstrated broad applicability to a variety of media over the years and such adaptations have been hungrily consumed by American audiences of all ages. The genre’s multimedia success suggests that superhero stories have cultural value unto themselves. In creating this collection we have tried to address some of these basic issues. We want a variety of content that considered characters from different perspective with an eye toward stimulating readers to think about comics and what they represent. More and more comic scholarship is coming out, but a great collection that can addresses the subject from many different perspective is not out...yet. This collection will be great for classroom, but accessible to the average reader. Well, that the plan anyway:)
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