'Nuff Said: American Graphic Media

Fearful Symmetry: John Carter and the Struggle of the Individual

As a professor and comic book fan, I love the current fascination with comics and related media. Blockbusters like Thor , Captain America , and Green Lantern offer fun adventure, but they also speak to heroic aspiration within the American character. These films offer a reflective glimpse into U.S. psyche, which is why controversy erupts over question of identity in comic mythology. Indeed, with the United States struggling, superhero mythology offers affirmation. The 247 million dollar global success of Captain America highlights this point. A celebration of “old fashioned” heroism, the film provides a fictive narrative of a racial integrated U.S. military with African American and Asian soldiers serving in Captain America’s handpicked unit. While it is easy to be dismissive of concerns about “historical inaccuracy” in a film with magic cubes and suspended animation, the convergence of media linked to comics offer other racial controversy. Indeed, Marvel’s announcement that th...

Green Lantern's opening weekend won the race, but not by the margin Warner Bros. executives had hoped. Some of my observations on the nature of race and identity within the context of Green Lantern made the news. For many, the consideration of a "deeper" symbolism in comic books is complex exercise. While critics have been lukewarm to Green Lantern, for fans I'm sure it is fulfilling. The place of comic books in contemporary discussion of race has been seen as space cultivating and perhaps, promoting stereotypes. The comic book genre, especially it most popular aspect, the superhero uses visual cues to reduce individual characters into representations of cultural ideas. From a historical standpoint, this makes perfect senses. The popular media that preceded the comic book, like the comic book themselves, held to the racial conventions that celebrated accepted values and attitudes related to white mainstream society. Like those media, comics have changed as shifts i...

'Green Lantern' is opening. Does it appeal only to white American males? Green Lantern is the second major cinematic superhero coming to audience. As my comments indicate, I think Green Lantern represents a problematic perspective. While other comic characters are born with powers (mutants in the X-Men) or are supernatural beings (Thor), Green Lantern differs from other characters because he is picked to serve as a representative of law and order. While many can be dismissive because it is a summer film, we should also examine the story we tell about ourselves.

In the aftermath of yet another confrontation between Republicans and Democrats over budget policy and the promise of future conflicts, it is worthwhile to step back and consider the traditionalist appeal in the context of superhero comics. The “traditionalist appeal” in this context is the resurrection of classic characters in recent comicbook superhero stories. While the political debate rarely directly spills onto the comic page, the sense of the political environment does, and often with startling results. Whether pro-war sentiment associated with Captain America’s first appearance punching Adolf Hitler or a flurry of President Obama appearances , comics are not divorced from the political climate. Superhero comics and society inform each other, contextualizing values, delineating beliefs, and highlighting concerns associated with political debates. Thus, feminist critiques elicit change in the status and action of female characters, and concerns about racial equity trigger...

I'm gearing up for a presentation on the U.S. experience and Superhero for TEDx Orlando . TED talks are about ideas worth sharing and if you know anything about me you know I am a fan of comic books. I'm a fan of many things, but comics are easy for people to understand. Honestly, given the marginalizing nature of academic endeavors, having something to talk about that people understand is not a bad thing. Despite my confused appearance, I have a pretty focused approach to scholarship . Yet, regardless of my focus, the vast majority of people dismiss academia. The old saying of "Those that can-do and those that cannot-teach" makes a lot of sense to people. It is wrong, thus proving the need for an education. Still, the United States puts a lot of stock in going out and "doing" as better than the learning and understanding achieved through intense study. Given this popular sentiment, you would think Rollins would be more well-known to the wider publi...

I recently got feedback on Ages of Heroes, Eras of Men from a prospective publisher. It a tough process, getting feedback from someone who doesn't know all the work you have put into something. It is honest feedback and I will take it and make sure the final product answer the editor's questions. We have done a lot of great work on the book, but publishers are a cold and objective bunch slow to hand out praise (and contracts). As I scramble to reply to the press, I realize I have not done much with one of the chapters I am writing for the book. My chapter looks at the introduction of African-American superheroes to the Marvel Universe in the 1960s and 1970s. The decision to introduce minority characters to a fictional universe may seem petty compared to the titanic struggles occurring over Civil Rights during the 1960s, but those struggles drove the decision to incorporate minorities into comics. The question for me is what does the Marvel Comic experience integrating per...