'Nuff Said: American Graphic Media

Marvel continues to infuse the "feel" of comic books into products across platforms.  This tactic avoids alienating long time fans, but opens the door to a new audience excited by film and television adaptations.  While DC Comic struggles with finding the right tone for many of its Golden Age characters, Marvel's Silver Age origins allow better flexibility for adaption.  As creators adapt the stories for new platform, much of the youthful anxiety and societal uncertainty inherent to Marvel's 1960s stories can be transferred to contemporary debates. Something to consider as DC and Marvel bring major movie releases to theaters this summer. 

Rethinking Marvel's Avengers in a bigger sociocultural context We Will Avenge Them Or… Be Avenged?: The Individual in the US Experience

So, I saw the Green Hornet at an advanced preview screening and and it was good. I can honestly say see it. You won't have that, "I can never get this time back" or "I can't believe I paid 10 bucks" feeling from this movie. You might recall that I have been thinking about the neo-pulp moment. To me the return of classic pulp characters to the small screen ( The Cape ) and big screen extends and progresses a message of masculinity, identity, and agency linked to the American experience. The Green Hornet is a reboot movie and works in part because the character's placement in U.S. popular culture is distinct, but limited. This movie was funny, had lots of action, and interesting visuals. There is something more to be said here. The visual engagement in the Green Hornet has little to nothing to do with 3D, that was pointless. The greatest impact of the 3D, in my opinion, is the end credits sequence. The visual artistry comes from Michel Gondry'...

The costumed crime fighter returned to primetime television Sunday with NBC’s midseason debut of The Cape . For all the emphases on superheroes in popular media, those heroes, at least on television, have shied away from costumes. They provided the function associated with superheroes, but not colorful form. Why then, the return to the costumed hero on the small screen? The Cape is a family friendly show about a wrongfully accused cop who takes on the persona of his son’s favorite comic book hero to clear his name and save “Palm City.” A genre show that draws on familiar themes, The Cape offers a fight for justice and an individual’s struggle against societal corruption. As with its big screen counterpart, The Green Hornet , The Cape returns places the pulp hero in the spotlight at a time when the value of individual agency is in question. This neo-pulp moment is both stimulated by and a reaction to social upheaval and economic uncertainty. Like superheroes, pulp character...

The ruminations over new activity to bring Wonder Woman back to the small screen once again remind me of the unique place DC Comic characters occupy in our collective mind’s eye. The struggle to produce a Wonder Woman film says much about the challenge represented by the Amazon Warrior/Princess who does not need to be rescued. Despite the growth of women’s role in society, we still assume a paternal and maternal model for men and women's in society. While Wonder Woman is not barred from motherhood, she is not seeking to place herself within the familial framework in an obvious way. Indeed, the recent runs of Wonder Woman have been better in part, because they have embraced the character as who she is--warrior, diplomat, and leader. Wonder Woman is one of the key characters from DC, yet she has not had the iconic stories similar to Batman ( The Dark Knight Returns , The Killing Joke , or Year One ) or Superman ( Greatest Stories or Red Son ) in print. Instead, many people k...

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...

My op-ed in the LA Times touches on some of my thinking about race in comics, but if you have been reading this blog, you know there is more to my research. Here is a list for those wondering about blackness in comics. Black Panther (1966) 1st Black Superhero Falcon (1969), 1st African-American superhero Eddie March, Iron Man for one issue (1970) Black Racer (July 1971) John Stewart (Dec. 1971, becomes star GL in 1985) Luke Cage (1972), 1st Black Superhero with his own book Blade (1973) Brother Voodoo (1973) Bronze Tiger (1975) Storm (1975) 1st Black Superheroine Misty Knight (1975) Black Goliath (1975) Get his own book in 1976 Bumblebee (Teen Titans 1976) Tyroc (1976) Black Lightning (April 1977), 1st DC superhero with his own book Vixen (1978), 1st DC black superheroine This list is imperfect, but it is telling us something about race in comics. As you can see, after the Black Panther a number of black characters are introduced. The first African-American character, the Falcon is...

It should not be a surprise that I'm once again returning to discussion of the book. After dealing with a conference presentation on comics at the Florida Conference of Historians meeting in Wakulla Springs,FL I'm thinking about the collection again. The concept is sound, but the publishers' spirits are weak. So, after some consultation among the editors we have decided to revamp the proposal a bit, to highlight the themes we think are important. This is not to say we have not done that before, we have, and now we are doing it again with the intention of making the links clearer to the less comic savvy reader. One thing that came out of the discussion is me moving away from race in my chapter and incorporating an examination of Iron Man. Don't worry, I will send the chapter out to a journal, so eventually someone will read it. Moving away from my exploration of race in Marvel does not mean the book will not address race, in fact we have one article exploring Lat...