The Superhero Reader

by Jeet Heer (Editor), Jeet Heer (Editor), Kent Worcester (Editor)

Despite their commercial appeal and cross-media reach, superheroes are only recently starting to attract sustained scholarly attention. This groundbreaking collection brings together essays and book excerpts by major writers on comics and popular culture. While superhero comics are a distinct and sometimes disdained branch of comics creation, they are integral to the development of the North American comic book and the history of the medium. For the past half-century they have also been the one overwhelmingly dominant market genre. The sheer volume of superhero comics that have been published over the years is staggering. Major superhero universes constitute one of the most expansive storytelling canvases ever fashioned. Moreover, characters inhabiting these fictional universes are immensely influential, having achieved iconic recognition around the globe. Their images and adventures have shaped many other media, such as film, video games, and even prose fiction. The primary aim of this reader is first, to collect in a single volume a sampling of the most sophisticated commentary on superheroes, and second, to bring into sharper focus the ways in which superheroes connect with larger social, cultural, literary, aesthetic, and historical themes that are of interest to a great many readers both in the academy and beyond.

Genres: Comics, Essays, Graphic Novels, Nonfiction

Kindle Edition

First published May 1, 2013

About the author

Jeet Heer is a senior editor at the New Republic who has published in a wide array of journals including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and VQR. He is the author of two books: In Love With Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (Coach House Books) and Sweet Lechery: Essays, Profiles and Reviews (Porcupine’s Quill). He has co-edited eight books and served as a contributing editor on another eight volumes. With Kent Worcester, Heer co-edited A Comics Studies Reader (University Press of Mississippi), which won the Peter C. Rollins Book Award given annually to the best book in American Studies or Cultural Studies. He’s been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship.

Reviews

[Arnav Varma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting collection of articles and papers. Some of them were a bit boring and disagreeable, but the book serves its purpose. The articles on “revisionary superhero” and “epic hero and pop culture” are cracking reads. The last article on “death-defying heroes” is also pretty decent.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of essays exploring different facets of the superhero genre. Some of them are older, but it is easy to extrapolate what each author might write about more recent developments of the genre.

[Olivia Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

3-3.5⭐️

[Diz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book collects chapters from other academic books on comics studies. This would be a good place for someone new to the critical study of comics to start. It does try to cover every aspect of comics, so you may find that some chapters are not for you, but also you'll find some chapters that you will really like. I particularly liked Peter Coogan's chapter on comic predecessors, Gloria Steinem's chapter on the inspirational power of Wonder Woman, Andy Medhurst's chapter on camp and Batman, and Henry Jenkins' chapter on how superheroes helped him deal with the death of his mother.

[Stewart Tame · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book. This is a collection of essays from an academic perspective dealing with the topic of superheroes. Included is an excerpt from Frederic Wertham's infamous Seduction of the Innocent. Fun book, but a bit dry and footnote-y.

[Shilo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though I did not read every piece of literary criticism in this large collection, what I did read was both interesting and useful when discussing similar ideas in my responses and essays for my superhero class.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting food for thought, most def.