Mighty: An Anthology of Disabled Superheroes

by Emily Gillespie (Editor), Jennifer Lee Rossman (editor)

With great powerchair comes great responsibility...

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's... accessibility!

You wouldn't like me when I'm out of spoons...

All too often, superhero media depicts disability as something to overcome on the journey to becoming a hero, or as a sign of villainy. It's time to make heroism accessible for everyone.

In these 15 stories, you'll meet winged wheelchair users, supernatural spoonies, guardians with glaucoma, and many more. These disabled superheroes fight villains as well as outdated ableist stereotypes, and show that anyone can be Mighty.

182 pages, Paperback

Published October 10, 2023

About the author

Emily Gillespie (also known as Ava) (she/her) is a mad and autistic author, disability activist, and professional daydreamer. Gillespie has a BA in Gender Equality and Social Justice an MA in Critical Disability Studies and a certificate in Creative Writing. They have volunteered and worked in the disability community as an activist, researcher, and facilitator for over ten years. Her writing explores themes of memory, identity and mental health journeys. They enjoy working in community spaces and examining individual and collective experiences. Dancing with Ghosts (Leaping Lion Books, 2017) is her first novel. Their poetry and short-stories can be found in several journals and anthologies. She is currently drafting her second grant funded novel about the failures of the emergency mental health system. In her spare time Emily enjoys reading, walking, dancing, swimming and people watching in cafes throughout Toronto. Emily can be found curled up in her bed full of unicorn plushies dreaming of a more just and loving world for all marginalized and disabled folks.

Reviews

[Nat Burgess · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was great! Very wide range of stories but they all fit classic superhero tropes in their own ways.

The stand outs for me were:
Mind Bender by Rowan Marci
Hold Steady Against the Tide by Beatrice Morgan
Hell Week by Emma Hardy
Instituting a Cycle of Violence by Matthew Del Papa
and
Masking Up by Erin Rockfort

[David Martinez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'll preface this by saying that I'm an autistic and an ADHDer with mobility issues, as well as a disability advocate.

I absolutely loved this book. There is so much representation of not only different kinds of disabilities, but other diverse identities. There were multiple stories that I could personally identify with the people in them.

I've been a comic book lover since the '90s and have always struggled to find characters that really seemed like I could fully relate to that didn't come across as "inspirational" in an ableist way. This book celebrates disabilities without either sugar-coating the struggles or making it so that someone "overcomes" their disability by removing it in a supernatural way.

I would highly recommend this book for anyone, not only those who are disabled and want to see themselves in a story, but also for those who are abled and want to get a realistic (as much as superhero stories can be) view of what it can be like for people.

[Janine Leffler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved the representation in this book. My favorite essays were Granny Snith, Mutant Pride and Captain Maven and The Ice Queen.