Throughout the history of the genre, the superhero has been characterised primarily by physical transformation and physical difference. Superhero Bodies: Identity, Materiality, Transformation explores the transformation of the superhero body across multiple media forms including comics, film, television, literature and the graphic novel. How does the body of the hero offer new ways to imagine identities? How does it represent or subvert cultural ideals? How are ideologies of race, gender and disability signified or destabilised in the physicality of the superhero? How are superhero bodies drawn, written and filmed across diverse forms of media and across histories? This volume collects essays that attend to the physicality of superheroes: the transformative bodies of superheroes, the superhero’s position in urban and natural spaces, the dialectic between the superhero’s physical and metaphysical self, and the superhero body’s relationship with violence. This will be the first collection of scholarly research specifically dedicated to investigating the diversity of superhero bodies, their emergence, their powers, their secrets, their histories and their transformations.

An examination of the art in superhero comics and how style influences comic narratives.

This collection of new essays focuses on The CW network's hit television series Arrow--based on DC Comic's Green Arrow--and its spin-offs The Flash, DC's Legends of Tomorrow and Supergirl. Comic book adaptations have been big business for film studios since Superman (1978) and in recent years have dominated at the box office--five of the 11 highest grossing films of 2016 were adapted from comics. Superheroes have battled across the small screen for considerably longer, beginning with The Adventures of Superman (1952-1958), though with mixed results. The contributors explore the reasons behind Arrow's success, its representation of bodies, its portrayal of women, its shifting political ideologies, and audience reception and influence on storylines.

Premiering in September of 2006, the weekly NBC television series Heroes was an immediate commercial and critical hit, lasting four successful seasons. Heroes follows a group of interrelated characters who discover they have superhuman powers, with each successive episode exploring how these people react to and utilize their powers for good or for evil. This collection of essays explores a variety of issues surrounding Heroes, examining the series' content, marketing and reception. Also investigated is the show's fusion of "cult" and mainstream elements of television, analyzing its ability to combine so-called lowbrow elements (comic books and superheroes) with a high-quality television form prizing such factors as moral ambiguity and depth of characterization--and what this blending process suggests about the current hybrid state of genre television, and about the medium as a whole.

What comes to mind when you think about superheroes? Strength, bravery, and heroism are common answers. However, superheroes do not only have physical strength, but they also have mental strengths and skills. Superheroes tend to have intelligence and detection skills which allow them to develop other skills. In this analysis of superhero literacy aimed at students, the connection between superhero media and larger theories of literacy are explored. The author uses six superhero television shows to show how literacy is portrayed in superhero media and how it reflects and shapes cultural ideas of literacy. The shows covered are Arrow, The Flash, Gotham, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Daredevil.

Queering Wolverine in Comics and Fanfiction: A Fastball Special interrogates the ways in which the Marvel Comics character Wolverine is a queer hero and examines his representation as an open, vulnerable, and kinship-oriented queer hero in both comics and fanfiction. Despite claims that Wolverine embodies Reagan-era conservatism or hegemonic hypermasculinity, Wolverine does not conform to gender or sex norms, not only because of his mutant status, but also because his character, throughout his publication history, resists normalization, making him a site for a queer-heroic futurity. Rather than focusing on overt queer representations that have appeared in some comic forms, this book explores the queer representations that have preceded Wolverine’s bisexual and gay characterizations and in particular focuses on his porous and vulnerable body. Through important, but not overly analyzed storylines, representations of his open body that is always in process (both visually and narratively), his creation of queer kinships with his fellow mutants, and his eroticized same-sex relationships as depicted in fanfiction, this book traces a queer genealogy of Wolverine. This book is ideal reading for students and scholars of comics studies, cultural studies, gender studies, sexuality studies, and literature.

Kids have a lot of questions about God: Does God know what I’m thinking? Do animals go to heaven? Is the Big Bang Theory in the Bible? They’ll find the answers to these questions—and more—in this engaging 100-day devotional. Each entry begins with Scripture to introduce a big question and then invites kids to think deeper about what they’ve learned. Plus, they’ll be equipped with language to talk with others about God and His amazing creation. For ages 8 to 12.

Beyond Bombshells analyzes the cultural importance of strong women in a variety of current media forms. Action heroines are now more popular in movies, comic books, television, and literature than they have ever been. Their spectacular presence represents shifting ideas about female agency, power, and sexuality. Beyond Bombshells explores how action heroines reveal and reconfigure perceptions about how and why women are capable of physically dominating roles in modern fiction, indicating the various strategies used to contain and/or exploit female violence. Focusing on a range of successful and controversial recent heroines in the mass media, including Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games books and movies, Lisbeth Salander from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo novels and films, and Hit-Girl from the Kick-Ass movies and comic books, Jeffrey A. Brown argues that the role of action heroine reveals evolving beliefs about femininity. While women in action roles are still heavily sexualized and objectified, they also challenge preconceived myths about normal or culturally appropriate gender behavior. The ascribed sexuality of modern heroines remains Brown's consistent theme, particularly how objectification intersects with issues of racial stereotyping, romantic fantasies, images of violent adolescent and preadolescent girls, and neoliberal feminist revolutionary parables. Individual chapters study the gendered dynamics of torture in action films, the role of women in partnerships with male colleagues, young women as well as revolutionary leaders in dystopic societies, adolescent sexuality and romance in action narratives, the historical import of nonwhite heroines, and how modern African American, Asian, and Latina heroines both challenge and are restricted by longstanding racial stereotypes.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a superhero drawing book! Professional comic book artist and YouTube guru Robert Marzullo teaches you the building blocks of creating your own action heroes and explosive comic book scenes. Easy to follow step-by-step demonstrations break down advanced drawings into basic shapes and shading for you to replicate and master before applying your newfound knowledge to create your own dynamic comic book characters and settings. INCLUDES • 50+ step-by-step demonstrations • Chapters on drawing faces, bodies, character details and scenes • Instruction on depicting both superhuman men and women using different perspectives, expressions, proportions and poses • Ideas for costumes, such as basic cuffs, capes, helmets, armor and weaponry • Tips for rendering power effects, from flying and wall smashing to magic-orb wielding and energy blasting • Lessons on blocking in a scene to create powerful comic panels that tell a story

The femme fatale occupies a precarious yet highly visible space in contemporary cinema. From sci-fi alien women to teenage bad girls, filmmakers continue to draw on the notion of the sexy deadly woman in ways which traverse boundaries of genre and narrative. This book charts the articulations of the femme fatale in American cinema of the past twenty years, and contends that, despite her problematic relationship with feminism, she offers a vital means for reading the connections between mainstream cinema and representations of female agency. The films discussed raise questions about the limits and potential of positioning women who meet highly normative standards of beauty as powerful icons of female agency. They point towards the constant shifting between patriarchal appropriation and feminist recuperation that inevitably accompanies such representations within mainstream media contexts.