Spider-Man. Batman. The X-Men. The Fantastic Four. Comic books and the characters they have spawned have become twenty-first-century mythology. Greg Garrett helps us see the profound depth that can be found in the glossy, fast-paced, and often violent world of comics, graphic novels, and the films they inspire. The book features extensive discussions of Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men. It includes an appendix with descriptions of twenty-five comics and graphic novels Garrett recommends for discussion of spirituality and comics.
Greg Garrett is the author of over a dozen critically-acclaimed books of fiction, memoir, translation, and criticism. His debut novel Free Bird was chosen by Publishers' Weekly and the Denver Rocky Mountain News as one of the top fiction debuts of 2002, and many have been moved by his autobiographical writing on depression and faith, Crossing Myself and No Idea, but he is probably best known for his books on religion, politics, and culture. These works include One Fine Potion: The Literary Magic of Harry Potter, We Get to Carry Each Other: The Gospel according to U2, Stories from the Edge: A Theology of Grief, Holy Superheroes!, The Gospel According to Hollywood, and The Gospel Reloaded: Exploring Spirituality and Faith in the Matrix (with Chris Seay). His newest book is The Other Jesus, a personal work of theology examining how to be a thoughtful and faithful follower of Jesus in the 21st Century. You may have heard (or read) him talking about religion, politics, and culture in the media. His work has been covered by The New Yorker, USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor, BBC Radio, National Public Radio, CBS Radio, msnbc.com, The Bob Edwards Show, The National Review, Commonweal, and many other broadcast, print, and web venues.
Greg writes a weekly column on religion and politics, Faithful Citizenship, for Patheos (http://patheos.com), blogs on religion and culture for The Thoughtful Christian (http://blog.thethoughtfulchristian.com) and blogs for the Christian Century (http://theotherjesus.com). In addition to his ongoing work in fiction, he is currently doing thinking, research, and writing for book projects on post-9/11 literature and culture, American religion and politics, and Christian wisdom traditions. Greg is an award-winning Professor of English at Baylor University, Writer in Residence at the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest and at Gladstone's Library in Hawarden, Wales, and a licensed lay preacher based at St. David's Episcopal Church in Austin, Texas.
He lives in Austin with his two sons, Jake and Chandler. His heroes include Martin Luther King, Barbara Jordan, Henry David Thoreau, Robert F. Kennedy, Desmond Tutu, and Stevie Ray Vaughn. His favorite authors include Lee Smith, Walker Percy, Graham Greene, Nick Hornby, Barbara Brown Taylor (are you really still reading this?), Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Merton, Rowan Williams, and Anne Lamott. His favorite color is blue (No, yellow!), he plays Taylor GS-7, Fender Stratocaster, and Epiphone Casino guitars, and he likes both green and red chile on his blue corn enchiladas.
