Super heroes: A modern mythology (Batsford cultural studies) [Paperback]

Richard Reynolds (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1992 | ISBN-10: 0713465603 | ISBN-13: 978-0713465600

The super hero has been the staple of the modern comic book since the late 1930s. The phenomenally successful movies "Superman" and "Batman" have made these two comic book super heroes as familiar worldwide as any characters ever created. Yet to relatively few aficionados are they known at first hand from their appearances in comic books.

Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology explores the origins of the super hero by documenting how heroes emerged from the comic book genre and are defined both by its history and by audience expectations.

To show some of the most influential and paradigmatic figures, this study focuses on the texts of three comic books in the genre--The X-Men, The Dark Knight Returns, and Watchman. It examines ways in which the comics mythologize both the role of the hero and the nature of consensus, authority, and moral choice.

Blending academic scholarship with specialized knowledge of the comic book medium, Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology will have appeal for several audiences. Since most of the academic scholarship published on comic books has focused on history rather than on cultural analysis, this book will be of great value to scholars of popular culture.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

A study of one of pop culture's superstars whose enchanting mystique pervades the modern world --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: B.T. Batsford (1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0713465603
• ISBN-13: 978-0713465600
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,413,068 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great., August 22, 2000

By 

Eric "hangthedj" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology (Educational Technology Selected Bibliography Series) (Hardcover)

This book forever changed the way that I read superhero comics. Reynolds discusses the factors that are present in virtually every superhero comic since Superman was created. Some are apparent (devotion to justice, secret identitities), and some are subtle (lost parents, accountability only to one's own conscience). Virtually all factors are recapitulations of the developmental struggles of the primary audience of these comics: adolescent males. Reynolds continues by illuminating the grand, mythical nature of the comic-book universes, all stories blending into one vast "canonical" story, each comic becoming part of a larger continuity. This continuity shares several features of classical mythologies, which Reynolds explores in depth, citing the X-Men, the Watchmen, and the Dark Knight Returns series (among others) as evidence. Read this, it's great.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Highly Insightful and Well-Written, August 6, 2007

By 

CB - See all my reviews

This review is from: Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology (Studies in Popular Culture) (Paperback)

In Superheroes: A Modern Mythology, Richard Reynolds does an excellent job of dissecting some of the origins of the superhero genre. Beginning in the 1930s and 1940s, he lays bare some of the prevailing ideas and iconography and puts superheroes in context. Reynolds also does an able job of analyzing The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore's Watchmen, as well as certain superhero origin stories. This book's only disappointment comes from the fact that his analyzes of superheroes' mythic origins don't go far enough - those looking for explicit comparisons to assorted mythic pantheons or full-throated examinations of how superheroes fall into legendary templates (except those of the Joseph Campbell variety) will be disappointed. However, an excellent and important read for anyone interested in comic books.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, December 28, 2010

By 

Jamie Smith - See all my reviews

This review is from: Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology (Studies in Popular Culture) (Paperback)

I had high hopes for this book, but when I reached its analysis of major superheroes such as Superman and Batman, I felt the author was way off. I thought his finding that Superman was just an adolescent fantasy was very simplistic - where was any discussion of the duality of the human and alien, the conflict between the physical, alien might of Superman against the mental, human might of Lex Luthor? And when Batman was seen as 'angry all the time', that his driving force is not anger at the injustice that he suffered and that he sees every day, but rather anger at himself for note being able to stop what happened to his parents - and that his greatest foe is not the Joker, the man who is the opposite of all that Batman represents, but rather Two-Face, because the author thinks he represents the duality of Batman/Bruce Wayne - I lost all faith that the author knew what he was talking about. If you want a serious book about superheroes as modern mythology, look elsewhere.