Read Online American Comics Literary Theory and Religion The Superhero Afterlife A Lewis Books

Product details Paperback 208 pages Publisher Palgrave Macmillan; 1st ed. 2014 edition (November 19, 2014) Language English ISBN-10 1349499617

American Comics Literary Theory and Religion The Superhero Afterlife A Lewis Books Reviews

• To echo the other reviews you'll find on this work, it is simply fantastic. As a religious academic comics are a bit outside my knowledge base. It is only recently I became interested in the topic after picking up Chris Claremont's recent run on Nightcrawler. My main question dealt with Kurt Wagner's commitment to Catholicism and Marvel's portrayal of the afterlife. Though the comic run failed to meet my expectations it led me to wonder what academic work had been done in the field of Religion and Comics. After reading many pseudo-academic writings on the topic I thought the field without rigor. Then out of the blue... "It's a bird, it's a plane, it's A. David Lewis!" He was one of the first of many academic scholars I discovered who took this field seriously.
  
  American Comics, Literary Theory and Religion does more than just establish and systematize a new sub-genera, but adds to religious scholarship by challenging ideas of selfhood and religious engagement. What does it mean to be more than a unified self? And how does seeing ourselves in multiplicity actually lead to inter-religious dialogue. If I had anything to add or say that could have been expounded upon in this work it would have been nice to see a short discussion on Carl Jung's insights to religion, archetypes and his views of the multiplicity of selfhood. But this in no way detracts from the work Lewis has done but would only strengthen it.
  
  I highly recommend picking up this book, and I look forward to his future projects.
• Religion and pop culture collide in A. David Lewis’s surprisingly accessible examination of heaven and hell, salvation and damnation in perhaps the most unexpected of media—superhero comics. From Fantastic Four to Promethea, Lewis traces the idea of the afterlife, our notions of selfhood, and nothing less than the meaning of life (and death) through the pages of a uniquely American genre.