Tag Archives: superheroes

from the Internet

Grammy Winner, Now Christian Comics Creator

God's Silver SoldiersThe local Mesquite News out of Mesquite, TX reported last month on a local-boy-done-good personality now putting his attention to Christian-inspired comics. Grammy-winner Art Greenhaw of the Light Crust Doughboys is trying his hand at comic books as editor and co-writer of God’s Silver Soldiers from Truthmonger Press.

Described on its site as “a creative entity whose mission is to bring the much-needed messages of mortality and spirituality to today’s youth through the medium of comicbooks [sic],” Truthmonger Press has premiered the God’s Silver Soldiers “visual novel” at the 2016 Comic-Con International. The series, described in its marketing materials as “approved by the Christian Comics Code Alliance,” features a band of do-gooders united by faith: “When God’s Silver Soldiers come together, the Holy Armor of God increases their strength a hundred fold, and they are able to call forth the powers given to these Christian Super Heroes  by The Almighty.”

Greenhaw, who counts “Stan Lee and artists Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Al Hartley, John Buscema, Ben Dunn and Kurt Schaffenberger” among his inspirations, also produced a companion soundtrack to the series.  He told Mesquite News that, if he wasn’t writing music or comics, he would likely be “reading, studying the greatest works of religion and philosophy and picking back up karate/martial arts.”

from the Internet

“I can’t give my superhero a Muslim name.”

What is the purpose, one might ask, of creating, for instance, Muslim superheroes, much less studying them? Last year, The Muslim Vibe produced an article that gives one such answer to that question: “Erasure of the Muslim Superhero: The Effect of Islamophobia on Muslim Children.”

The lesson need not be limited to Muslim children alone — any oppressed or vilified group will face the same backlash, particularly among its most impressionable and least powerful subgroup, children. But, at this moment in American and world politics, that effect falls particularly hard on Muslim children. Therefore, as the author Afrah Mansour relates, there is a duty “an educator to make the younger generation value themselves” alongside others.

http://themuslimvibe.com/muslim-lifestyle-matters/parents/erasure-of-the-muslim-superhero/

Muslim Superheroes: Comics, Islam, and Representation comes out in Spring 2017 from the ILEX Foundation.

events

Nebraska Meet-Up for Superheroes & Religion

“A surprising look at the deep religious motifs of superheroes,” bills the poster for First-Plymouth Church’s upcoming event, Superman, Batman, and Jesus.  And while the locale might be curious — Brewsky’s Food & Spirits in Lincoln, NE — its premier presenter, S&S’s own Prof. Dan Clanton, is a key authority on the topic, himself a co-editor of Understanding Religion and Popular Culture from Routledge in 2012. 14305281_10154534213848094_5880995712971770888_o

The event will also feature music by local talent Andrea Von Kampen. (Does she perform any music on the combined theme of religion and superheroics?)

academic, from the Internet

MUSLIM SUPERHEROES Begins “In Earnest”

Mizan logoIn advance of the Spring 2017 release of Muslim Superheroes: Comics, Islam, and Representation, Mizan has been featuring a series of related articles on its Mizan Pop site. The first, dated this past summer, provides an overview of that category’s — “Muslim superheroes” — history.

The study of Muslim superheroes has only quite recently begun in earnest, with scholars like comics historian Fredrik Strömberg and French scholar Shirin Edwin publishing some of the first scholarly articles in this specific field in 2011. There has been a small but steady stream of work on the subject since. Regrettably, while some of this scholarship is of high quality, it has, to date, been scattered over multiple disciplines, and new work has only rarely been in dialogue with what has come before.

In theory, Muslim Superheroes, edited by A. David Lewis and Martin Lund, is intended to further that dialogue and provide stronger connective tissue between the disciplines on the topic. Their promotional Facebook page features links to some of that “steady stream on the subject” and a preview of the book jacket (featuring art by Qahera artist Deena Mohamed).

Muslim Superheroes

academic, contributors

Martin Lund Reconstructs Superman’s Judaism

Superman puzzleThis Fall, Palgrave Pivot is releasing Re-Constructing the Man of Steel: Superman 1938–1941, Jewish American History, and the Invention of the Jewish–Comics Connection by S&S’s own Martin Lund. The super-sized title only hints at the herculean task Lund has taken on: To objectively explore the Judaic origins to the Last Son of Krypton’s publications, too often a site of distortion an mythicism. Rather than discard Superman’s Jewishness wholly, Lund “offers a new understanding of the Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in the mid-1930s, presenting him as an authentically Jewish American character in his own time, for good and ill.”

The book is due out this October and is available now for preorder. It is the second title in Palgrave Pivot’s “Contemporary Religion and Popular Culture” series.