Category Archives: articles and essays

articles and essays, online

Reexamining “Our Gods Wear Spandex,” Superheroes as Occult Gods

Flash on the tarot path? From TrueFreeThinker.com

Over at True Free Thinker, Ken Ammi digs deep into the 2007 text Our Gods Wear Spandex by Christopher Knowles. In addition to placing it in context to several other notable works of the time, Ammi supports Knowles’s contention of occult symbology embedded in the superhero genre, particularly that of pre-Christian paganism:

Although most of us don’t realize it, there’s simply nothing new about devotion to superheroes. Their powers, costumes, and sometimes even their names are plucked straight from the pre-Christian religions of antiquity. When you go back and look at these heroes in their original incarnations, you can’t help but be struck by how blatant their symbolism is and how strongly they reflect the belief systems of the pagan age…

Ammi goes into a example-by-example analysis of such heroes as Captain Marvel, Zatara and Zatanna, Doctor Fate, Superman, the Flash, the X-Men, and many more. His examination of Captain America in particular may take on new relevance during the controversial “Secret Empire” storyline currently underway.

Our Gods Wear Spandex is available at Amazon.com.

academic, articles and essays, contributors, from the Internet, islamicommentary

The First Muslim Superhero

[With the apparent close of the IslamiCommentary site from the Duke University Islamic Studies Center (DISC), Sacred and Sequential is cataloging a number of their articles pertinent to comics and Islam for continued online access. The following, if altered at all, has been edited only minimally for clarity and/or ]

Kismet Seventy Years Later: Recognizing the First Genuine Muslim Superhero

by A. DAVID LEWIS for ISLAMiCommentary on MARCH 20, 2014: 

Kismet may not be the first Muslim superhero, but he may be the first worthy of that title. Some buffoonish characters preceded him, and other orientalist caricatures appeared on earlier comics pages, but without either superpowers or other key elements of the genre. This month, on the seventieth anniversary of his first appearance, it’s a fitting time to reintroduce and recognize Kismet, “Man of Fate;” the first genuine Muslim superhero.

The superhero as a genre found its first real traction, famously, in the pages of Action Comics #1; the 1938 debut of Superman. Like Kismet, the character of Superman had his antecedents, prior masked men and super-powered protagonists either on comics pages, on radio, or in print pulp novels. But it wasn’t until Superman crystallized the conventions of a) being driven by a quest for justice and defense of the weak; b) demonstrating abilities beyond that of a normal person; and c) having a costume and secret identity; that the superhero genre became clearly recognized.

1944 — six years after Superman — wave upon wave of superhero characters, with varying success, had been pouring into audience’s hands.

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articles and essays, from the Internet

The Daredevil of 2016, the Faithful of 2017?

Earlier this year, S&S’s own Scott Gardner reflected on “The Spiritual Consciousness of Marvel’s Daredevil” for The Huffington Post, analyzing both seasons of the hit Netflix superhero series in terms of its ties to faith. With the church-infused Luke Cage having become a binge-worthy sensation as well as Iron Fist, The Punisher, and Defenders all debuting out in 2017, ’tis the seaon, so to speak, to revisit the break-out characters’ heroic suffering and “struggling conflict of faith.”

DAREDEVIL #7 art by Paulo Rivera

articles and essays, from the Internet

Didactic or Dynamic? Superheroes from the Middle East

(The following article by Fredrik Strömberg was originally posted on the Mizan Project website. It is copied here with permission.)

Superheroes from the Middle East: Adaptation of the Genre?

A selection of comic books published by AK Comics and Teshkeel.
A selection of comic books published by AK Comics and Teshkeel, including The 99 (photo credit: Fredrik Strömberg).

This is the third essay published here on Mizan Pop in our Muslim Superheroes series. The first and second installments in the series can be read here and here.

America has been exporting superhero comics for more than seven decades; nevertheless, there have been few commercially successful comics created in that genre in the rest of the world. Given that there have been several violent conflicts between the United States and Arab or Muslim-majority nations over the last few decades, it is intriguing that attempts at establishing a line of original superhero comics were made in the Middle East in the first decade of the twenty-first century by two different publishing houses: AK Comics in Egypt and Teshkeel Media Group in Kuwait.

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articles and essays, contributors, events

Jack T. Chick dies at 92

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According to Chick Publications, their CEO and founder Jack T. Chick died peacefully in his sleep on Sunday night. He was 92. His death is mourned by some, and celebrated by others.

chickrip

Since the news broke, “Jack Chick” has been trending on Twitter. It is not a pretty picture that is being presented. This is in no way surprising. For all but a select few, the man did not have a nice word to spare. And for the rest of us, he offered only glimpses of the hellfire that awaits us.

I should back up a bit, though, on the off chance that anybody visiting this site doesn’t know who Jack Chick was. He was the creator of the famous and notorious “Chick tracts,” small pamphlets containing black and white Evangelical fundamentalist propaganda comics. Chick had been publishing these pamphlets since the early 1960s, and his oeuvre touches on an impressive array of topics, from evolution to Halloween to “false religions” (everything that is not Protestantism, basically) to the end-times to, famously, role-playing games. The basic message was always the same, however: it doesn’t matter how good or bad you have been in your life, you are going to hell unless you accept the brand of Christianity that Chick promoted. You can read most of them here. He also produced comic books and sold literature that promoted his world-view.

The legacy he leaves behind is a strange one.

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