Bandits, Misfits, and Superheroes
Summary
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Bandits, Misfits, and Superheroes by Josef Benson
American comics from the start have reflected the white supremacist culture out of which they arose. Superheroes and comic books in general are products of whiteness, and both signal and hide its presence. Even when comics creators and publishers sought to advance an antiracist agenda, their attempts were often undermined by a lack of awareness of their own whiteness and the ideological baggage that goes along with it. Even the most celebrated figures of the industry, such as Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Jack Jackson, William Gaines, Stan Lee, Robert Crumb, Will Eisner, and Frank Miller, have not been able to distance themselves from the problematic racism embedded in their narratives despite their intentions or explanations. Bandits, Misfits, and Superheroes: Whiteness and Its Borderlands in American Comics and Graphic Novels provides a sober assessment of these creators and their role in perpetuating racism throughout the history of comics. Josef Benson and Doug Singsen identify how whiteness has been defined, transformed, and occasionally undermined over the course of eighty years in comics and in many genres, including westerns, horror, crime, funny animal, underground comix, autobiography, literary fiction, and historical fiction. This exciting and groundbreaking book assesses industry giants, highlights some of the most important episodes in American comic book history, and demonstrates how they relate to one another and form a larger pattern, in unexpected and surprising ways.
Josef Benson is an assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Parkside where he teaches courses in contemporary literature, African American literature, gender studies, poetry writing, fiction writing, and composition. He is the author of Hypermasculinities in the Contemporary Novel: Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison, and James Baldwin (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014).
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781496838346 |
| ISBN 10 | 1496838343 |
| Title | Bandits, Misfits, and Superheroes |
| Author | Josef Benson |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding type | Paperback |
| Publisher | University Press of Mississippi |
| Year published | 2022-03-30 |
| Number of pages | 304 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |