Book Review: Death, Disability and the Superhero

Book: Death, Disability and the Superhero: The Silver Age and Beyond by Jose Alaniz

Source: Borrowed from Publisher/NetGalley for an honest review

Publication: Available now

Description:

The first full-length examination of the evolving superhero through the lens of disability studies

The Thing. Daredevil. Captain Marvel. The Human Fly. Drawing on DC and Marvel comics from the 1950s to the 1990s, and marshaling insights from three burgeoning fields of inquiry in the humanities—disability studies, death and dying studies, and comics studies— José Alaniz seeks to redefine the contemporary understanding of the superhero. Beginning in the Silver Age, the genre increasingly challenged and complicated its hyper-masculine, quasi-eugenicist biases through such disabled figures as Ben Grimm/The Thing, Matt Murdock/Daredevil, and the Doom Patrol.

Alaniz traces how the superhero became increasingly vulnerable, ill, and mortal in this era. He then proceeds to a reinterpretation of characters and series—some familiar (Superman), some obscure (She-Thing). These genre changes reflected a wider awareness of related body issues in the postwar U.S. as represented by hospice, death with dignity, and disability rights movements. The persistent highlighting of the body’s “imperfection” comes to forge a predominant aspect of the superheroic self. Such moves, originally part of the Silver Age strategy to stimulate sympathy, enhance psychological depth, and raise the dramatic stakes, developed further in such later series as The Human Fly, Strikeforce: Morituri, and the landmark graphic novel The Death of Captain Marvel, all examined in this volume. Death and disability, presumed routinely absent or denied in the superhero genre, emerge to form a core theme and defining function of the Silver Age and beyond.



Rating: 4 stars

Review: 

This was a well researched book but because it was written in such a scholarly way that it can be a little boring in certain aspects but mostly with the introduction chapter which read like a boring and wordy college text book. Once you get pass the introduction it's actually a very interesting book.

Over the years, many experts have wondered about the effects of comic books and what they teach children the same way some experts today over think the effects Barbie has on children. From the child's point of view, comics and Barbie dolls are nothing more than entertainment they don't see any of the negative things that adults some how seem to be able to see.

However this book takes a different approach by looking at the Silver Age of comics and focusing on how death and disability seem to effect the superhero and how it also describes how superpowers and alter egos could be seen as a certain type of disability.

The book also provided information about how those who have disabilities are treated in society with many cite how overlooked they are or treated as if they are inhuman. There are many examples where the comics mimic their response.

This is a unique read because it's probably not for someone who's looking for a fast read because it's several hundred pages of information. This book might have you looking at comics in a different way (but still not ruining the fun of reading them). Sample pages of comics are used to show examples to highlight the issues.

This was a good read.