{"product_id":"the-superhero-reader-9781617038068","title":"The Superhero Reader","description":"\u003cp\u003eWith contributions from Will Brooker  Jeffrey A. Brown  Scott Bukatman  John G. Cawelti  Peter Coogan  Jules Feiffer  Charles Hatfield  Henry Jenkins  Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence  Gerard Jones  Geoff Klock  Karin Kukkonen  Andy Medhurst  Adilifu Nama  Walter Ong  Lorrie Palmer  Richard Reynolds  Trina Robbins  Lillian Robinson  Roger B. Rollin  Gloria Steinem  Jennifer Stuller  Fredric Wertham  and Philip Wylie  Despite their commercial appeal and cross-media reach  superheroes are only recently starting to attract sustained scholarly attention. This groundbreaking collection brings together essays and book excerpts by major writers on comics and popular culture.  While superhero comics are a distinct and sometimes disdained branch of comics creation  they are integral to the development of the North American comic book and the history of the medium. For the past half-century  they have also been the one overwhelmingly dominant market genre. The sheer volume of superhero comics that have been published over the years is staggering. Major superhero universes constitute one of the most expansive storytelling canvases ever fashioned. Moreover  characters inhabiting these fictional universes are immensely influential  having achieved iconic recognition around the globe. Their images and adventures have shaped many other media  such as film  videogames  and even prose fiction.  The primary aim of this reader is twofold: first  to collect in a single volume a sampling of the most sophisticated commentary on superheroes  and second  to bring into sharper focus the ways in which superheroes connect with larger social  cultural  literary  aesthetic  and historical themes that are of interest to a great many readers both in the academy and beyond.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45651827458101,"sku":"ByrdShop_1617038067","price":32.41,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781617038068.jpg?v=1781841465","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-superhero-reader-9781617038068","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}