Bending Steel: Modernity and the American Superhero

How superheroes grappled with industrialism, modernism, and capitalism

Publisher Marketing: Aldo Regalado offers fresh insight into the origins of the American superhero. In particular he traces how the interconnected racial and gendered concerns embodied in superheroes played out in the early years of comic books. The depth of scholarship and the quality of writing are top notch and this will be a go-to work for scholars in the field.--Ian Gordon, associate professor of history at the National University of Singapore, author of Comic Strips and Consumer Culture, and coeditor of Film and Comic Books, published by University Press of Mississippi Review Quotes : Much discussion of the superhero figure focuses on what superheroes are, who wrote, drew, published, and read them, when and where, and even how the market, legal, and cultural conditions of the New York publishing world laid the groundwork for the creation of the superhero genre, but rarely do scholars address the most difficult question of why the superhero arose specifically in late Depression-era urban America. Regalado's answer--a response to modernism and the superhero's ongoing engagement with the changing nature of modernism and postmodernism in America--presents a cogent, deeply sensible, and convincing answer. Regalado takes into account consumers, creators, and producers of superhero comics and the conversation between them that shaped the genre's ongoing response to modernism and its changes and discontents. This work is ever sensitive to the humanity, needs, drives, and concerns of those involved in the production and consumption of superhero narratives.--Peter Coogan, director of internal operations, Institute for Comics Studies Review Quotes : It's the scholar's appraisal of comics fandom and the new misanthropy of today's corporate comics that really hits hard. When he concludes, 'Run by relatively small companies and intimately tied to fan communities, superheroes were arguably more connected to their consumers for much of their publications histories, ' readers will be left mulling an important issue: Are today's mainstream comics, stepped in progressive values yet more violent and cynical than ever, truly more subversive than yesterday's white patriarchal products? The answer is rewardingly complex thanks to Bending Steel .--Jarret Keene Biographical Note : Aldo J. Regalado is a teacher of history and American studies at Palmer Trinity School, an adjunct lecturer through the American Studies Program at the University of Miami, and an adjunct lecturer in US history at Florida International University. Review Quotes : Bending Steel is an insightful volume that reads like a synthesis of two decades of scholarship on superhero comics. . . . Regalado's fine book is a welcome addition to superheroism scholarship and deserves a wide readership.--Simon Wendt, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt "Amerikastudien / American Studies: A Quarterly" Publisher Marketing :

Format: Paperback | Pages: 288 | Publication Date: 2017-03-01