Just as often as superheroes journey into the afterlife, they also return from it. Their surprising immortality has created its own set of storytelling rules and expectations; it also has come to influence their secular readership in new interreligious investigations of narrative character and personal selfhood.
Unlocking a new and overdue model for reading comic books, this unique volume explores religious interpretations of popular comic book superheroes such as the Green Lantern and the Hulk. A. David Lewis argues that the superhero subgenre offers a hermeneutic for those interested in integrating mutiplicity into religious practices and considerations of the afterlife.
Review: Don't be fooled by the academic tone of the title. This book is captivating, insightful, and incredibly thought-provoking. Whether you're fairly new to the comics medium or have (like me) studied it all your life, you'll find that Lewis illuminates the subject in a light you've never before seen or considered, and it's delightfully revelatory. - Mark Waid, writer for Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Superman: Birthright, Kingdom Come, and Thrillbent's Empire A unique and fascinating look into the metaphysics of the comic book world. - J.M.
DeMatteis, writer of Moonshadow and Brooklyn Dreams This is a beautiful and sophisticated analysis of the multiplex self in the mirror of the afterlives portrayed in the narratives and visual art of superhero comics. The positive message is clear. We are not who we think we are. Like the superheroes themselves, we each have a secret identity (or identities).
The conscious ego or unitary self is a useful construction, but also an illusion. Lewis then goes further. He suggests that these multiplex selves imagined in fantastic fiction can help us with the real-world work of interreligious understanding and, indeed, of self-understanding. As such, these super-selves can become an important part of a new soul-making practice that will result in future selves and future stories in which to live and flourish.
Our afterlives, it turns out, are not determined or decided. They are constantly being rewritten, redrawn, and seen anew. By us, as super. - Jeffrey J. Kripal, J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Religion, Rice University, USA and author of Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal
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