"Confessions of a Superhero" is a must-see documentary

We watched this film over the weekend--what a poignant look at superhero obsession in our culture. Highly recommended by these editors!!

Official website: http://www.therealsuperhero.com/

Official website description: CONFESSIONS OF A SUPERHERO is a feature length documentary that chronicles the lives of three mortal men and one woman who make their living working as superhero characters on Hollywood Boulevard.  This deeply personal look into their daily routines reveals their hardships and triumphs as they pursue and achieve their own kind of fame.  The Hulk sold his Super Nintendo for a bus ticket to LA; Wonder Woman was a mid-western homecoming queen; Batman struggles with his anger, while Superman’s psyche is consumed by the Man of Steel.  Although the Walk of Fame is right beneath their feet, their own paths to stardom prove to be long, hard climbs. 

Superhero Conference at University of Oregon

A must for all superhero academics!  See the link for more details: http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/32658

Understanding Superheroes: An Interdisciplinary Conference at the University of Oregon

Location: The University of Oregon, Eugene, OR
Dates: October 23-24, 2009

“Understanding Superheroes” is conceived as an interdisciplinary multi-media event, held in conjunction with a simultaneous exhibition of original comic art at the UO’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art.

This exhibition, “Faster Than A Speeding Bullet,” will feature over 150 pages of original superhero comic art from the 1940s to the present, with examples of key works by many major creators in the industry, including Neal Adams, Mike Allred, C C Beck, Gene Colan, Steve Ditko, Will Eisner, Bill Everett, Lou Fine, Ramona Fradon, Dave Gibbons, Don Heck, Carmine Infantino, J G Jones, Gil Kane, Jack Kirby, Joe Kubert, Mort Meskin, Frank Miller, Joe Orlando, George Perez, H G Peter, Mac Raboy, John Romita Sr., Alex Ross, Marie Severin, Bill Sienkiewicz, Matt Wagner, and Berni Wrightson.

Keynote Speakers include Danny Fingeroth (author of Superheroes On The Couch and Disguised As Clark Kent) and Charles Hatfield (author of Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature).

Guests Panelists include Kurt Busiek (author of numerous Superhero titles for Marvel and DC, and creator of the award-winning Astro City series), Greg Rucka (co-creator of Gotham Central, White Out, Queen & Country, and many projects for Marvel and DC), and Gail Simone (writer on Marvel’s Deadpool, DC’s Birds of Prey, co-creator of Welcome To Tranquility for Wildstorm, and current Wonder Woman scribe)!

Other guests TBA.

We invite 1-2 page proposals for 20-30 minute conference papers considering the implications of superhero fantasies for our understanding of such diverse topics as gender identity, queerness, theological yearning, and nationalist politics. We also welcome appreciative discussions of superhero comics as significant aesthetic achievements — particularly insofar as those discussions contribute to the ongoing project within contemporary Comics Studies, to map the unique conventions of the comic art form. Above all, we are interested in sophisticated, lucidly written analyses that utilize the conceptual tools and hermeneutic lenses of contemporary literary and cultural theory.

It is our hope that this conference will help all participants, student and professional, skeptic and fan, to understand the extraordinary imaginative appeal of the costumed adventurer — an appeal that overlaps significant distinctions of age, gender, nation, and culture, and which no amount of silliness or cynicism seems quite able to dispel.

Please address queries and submit proposals via email to Ben Saunders, Associate Professor, Department of English by Monday, June 15th, 2009. (Email address: ben@uoregon.edu )

One of Our Editors at National Popular Culture Conference!

Right now, one of our editors, Andrea Reid, is at the 2009 National Popular Culture & American Culture Associations Conference in New Orleans (see http://www.pcaaca.org/conference/national.php for details).

If you're into superheroes, poetry, or better yet, superhero poetry, try to snag a chance to talk with her about the anthology.

You can catch Andrea on a panel about Food in Popular Culture on Saturday, April 11, from 8:00-9:30 a.m.. Details follow:

Preservation Hall Studio 5 (2nd Floor)

4014 Food in Popular Culture V: Ethnicity, Authenticity, and Domesticity
Chair: Ann Ciasullo, Gonzaga University

"Mom, What‘s for Dinner?": Twenty Minutes to an Authentic Family Meal
Angela Rasmussen, Spokane Community College

The Secret Ingredient is Resentment: Marketing Domesticity to Post-Modern Women
Andrea Reid, Spokane Community College

A Fresh Translation of Italian: Americans, Italians, and the Promise of Acceptable Ethnicity through Family and Food
Ann Ciasullo