Captain America is a far more subversive character than people tend to realize. Since his revival by Stan Lee in the â60s he has often been used as a vehicle for critiquing American society.
Category: Sparking Neurones
by Stuart Young
Make Mine a Double: On Being a Pod Person
“STUART” SAYS: Invasion of the Body Snatchers is the first film I remember seeing that actually terrified me. I was so young — I saw it when I was still just a highly impressionable child — and the concept driving the film was utterly, perfectly terrifying: What if your loved ones were replaced by emotionless…
Magick, Madness, and Outsider Art: The Lovecraftian Path to Happiness
A Search for the Heroic in Lovecraftian Fiction, Part Four NOTE: This is the final part of a four-part series in which Stu Young explores the works and influence of H. P. Lovecraft in an attempt to tease out themes of heroism and optimism among the more familiar themes of horror, gloom, and despair. Although…
Unnamable but Not Undrawable: The World of Lovecraftian Superheroes
A Search for the Heroic in Lovecraftian Fiction, Part Three In Part One of this series I set out to demonstrate that it’s possible to find aspects of optimism and heroism in H. P. Lovecraft’s stories. In Part Two I looked at how a number of other writers, and also filmmakers — including Robert E….
Lovecraftian Legacy
A Search for the Heroic in Lovecraftian Fiction, Part Two NOTE: This article is the second in a series. It follows directly on from Part One, which sets the stage. * * * Having established that Lovecraft’s stories can be at least vaguely cheerful and optimistic, and that they can also feature feats of heroism…
Eldritch Optimism: A Kinder, Gentler Rereading of H. P. Lovecraft
A Search for the Heroic in Lovecraftian Fiction, Part One Novelist Jonathan Ryan recently wrote an essay, “Meaning to the Madness,” that was largely devoted to exploring the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft. Teeming Brain head honcho Matt Cardin wrote a response. There was then a Teeming Brain podcast (the first ever) about the whole…
Captain America: Living Symbol, Heroic Symbiosis (Men in Tights, Part 4)
NOTE: This article is the final part of a series. Captain America is the member of the Avengers who is most obviously wearing a costume. It’s not a battlesuit or a uniform. It’s not the cultural garb of a mystical race. It’s a costume. This is significant, because his costume indicates his deepest identity as…
The Avengers: Clothes Make the Iron Man (Men in Tights, Part 3)
The other big superhero film this year was The Avengers, or Avengers Assemble, as it was known in the UK. The reason for the name change was to avoid confusion with the old TV series, but that still didn’t stop thousands of people all across the Internet thinking it was funny and saying, “The Avengers?…
Spider-Man: Totem and Tragedy (Men in Tights, Part 2)
[NOTE: This is Part 2 of a column series titled Men in Tights. For the introduction, see Part 1, “Batman: Daemon with a Cape.”] Spider-Man is another superhero whose origin is steeped in tragedy. When scrawny egghead Peter Parker is granted superpowers by a radioactive spider-bite, he decides to make some money by working as…
Batman: Daemon with a Cape (Men in Tights, Part 1)
Let’s face it, superhero costumes aren’t the most practical attire ever invented. If you’re going to fight heavily armed criminals, why the hell would you choose to wear brightly coloured spandex and a movement-impeding cape? The bright colours would draw the eye of anyone with a machine gun or death ray, and the cape would…