Titans: How Superheroes Can Help Us Make Sense of a Polarized World

These days it seems like heroes fight each other more often than they fight villains. The hero-vs-hero trope so common in comic books and in superhero movies these days can provide us with a means of thinking about the deeply polarized state of modern politics and public opinion about civic life morality and even God. There is a real divide in our public life that nobody seems to be able to cross. Its easy to complain that people should be more willing to meet each other half-way that politicians should be more willing to compromise in order to get things done but there are plenty of important issues on which compromise really isnt possible. We see this problem dramatized in comics like Marvels Civil War and Avengers vs X-Men; in DCs Kingdom Come and The Dark Knight Returns; and in film media like Daredevil Batman v Superman and Captain America: Civil War. The consequences of the conflicts that arise in these stories can serve as warnings about our current political environment. Theyre safe places in which we can see the logic of our political dysfunction carried to frightening (but perhaps inevitable?) conclusions. Superheroes seem to spend more time these days fighting each other than battling evil. In Titans Boudreaux Latta and Nevin use this trend as an opportunity to explore issues such as conflicts between different visions of the good the nature of power (and superpower) and the value of superheroes as modern mythology. Their love for the subject matter shines through while they flesh out the stories we all love with fascinating insight and entertaining prose. --Mark D. White author of The Virtues of Captain America and A Philosopher Reads Marvel Comics Civil War Boudreaux shows with surpassing clarity not only how comic books make use of philosophy but also the more important point that precisely because it is such a powerful tool for understanding the world philosophy underwrites all forms of culture popular as well as elite. In making explicit so much of the thought that informs the genre he also provides a helpful primer on a variety of major ideas and schools of thought in the Western tradition. --Stephen Slimp University of West Alabama Titans is a serious examination of the political philosophical and theological themes in superhero films and comic books. The superhero genre constitutes a new mythology that revisits ancient themes which have continued salience in the contemporary world--the existence of God the problem of evil the moral obligation to disobey unjust laws. Titans is an important study of a popular genre that has not received sufficient scholarly attention. --Joseph S. Devaney Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College Armond Boudreaux is an Assistant Professor of English at East Georgia State College in Statesboro GA. He is the author of That He May Raise and Animus: Little Gods. You can read more of his writing on superheroes and politics at https: //aclashofheroes.wordpress.com and www.armondboudreaux.com. Corey Latta is a writer teacher and public speaker. He is the author of Functioning Fantasies Election and Unity in Pauls Epistle to the Romans When the Eternal Can Be Met and C. S. Lewis and the Art of Writing.