In June 1938, Action Comics #1 sold for ten cents. The cover featured a muscle-bound alien in blue tights and a red cape, hoisting a green 1937 DeSoto with whi...
I’ve always been fascinated by the opening scenes of Avengers: Endgame. They depict superheroes of an unexpected sort—not the triumphant, swaggering bunch we’v...
Who is the hero of the New Testament?
In his vituperative 1895 volume, The Antichrist, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche gave one answer:
Do I s...
Warning: this article contains spoilers about the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
In the spring of 1954, comic books were in serious trouble. That April, the Ger...
“Beyesusim, Amen.”
The voices of my heroes reverberated off the walls in a reverent chorus. We were all crammed into a small side-room, gathered around a la...
Heroes are not supposed to fail, and yet they do. We elevate influential leaders to almost god-like status, expecting them to persevere authentically and blame...
In 1949, Joseph Campbell published his theory of the archetypal “monomyth” in The Hero With a Thousand Faces. His claim was that all stories follow one general...
When I was younger, I always loved going to mass with my grandmother. She would sit with my sister and me and show us the stories illuminated by the brilliant ...
Recently my friends asked me the question, “If you could choose one moment to go back to, what would you choose?” Some people would choose a memorable birthday...
Jonah Lehrer wrote in the Wall Street Journal about the Heroic Imagination Project, a nonprofit designed to train adolescents to be the next generation of Ameri...
