Comics and Fantasy

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Friedrich Nietzsche infamously declared that God is dead. Later, Carl Jung diagnosed the distinctive illness of the twentieth century as that of a godless age in search of meaning. The twentieth century witnessed a rejection of old, official myths (God, the immortal soul, the nation state, etc.), which are supplanted by new ones that first emerge in so-called low, popular culture. Fantasy texts address various crises of meaning, by providing readers and audiences with new myths, new gods. This course will explore the connections between fantasy, popular media and crises in the conception of the modern self, as mapped through events such as WWII, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, the triumph of late capitalism, and present-day fundamentalist terrorism. Sigmund Freud asserts that fantasy fulfills unconscious wishes, or 'lacks'. What do our enduring popular myths of roughly the last 100 years reveal about us, individually and collectively? Why are characters like Aslan, Superman, Batman and Bilbo Baggins such enduring figures of the modern imagination, easily translating from medium to medium (cheap paperbacks and comics, to film and TV)? Do they represent a hunger for old authority? Or, could they be archetypes of new humanist liberation? The course will address these questions and others through analysis of a selection of key comics and fantasy texts, including the following: J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit; Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns and Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's Batman: Year One; C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's The Avengers; Jim Starlin's The Infinity Gauntlet; Chris Claremont and John Byrne's Uncanny X-Men; Alan Moore's Watchmen; Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's All-Star Superman; Ann Nocenti's Daredevil; Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea; J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets; George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones; Neil Gaiman's American Gods. Note, prescribed texts are subject to change.