• Book Cover: Secret Identity Reader: Essays on Sex, Death and the Superhero, Lee Easton, Richard Harrison

Secret Identity Reader: Essays on Sex, Death and the Superhero

by Lee Easton, Richard Harrison

December 1, 2010 | ISBN 978-1-894987-50-9 | 392 Pages

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Comic book superheroes have risen from their newsprint beginnings to dominate films, infiltrate the literary establishment, and become an integral part of popular culture. Secret Identity Reader: Essays on Sex, Death and the Superhero is a collaboration between two authors who investigate, and often disagree on, key facets of the superhero character and storyline. Masculinity, origin stories and the problem of the sidekick are all fair game in this wide-ranging discussion, which also considers the superhero’s place in a post 9/11 world and ponders why these characters keep dying and coming back to life. Contents 1. The First Introduction to This… Read more

Excerpt

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Events with Lee Easton, Richard Harrison

  • Telling Secrets (Tim Blackmore, Canadian Literature, 06/12/2012)
    “It is a great relief to read a book as thoughtful, intelligent, well-informed, perceptive, and smart as Lee Easton and Richard Harrison’s Secret Identity Reader.... It’s a pleasure to see this kind of study done right (the word “properly” just doesn’t pack the colloquial wallop it needs).”

  • Lee Easton works in the Department of English at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta. He began his lifelong habit of reading superhero comics in Sudbury, Ontario, after receiving an issue of World's Finest Comics. He has taught courses about comics at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario, and at Mount Royal University alongside his colleague and collaborator, Richard Harrison. In addition to teaching and writing about superhero comics, Lee also writes about the representation of gender and sexuality in film and science fiction. He is currently the chair of the Department of English at Mount Royal University.

    Richard Harrison’s eight books include the Governor General’s Award–finalist Big Breath of a Wish, and Hero of the Play, the first book of poetry launched at the Hockey Hall of Fame. He teaches English and Creative Writing at Calgary’s Mount Royal University, a position he took up after being the Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the University of Calgary in 1995. His work has been published, broadcast and displayed around the world, and his poems have been translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic. In On Not Losing My Father’s Ashes in the Flood, Richard reflects on his father’s death, the Alberta Flood and what poetry offers a life lived around it.