In a fast-paced, accessible narrative, award-winning young adult author Paul Volponi explores the real-life science, history, and literature behind comic book superheroes’ powers and origins.
To Be A Hero is a modern day setting allowing players to step into the roles of super-powered heroes and villains. In this setting, super-powered beings have existed throughout the ages and the classic conflict of hero versus villain has spurned on history's most defining moments. The battle of good against evil, justice against injustice, freedom against tyranny continues to be played out to the modern day with the player characters at the head of this epic struggle.The main book contains 7 brand new origins, the To Be A Hero's unique take on races. It also contains 6 basic classes, 20 all new prestige classes, as well as new skills and skill uses, feats, unique equipment, firearms and complete rules for super-powers and super-powered beings with over one hundred unique powers. To Be A Hero captures the essence of the super-hero genre and makes it playable and balanced in a way previously unseen.
The comic book universe is adventurous, mystifying, and filled with heroes, villains, and cosplaying Comic-Con attendees. This book by one of Wired magazine's art directors traverses the graphic world through a collection of pie charts, bar graphs, timelines, scatter plots, and more. Super Graphic offers readers a unique look at the intricate and sometimes contradictory storylines that weave their way through comic books, and shares advice for navigating the pages of some of the most popular, longest-running, and best-loved comics and graphic novels out there. From a colorful breakdown of the DC Comics reader demographic to a witty Venn diagram of superhero comic tropes and a Chris Ware sadness scale, this book charts the most arbitrary and monumental characters, moments, and equipment of the wide world of comics. Plus, this is the fixed format version, which includes high-resolution images.
A Hero Like You looks at everyday heroes and highlights qualities such as loyalty, compassion, resourcefulness, justice, and courage. The lyrical rhyme and relatable illustrations remind us that we all have the opportunity to be a hero by helping others, doing right and making the world a better place. "What the world needs is a hero like you!"
In the age of digital media, superheroes are no longer confined to comic books and graphic novels. Their stories are now featured in films, video games, digital comics, television programs, and more. In a single year alone, films featuring Batman, Spider-Man, and the Avengers have appeared on the big screen. Popular media no longer exists in isolation, but converges into complex multidimensional entities. As a result, traditional ideas about the relationship between varying media have come under striking revision. Although this convergence is apparent in many genres, perhaps nowhere is it more persistent, more creative, or more varied than in the superhero genre. Superhero Synergies: Comic Book Characters Go Digital explores this developing relationship between superheroes and various forms of media, examining how the superhero genre, which was once limited primarily to a single medium, has been developed into so many more. Essays in this volume engage with several of the most iconic heroes—including Batman, Hulk, and Iron Man—through a variety of academic disciplines such as industry studies, gender studies, and aesthetic analysis to develop an expansive view of the genre’s potency. The contributors to this volume engage cinema, comics, video games, and even live stage shows to instill readers with new ways of looking at, thinking about, and experiencing some of contemporary media’s most popular texts. This unique approach to the examination of digital media and superhero studies provides new and valuable readings of well-known texts and practices. Intended for both academics and fans of the superhero genre, this anthology introduces the innovative and growing synergy between traditional comic books and digital media.
Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics offers the first thorough exploration of Latino/a superheroes in mainstream comic books, TV shows, and movies--Provided by publisher.
Meet one hundred of the strangest superheroes ever to see print, complete with backstories, vintage art, and colorful commentary. You know about Batman, Superman, and Spiderman, but have you heard of Doll Man, Doctor Hormone, or Spider Queen? So prepare yourself for such not-ready-for-prime-time heroes as Bee Man (Batman, but with bees), the Clown (circus-themed crimebuster), the Eye (a giant, floating eyeball; just accept it), and many other oddballs and oddities. Drawing on the entire history of the medium, The League of Regrettable Superheroes will appeal to die-hard comics fans, casual comics readers, and anyone who enjoys peering into the stranger corners of pop culture.
Why are so many of the superhero myths tied up with loss, often violent, of parents or parental figures? What is the significance of the dual identity? What makes some superhuman figures "good" and others "evil"? Why are so many of the prime superheroes white and male? How has the superhero evolved over the course of the 20th and early 21st centuries? And how might the myths be changing? Why is it that the key superhero archetypes - Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, the X-Men - touch primal needs and experiences in everyone? Why has the superhero moved beyond the pages of comics into other media? All these topics, and more, are covered in this lively and original exploration of the reasons why the superhero - in comic books, films, and TV - is such a potent myth for our times and culture.>
Eddie Hertz is a 12-year-old genius who patrols the streets of Nirvana, hoping to foil the schemes of the evil Mephisto. Being small for his age, Eddie relies on a Batman-style gadgets belt and acrobatic skills as well as street smarts and ingenuity. Eddie has a dream, to become like Damocles, Nirvana's great superhero. To accomplish that goal, Eddie invented a device that theoretically will endow him with superpowers, but using it on himself could be dangerous, maybe even fatal, so he doesn't have the nerve to try it. When Mephisto unleashes an earthquake machine to terrorize the city, Eddie gains a surprising ally - his quirky eight-year-old sister, Samantha, who comes up with an unexpected way to help in the frantic battle to prevent the impending destruction. Working as a team, the siblings fight Mephisto in a race against time to save Nirvana and the world from devastating earthquakes, all the while receiving advice from a computerized version of Damocles, who has been rendered incapable of helping in physical form.