Every Cripple a Superhero

Every Cripple a Superhero
Author: Christoph Keller
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 187
Release: 2022-07-28
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1802061002

'Fascinating ... compelling ... very funny' Sunday Times 'A defiant call to arms ... affecting ... lingers long in the memory after its final page' Morning Star 'A skilful act of literary witness, sharp, moving and funny' Joanne Limburg 'Christoph Keller ... ranks among the great Swiss writers' Neue Zürcher Zeitung Most stories of disability follow a familiar pattern: Life Before Accident. Life After Accident. For Christoph Keller, it was different: his childhood diagnosis with a form of Spinal Muscular Atrophy only revealed what had been with him since birth. SMA III, the 'kindest one', allows those who have it to live a long life, and it progresses slowly. There is no cure. By the age of 25, he had to use a wheelchair some of the time. 'There were two of me: Walking Me. Rolling Me.' By 32, he could still walk into a restaurant with a cane or on somebody's arm. At 45, 'Rolling Me' took over altogether. Intimate, absurdist and winningly frank, Every Cripple a Superhero is at once a memoir of life with a progressive disorder, and a profound exploration of the challenges of loving, being loved, and living a public life - navigating restaurants, aeroplanes, museums and artists' retreats - in a world not designed for you. Threaded throughout are Keller's own photographs of the unexpected beauty found in puddle-filled 'curb cuts', the pavement ramps that, left to disintegrate, form part of the urban obstacle course. Those puddles become portals into a different, truer city; and, as they do, so this book - told with humour and immense grace - begins to uncover a truer world: one where the 'normal' is not normal, where disability is far more widespread than we might think, and where there always exist, just alongside our own, the lives of everyday superheroes.

Death, Disability, and the Superhero

Death, Disability, and the Superhero
Author: José Alaniz
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 553
Release: 2014-10-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1626743274

The Thing. Daredevil. Captain Marvel. The Human Fly. Drawing on DC and Marvel comics from the 1950s to the 1990s and marshaling insights from three burgeoning fields of inquiry in the humanities—disability studies, death and dying studies, and comics studies—José Alaniz seeks to redefine the contemporary understanding of the superhero. Beginning in the Silver Age, the genre increasingly challenged and complicated its hypermasculine, quasi-eugenicist biases through such disabled figures as Ben Grimm/The Thing, Matt Murdock/Daredevil, and the Doom Patrol. Alaniz traces how the superhero became increasingly vulnerable, ill, and mortal in this era. He then proceeds to a reinterpretation of characters and series—some familiar (Superman), some obscure (She-Thing). These genre changes reflected a wider awareness of related body issues in the postwar U.S. as represented by hospice, death with dignity, and disability rights movements. The persistent highlighting of the body's “imperfection” comes to forge a predominant aspect of the superheroic self. Such moves, originally part of the Silver Age strategy to stimulate sympathy, enhance psychological depth, and raise the dramatic stakes, developed further in such later series as The Human Fly, Strikeforce: Morituri, and the landmark graphic novel The Death of Captain Marvel, all examined in this volume. Death and disability, presumed routinely absent or denied in the superhero genre, emerge to form a core theme and defining function of the Silver Age and beyond.

Superhero Universe

Superhero Universe
Author: Claude Lalumière
Publisher: EDGE-Lite
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2016-04-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1770530886

Superheroes! Supervillains! Superpowered antiheroes. Mad scientists. Adventurers into the unknown. Detectives of the dark night. Costumed crimefighters. Steampunk armoured avengers. Brave and bold supergroups. Crusading aliens in a strange land. Secret histories. Pulp action. Tesseracts Nineteen features all of these permutations of the superhero genre and many others besides!Edited by Claude Lalumière and Mark Shainblum, Superhero Universe (Tesseracts Nineteen) features twenty-four stories (and one poem) by some of Canada’s best fantasy and science fiction writers:John Bell, P. E. Bolivar, Kevin Cockle, Evelyn Deshane, Marcelle Dubé, Chadwick Ginther, Patrick T. Goddard, Kim Goldberg, Geoff Hart, Sacha Howells, Arun Jiwa, D. K. Latta, Michael Matheson, Bernard E. Mireault, Luke Murphy, Brent Nichols, David Perlmutter, Mary Pletsch & Dylan Blacquiere, Jennifer Rahn, Corey Redekop, Alex C. Renwick, Jason Sharp, Bevan Thomas, Leigh Wallace, and A. C.Wise.The Tesseracts anthology series is Canada's longest running anthology. It was first edited by the late Judith Merril in 1985, and has published more than 529 original Canadian speculative fiction (Science fiction, fantasy and horror) stories and poems by 315 Canadian authors, editors, translators and special guests.Some of Canada's best known writers have been published within the pages of these volumes - including Margaret Atwood, William Gibson, Robert J. Sawyer, and Spider Robinson (to name a few).

The Essential June Jordan

The Essential June Jordan
Author: June Jordan
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2021-05-04
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1619322404

"...This volume of verse displays the undeniable legacy June Jordan left on both our literature and culture. Collected here are blazing examples of poetry as activism, stanzas that speak truth to power and speak out against violence against women and police brutality. But Jordan also speaks on the significance of hope, mixing, as Brown puts it, 'the doom and devastation made mundane through media with the hard decision to love anyway.'"—O, The Oprah Magazine The Essential June Jordan honors the enduring legacy of a poet fiercely dedicated to building a better world. In this definitive volume, introduced by Pulitzer Prize winner Jericho Brown, June Jordan’s generous body of poetry is distilled and curated to represent the very best of her works. Written over the span of several decades—from Some Changes in 1971 to Last Poems in 2001—Jordan’s poems are at once of their era and tragically current, with subject matter including racist police brutality, violence against women, and the opportunity for global solidarity amongst people who are marginalized or outside of the norm. In these poems of great immediacy and radical kindness, humor and embodied candor, readers will (re)discover a voice that has inspired generations of contemporary poets to write their truths. June Jordan is a powerful voice of the time-honored movement for justice, a poet for the ages. Introduced by Jericho Brown, winner of the 2020 Pulitzer prize in poetry.

Just Call Me Superhero

Just Call Me Superhero
Author: Alina Bronsky
Publisher: Europa Editions
Total Pages: 199
Release: 2014-10-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1609452410

The acclaimed author of Broken Glass Park brings her “warmth, humor and sharp observational eye” to a disfigured teenager’s coming of age in Berlin (Kirkus Reviews). Once a handsome teenager, seventeen-year-old Marek is left badly disfigured after a Rottweiler attack. Now his mother sends him to a support group for young people with physical disabilities—what he calls “the cripple group”—led by an eccentric older man only known as “the guru”. Angry at the world and dismissive of the group, Marek sees no connection between their misfortunes and his own. Then a family crisis forces Marek to face his demons, and he finds himself in dire need of support. But the distance he has put between himself and the guru’s misshapen acolytes may well be too great to bridge. Just Call Me Superhero cements Alina Bronsky’s reputation as one of Germany’s most compelling and stylish young authors. An atmospheric evocation of modern Berlin, a vivid portrait of youth under pressure, and a moving story about learning to love, this new novel from the author of Broken Glass Park and Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine is an irreverent look at the sometimes-difficult work of self-acceptance.

Cripple Wolf

Cripple Wolf
Author: Jeff Burk
Publisher:
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2011-09-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781936383863

Part man. Part wolf. 100% crippled. Welcome to Fetish Flights, the only airline where BDSM flight attendants service your every need. Aboard a red-eye flight from Tokyo, Japan to Portland, Oregon, a disabled Vietnam vet is harboring a secret. Every full moon he turns into a ravenous killing machine. When he transforms mid-flight and slaughters most of the passengers and crew, a Japanese punk band, a limbless superhero, a Muslim terrorist, and two stoner pilots must fight to stay alive until they reach land. In the spirit of Snakes on a Plane and Tokyo Gore Police, Cripple Wolf is a hilarious, perverted, and hyper-violent ride for fans of video games, comic books and trash culture. This collection includes six additional stories: Punk Rock Nursing Home, Adrift with Space Badgers, Cook for Your Life, Just Another Day in the Park, Frosty and the Full Monty, and House of Cats.

Six Superhero Stories Volume One

Six Superhero Stories Volume One
Author: Robert Jeschonek
Publisher: Robert Jeschonek
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2012-10-25
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1476399980

In these pages, you will thrill to some of the most exciting superhero stories ever to star a caped avenger, all written by DC Comics writer Robert T. Jeschonek. This volume includes six superhero stories for one low price: "Forced Retirement": What if Alzheimer's struck the World's Mightiest Hero? His daughter, heroic Hericane, finds out the hard way. "Heroes of Global Warming": The world's hottest hero has gone rogue! In an age of global warming, super-heated hero Skillet looks like a lukewarm loser. But when his teammates, the Castigators, turn their backs on him, he turns the Castigators into prey. "Forced Betrayal": Who murdered the girlfriend of the World's Mightiest Heroine? Super-powered Hericane will stop at nothing to find out who killed the woman she loved. "The Wife Who Never Was": What happens when a truly super hero loses the love of his life in the continuity overhaul of his fictional universe? Mighty Pinnacle's super memory won't let him forget his lost marriage to Doris Dane, and his aching heart drives him to search everywhere for a way to bring her back. "Forced Partnership": Hero-on-sidekick violence explodes in this hard-hitting super-hero tale. Why does Partycrasher, dark avenger of the night, give his sidekick the beating of a lifetime? Could it be the cowled crusader has fallen under the influence of sexy reformed bad girl Linda Loveblind, aka Partygirl? Or has the sidekick truly committed a heinous crime for which there can be no forgiveness? "A Matter of Size": Who is killing the world's smallest super-heroes? Down-on-his-luck masked avenger Man-Child takes the case, but can he save the remaining Small Wonders from a killer with a twisted crush fetish?

Batman and the Shadows of Modernity

Batman and the Shadows of Modernity
Author: Rafael Carrión-Arias
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2024-07-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1040046010

This book aims to study the Batman narrative, or Bat-narrative, from the point of view of its nodal relationship to modern narrative. To this end, it offers for the first time a new type of methodology adequate to the object, which delves both into materials scarcely studied in this context and well-known materials seen in a new light. This is a multidisciplinary work aimed at both the specialist and the global reader, bringing together comic studies, philosophical criticism, and literary criticism in a debate on the fate of our current global civilization.

What is a Superhero?

What is a Superhero?
Author: Robin S. Rosenberg PhD
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2013-07-01
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 019933952X

It's easy to name a superhero--Superman, Batman, Thor, Spiderman, the Green Lantern, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Rorschach, Wolverine--but it's not so easy to define what a superhero is. Buffy has superpowers, but she doesn't have a costume. Batman has a costume, but doesn't have superpowers. What is the role of power and superpower? And what are supervillains and why do we need them? In What is a Superhero?, psychologist Robin Rosenberg and comics scholar Peter Coogan explore this question from a variety of viewpoints, bringing together contributions from nineteen comic book experts--including both scholars in such fields as cultural studies, art, and psychology as well as leading comic book writers and editors. What emerges is a kaleidoscopic portrait of this most popular of pop-culture figures. Writer Jeph Loeb, for instance, sees the desire to make the world a better place as the driving force of the superhero. Jennifer K. Stuller argues that the female superhero inspires women to stand up, be strong, support others, and most important, to believe in themselves. More darkly, A. David Lewis sees the indestructible superhero as the ultimate embodiment of the American "denial of death," while writer Danny Fingeroth sees superheroes as embodying the best aspects of humankind, acting with a nobility of purpose that inspires us. Interestingly, Fingeroth also expands the definition of superhero so that it would include characters like John McClane of the Die Hard movies: "Once they dodge ridiculous quantities of machine gun bullets they're superheroes, cape or no cape." From summer blockbusters to best-selling graphic novels, the superhero is an integral part of our culture. What is a Superhero? not only illuminates this pop-culture figure, but also sheds much light on the fantasies and beliefs of the American people.

The Best Dancer

The Best Dancer
Author: Christoph Keller
Publisher:
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2009
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781932010220

At fourteen, Christoph Keller was diagnosed with a hereditary neuromuscular disorder called Spinal Muscular Atrophy, which should have confined him to a wheelchair by the age of twenty. Defying doctors advice to take it easy, he begins to appreciate every moment by living each day to its fullest. By embracing the memories of an imagination-filled childhood, Keller is able to accept his alcoholic father and ever-changing disability.