Superculture: How Superheroes Changed the World

Capturing a fusion between magic and science, superheroes resonate with many complex and fractured identities, their stories highlighting civilization’s most pressing concerns: the networked society, climate change, nuclear war, Artificial Intelligence, and the emergence of transhuman and posthuman bodies.

'Superculture' examines superhero narratives from their assemblage in the 1930s to the present day, diving into the ways in which these fictions give form to – and have sometimes even foreshadowed – key ideas and anxieties across the 20th century. Focusing on United States history from the Second World War to 9/11 and surveying the Anglophone superhero mythos in film, television, gaming, merchandizing, fandom and in the urban myths of daily life, Reynolds takes a chronological look at the superhero and social change.