While working on my chapter about why Batman works with a boy sidekick, I’ve been contemplating how and why the most famous superheroes all tend to be orphans. For Batman, Superman, and Spider-Man, their parents’ and surrogate parents’ deaths are integral to their origins. Daredevil too. Robin’s origin was a deliberate reflection of Batman’s own. […]
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(…continued from “Nature, Nurture, and the Kryptonite Bomb”) We know many predictors of long-term criminality, factors that correlate with repeated lawbreaking. Among juvenile delinquents, those who did not start engaging in antisocial actions until adolescence tend to outgrow that behavior, whereas those who engaged in pre-adolescent antisocial actions do not. People who repeatedly break the […]
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If we are going to be completely honest about it, television over the last few years has been a wasteland for good science fiction shows. There have been exceptions but most shows have died a harsh and just death. Sometimes our geeky eagerness for good science fiction often has us embracing shows with very little […]
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(continued) Across media and throughout alternate histories, be they parallel universes, divergent timelines, or “imaginary stories,” one story after another suggests that Kal-El grows up to be the hero Superman because of how his adoptive parents raised him on Earth. Raised by Jonathan and Martha Kent in heartland, U.S.A., he becomes Superman. If raised instead […]
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During our WonderCon panel (“Trauma and Superheroes – To Become a Hero or a Villain?”), my colleagues Robin Rosenberg and Andrea Letamendi discussed how repeated trauma and stress will affect people like police officers, war veterans, and crime victims, including what role those play in nudging people into post-traumatic stress disorder or post-traumatic growth. Will […]
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The Psychology of Harry Potter proved to be more relevant to Batman than I’d expected – so relevant, in fact, that I felt like I should never have been surprised. The book has two sections full of chapters that are very relevant to Batman, another orphan boy who grows up to be a great hero. […]
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