| Mysterious Travelers: Steve Ditko and the Search for a New Liberal Identity Contributor(s): Kruse, Zack (Author) |
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ISBN: 1496830547 ISBN-13: 9781496830548 Publisher: University Press of Mississippi OUR PRICE: $34.65 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: February 2021 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | Comics & Graphic Novels - Social Science | Popular Culture - Political Science | Political Ideologies - General |
| Dewey: 741.597 |
| LCCN: 2020042479 |
| Physical Information: 0.6" H x 6.14" W x 9.21" (0.89 lbs) 286 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Steve Ditko (1927-2018) is one of the most important contributors to American comic books. As the cocreator of Spider-Man and sole creator of Doctor Strange, Ditko made an indelible mark on American popular culture. Mysterious Travelers: Steve Ditko and the Search for a New Liberal Identity resets the conversation about his heady and powerful work. Always inward facing, Ditko's narratives employed superhero and supernatural fantasy in the service of self-examination, and with characters like the Question, Mr. A, and Static, Ditko turned ordinary superhero comics into philosophic treatises. Many of Ditko's philosophy-driven comics show a clear debt to ideas found in Ayn Rand's Objectivism. Unfortunately, readers often reduce Ditko's work to a mouthpiece for Rand's vision. Mysterious Travelers unsettles this notion. In this book, Zack Kruse argues that Ditko's philosophy draws on a complicated network of ideas that is best understood as mystic liberalism. Although Ditko is not the originator of mystic liberalism, his comics provide a unique window into how such an ideology operates in popular media. Examining selections of Ditko's output from 1953 to 1986, Kruse demonstrates how Ditko's comics provide insight into a unique strand of American thought that has had a lasting impact. |
