Flawed Heroes, Flawless Villain

This assignment was a textual analysis of the graphic novel Watchmen. The two course objectives of ENG 200H were addressed: to “demonstrate abilities to read complicated and complex texts closely and critically” and to “explore the relevance of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition (CIT) in reading, writing, and rhetoric.” Reading Watchmen, we aimed to demonstrate how the novel is related to the CIT, either through connections or disconnections. Because the assignment is a textual analysis, I had to pay close attention to the context of Watchmen and the CIT, include a summary of the text though a specific angle, narrow my focus to single CIT principle with a clear interpretation, support my claims with specific textual and/or visual evidence spanning the entire novel, address the importance and validity of my claims, and cite the two texts using MLA format. To begin writing this textual analysis, I read the “University of Dayton’s Mission Statement of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition” as well as the graphic novel Watchmen, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. I took extensive notes on the novel in regards to plot, symbols, and characterization. In class we explored connections and disconnections of the CIT with Watchmen as well as did prewriting to influence ideas for our analyses. I wrote one draft of my textual analysis, which I edited after peer review in class and suggestions from Dr. Mackay over email

Bridging Transpersonal Ecosophical Concerns with the Hero’s Journey and Superheroes Through Comicbook Lore: Implications for Personal and Cultural Transformation

This paper explores how mythical figures and comicbook superheroes can 1) inspire personal growth, social and planetary change, and 2) explicate aspects of the deep ecology movement and transpersonal ecosophy that invite further academic inquiry while at the same time 3) speak to concerns that ignite the interests of popular culture and personal mythology. Likewise the ecopsychological significance of modern fictional characters in comicbooks, graphic novels, and films will be examined. It is divided into two parts. Part 1 provides a theoretical examination of how definitions of the terms myth and hero and hero’s journey are framed, and their implications for understanding personal and transpersonal growth. Part 2 provides portraits of individual characters from comicbook lore, their evaluation, and their significance toward raising collective archetypal awareness of the psyche’s relationship with Earth—an ecopsychological framework. In addition the paper offers practical examples of how this understanding of comicbook lore can be used for cultivating a new quality of life on a planetary scale

The Sandman: The Artifice of Comics and Power of Dreams

Neil Gaiman’s Vertigo Series The Sandman is an exceptional artistic endeavor. From “Preludes and Nocturnes”(1988) to “The Wake” (1996), Gaiman worked alongside a team of talented artists and graphic designers to produce an indelible work of revisionist mythology. This thesis will attempt to establish the framework by which our modern literary canon has celebrated classical Western myths while relegating graphic or visual forms of literature or outright neglecting comic myths altogether. Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics will frame the discourse for pictographic analysis of Neil Gaiman’s mythological revisionism of Milton’s Paradise Lost in Season of Mists, Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and The Travels of Marco Polo in “Soft Places.” The Sandman is a playful modern myth that revives classical mythology within the comics medium, calling for a new kind of literary discourse that seeks to reverse decades of literary bias resulting from the 1950s Comics Code that has relegated the medium as juvenile. I will argue that given the comics flexibility, it is the only medium in which a transtextual myth of this nature can be fully realized

Advocate, March 2014, Vol. [25], No. [4]

TABLE OF CONTENTS: From the Editor’s Desk: An Open Letter to the GC Community, The Advocate Editorial Staff (p. 3) CUNY News in Brief: - Albany Kills Dream, Shafts Libraries (p. 6) - Gay Activists Protest St. Patrick’s Day Parade Ban, Camilo Gomez (p. 10) Guest Columnist: U.S. Sailors and Marines Allege Fukushima Radiation Sickness, Amy Goodman (p. 12) Women in the U.S. Workforce: Much to Celebrate, Much to Do, Cristina Pérez Díaz (p. 14) CUNY Gives ROTC the Boot, Conor Tomás Reed (p. 16) Copyright and Democracy: The Case for Protecting Intellectual Property in the Digital Age, Eric Bayruns (p. 17) Fighting for a Fair Wage: 15 NOW Comes to NYC, William Blueher & James D. Hoff (p. 20) The Problem of Reparations for Slavery: New Proposals from the Caribbean Community Address the Legacy of Humans as Property, Gordon Barnes (p. 22) Edifying Debate: - Approaching Spiritual Death: Austerity, Intervention, and the Collapse of Morality, Rhone Fraser (p. 27) - The Search For Life: Why It’s More Likely Than Ever That We’re Not Alone, Greg Olmschenk (p. 31) Art Review: White Men in Suits: On Abstract Expressionism and Dorothy Krakovsky, Clay Matlin (p. 34) Event Review: An Unexpected American Utopia, Francisco Fortuño Bernier (p. 38) Theater Review: A Purim Spiel at Baruch, Dan Venning (p. 42) News From The Doctoral Students’ Council: Help Pick the Next President! (p. 46) The Back Page: - Mind Games, Maryam Ghaffari Saadat - Ph.D. Comics, Jorge Cha

What the Shadows Know: The Crime-Fighting Hero The Shadow and his Haunting of Late 1950s Literature

This paper examines thereemergence of the popular crime fighter The Shadow in the work of SylviaPlath, Jack Kerouac, and Amiri Baraka. The Shadow was an immensely successful pulp magazine and radiophenomenon known to millions during the 1930s and 1940s. In the pulps he wasdrawn in the hardboiled style of the era, and in radio’s “golden age,” he wasknown by his eerie, disembodied laugh.  Thisdark mysteriousness, along with his willingness to use vigilante justice inorder to punish his adversaries, marks The Shadow as a strange sort of crimefighter.  While he is clearly on the sideof justice, there remains a hint of darkness in his character.  It isprecisely this uncertainty that compels Plath, Kerouac, and Baraka to put TheShadow to new uses in their works.  Allthree draw on the figure of The Shadow to comment on the loss of childhoodinnocence. For these artists, meaning is found in the shadows because life isnever simply black and white.  But it isimportant that this nostalgic looking back takes place within a postwarpresent.  The ambiguities that The Shadowraises allow these authors to simultaneously comment on the Cold War conditionsof their texts' production and reception.  In an era that positedtruth as a binary choice between light and darkness, The Shadow was a usefulsite for deconstructing the Manichean rhetoric of the Cold War

Hunter S. Thompson, Transmetropolitan, and the Evolution from Author to Character

This thesis examines American author Hunter S. Thompson, in the context of his own works – primarily Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and The Rum Diary– as well as the representation of him as a character in the graphic text Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis. The evolution of Thompson from author to character and the development of that character in his own works is examined, as well as how this development allowed for his character to be fully realised in a completely fictional world. In turn, the fully developed use of Thompson’s character is the starting point for my analysis of Transmetropolitan could potentially be read as a work of New Journalism, albeit a fictional one. The first chapter examines how Thompson began writing himself as a character in his early fictional work The Rum Diary. Though largely overlooked by critics because of its long delayed publication and the focus on the more flashy and better known Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Rum Diary is critical to Thompson’s development of himself as a character in his works in particular, and to his development as an author in general. Though The Rum Diary is ostensibly a purely fictional novel, this chapter examines how the character Paul Kemp is actually largely autobiographical, and how Kemp is an early version of the same character Thompson uses in his later nonfiction. I then analyse the development of that nonfiction version, Raoul Duke, in Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. As The Rum Diary is not actually purely fictional, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is not actually completely nonfictional. Thompson, as this chapter shows, did not believe in the divide between fact and fiction, and he uses the character he develops in Raoul Duke to write about himself while creatively embellishing the truth. I then look at how Thompson wrote himself so strongly into his character that he became inextricably viewed as actually being Raoul Duke, and how that character was in turn viewed and written about. The second chapter examines the legacy of Thompson’s fully formed self-characterisation, as it is picked up by another author and written in the fully fictional context of the graphic novel series Transmetropolitan. I consider how Transmetropolitan’s main character Spider Jerusalem continues Thompson’s self-as-character through his characterisation, behaviour, and language. Furthermore I analyse how, within the world of the series, Spider as a journalist continues Thompson’s legacy as a writer. The third and final chapter examines how Spider’s characterisation as a continuation of Thompson is an important contextual factor for considering Transmetropolitan as a work of New Journalism. I consider the connection to Thompson, the content of Spider’s articles, and the format in which the articles are depicted in the graphic nove

What the Shadows Know: The Crime-Fighting Hero The Shadow and his Haunting of Late 1950s Literature

This paper examines thereemergence of the popular crime fighter The Shadow in the work of SylviaPlath, Jack Kerouac, and Amiri Baraka. The Shadow was an immensely successful pulp magazine and radiophenomenon known to millions during the 1930s and 1940s. In the pulps he wasdrawn in the hardboiled style of the era, and in radio’s “golden age,” he wasknown by his eerie, disembodied laugh.  Thisdark mysteriousness, along with his willingness to use vigilante justice inorder to punish his adversaries, marks The Shadow as a strange sort of crimefighter.  While he is clearly on the sideof justice, there remains a hint of darkness in his character.  It isprecisely this uncertainty that compels Plath, Kerouac, and Baraka to put TheShadow to new uses in their works.  Allthree draw on the figure of The Shadow to comment on the loss of childhoodinnocence. For these artists, meaning is found in the shadows because life isnever simply black and white.  But it isimportant that this nostalgic looking back takes place within a postwarpresent.  The ambiguities that The Shadowraises allow these authors to simultaneously comment on the Cold War conditionsof their texts' production and reception.  In an era that positedtruth as a binary choice between light and darkness, The Shadow was a usefulsite for deconstructing the Manichean rhetoric of the Cold War