Tag Archives: deaths

Sequart Reviews A. David Lewis’s New Book: “particularly timely”

Sequart logoSequart‘s Karra Shimabukuro was given early access to the new book by A. David Lewis, American Comics, Literary Theory, and Religion: The Superhero Afterlife. Due out in November from Palgrave Macmillan, Shimabukuro detailed what readers can expect from the forthcoming book on superheroes, the afterlife, and audiences’ notions of personal selfhood.

As more and more people question the purpose and definition of self in the modern world, Lewis’ work is particularly timely.

Shimabukuro particularly noted the incorporation of theorists Benedict Anderson and Jeffery Burton Russell as personal attractions to the text. The book, she says, will be of interest to readers intrigued by the “argument for multiple selfhoods, and how this relates not only to how we view characters (in relation to reboots, revisions, and retcons), but also how we understand characters through the ever growing intertextual connections such as movies, cartoons, fan fiction, etc.”

Read more here.

Batman and the Tibetan Comic Book of the Dead

Over at Dreamcatcher.com, George Atherton provided the Internet a service by saving a cataloging the Tibetan Book of the Dead from Thomas Coville’s defunct personal site. The illustrated work itself attempts to paint a (digital) picture of the psycho-spiritual levels of the Tibetan afterlife, the Bardo Thodol.

A page from Thomas Coville's Bardo Thodol
The final level of the Tibetan Bardo Thodol, as envisioned by Thomas Coville.

Coincidentally, this work was highlighted in a brief posting by Rev. Danny Fisher back in 2008 entitled “Holy Bardo, Batman” — that same year, the very same superhero enacted a death sequence as part of Grant Morrison’s Batman R.I.P. storyline where he entered a comatose trance enabled from his secret Tibetan training. (Chronicled by Prof. Jeffrey J. Kripal in his book Mutants and Mystics.)

R.I.P. Hellboy?

A very amusing Gutters webcomic on the (temporary) death of Hellboy:

Gutters #176 by Ryan Sohmer, David Namisato, Richard Clark, and Rus Wooton

Hellboy creator Mike Mignola has said, “this isn’t the end of Hellboy, both the character and the comic, even though he’s now dead.” Still, funny, funny stuff from The Gutters.

Father of Indian Comics Dies

Following the early February post on Indian Comics, news came in late last month that Anant Pai, creator of Amar Chitra Katha, died of a heart attack at age 81 in Mumbai.

AsiaOne News reported that Samir Patil, the current head of ACK Media which published Amar Chitra Katha, vows Pai’s work will go on. “We will keep his legacy alive.”

Amar Chitra Katha was founded in 1967 by “Uncle Pai” (as he was affectionately known) and has, according to one source, sold  “around 90 million copies of its more than 400 titles in more than 20 Indian languages.”

ACK Media Rememberance of "Uncle Pai"