At their best, comics ask the big questions. How do we make our way through the world? Why are we here? How can we find peace? Why do we read comics?
Also, why does my elbow hurt? But that may not be relevant here. Or maybe it is! Comics writer and academic A. David Lewis tackles his own journey through how comics have helped shape his spirituality and how his spirituality shaped his comics. But in recent years, he’s delved into Graphic Medicine, maybe not a genre that leaps to mind in the medium of comics, but his new book named a few that I may have to look for.
That new book, Body, Soul, and Comics, reaches for the answers but accepts we all have to find our own. We’ve been friends for two and a half decades, and though I love his comics work such as Mortal Coils and Kismet, Man of Fate, his academic work hits me where I live. At least where I live currently. We’ve got big questions, all of us. And comics help us muddle through them.
We sat down one night shortly after the release of his book to talk about what comics mean to us, and where they may be going. While completely in context, we also take a little sidebar to praise Jim Starlin’s The Death of Captain Marvel, a sometimes overlooked work that does tackle the big questions with a superhero and a god of Death. Further question: has Mar-vell himself been resurrected in comics? I think Marvel has often faked us out with the character, and certainly there are a couple of generations that (rightfully) consider Carol Danvers to be Captain Marvel.
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