Drawing on previous Luke Cage scholarship (2023 and 2024) and various media sources, the paper focuses on how two themes characteristic of his superhero mission, mutual trust and shared obligations, suggest a path forward in the midst of American civil disagreements.

Drawing on theorized fundamental human freedoms, Social Cognitive Domain Theory, and Christian philosophy, the chapter highlights how beliefs about the nature of reality animate Grant Morrison’s New X-Men.

Drawing on Social Cognitive Domain Theory and Christian philosophy, the chapter explores the centrality of Daredevil’s understanding of and response to the distinction between the letter and spirit of the law.

Explores the theme of choice in the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. television series, particularly regarding the choices characters make against the backdrop of time travel and alternate realities. Draws on sociological and psychological explanations of key events in seasons four and five to elucidate the important role assumptions about the world and our place in it play in the moral decisions the characters make.

Explores how the Phoenix and Dark Phoenix sagas, as told in X-Men: The Animated Series demonstrate how beliefs can inform people’s morally-relevant treatment of others. Highlights the roles of ambiguity and disagreement in understanding Jean Grey’s superhero mission.

Philosopher Paul Ricoeur, speaking on justice, notes that while injustice is ubiquitous throughout society, whereas how to best address it is not. Or, put another way, it is easier to identify what is morally wrong in social relations than to ensure those relations are morally right. Vigilantes exemplify this discrepancy, and one notable example is Daredevil: Born Again.

As sheriff, Paul Billings is responsible for maintaining social order. Similarly Saul—as a sanctioned persecutor—can also be understood as trying to maintain a sense of social order by punishing those spreading ‘radical’ beliefs. Just as Billings’ questioning of authority alters his worldview, Saul’s was altered while traveling to Damascus. These two figures and their stories invite us to consider three types of beliefs that inform how we treat each other: (meta) physical beliefs, social beliefs, and psychological beliefs.

By broadly situating Oz’s transition from a young aspiring criminal to a ruthless crime boss within a developmental context, The Penguin…invites us to consider the role of means-ends relations in the morally-relevant actions committed in the show, and how this relationship may inform some of the decisions we may make in our own lives.

The findings suggesting that people understand morally relevant actions involving antagonists differently than those involving others–coupled with the fact that various forms of this distinction feature heavily in superhero narratives (e.g., hero-villain, criminal-victim, innocent-guilty, malevolent force-unwitting host)–point to a potential area of scholarly inquiry when thinking about what it means to treat others fairly across different contexts.

Given the dearth of research on superheroes and supervillains, questions concerning the extent and nature of (apparent) normative and contextual features that influence people’s understanding of these characters are open ones. Are evaluations of certain acts committed by superheroes and supervillains more prone to certain localized cultural norms and understandings than others? What about attributions of certain traits?

Constructivist analyses of Black Panther, Luke Cage, and Bishop help reveal some of the ways superheroes, despite their consistent motivations and frequent predictability (e.g., in terms of the motivations of many of their villains, use of violence, etc.), are both socially responsive to and adaptive within their differing social contexts. They are embedded in varied social interactions and relationships–an embeddedness that has implications for both pedagogy and scholarship.

By trying to understand the nature of the decisions made by such a complex and multifaceted character (the X-Man Bishop)—one who, despite occupying various positions within and outside of the law across dystopian and non-dystopian social arrangements, consistently fights to alter them in the face of injustice—we may come to a slightly better understanding of ourselves.

Martin, J. (2024, April). Something from Nothing?: Joker and Moral Development. Guest lecturer for 

Comparative Cultural Studies 2: Seminar 120 IBM at University of Europe for Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany (Pre-Recorded on April 5th, 2024).

The potential benefits of using superhero media as a context to study older children’s more interpretive or constructivist view of the mind may include familiar characters, the consistency of morally relevant considerations, and the frequent comparison of superheroes and supervillains across contexts that parallel those within children’s social worlds.

Martin, J. (2023, October). Toward a Developmental Analysis of Superhero Media: Lessons from Wakanda. Guest lecturer for English 1105: Superheroes and Society at Centenary University, Hackettstown, NJ (Pre-Recorded on September 26th, 2023)

• Relevant publication(s): Black Panther (2021), Comics and Citizenship (2023), and Social Superheroes (2024)

Insofar public corruption, crime, and institutional distrust inform many Harlemites’ understanding of Harlem and their place in it, Luke Cage’s superhero mission needs to be understood as coterminous with Harlemites’ experiences, behaviors, and beliefs concerning these matters.

After reading Arkham’s Souls, we hope you take away three broad implications….One pertains to the importance of knowledge from various disciplines combining to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. The second concerns the potential pedagogical and scholarly opportunities such an analysis affords and the interdisciplinary collaborations it can engender. Lastly, we hope that the volume encourages thoughtful, good-faith reflections and discussions concerning what it means to live meaningfully in a society with others.

Both of these features [separating moral from nonmoral understandings of social interactions and applying those understandings to complex situations]...are suggested through Mr. Freeze’s motivations to use cryogenics to save and improve people’s lives, his sense of unjust treatment, his sometimes selective use of harm, and his expressions of vulnerability….Therefore…we can learn a little something about ourselves through villains like Mr. Freeze.

Martin, J. F., & Strong, M. T. (2023, August). Dimensions and decisions: Time travel, alternate realities, and moral judgments. Paper presented at the one-hundred eighteenth annual meeting of the American Sociological Association [Sociology of Cultures Roundtables; I did not attend], Philadelphia, P.A.

• Relevant publication(s): Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Moral Judgments (In Progress)

Martin, J. (2023, April). Toward a Developmental Analysis of Superhero Media: Lessons from Wakanda. Guest lecturer for Public Philosophy Night at the Spokane Public Library, hosted by Eastern Washington University, Spokane, WA.

• Relevant publication(s): Black Panther (2021), Comics and Citizenship (2023), and Social Superheroes (2024)