Category: Philosophy
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All in all, Green Lantern Annual #1, written by Geoff Johns and pencilled by Ethan Van Sciver and Pete Woods, is one of the most exciting books to come out of the DC New 52 so far. Faint praise, perhaps, but this felt like the build-up to Johns' previous GL events like "Sinestro Corps War"…
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Inspired by my friend Colin Smith's post on his blog, Too Busy Thinking about My Comics, regarding our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man's questionable actions in Amazing Spider-Man #685, and then further spurred on by a vigorous debate with Spidey editor Stephen Wacker on Twitter this morning (joined by Colin and several other stalwart discussants), I need…
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Last week's Green Lantern Corps #8, written Pete Tomasi and illustrated by Fernando Pasarin and Scott Hanna, featured an interesting discussion among the Alpha Lanterns regarding what to do about John Stewart in light of his killings of a fellow Green Lantern who seemed close to revealing Corps secrets under torture by the Keepers. This…
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This week's Batman and Robin #8 (written by Peter Tomasi and illustrated by Patrick Gleason and Mick Gray) was a welcome denouement to the Morgan Ducard/Nobody storyline that culminated at the end of #7 when, as Bruce explains to Alfred, "Nobody's dead. Damian killed him." (Imagine parsing that statement if you hadn't been keeping up with the…
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At The Atlantic today, Hans Villarica interviews Dr. Roy Baumeister, one of the psychologists chiefly responsible for the ego-depletion or "muscle" theory of willpower. Under this conception, people have a limited amount of willpower at any given time; as they use it, it is depleted in the short term but strengthened in the long term (just like a muscle…
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In the back-up feature to last week's Detective Comics #8, written by Tony S. Daniel and illsutrated by Szymon Kudranski, Harvey Dent, aka Two-Face, appropriately adopts both sides of the recent philosophical and psychological debate over character traits. First, Harvey shows us the situationist position: Situationists such as John M. Doris, author of Lack of Character: Personality…
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Ah, comics. The other day I was chatting about New Avengers #22 with with my friend Christine of the fantastic Daredevil blog The Other Murdock Papers. I mentioned how how out-of-character it seemed that Daredevil would exclaim "Toss her!" when the New Avengers are trying to extract information from Victoria Hand. (Remember that New Avengers scribe Brian…
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Thanks to Mitters' tumblr, I discovered that there are three samples from The Avengers and Philosophy: Earth's Mightiest Thinkers available at Wiley's site for the book: the table of contents, the index (in case you're curious who's included in the book–I'm happy to say most everybody!), and best of all, the first chapter, written by yours…
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The last two of three pieces I wrote on Captain America this week are up today: I discuss why I find Cap personally inspiring at The Good Men Project, and ask if his ethics are too antiquated for the modern day at Psychology Today. And don't forgot yesterday's op-ed in the San Diego Union-Tribune (reprinted in…
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Wiley just released their free Kindle book, Superheroes: The Best of Philosophy and Pop Culture, featuring one chapter from each of the superhero-themed books in the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series, including the forthcoming titles on Superman and the Avengers, as well as two new and exclusive chapters, written by yours truly, on Captain…
Mark D. White 