My Second Book!

        This past Friday a package arrived at my front door containing something very exciting: copies of my second book! Behold, Religion and Myth in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is officially in print and available to purchase through McFarland Books (the publisher), Amazon, and other major booksellers!  A big thanks goes to McFarland Books for being a great press to work with. 

        Back in the summer of 2019, after seeing Avengers: Endgame, which concluded more than ten years of Marvel movies, I knew I had to write this book. The ideas had been rattling around in my head for years prior as I saw the preceding films interconnecting and building on one another, all the while resonating with myths and religious narratives I had studied or knew about. While the parallels between superheroes and comics on the one hand and myth and religion on the other are not necessarily something new, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has expanded the popularity of these characters and storylines to an unprecedented level. From a narrative point of view, as a set of twenty-three films (at the point when I finished writing) with a determined beginning, middle, and end, it provided a discrete popular culture text that could be compared against other mythic narratives from the Iliad, to Gilgamesh, to the Mahabharata, and on and on. Working from that premise, and covering the Marvel films from Iron Man (2008) to Avengers: Endgame (2019), here are just a few of the topics and comparisons that I cover in the book:

        How do the Avengers' origin stories resemble rites of passage and shamanic initiation experiences found around the world?

        

        How do the various villains in the MCU compare with monsters found throughout world mythology?

        In what way do the various battles the Avengers fight with one another (as in Captain America: Civil War) or close family members (like Black Panther, or Thor: Ragnarok, or Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 2) resemble battles in Persian, Chinese, Indian, and Greek mythologies?

        How does Thanos compare with other figures of death and destruction, such as Hades in ancient Greece, Yama in Hinduism, and Mara in Buddhism?

        What parallels does the final battle scene in Avengers: Endgame have with apocalyptic final battles in the Zoroastrian, Jewish, Christian, and Hindu traditions?

        If you're interested in picking up a copy, you can go to the Publisher's official website, look for a copy on Amazon, or check out Barnes and Noble. It's available in print and electronic form. 

        It's a thrilling feeling to have a moment of inspiration, dream of an idea, work on it feverishly, then see it assume an actual physical form you can hold in your hands, as I did Friday when the hard copies arrived at my doorstep. It's also a nice culmination in my life: a few of my very early memories are as a three or four year old playing with my Spider-Man action figure, making it swing from bookcase shelves using dental floss as webbing. The Marvel characters have been my heroes for a long time and its been a joy to live with them on an intellectual level now, too. For those of you who check out the book, let me know what you think of it. I hope you enjoy it and I'd really like to hear your thoughts.

        As the title of this post suggests, this is my second book, coming after 2019's Malleable Mara: Transformations of a Buddhist Symbol of Evil. That book has recently come out in paperback, meaning it's considerably reduced in price. Check it out here and, along with Religion and Myth in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you can complete the whole Michael Nichols collection! 😁 At least until I write the next one.....