Canvases of Representation: Addressing the Cultural Politics of Black Male Superhero Identity in Graphic Narratives

Canvases of Representation: Addressing the Cultural Politics of Black Male Superheroes Identity in Graphic Narratives is an analytical literary mixtape dedicated to Black male superheroes Black Panther, Luke Cage, and Black Lightning. Cochran draws out how superheroes play a role in the socio-political, identity, and cultural representations Black identity. The work argues that what is not just the symbolic/cultural destruction of the Black image in popular culture but how such representations provide a template for how the Black body is actively managed, controlled, surveilled, and contained in the material world. Examining these figures through the blended genres of Afrofuturism, film, and hip-hip as well, this research explores how Black creators have begun to dis-articulate fictional representations and develop a collective catharsis more “authentic” to the complex Black experience