Richard Reynolds – författare

On Guerrilla Gardening is an activist's call to arms to all citizens - green-fingered, green-thinking or curious - to join the revolution of guerrilla gardening: transforming public space into oases of colour and life. The enemy: neglect, apathy and the disintegration of community spirit. The arsenal: daring, a packet of seeds and a passionate commitment to social change. When Richard Reynolds first embarked on guerrilla gardening, growing flowers by moonlight outside his tower block, he had no idea it was part of a growing global movement committed to cultivating the potential in the land regardless of all obstacles. Charting the battles fought across thirty different countries and the revolutionary history of this subculture, On Guerrilla Gardening is an inspirational take on gardening in the 21st century.

The superhero has been the staple of the modern comic book since the late 1930s. The phenomenally successful movies Superman and Batman have made these two comic book superheroes as familiar worldwide as any characters ever created. Yet to relatively few aficionados are they known at first hand from their appearances in comic books.Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology explores the origins of the superhero by documenting how heroes emerged from the comic book genre and are defined both by its history and by audience expectations.To show some of the most influential and paradigmatic figures, this study focuses on the texts of three comic books in the genre--The X-Men, The Dark Knight Returns, and Watchman. It examines ways in which the comics mythologize both the role of the hero and the nature of consensus, authority, and moral choice.Blending academic scholarship with specialized knowledge of the comic book medium, Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology will have appeal for several audiences. Since most of the academic scholarship published on comic books has focused on history rather than on cultural analysis, this book will be of great value to scholars of popular culture.

Finding the superhero genre in need of further investigation from philosophical standpoints that value excess as a creative drive, rather than denigrate it as a problem to be resolved, this book opens up discussions that highlight different approaches to ‘the creative excess of being’ as expressed through the genre.While superheroes are an everyday, culturally dominant phenomena, philosophical methods and investigations have a reputation for lofty superiority. Across 13 chapters, this book facilitates a collision between the superhero genre and the discipline of philosophy, resulting in a voyage of exploration where each illuminates the other. The contributions in this book range from new voices to recognized scholars, offering superhero studies a set of critical interventions that are unusual, conceptually diverse, theoretically grounded and varied in practice. These chapters consider ‘excessive’ traits of superheroes against schools of thought that have attempted to conceptualize and understand excess by analysing texts and figures across a variety of mediums, such as The Fantastic Four, Captain America, The Vision, Logan, Black Panther and Super Hero Girls.With its unique approach to the superhero genre, this book will be an invaluable read for students and scholars working on comic studies, transmedia studies, cultural studies, popular culture and superhero studies.

Finding the superhero genre in need of further investigation from philosophical standpoints that value excess as a creative drive, rather than denigrate it as a problem to be resolved, this book opens up discussions that highlight different approaches to ‘the creative excess of being’ as expressed through the genre.While superheroes are an everyday, culturally dominant phenomena, philosophical methods and investigations have a reputation for lofty superiority. Across 13 chapters, this book facilitates a collision between the superhero genre and the discipline of philosophy, resulting in a voyage of exploration where each illuminates the other. The contributions in this book range from new voices to recognized scholars, offering superhero studies a set of critical interventions that are unusual, conceptually diverse, theoretically grounded and varied in practice. These chapters consider ‘excessive’ traits of superheroes against schools of thought that have attempted to conceptualize and understand excess by analysing texts and figures across a variety of mediums, such as The Fantastic Four, Captain America, The Vision, Logan, Black Panther and Super Hero Girls.With its unique approach to the superhero genre, this book will be an invaluable read for students and scholars working on comic studies, transmedia studies, cultural studies, popular culture and superhero studies.

Capturing an enticing fusion between magic and science, superheroes resonate with many complex and fractured identities, their stories highlighting civilization’s most pressing concerns: the networked society, climate change, nuclear war, Artificial Intelligence, and the emergence of transhuman and posthuman bodies.Superculture examines superhero narratives from their assemblage in the 1930s to the present day, diving into the ways in which these fictions give form to – and have sometimes even foreshadowed – key ideas and anxieties across the 20th century. Focusing on United States history from the Second World War to 9/11 and surveying the Anglophone superhero mythos in film, television, gaming, merchandizing, fandom and in the urban myths of daily life, Reynolds takes a chronological look at the superhero and social change.Superculture digs into:· The genre’s origins· The relationship between the genre’s creatives and their film-making ambitions and achievements within the publishing industry and media· The link between the development of superhero narratives and key historical moments for the US including World War II, the Cold War and the Vietnam War· The genre’s expansion into new narrative forms and cultural niches from radio and animation to merchandizing· The impact of developments in science and technology on superhero stories· How the genre questioned and deconstructed itself in the 1980s and how this spawned a fraction in approaches in 1990s· How creators fashioned narratives responding to the new geopolitics of the new millennia.Expansive and with hard-hitting implications for way we view superheroes, Superculture offers a way into 100 years of history and ideas, demonstrating that the popularity of the super’s story lies in the fact that it has moved from the realms of fantasy into everyday lived reality of the contemporary world.

Capturing an enticing fusion between magic and science, superheroes resonate with many complex and fractured identities, their stories highlighting civilization’s most pressing concerns: the networked society, climate change, nuclear war, Artificial Intelligence, and the emergence of transhuman and posthuman bodies.Superculture examines superhero narratives from their assemblage in the 1930s to the present day, diving into the ways in which these fictions give form to – and have sometimes even foreshadowed – key ideas and anxieties across the 20th century. Focusing on United States history from the Second World War to 9/11 and surveying the Anglophone superhero mythos in film, television, gaming, merchandizing, fandom and in the urban myths of daily life, Reynolds takes a chronological look at the superhero and social change.Superculture digs into:· The genre’s origins· The relationship between the genre’s creatives and their film-making ambitions and achievements within the publishing industry and media· The link between the development of superhero narratives and key historical moments for the US including World War II, the Cold War and the Vietnam War· The genre’s expansion into new narrative forms and cultural niches from radio and animation to merchandizing· The impact of developments in science and technology on superhero stories· How the genre questioned and deconstructed itself in the 1980s and how this spawned a fraction in approaches in 1990s· How creators fashioned narratives responding to the new geopolitics of the new millennia.Expansive and with hard-hitting implications for way we view superheroes, Superculture offers a way into 100 years of history and ideas, demonstrating that the popularity of the super’s story lies in the fact that it has moved from the realms of fantasy into everyday lived reality of the contemporary world.