Giant Humans, Tiny Worlds

The novel is no longer the youngest medium, but today has been displaced by the graphic novel, an even younger medium. Whereas the novel had been concerned with the various utopian projects of Modernity, the graphic novel operates inside a world horizon of mad scientists, failed superheroes and crumbling cities. Indeed, it takes for granted the failure of all modernizing utopias, while simultaneously retrieving two-dimensional Giant Humans from the world of the ancient epics with which to construct personal immune systems for the Self, especially since public immune systems no longer function properly. In this book, John David Ebert discusses 24 of the most popular graphic novels of all time, including "The Dark Knight Returns," "Watchmen," "Black Hole," etc., looking for traces of the new imaginary significations with which the youth of today are shoring up the ruins of their own subjectivities.