113,248 words. (Imagine that sung by the cast of Rent.)
Whew.
Yesterday evening I emailed the manuscript for my latest superhero-and-philosophy book to my editor, who will then send it to instructor-reviewers to assess its potential for course adoption. As with my Captain America and Civil War books, this book was written for general readers, but the publisher wants to test the waters for class use as well, so we'll see what happens with that.
As readers of these updates and my Twitter account know, I've been coy about the subject of the book. The book isn't planned to be released until 2019, and there are other people who do this kind of thing (and do it very well), so I'm wary of inviting them to beat me to the punch. I can tell you, however, that the book has an approach similar to The Virtues of Captain America, exploring the moral code of a popular superhero while making a broader point about our ethical decision-making. While Cap can come off as "too" good, the hero I deal with in this book does not, which lets me delve more into issues of moral conflict and consistency. In that sense, the book serves as a nice companion piece to the Cap book—so much so that the publisher actually suggested we title this one The Vices of..., but I thought that was going a little far!
The last time I gave an update, I had completed my work on the book for the summer, at which point I felt I was almost done and had 92,000 words written. As the fall semester began, I worked here and there throughout September, adding 10,000 words, and did a quick pass-through in early October, adding about 2000 more. At the end of October, I split the two huge files (Part I and Part II) into four chapters each, and the chapters into sections, and then began the fine editing: filling gaps in content that I kindly left for myself, reinforcing the broader point of the book as often as I could, and trying to cite as many comics as possible (433 at latest count). In the end, I had 113,248 words, definitely the longest book I've ever written and nearly twice as long as each of my Palgrave books (including The Decline of the Individual, which I wrote earlier this year and was published since my last update).
Again, I say whew.
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While this book was my main activity the last several months (outside of teaching and chairing), I did also manage to write a few posts for Psychology Today:
- Should You "Write First, Edit Later"? (September 17)
- Do Romantic Relationships Imply a Loss of Self? Should They? (September 20)
- Alexa, Should I Ask You to Help Me Make Decisions? (October 9)
- Yes, Condemn Weinstein, But Don't Endorse a "Pence Rule" (October 12)
Finally, after a year and a half away, I returned to comics blogging at The Comics Professor, commenting on the return of the classic Steve Rogers in Mark Waid and Chris Samnee's Captain America (with a word or two about Secret Empire and "Hydra-Cap") and the surprising move of superstar comics writer Brian Michael Bendis from Marvel to DC. I hope to blog on comics more frequently from now on, as well as begin some other related projects, as I wrote at the end of the Captain America post:
I've been thinking a lot lately about diving back into the past comics I love, whether Captain America, Batman, the Fantastic Four, or others, and blogging in a more systematic way about them, taking each issue or storyline and writing about what I love about it, whether there's something of philosophical interest there or not. Maybe I'll just geek out about how cool the art is, or how a moment made me laugh or cry. Maybe I'll even do a podcast about them, something like The Fantasticast or the Nerdsync podcast—not that I can do that any better than Stephen and Andrew or Scott do, but I'd do it my own way, whatever they may be. Just an idea I've been knocking around, something to get excited about.
In other words, my next major comics project will likely not start out as a book, although a book may eventually come out of it. We'll see.
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The near future brings some academic work: writing a chapter for a book on ethics and the "making of an economist," due by the end of the year, and then my major work for the rest of the academic year, continuing to edit and write for The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Economics, my most ambitious editing project to date. (In the meantime, I'll be overseeing production of Doctor Strange and Philosophy, which is planned to come out in spring 2018.)
I hope to check in again before the new year. I hope you enjoy the upcoming holidays, and stay warm and safe.
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