Mark D. White

As summer ends and another fall begins... (A personal update)

I meant to post an update at the end of August, but I decided to wait until I wrapped up the second edition of my Captain America book, which I finally submitted last week, and restarted the associated blog, which I did this week. (You can see the first "real" post here, and a little about the book on the "I'm back" post here.) Now I continue work on other projects, all of which I want to make significant progress on this academic year (while the situation at my job continues to deteriorate).

I've long been questioning the purpose of these updates, as infrequent and brief as they've become. They may make more sense next year, however, when the books I finished this year start coming out.

I hope everyone has a good rest of the year, and we'll see what I have to report at the end of it.

Summer workin', did some at last... (A personal update)

I'm writing this on a Monday, and the fall semester begins on Thursday, so I'm sure I'll get all my writing goals for the summer done by then.

Ha.

I wanted to check in before school starts, although I don't have much specific to report. Nothing was finished this summer, though progress was made on several projects—not the least of them being scheduling them out. As it happens, the commitments I've made are exceptionally well spaced out in time through the end of 2024, thanks to some patient editors, and it should leave time to do smaller things as they arise. ("Should," he writes with trembling fingers.)

Besides this, there have been several new developments since I last reported:

• The chapter I completed before summer began, "Punishment and Resources," was accepted, and will be published in The Oxford Handbook of Punishment Theory and Philosophy, edited by Jesper Ryberg.
• I published three posts based on my Thor book at Psychology Today: "What Makes Thor Worthy?", "Who Should Decide What Worth Means—and If You're Worthy?", and "How Do You Reclaim Your Sense of Worth After Losing It?"
• I'll be giving my first guest lecture since 2018 in late September, at York College (in Pennsylvania), where I last visited in 2015, on the subject of Batman and ethics. (That's assuming I'm finished with jury duty obligations that start in the middle of September!)
• Finally, my biggest news is that I have agreed to prepare a revised and updated second edition of The Virtues of Captain America in anticipation of the new movie in 2024 (and the tenth anniversary of the first edition). I've planned a thorough revision of the entire book, working in new examples when appropriate, plus a new section on the implications of the recent "Secret Empire" debacle and a new chapter on Sam Wilson's (ongoing) experience as Cap. (Coincidentally, this arrived today.)

I hope you enjoy the withering embers of summer, in whatever way you can, and the impending crispness of fall, whatever form it takes for you.

This blog's title is, of course, in tribute to this fine singer and actress, gone far too soon.

As summer starts... (A personal update)

With the academic year wrapped up and a long overdue handbook chapter completed, the time has come to switch gears, which also provides an opportunity to post a brief update, also long overdue.

It was a tough semester with a lot of campus drama, most of it unnecessary but none of it surprising. I did, however, change my mind about what I wrote at the end of 2021, for both professional and personal reasons, and offered to continue as department chair for a least a little while longer (which my colleagues all too eagerly took me up on).

With the handbook chapter finally done and the summer laid out ahead of me, I can resume work full-time on my introductory ethics textbook using superhero examples, as well as background reading/re-reading for future titles in the A Philosopher Reads... series, which is now actually a series after the publication in April of the second book, A Philosopher Reads... Marvel Comics' Thor: If They Be Worthy. There is already one review online from Armond Boudreaux at A Clash of Heroes, as well as two podcasts I guested on, the first of which is with my old friends Leon and Alen at Seize the Moment:

(Clearly we're all having a miserable time.)

The second is with my new friend, Thor super-fan Ryan Does, at Across the Bifrost:

I have one more podcast for the book planned at this time, and as the new movie approaches I'm sure I'll have more to share.

In other superhero-related news:

• My other blogging activity all but collapsed since the new year began, but I have kept up with my twice-weekly posts at The Virtues of Captain America Blog, which celebrated its 400th post in May.
• I wrote about the latest Batman film here, and was interviewed by the German magazine Cinema ahead of its release (see my tweet with images here).
• The book Black Panther and Philosophy, edited by Edwardo Pérez and Timothy E. Brown, was released in January, and it includes my chapter "Panther Virtue: The Many Roles of T’Challa."
• I guested on the Podcast Supreme discussing Doctor Strange: The Oath, the subject of my chapter in Doctor Strange and Philosophy:

• Speaking of Doctor Strange and Philosophy, I learned recently that the Chinese translation has been published, which makes four of my volumes in the Blackwell Philosophy and Popular Culture series that have been translated in Chinese, which blows my mind.

- -- --- ---- ----- ---- --- -- -

That's it for this update; we'll see how much I have to report by summer's end.

If you have a chance, I hope you enjoy the next several months, whatever that means for you, and in the meantime I'll see you on Twitter and Instagram, where I post lots of photos like the one at the top of this post, taken yesterday morning from the landing at the top of my back stairs. Here's another, from this morning, just because you made it this far:

My 2021 in review, and looking ahead to 2022...

At the end of this dizzying year, and on the occasion of my fiftieth birthday, I offer my reflections on the last twelve months in terms of work—reflections that, to quote Rick Blaine, "don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world," where matters of much greater importance are going on. <gestures wildly at everything> Nevertheless...

I went into my work frustrations in my update last month, so I won't belabor the point here. Suffice it to say that this is my eleventh and final year as department chair, and I'm very much looking forward to returning to full-time teaching and writing as of next July 1. This year I designed a new introductory/survey course in legal philosophy, and I hope that it, together with the upper-level legal philosophy course I regularly teach—retitled "Jurisprudence" to reflect how I've been teaching it for years—will become part of my regular teaching rotation, along with other courses in philosophy and economics. (I taught law-and-economics this semester for the first time in years and enjoyed it, despite the Zoom setting, and I'm hoping to continue teaching that, and resume the economics-and-philosophy course I introduced 20+ years ago, more regularly going forward.)

Although everything that happened in 2021 made it very difficult to write, I did manage to get more done than last year; what's more, I became more productive as the year progressed, which leaves me cautiously optimistic heading into 2022.

1. I wrote two chapters for edited volumes coming out next year and welcomed the publication of one written last year, for which I thank all the editors who invited me to contribute.

• I wrote "Panther Virtue: The Many Roles of T’Challa” for Black Panther and Philosophy, edited by Edwardo Pérez and Timothy E. Brown, coming out in February 2022 from Wiley-Blackwell.
• I also wrote "A Kantian Perspective on Teaching Ethics to Economists" for Handbook of Teaching Ethics to Economists: A Plurality of Perspectives, edited by Craig Duckworth, Ioana Negru, and Imko Meyenburg, coming out from Edward Elgar later in 2022 (I believe).
• My chapter "Reflections on the State of Economics and Ethics" was published last month in The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Economics, edited by Conrad Heinmann and Julian Reiss.

2. I was much more active in what we olds used to call "the blogosphere," especially in the second half of the year:

• In August, I resumed blogging for Psychology Today, including a very widely read post earlier this month on Cecily Whiteley's provocative work on depression as a unique state of consciousness.
• In September, Jonathan Wight and I revived the Economics and Ethics blog, which has since highlighted new developments in the area, usually at least once a week.
• Earlier this month I started blogging at The Comics Professor again on interesting ethics-related content in current superhero comics (and I hope to blog there weekly going forward).
• And all year long I maintained twice-weekly posts at The Virtues of Captain America Blog, which is now halfway through Cap's 1990 appearances after 3½ years of blogging, resulting in 364 posts so far.

3. My signal achievement this year was finishing A Philosopher Reads Marvel Comics' Thor: If They Be Worthy, which will be released in 2022 ahead of next summer's Thor: Love and Thunder film. (UPDATE: It's now available.) It's an exploration of the seven years of Thor comics written by Jason Aaron and drawn by Esad Ribić, Russell Dauterman, and others, in which the original Thor suddenly finds himself unworthy of wielding his mighty hammer Mjolnir, only to see a new Thor emerge, eventually revealed to be Jane Foster, who must struggle with her own unique issues while saving the universe (and dealing with Odin). In this short volume, I use this fascinating tale to discuss the various meanings of worthiness, how it feels to lose it, and how one can reclaim it—which requires a more nuanced and somewhat paradoxical understanding of worthiness, suggested by the comics themselves. (See more about this book here.)

-----

Thinking ahead to 2022: I look forward to finishing my current book project—an introductory ethics textbook using superhero examples—as well as a handbook chapter on the philosophy of punishment. Then I will pick up work on two other book projects: a long-delayed discussion of antitrust, which is even more relevant these days than when I started it, and a deep dive into the Fant... well, perhaps I should hold off on talking about that for a while.

(Sorry, Ben—got carried away.)

Work during a pandemic, continued... (A personal update)

I had little reason to write this other than that it has been three months since my last post... three dreadfully long and eventful months in the real world, while little seems to have changed in my tiny corner of it (other than my hair). All the things I wrote last time about difficulties focusing on anything when the coronavirus continues to spread around the world—increasingly so in parts of the U.S. the last month—still hold true, but have been magnified since the #BlackLivesMatter protests against police brutality began after the tragic death of George Floyd.

You know all this, of course... but what else to say?

I'll be brief: My productivity is of a pace with that reported in the last post (along with the corresponding malaise for that and many other reasons). I finished or abandoned all of the smaller or shorter things to my to-do list, and am now focused on keeping my Captain America blog current and working on my next superhero-and-ethics book, which ideally will be finished (or close to it) by the end of summer. This one will be a bit different than my Captain America or Batman books: Rather than looking at a character's overall approach to ethics, it will be focused on one particular idea connected with them (and which happens to be very meaningful to me as well). Also, one of the book proposals I mentioned in my last post led to a contract, and I've started planning for that project, with work in earnest to start in the fall. (And I'm awaiting word on the other proposal, the first draft of which I just sent to my editor a week ago.)

Other than that, I'm managing affairs for my college department over the summer, adapting to a constantly changing budget outlook ahead of a precarious fall semester, and updating my course while adapting it for the online format. I did find time to guest on a podcast, Good Is in the Details, hosted by my good friend Gwendolyn Dolske, discussing Batman and ethics, with a follow-up on Captain America coming soon. As always, I'm trying to stay offline more, even though my sense of FOMO is heightened and rationalized by the crucial, historical nature of everything happening at the moment.

I hope you have whatever kind of summer you can manage; try to stay positive and focus on the good; and please, please take care of yourselves and others by wearing a mask when you're out and about. Not all heroes wear masks, but everyone who wears a mask is a hero.

My 2019 in review, and looking ahead to 2020...

This was a difficult year's-end review to write. 2019 was not a good year for me, neither professionally nor personally, and although I did have a good number of things come out, based on past efforts, I produced very little new material over the last twelve months.

I had two books published this year, Batman and Ethics (Wiley Blackwell) and my edited volume The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Economics (Oxford University Press), and five articles and book chapters:

• “With All Due Respect: A Kantian Approach to Economics,” in The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Economics, pp. 54-76
• “More Harm Than Benefit: The Ramifications of the Neglect of Rights in Economics,” in Wilfred Dolfsma and Ioana Negru (eds), The Ethical Formation of Economists (Routledge), pp. 71-91
• “Nudging – Ethical and Political Dimensions of Choice Architectures,” in Holger Strassheim and Silke Beck (eds), Handbook of Behavioural Change and Public Policy (Edward Elgar), pp. 319-331
• “Criminal Justice in Gotham: The Role of the Dark Knight,” in Damien Picariello (ed.), Politics in Gotham: The Batman Universe and Political Thought (Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 123-140
• “The Neglect of Rights in Law and Economics,” GNLU Journal of Law & Economics, vol. II, pp. 22-39

The final piece above was written this year, as was a book review for a journal and a very short piece on nudge for an online site (both forthcoming next year, perhaps). In terms of blogs, I wrote my usual complement of posts for Psychology Today, including a post based on my Batman book originally posted at The Comics Professor, and kept up with my Virtues of Captain America blog (although my backlog is not what it used to be). Finally, I wrote a nudge paper for a special journal issue that didn't work for the reviewers and a few chapters for the antitrust book I worked on in the spring but set aside (twice), and I finished the background reading for the first of two superhero books I am writing for Ockham Publishing (who published my Civil War book in 2016).

Looking ahead to next year, I plan to write the superhero book mentioned above (and start background work on the second), finalize plans for an academic trade book on economics and ethics (and write an invited handbook chapter on same), and continue to work on the antitrust book (which I've begun to refer to as my "white whale").

It might as well be spring... (A personal update)

It's been a strange year so far in terms of work (both writing and school), so the true updates in this post will be few, and instead I'll focus on things coming out in the near future.

My main project since the beginning of the year has been my antitrust book, but I did not make as much progress on it as I'd hoped, so after some hiccups (and thanks to the patience of my editor), I will be taking the summer to finish it. (Speaking of antitrust, I had the pleasure recently of attending a talk by Jonathan B. Baker, whose new book, The Antitrust Paradigm, I'm eagerly awaiting.) I did, however, manage to write an invited essay for a new law-and-economics journal (tentatively out this fall) and a short book review for another journal, and I have started working on an invited symposium paper on nudge (specifically, proposed ethical guidelines for their use) for a political science journal.

The academic trade book proposal I mentioned in my last post—which would have collected and elaborated on my thoughts about adultery based on my Psychology Today posts on the topic—didn't get picked up, but I plan to write something longer on the topic nonetheless. As far another book in the works, I'll save that until the end...

~  ~  ~  ~  ~

I have a few things coming out this year, one of which (as you can see above) showed up on my doorstep the morning of the day before Easter: Batman and Ethics, which is available now as an ebook and will be released in US in paperback in early May (the 6th or the 13th, depending on what site you're looking at), earlier some other places (26 April in the UK, apparently). There is now a dedicated page for it here, which explains what I'm on about, and includes a quote from an early review by Armond Boudreaux at his great blog A Clash of Heroes.

Although I do not yet have a copy in my hands, this summer will see the release of The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Economics, involving several dozen brilliant scholars over 27 chapters (including mine, “With All Due Respect: A Kantian Approach to Economics"), all of which I was honored to edit. I also have a dedicated page for this here, and my introduction is available at SSRN.

I also have several chapters coming out this spring in other people's books:

• Available now is Damien Picariello's edited volume, Politics in Gotham: The Batman Universe and Political Thought (Palgrave), including my chapter “Criminal Justice in Gotham: The Role of the Dark Knight."
• Coming at the end of May is Wilfred Dolfsma and Ioana Negru's edited volume, The Ethical Formation of Economists (Routledge), including my chapter “More Harm Than Benefit: The Ramifications of the Neglect of Rights in Economics."
• Also out at the end of May is Holger Strassheim and Silke Beck's Handbook of Behavioural Change and Public Policy (Elgar), including my chapter “Nudging – Ethical and Political Dimensions of Choice Architectures.”

Also out since my last post is “On the Relationship Between Economics and Ethics,” in Annals of the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi (available at SSRN), followed in the same issue by a response from John B. Davis, who contributed to the Oxford handbook as well. (Speaking of contributors to the Oxford handbook, Virgil Storr and Ginny Choi have a book coming this summer titled Do Markets Corrupt Our Morals? that I strongly encourage you to check out, and which may or may not carry a blurb from yours truly.)

I also had my customary posts at Psychology Today and my ongoing efforts at my blog The Virtues of Captain America, which is steadily approaching its 100th post. And finally, appropriate given the impending release of Avengers: Endgame, I recently found the Chinese edition of The Avengers and Philosophy, which I didn't think was due until 2020 but seems to have appeared early. (Keeping my eye open for the planned Chinese edition of Iron Man and Philosophy too.)

~  ~  ~  ~  ~

Going forward, while I wrap up the antitrust book and the nudge paper, I will be starting the "arduous" task of re-reading and note-taking for my next superhero-and-ethics book, a long-term project with no firm completion date (on agreement with the publisher). This will be a true labor of love, and my dream project since I started doing this sort of thing. I'm keeping the details tight to my vest for the time being, but if I do my job right, it should be fantastic.

My 2018 in review, and looking ahead to 2019...

I'm feeling rather ambivalent about my life these days (see here) — which is not unusual for me the last ten years or so, but still. I have, however, come to some realizations of late that may suggest a corner is about to be turned. We'll get to that in due time... in the meantime, let's see what I managed to do this year nonetheless (in addition to my duties as a mild-mannered professor for a metropolitan university).

In terms of things that were published this year (but finished earlier), I had one new edited book out this year, Doctor Strange and Philosophy, which included one chapter I wrote, and one journal article that was posted online in 2016 (and written much earlier) but was not slotted into an issue until this year (this month, actually). (A chapter on nudge that I wrote even earlier, that I thought would be in a book published this year, will be out next year.)

Much of what I actually did this year (which involved more editing than writing) will appear in 2019:

• I did most of my work on The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Economics, including writing the introduction and my chapter, editing the other 26 chapters, and overseeing the review of copyedits and proofs (the last one still ongoing). This should be out next summer.
• Even though it was written in 2017, I wrapped up work on Batman and Ethics this year, including making final revisions, reviewing copyedits and proofs, and compiling the index. This should be out next April.

I did write several shorter pieces that should be out next year as well...

• “On the Relationship Between Economics and Ethics,” forthcoming in a symposium on the interdisciplinary potential of economics (with a response by John B. Davis) in Annals of the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, 52(2), Winter 2018
• “More Harm Than Benefit: The Ramifications of the Neglect of Rights in Economics,” forthcoming in Ioana Negru and Wilfred Dolfsma (eds), The Ethical Formation of Economists (Routledge, 2019)
• “Criminal Justice in Gotham: The Role of the Dark Knight,” forthcoming in Damien Picariello (ed.), Politics in Gotham: The Batman Universe and Political Thought (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)

...as well as several shorter pieces that appeared this year (as well as the normal assortment of blog posts at Psychology Today and several at The Comics Professor):

• “How to Live a More Authentic Life in Both Markets and Morals,” a commentary on William Irwin's The Free Market Existentialist (in Reason Papers, 40(1), Summer 2018, pp. 59-63)
• “Restoring Social Responsibility to Inner Freedom, with Help from Immanuel Kant” and "Inner Freedom Is Consistent with Family (and Social Ties in General)," as part of the conversation on inner and outer freedom at Cato Unbound (October 2018)

Finally, I wrote a review of Eugene Heath and Byron Kaldis (eds), Wealth, Commerce & Philosophy: Foundational Thinkers and Business Ethics, which should appear eventually in the Journal of the History of Economic Thought.

On a different tack, this past summer I launched The Virtues of Captain America blog, which just celebrated its 50th post this month, and will keep me busy for many years to come (seeing that the 50th post brought us into the 1970s, and the 100th, which I will be writing soon, will only find me in 1974).

-- -- -- -- --

Looking forward, I've begun a book on antitrust, which I hope to finish next spring and should be out next fall from Rowman and Littlefield International. I'm also crafting a proposal for a short academic trade on a topic I've discussed a bit at Psychology Today, which, if accepted by the press I've discussed it with, I would write next summer. Besides that, I have a couple other academic projects in mind, but no firm plans beyond some preliminary discussions with presses.

Those projects notwithstanding, in the coming year I hope to devote myself more to writing about superheroes, not just on the Cap blog but new projects as well. Yes, I realize I said much the same thing last year, but I'm even more convinced now that this is the way to go for me, given additional feedback I've gotten from fans and friends over the past year, as well as my experience at San Diego Comic-Con this past summer. I'm hesitant to leave academic writing entirely, because it seems to be a part of my professional identity with which I have a strange push-pull relationship. I've never felt like a "serious academic," and I'm increasingly uncertain I ever could be one, but at the same time I feel I "should" keep trying to be one, even though my particular talents, such as they are, seem to be of more value elsewhere. (Let's not go down that particular rabbit-hole just yet, but my latest Psychology Today post alludes to it.)

I'll leave you with something that's been a balm to my soul lately... let's hope for a brighter year ahead!

 

Midway through autumn... (A short personal update)

This will be a short update because I haven't done much since my last one, given the hectic start to the fall semester. (I know, likely excuse.) I do, however, have a lot to accomplish in the coming months, so I'm posting this as a way to clear the deck, so to speak, in preparation for the busy months to come.

I did very little actual writing in the past two months. In the first couple weeks, I finished the book chapter on Batman to the volume editor's satisfaction, and polished up a book manuscript for final submission. Later, I contributed a response to William Irwin's post on inner and outer freedom at Cato Unbound for the October issue (and a further comment should be posted soon). In terms of blogging, I posted three new pieces to Psychology Today: "How Do You Develop a Work Routine That's Not Routine?", "Can Fantasizing About Love Ever Be Enough?", and its follow-up, "What If the Fantasy of Love Is All That You Can Have?" And I continued to stockpile posts for The Virtues of Captain America blog, in an attempt to maintain about a six-month backlog while posting twice a week.

The most time-consuming tasks (outside of college work) dealt with production on two books coming out this year. I reviewed the copyedits for one sole-authored book, and also coordinated the review of copyedits for The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Economics, liaising with over two dozen contributors as well as the copyeditor. I've been told to expect page proofs for both books in December, a fact I'm trying to use to inspire diligence in writing before then.

Speaking of which... as I mentioned in the last post, I have two conference presentations in early January to prepare for (both of which I've begun), one on a Kantian view of the market and state for an Association for Social Economics session at the ASSA meetings, and the other a commentary on Leo Zaibert's fantastic new book Rethinking Punishment for the Eastern APA meetings.

New to this update are two new commitments. The first is a monograph tentatively titled The Problems with Antitrust, under contract with Rowman & Littlefield International (to be included in my series On Ethics and Economics), in which I will expand on previously published criticisms of the moral foundations and implications of antitrust (such as this article). I promised to have this done by the end of February, after which I turn to the second, a presentation for the PPE Society meetings in late March on the ethics of the economics of the family, on which I touched in this article as well as my chapter for the handbook (generally on Kant and economics), but have never explored at length.

There are a couple more conferences in the spring I'm considering attending and possibly presenting at, which is a big change from recent years when I backed off from conference travel. (Don't ask me why... I haven't figured it out yet.)

-- -- -- -- --

Unfortunately, my plan to devote a certain amount of time each day to writing never got off the ground, partially because I didn't have a significant writing project (with most of the last two months being spent reviewing copyedits and occasionally writing short pieces for various websites or blogs), and also due to campus responsibilities and various personal matters. Now that I do have such projects (especially the book), and administrative duties at school have lessened (being heaviest through September and October), perhaps I can develop a routine... or rather, I need to develop a routine, and stick to it (a problem I addressed in the first Psychology Today post mentioned above).

As the wise men said...

A big phew, halfway through... (A personal midsummer's update) [UPDATED]

This update is coming a bit later than I would have liked, but I wanted to get some things done first, and there's something I couldn't talk about publicly until recently. (There's actually something else coming soon that I can't quite talk about yet, but I didn't want to wait for that too! UPDATE: here it is!) So here we are, almost exactly in the middle of summer... and let me tell you what I've been up to since my last update at the end of March.

By the way, the picture at the top of the post is actually not the view out of my window, but it is what I imagine about when I think about retirement. (Sigh.) It's my happy place, wherever it is.

-- -- -- -- --

Just yesterday, I submitted the manuscript of The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Economics to my editors, all 27 chapters, 995 manuscript pages, or 282,327 words of it. (I immediately tweeted the news with the GIF to the right, which shows what I'm still doing today.) I've done a lot of edited volumes, some with co-editors but most of them by myself, but this was by far the largest and most involved project I've been involved with. I've been told that there will be a page at Oxford's site for the book fairly soon, so I'll hold off on further details until then (which will likely be posted at Economics and Ethics, natch). From what people tell me, we managed to finish it fairly quickly, for which I'm grateful to all of my contributors—including the one who bet me it wouldn't be finished until 2020. (He should have known better: even my co-edited volume on procrastination was delivered on time!)

My scholarly output was fairly limited the last few months to editing the handbook (and writing my chapter and introduction for it), but I did manage to write a short piece on the relationship between economics and ethics for a journal symposium (which was well timed, helping me to think through some issues I was planning to discuss in the handbook introduction anyway), and do the normal amount of journal article refereeing and book proposal reviewing.

And oh yeah, I wrapped up the academic semester too. Here's a photo from commencement day, with my indispensable administrative assistants Florinda and Joan, who actually run my department. (I never gave much thought to my own graduations, but I've come to appreciate them more and more since I became a department chair.)

I am mulling several possible academic projects now that I wrapped the handbook, one of which may have been proposed to a press and may be under review as we speak. (Maybe.)

It's not academic, but before we get to the comics-related stuff, I'll mention the trio of Psychology Today posts since my last update: "What Is the 'Other' Issue in the Masterpiece Cakeshop Case?" (June 4), "Helping the Self-Loathing Break Out of Their 'Comfort Zone'" (June 14), and "What If Your Partner Doesn't Believe Adultery Is Wrong?" (June 29).

-- -- -- -- --

There's a fair bit of news to announce in the comics realm. First, Doctor Strange and Philosophy was released in May. According to the first Amazon review, it may hurt your brain, but "in a good way." High praise! (And check out my pal Scott's Nerdsync video on the philosophy of Thanos, which draws on the nihilism discussions in the Doctor Strange book.)

More recently, I launched my new blog I've been hinting at for a while, The Virtues of Captain America, which serves as an online complement to the book of the same title. As explained in the About the Blog page, my plan is to go through every appearance of Cap from his Silver Age revival in 1964's Avengers #4, exploring his ethical behavior as reflected in every marvelous issue. Some comics will have more ethical content than others, of course, but I have fun with all of them.

As you can see at the right, the first three posts are currently live: Avengers #4 (March 1964), Avengers #5 and Fantastic Four #26 (May 1964), and Avengers #6 (July 1964). Soon, we'll get to his solo adventures in Tales of Suspense, which began in issue #59 (November 1964), but we'll begin with his guest appearance in issue #58 the month before. I have about 50 posts stockpiled, and I hope to keep this rolling for quite a while, posting two or three times a week.

I also wrote a couple posts at The Comics Professor, both of which happen to be on recent Captain America comics: Mark Waid and Chris Samnee's Captain America #700 and Ta-Nehisi Coates and Leinil Francis Yu's Captain America #1.

I will be mentioning the new blog—and possibly also my next superhero book, which is almost in production at long last—next week when I speak for the first time at San Diego Comic-Con. (Crazy, right? Definitely crazy.)

I'll be speaking at two panels (because one wouldn't be crazy enough):

• The Friday panel, "An Evening with Batman's Brain," will be a reprise of the event held at Victoria University in March 2016 (recounted here) with E. Paul Zehr (Becoming Batman) and Travis Langley (Batman and Psychology), plus Lee Meriwether, Michael Uslan, and Paul Levitz, and moderated by Aaron Sagers. (Note that participation can change up to the last minute.)
• The Saturday panel, "Chasing Captain America: Physiology and Philosophy from Stem Cells to Socrates," will also feature Zehr (who recently published a book titled Chasing Captain America), along with Daniel H. Wilson and (OM)G. Willow Wilson, moderated by Andrea Letamendi.

I imagine this will be quite an experience; I've only been to one major con (New York Comic-Con in 2011), and I've never spoken at one. (Needless to say, I couldn't have finished the handbook at a better time!) UPDATE: See this post for my SDCC experience.

-- -- -- -- --

As I mentioned above, I should be able to discuss my upcoming book on superheroes and philosophy very soon [here it is!], so watch this space for more on that... assuming I survive San Diego! Until then, enjoy yourselves and please be kind.