Spring 2026 Superheroes! (CMX540 Topics in Comics: Superheroes)

For this first time teaching the Superhero course, I’ve decided to document it along the way – it’s been so much fun already! Follow along here as we go… [Most Recent Update: 2/3/26]

Course Outline: Introduction to the scholarly study of superheroes in comics (and other media), their origins, the kinds of stories and themes addressed throughout their history, along with prominent titles and authors. Students will engage with the material through creative projects, including drawn responses to comics and scholarly readings as well as creating their own superheroes/comics featuring their characters. We’ll explore why the comics medium is well-suited for the impossible action of superhero stories. Final projects will entail a deep dive on a critical aspect of superheroes, and students will present their thinking in comics, other visual media, or written work.

After making a mini-comic for a new course Fall 2025 (see here), I felt inspired to build on this but give myself space to play and draw more and then I got a bit carried away!! So here’s the drawn syllabus that I gave to students first day as printed small booklets.

Want to download and print/fold/staple your own – grab the printable version here, and if you just want to view it – see the pages in a PDF here. And if you want the pages in higher res (for coloring or poster-thing) you can find a hi-res PDF of the individual pages here. (or to print as an oversized booklet here.) (The text only version for accessibility is here.) As always, all my syllabi (and other teaching resources) live here permanently. I learned about this minicomic format from Scott McCloud & Raina Telgemeier’s Cartoonists Club graphic novel – see the excerpt below for how to print and fold your own in this format! And see here for all my compiled resources on how to make mini comics of all sorts!

I crowdsourced a superhero song list that you can check out (and add to), here are some of the scholarly books I’ll be drawing on to create the arc of the course…

Course Overview: Introduction to the scholarly study of superheroes in comics (and other media), their origins, the kinds of stories and themes addressed throughout their history, along with prominent titles and authors. Students will engage with the material through creative projects, including drawn responses to comics and scholarly readings as well as creating their own superheroes/comics featuring their characters. We’ll explore why the comics medium is well-suited for the impossible action of superhero stories. Final projects will entail a deep dive on a critical aspect of superheroes, and students will present their thinking in comics, other visual media, or written work. 

Ongoing mini-assignments (35%): Frequent in-class & at-home drawing, comics-making, & written responses to our readings and discussions. They will be posted to Canvas to prepare for discussion. Evaluation purely on completion – not skill, No Drawing experience necessary! Emphasis on curiosity + willingness to dive in and have fun!

Student Hours (5%): Talk comics, ask questions, help me get to know you!

Project 1 (15%): Discuss why superheroes matter to you. in comics, writing, video, or other format, take up what we’ve learned to reflect on the significance of superheroes.

Project 2 (15%): Discuss why superheroes matter to you. in comics, writing, video, or other format, take up what we’ve learned to reflect on the significance of superheroes. Come up with Powers, costume, backstory, lair, villains – all of it!

Final Project (30%): An in-depth exploration on the subject of superheroes and related to the aims of the course. In terms of subject, here are some possible directions: critical examination of a particular comic, series, character; exploration of a theme across multiple comics; research relating superheroes to culture more broadly; investigation of superheroes in comics alongside their representations in other media; research project in our comics archives on campus; educationally-focused material; a superhero comic building off earlier explorations in the course. These are only suggestions – we will figure this out together, and final projects will be determined in conversation between students and instructor (with input from cohort along the way.) 

Additionally, the presentation of the final projects might also take on diverse forms: We can certainly anticipate many of these being in comics and related visual forms, video or other transmedia are welcome, and something in words is also allowable 🙂 

WEEK 1: Introduction, Comics Prehistory/History, and Comics Theory: 

We met, got started. On Day 2, I gave an overview of the prehistory and history of comics, and then took them through a whirlwind tour of the affordances of comics. I didn’t quite finished, and ended up continuing with all things words in comics for the following week.

Write a brief reflection of what your interest in in comics/what brought you to this class; share your favorite superhero (or more than one) as well as we did in class. Post a picture of you – to practice posting and remind us of who everyone is! 

In class (or out) you picked one superpower you’d want to have – then made a quick 3-panel comic showing how you might use it, how it would affect your life, something of that sort. (More examples in PDF here).

Make a Sketchnote about your favorite hero – and try to explore some of these questions to get at why they are your favorite: what traits make them your favorite? Was it a time in your life that you came to identify with them? What about their personality do you identify with? What is it about their powers or abilities that resonates with you? Think perhaps about our reading from Ben Saunders and how some of the things he discussed might help you think about this question. Draw the hero, draw anything related to it alongside your words and have fun thinking on this! 

READINGS:

WEEK 2: What Is A Superhero?

Class 3: I reviewed some of the comics theory I had covered (McCloud sequential art, time, de Luca effect, speed lines, Simultaneity, panel breaking) and then wrapped with an exploration of multimodality, words in comics, and the visualization of text in comics. We looked at their Superpower in three panels pieces and talked about how different they were, and how well they had to think about the form (and the succinctness of 3 panels) to get the powers across. We briefly discussed Mark D. White’s Why I Read Superheroes, but getting into a deep dive around the intro to Ben Saunders Do the Gods Wear Capes. Very serious and thoughtful contributions from students across the class. Enlightening perspectives all around. For my part, this chapter helped me formulate what I wanted to do with the class – his phrasing “the wish that things were otherwise” became my guiding mantra. In the piece, Saunders talks about the gulf between our sense of what is and our sense of the way things ought to be. We talked a lot about Love and being one’s best self (and at times if the impossibility of that made it a problem). And like the article, I see the class as a chance to celebrate the weird and wondrous nature of superhero comics, and as Saunders says, particularly the comics of the 30s to the 1970s.

Class 4: 

READ either Peter Coogan’s chapter 3 The Definition of a Superhero AND/OR The Hero Defines the Genre… (both are by Coogan and nearly the same text, the second one is a bit more concise, the first has more pictures from comics as well as a few more examples…), and sketch out some notes, thoughts, reflections and any questions you have. POST that here as an image or text for class discussion. 

You’ve READ Action Comics #1 (The first appearance of Superman!) – not try to summarize it in 3 panels. Either redraw 3 key moments as they appear, invent your own drawing for your three moments, whatever works for you! 

READINGS: 

  • Peter Coogan The Definition of Superheroes