Kapow! Stan Lee Is Co-Teaching a Free Comic Book MOOC, and You Can Enroll for Free

“Why did super­heroes first arise in 1938 and expe­ri­ence what we refer to as their ‘Gold­en Age’ dur­ing World War II?” “How have com­ic books, pub­lished week­ly since the mid-1930’s, mir­rored a chang­ing Amer­i­can soci­ety, reflect­ing our mores, slang, fads, bias­es and prej­u­dices?” “Why was the com­ic book indus­try near­ly shut down in the McCarthy Era of the 1950’s?” And “When and how did com­ic book art­work become accept­ed as a true Amer­i­can art form as indige­nous to this coun­try as jazz?”

All of these ques­tions … and more … will be explored in an upcom­ing MOOC (Mas­sive Open Online Course) co-taught by the leg­endary com­ic book artist, Stan Lee. He will be joined by experts from the Smith­son­ian, and Michael Uslan, the pro­duc­er of the Bat­man movies who’s also con­sid­ered the first instruc­tor to have taught an accred­it­ed course on com­ic book folk­lore at any uni­ver­si­ty.

The course called The Rise of Super­heroes and Their Impact On Pop Cul­ture will be offered through edX, start­ing on May 5th. You can enroll in the course for free today.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Over 22,000 Gold­en & Sil­ver Age Com­ic Books from the Com­ic Book Plus Archive

Free Com­ic Books Turns Kids Onto Physics: Start With the Adven­tures of Niko­la Tes­la

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

Down­load Pink Floyd’s 1975 Com­ic Book Pro­gram for The Dark Side of the Moon Tour