{"product_id":"9781496830548","title":"Mysterious Travelers","description":"\u003cp\u003eSteve Ditko (1927-2018) is one of the most important contributors to American comic books. As the cocreator of Spider-Man and sole creator of Doctor Strange, Ditko made an indelible mark on American popular culture. Mysterious Travelers: Steve Ditko and the Search for a New Liberal Identity resets the conversation about his heady and powerful work. Always inward facing, Ditko's narratives employed superhero and supernatural fantasy in the service of self-examination, and with characters like the Question, Mr. A, and Static, Ditko turned ordinary superhero comics into philosophic treatises. Many of Ditko's philosophy-driven comics show a clear debt to ideas found in Ayn Rand's Objectivism. Unfortunately, readers often reduce Ditko's work to a mouthpiece for Rand's vision. Mysterious Travelers unsettles this notion.   In this book, Zack Kruse argues that Ditko's philosophy draws on a complicated network of ideas that is best understood as mystic liberalism. Although Ditko is not the originator of mystic liberalism, his comics provide a unique window into how such an ideology operates in popular media. Examining selections of Ditko's output from 1953 to 1986, Kruse demonstrates how Ditko's comics provide insight into a unique strand of American thought that has had a lasting impact.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"UNIVERSITY PRESS OF MISSISSIPPI","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51393278411026,"sku":"9781496830548","price":70.06,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0508\/3093\/4173\/files\/9781496830548.jpg?v=1774736775","url":"https:\/\/bargainbooks.com.au\/products\/9781496830548","provider":"Bargain Books Australia","version":"1.0","type":"link"}