Jeff Kripal's 2011 study of American superhero comics as secular expressions of religious and paranormal experience — arguing that comics authors like Jack Kirby, Alan Moore, and Stan Lee drew on their own anomalous experiences to create characters (X-Men mutants, Dr. Manhattan, Silver Surfer) that encode genuine mystical insight.
Argues that popular culture is not merely entertainment but a medium through which paranormal and mystical experiences enter public discourse in displaced form — the mutant who discovers powers they didn't know they had is the secular version of the mystic's awakening to capacities beyond ordinary human life.
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