A cartoon, followed by a feature film, is a movie theatre tradition. Today we start with Captain America: The Bitter Taste of Defeat. This is available in 2 parts.
Just in case you feel like you want to 'swing through the air', watch this episode of Spider-Man called To Cage A Spider!
Are you ready for a Spidey snack? Try the recipe for Spider-Man cupcakes from comicconfamily.com!
Finish the day with this early Batman and Robin movie!
All of our comics below are available at the Digital Comic Museum. Just click on the linked character's name and go to the first issue of the comic. As you read the comic books, just look for the small numbers at the bottom of the page with the arrows to turn the pages. There is no need to download in order to read the comic book.
We begin our comic book reading with a classic favorite Brenda Starr! Brenda St
arr is a reporter in Chicago. She was created and drawn by a woman cartoonist. While the character is not a superhero, she is a 'modern' woman and has many adventures in exotic places.
Our se
cond selection is a more traditional superhero - Wonder Boy! Wonder Boy has the strength of 1,000 men. He is an alien who fell to Earth from the planet Viro. He decided to help the people of Earth fight crime and evil.
Our third comic book selection is less superhero and more legend. Missionaries who worked in the lumber camps of the northern areas of the Midwest were often referred to as sky pilots. "Sky pilots" were not people who flew airplanes, but rather who guided the
spirituality in the camps. In this comic series, John Hawks is a fictional fighting missionary in the northern lumber fields and is known as the Sky Pilot!
Our first exhibit is located in Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. It is the Marvel: Universe of Super Heroes exhibit! This exhibit consists of more than 300 items including comic book pages, sculptures, interactive displays, costumes and props from Marvel films. Look for characters such as Spider-Man, Black Panther, Hulk, and Captain Marvel and see how they have developed over the past 80 years.
Photo from Marvel: Universe of super Heroes at the Museum of Science and Industry Chicago, IL
This exhibit travels and so you can also view it at The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan! Watch close and you will get a different perspective from our first video!
Our final Midwest exhibit is the Hall of Heroes Superhero Museum in Elkhart, Indiana! This entire museum is devoted to the 80 years of superhero history. It contains over 70,000 comic books, 10,000 toys, figures and props, and 100+ pieces of original comic art pages and animation cells. It contains a replica of the Bat Cave set from the 1960's T.V. series, the shield used in the film Captain America: The First Avenger, and the Marvel Superhero Express tin train. You may have to watch this tour more than once. There is a lot to see!
Photo of Hall of Heroes Superhero Museum in Elkhart, Indiana promotional poster with Spiderman. Source: Hall of Heroes Superhero Museum, Google images
At the end of the day, it is always nice to finish with a puzzle. If you have ever seen A Christmas Story, you have watched the main character, Ralphie, send off for a decoder ring to solve a puzzle. This was a popular type of puzzle in the "Golden Ag
e of Comics". Just in case you come across a decoding puzzle, here is one to practice on from the Nothing but Comics site! Read the article to learn how to solve these puzzles!
Photo from Wikimedia Commons. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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