In times of social and political instability, childhood performance of superheroic feats provides unifying cultural fictions for individual, family, and community to reckon with national trauma. Koni Zhang (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) examines the Japanese manga Barefoot Gen, an atomic bombing survival tale that adopts superhero visual elements and narrative structure yet denies individual salvation, arguing that survival and witness—not triumphalist victory—constitute true heroism against state-powered violence. Rose Padilla (University of Texas at Austin) theorizes girlhood play as superheroic nation-building in the post-World War II Philippines using Mars Ravelo and Nestor Redondo's Darna, a Filipino nationalist fiction that imagines play and superheroes as analogs for post-war reconstruction and reckoning of trauma. Through an examination of Batman comics, Justine Trinh (Washington State University) looks at the runaway figure of Jason Todd to show the instability of the family. Following his resurrection, Jason's character demonstrates the inability to move on from death, as both Jason and Bruce label each other as failures within the family. These presentations collectively reimagine superhero comics as a renewable cultural resource to negotiate traumatic childhood events in the 20th century, the present day, and beyond.
