Michael Critzer Haunts and Inspires in the Middle of Eternity

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Now, onto our next author interview…

As only he can do, Michael Critzer delivers a truly offbeat story to our upcoming anthology, Elsewhere in the Middle of Eternity. However, his love of superheroes is clearly evident in his second tale. Let’s chat with him about that.

As a fiction writer, Michael Critzer’s work appears in a growing number or literary magazines and genre anthologies. His first book, Heroic Inspirations, is due out from Hero House Publishing later this year. As a cultural studies scholar, he has presented at academic conferences on the cultural and psychological roles superheroes play in our society. To that end, he is founder of the buzz-generating Iconic superhero pages on Facebook and the Iconicast Podcast. When all of that play is done, he teaches writing, rhetoric and American literature in Central Virginia. Follow him on Twitter @MichaelCritzer and on Facebook at Facebook.com/AuthorMichaelCritzer

Welcome back for another escapade into the Middle of Eternity. Once again, you’ve submitted two remarkably diverse stories with “Unboxing Anna” and “An Early Fall”. What inspired each of these?

Thanks, Phil! It’s an honor to be asked back again. I’m proud of these two stories, and they do represent the range of my writing interest. I wrote the first draft of “Unboxing Anna” while working on my MA in English. I was fascinated with psychoanalytic literary theory and was reading up on Freud and Jung. The concept of the “anima” intrigued me. In a nutshell, it’s the idea of the female in the male mind, a projection. I began thinking of how we build up an illusion of the other person in a relationship and how when relationships end, it’s usually because the person has done something to shatter that illusion. We mourn the loss of who we thought a person was more than the loss of the actual person. The illusion lives on, morphing into other relationships and so on. So I created Carl (Karl Jung anyone?) and his ex-girlfriend Anna (anima), threw in some ghost story tropes, and the story wrote itself.

“An Early Fall” was a real labor of love for me. My scholarly and creative nonfiction work focuses on superheroes and the importance of their inspiration. So I decided to put my fiction where my commentary was and see what I could write. The Blue Wonder is the epitome of an archetype I call the aspirational hero. He represents a standard to aspire to rather than the more cathartic heroes who often fail as we do. Aspirational heroes are a dying breed in superhero mythology. Characters like Superman and Wonder Woman are being written away from the archetype. Captain America is one of the very few holdouts. So it was important to me to really make the character believable and inspiring. And the best way to make a character inspiring is to show them inspire someone else. Enter Joselyn, a ten-year-old girl with autism and an out of control super power. She’s another character close to my heart as my own daughter, who is four, is autistic. I hope to be the kind of comfort and inspiration to her that the Blue Wonder is for Joselyn.

Since our last interview, you began a number of Facebook groups devoted to superheroes such as Iconic Superman, Iconic Wonder Woman, and Iconic Batman (did I miss any?). What attracts you to comic book heroes and how have you referenced this genre in pursuit of your MFA?

I’ve been obsessed with superheroes and comic books since the 1989 release of Tim Burton’s Batman. During my academic career, my interest developed onto a mythological level as well. I studied how superheroes function for our society in ways similar to the Greek or Norse gods for their respective societies and so on. I’ve presented at academic conferences on the subject. For my MFA degree, since you asked, I wrote my extended critical essay on how to write traditional heroes who always do the right thing while still making them three dimensional characters.

Preserving traditional heroes has become my platform of sorts. Around 2011, there was a shift in the character of many superheroes that favored a much darker and flawed personality and universe. Because of my research into how the characters can influence and reflect society, the change worried me. I began the Facebook pages as part of a cultural study, encouraging fans to celebrate the traditional, aspirational aspects of these characters and begin a demand for them to return to that format.

I met some great likeminded people and many came on board as page admins. Now we have pages for Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Captain Marvel, The Brave and the Bold, Spider-Man, and even Optimus Prime. And I’m sure there’ll be more to come as people volunteer with an interest to promote a character through the pages. The movement eventually led to us starting a monthly podcast entitled Iconicast.

Tell us the “origin story” of Iconicast. Where else can we find you online (blog, website, etc.)?

One of my page admins, Sierra, was a cohost on a podcast by her local comic shop. I listened to it and realized that a podcast would be an even better format to discuss our views on superheroes and cultural mythology. I grabbed Sierra, and soon Al, and we started recording every month. Those first episodes are pretty awful in terms of sound quality, but I learned as I went along. We’ve been blessed to have a lot of great guests on the show as well, including artists Mauricio Abril and Des Taylor, Jim Bowers of CapedWonder.com, Brett Culp from Legends of the Knight, and the famous cosplayer and actress Valerie Perez.

The website for our podcast is IconicastPodcast.com. click past the welcome page to find a list of all our Facebook pages on the left. We’re also on iTunes for those Apple heads out there.

Where else have you been published and what are you working on next?

I’ve been published in a few online lit magazines, including The Rind and Golden Walkman. But other than some college publications, you were the first editor brave enough to put me in print! I’m excited about Elsewhere in the Middle of Eternity. I’m also excited about my first book due out at the end of this year from Hero House Publishing. It’s a nonfiction book on the inspiration of superheroes called, appropriately, Heroic Inspirations. You can follow the updates on my author page, facebook.com/AuthorMichaelCritzer or my twitter @MichaelCritzer. I also have a blog/website at MichaelCritzer.com which I’ll use to promote my new YouTube channel. I’ll be featuring superhero collectible reviews, film, and comic analyses every week. In some ways it will be like the college class I teach on American Heroes condensed into short video format.

What does Michael Critzer do when he isn’t writing?

Professionally, I teach writing and literature courses at James Madison University. And I’m a freelance ghost and copywriter on the side.

Outside of work, like any studious aspiring writer, I read. Whether novels, short stories, comics, or audio books, I try to read a good portion each day. Most of the time, though, I’m playing with my beautiful daughter Alyssa and engaging in some form of superhero related media.