Identity Loss and the Origins of Superheroic Teachers in Comics

This chapter is the first in a trio under the banner of The Split and Secret Identities of Superheroic Teachers in Comics, and proceeds from the subject of identity conflict in the context of teacher education, inquiring what precisely it is about teaching that seems to instill such powerful fears and anxieties of losing and forgetting important parts of the self. This inquiry is then conveyed to the context of early superheroic teachers (from the 1940s)—Lady Fairplay, The Liberator, and Captain Wonder—exploring the representational strategies that comics use to visualize internal processes of identity fragmentation.