Is the Clown Prince of Crime anything special without his heroic nemesis? No. It’s exciting to see the Joker onscreen because of the problems he creates for Batman. How will Batman escape this death trap, or foil this scheme, or inspire the citizens of Gotham to rise above the fear and cruelty that the Joker would reduce them to? Without the Caped Crusader to combat him, the Joker is just another violent man who finds himself funnier than anyone else does. Don’t we have enoug

The easiest way to illustrate how family life is bolstered by vowed religious is to point to how so many consecrated people serve the needy. There are whole religious congregations who conceive of their charism as intimately bound up with babies and birth. The Sisters of Life are a community of women religious centered in New York. When I asked them how they would characterize their mission, they said, “The Sisters of Life are Catholic religious Sisters who believe and witnes

I reflect on Stan Lee's life and legacy at First Things: "It was impossible not to look up to Stan Lee if you were a nerdy kid (like me) interested in creating fantastical universes (like me). Books like How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way interspersed comics-drawing tutorials with color commentary from Stan Lee. I got one of those books in a Christmas stocking when I was maybe ten and traced the figures in it to generate my very first superheroes. His personality was so strong

"We will not make our culture healthier or our children safer by treating the sexual assault of prisoners as normal, or funny, or just. And, more broadly, we can’t be satisfied granting human dignity to some people while casually dehumanizing others. Prisoners, even those who have done terrible things, are not “monsters” we can use (rhetorically or literally) like subhuman beasts. Wishing rape-as-punishment (even on rapists) is itself wicked and contributes to our broken pris

“Star Wars: The Last Jedi is an excellent addition to the Star Wars canon, precisely because it is not cowed by its predecessors. Instead, the new film is a surprising, occasionally subversive continuation of the saga—and a film designed to get at the heart of what makes Star Wars stories appealing, what makes them matter. It seems director Rian Johnson set out to make the essential Star Wars film, and in many ways he succeeded. The film moves forward the stories of classic c

"When I was learning about Catholicism, as an Anglican in the process of converting, Mary was a sticking point. Yes, of course Jesus’s mother was “full of grace,” as the angel had said, and therefore worthy of admiration. But why did the Church teach that she was conceived without original sin and received bodily into heaven? These teachings seemed to owe more to popular piety than to the Scriptures, or even the Church Fathers. Mary’s Assumption was defined as an article of f

I stopped by First Things to record a podcast on Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire. Julia Yost and I discuss the moral universe of the book series (and the HBO show based on it), with some digressions into the neoconservatism of dragons and the way Westeros's decadent elite parallel those in power in our world. Brace yourselves, Demographic Winter is Coming. Listen to the episode here: #FirstThings #Television #Literature #Fantasy #Podcast

Polyamorists should rebel not against marital fidelity but against filial parsimony. Having many children represents a real chance to fall i

"Zombies, as popularized by George Romero in Night of the Living Dead and currently depicted on The Walking Dead, are mindless, rotting, infected corpses that hunger for human flesh. The classic zombie’s movement is invariably described as “shambling.” Jesus, by contrast, is trampling down death by death, as the Orthodox Paschal troparion puts it. The accounts in the Gospels of Jesus’s post-Resurrection appearances suggest that his body is not decaying and necrotic but glorio

In the second segment of this First Things podcast, my wife Leah and I sit down with Julia Yost to discuss the film Logan and what is says about faith, fatherhood, and the evolution of the superhero genre. We talk about the way the Western-influenced film depicts superheroes not a power fantasies but as broken people trying to do good. Hear why we think this was a moving last hurrah for Hugh Jackman and Wolverine. Listen to the segment at 21:27 in the track below: #Podcast #F