2012’s The Avengers featured a broad range of talents and divine gifts — see Thor, for example. After its release, it became the fastest movie to gross $1 billion and the third highest-grossing film of all-time, at $1.51 billion.

Michael Weingrad is the first full-time professor of Jewish studies at Portland State University in Oregon. He is an expert on modern Jewish literature and culture.

Man of Steel is a 2013 motion picture starring Henry Cavill as Superman. This reboot of the Superman series coincided with the Superman comic’s 75th anniversary.

Judith Katz is an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Among her areas of expertise is representation of Jews in the arts and popular culture.

The Sci Fi Channel’s reality show Who Wants to Be a Superhero? ran from 2006-2007. The show featured average folks who bring their own costume and character and compete to win a prize as a true superhero. As the promotional materials said, “No one will be asked to perform feats of impossible strength; our superheroes will be […]

The NBC drama Heroes ran from 2006 to 2010. The program recounts the stories of regular people around the world who discover that they have superpowers and how this affects their lives and the lives of those around them.

Julian Henri Preisler is an archivist and genealogist in the Eastern Panhandle region of West Virginia. He formerly ran a website about West Virginia Jewish history.

Jack Kugelmass is an anthropology professor at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where he is also director of its Jewish studies center. He specializes in American and European Jewry, Israel and Jews in New York.

Jonathan Hess is director of the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Its faculty members are drawn from the humanities and social sciences.