Harry Brod is a professor of philosophy and religion at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, Iowa. He wrote a paper titled “The People of the Comic Book: Jewish Men and the Creation of Comic Book Superheroes.”

Danny Fingeroth is a former editor and writer at Marvel Comics and author of Superman on the Couch: What Superheroes Really Tell Us About Ourselves and Our Society and The Rough Guide to Graphic Novels. Fingeroth has taught comics writing in New York and Italy.

Read a Jan. 22, 2006, New York Times story about “The 99”.”The 99″ are Muslim comic book superheroes and the creation of an American-educated artist, Naif al-Mutawa. Mutawa’s characters battle evil, and each character represents one of the 99 qualities that Muslims attribute to God.

Read a Dallas Morning News story from 2002, posted at Beliefnet.com, about a character from the Fantastic Four announcing he is Jewish.

Read a July 1, 2005, story in Episcopal Life about religious themes in the comics.

Read this July 10, 2006, article in Books & Culture about the movie Superman Returns.

Leslie E. Sponsel is a professor emeritus at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He specializes in religion and ecology and has written about Buddhism and the environment.

J. Baird Callicott is a professor in the philosophy and religious studies department at the University of North Texas in Denton. His expertise includes ecological ethics. He has written several books, including In Defense of the Land Ethic: Essays in Environmental Philosophy and Earth’s Insights: A Multicultural Survey of Ecological Ethics From the Mediterranean Basin to […]

Frederick Denny is a professor emeritus of religious studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. His research interests include contemporary Islam, religion and ecology and religion and human rights.