mental illness

“The best moments in reading,” Alan Bennett writes in The History Boys, “are when you come across something -- a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things -- which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.” These “hands” can be found in any form of literature, from novels to poetry to journalism to, yes, comic books. One such hand reaches forth from the pages of X-Men Legacy, published by Marvel and written by Simon Spurrier. Instead of being an action-packed affair, this book was a character study; a very literal glimpse into the mind of a young man searching for his place in both the mutant world and the world at large.

"I am not a superhero," begins Laura Burke in the video for "Superhero," her spoken word poem about living with mental illness. Burke, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2009, describes the experience through the lens of superhero stories, where people's lives are often turned upside down as they are faced with entirely new ways of seeing the world and seemingly insurmoun