The Provocateurs: Superhero Porn / Hookers for Jesus

Dr Hailey Austin (Abertay University) undresses the secret origins of superhero comics, revealing how 19th-century nude photography and 1920s erotic pulp magazines created iconic superhero characters like Superman, Wonder Woman and Spider-Man, and influenced their revealing spandex costumes. Dr Jo Thor (The University of Edinburgh) journeys from Annie Lobert’s Hookers for Jesus ministry in modern Las Vegas to Victorian Scotland’s Magdalene asylums – prayer, work, refuge. Were they pioneering social care for prostitutes, or moral control? What should we borrow today?