Brandon Vickerd’s “…he was turned to steel, in the great magnetic fields…” is a larger than life figure inspired by the Marvel Comic Book character Iron Man and the Black Sabbath song of the same name.
Vickerd uses this figure to examine the archetype of the self sacrificing hero – a character that peoples the culturally constructed myths of many western mythologies and typically revolves around the theme of heroic self sacrifice and the subsequent rejection and inhumanity of society towards its saviour. He uses the story of Iron Man as an updated version of this heroic narrative and a way to examine our readiness to relate to these cultural myths and their part in the socialization of the individual.
