The Superhero Project: X Global Meeting

"Supervillains & Anti-Heroes"

Friday 4th to Sunday 6th September 2026

Shravya Aradhyam

University of East Anglia

Killer Smiles: Joker and Gothic Monstrosity.

The Joker was introduced in 1940 by writer Bill Finger and artists Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson. The team was looking to introduce a criminal who was a match for the Batman and Robin’s skills, and so they created the Joker, inspired by an amusement park emblem, Conrad Veidt in The Man Who Laughs (1928) and a playing card given to Bob Kane by Jerry Robinson. While the Joker has had multiple appearances on screen - television and film - since the 1960s, he has always appeared as the opposing force that the Batman encounters. The film Joker (2019) looks at this character from a different angle. It places the mythos of the Joker at the centre of its narrative, making the case for the Joker being protagonist Arthur Fleck’s only escape from his torturous reality. The film thus enables a discourse on monstrosity, asking of its viewers who is truly monstrous in a world where everyone is monstrous?

Such narratives have been a part of popular culture since the 1700s, with the Gothic mode predominantly examining ideas of monstrosity, grotesqueness, and the barbaric (Punter 2). As much as the monster signified ‘ugliness, irrationality and unnaturalness’, it also served a critical and moral function, displaying or cautioning against immoral behaviour (Botting 204-5).

This paper examines the various ways in which Joker displays this Gothic monstrosity. Using examples across multiple eras of Gothic literature, from Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley, to The Man Who Laughs (1869) by Victor Hugo and beyond, this paper uncovers in detail what is truly meant by monstrosity, and how Joker is placed in this legacy of monsters.

Keywords: Film Studies, Superhero, Joker, Gothic Literature, Monster.

Luke Billings

University College Jersey

Transcending the Shadow through the Portrayal of the Anti-Hero: Birdman, Batman '89 and the Unconscious Hulk.

In 2014’s multi-Oscar-winning psychological drama Birdman, Michael Keaton plays Riggan Thomson, a commercially successful yet artistically unfulfilled actor, globally recognised for his portrayal of the superhero Birdman.

The film follows Riggan as he prepares and ultimately opens a Broadway adaptation of a short story by Raymond Carver. At its core is his search for personal meaning through a turn toward grassroots “meaningful” art. Yet this effort is continually undermined by the antagonistic force of his own ego, shaped by decades of stardom as a superhero lead. This conflict appears through visions and apparent paranormal abilities experienced by Riggan, presented as projections of the Birdman figure. Crucially, this figure is not something external, but Riggan himself as he once appeared in his Birdman films—fully formed, costumed, and speaking from within his unconscious mind. It is his former on-screen persona, now internalised and given voice, functioning as a clear manifestation of the shadow. Carrying the authority and identity of that cinematic role, it blurs the boundary between performance and self. Riggan’s struggle, therefore, is not simply one of breakdown, but reflects an ongoing struggle for transcendence of the shadow through its confrontation, as the boundary between ego and unconscious begins to dissolve.

In Jungian terms, this conflict can be understood as an encounter with the shadow—the repressed and often unacknowledged aspects of the psyche that challenge the ego’s sense of control. The process of confronting and integrating this shadow is central to psychological transcendence, a movement beyond the limitations of the ego toward a more unified self. Directed by Mexican auteur and master of the human psychological drama, Alejandro Iñárritu, Birdman is a mesmerising and raw arthouse film that broke through the mainstream barrier to win Oscars for both Best Picture and Best Director categories, securing its place within the contemporary cultural landscape.

Alongside its narrative, the film operates through a parallel meta-narrative, most clearly reflected in Michael Keaton’s role in 1989’s Batman, a genre-defining and commercially successful superhero film that provides a clear real-world parallel to Riggan’s past. A further meta-layer emerges through Ed Norton’s portrayal of Mike Shiner, Riggan’s on-stage rival, whose attempts to dominate the production generate friction and contribute to Riggan’s descent into shadow-based disorder. This dynamic echoes a set of behaviours Norton himself was accused of during his time playing the Hulk. Birdman thus presents overlapping narrative and meta-narrative layers, in which the events of the script reflect the lived experiences of its actors within a broader social consciousness. At their core, these layers centre on the anti-hero archetype, visible both in Riggan and in the role played by Keaton in Batman, as well as in Mike Shiner and the role played by Norton as the Hulk. In each case, these figures act heroically yet remain shaped by the darker forces that define them, leaving them unable to be fully recognised as heroes and entangled in a fractured, often traumatised ego

Keywords: Batman '89, Batman, Hulk, Jungian Psychology, Birdman, Edward Norton, Michael Keaton.

Torsten Caeners

University of Duisburg-Essen

"Let's face it; this is not the worst thing you've caught me doing" (Tony Stark) - The Derridean Pharmakon as an anti-heroic Function in the dichotomous Dynamics of the Superhero and the Supervillain.

The Anti-Hero is a concept that is inherently unstable, attaching itself, as it does, to the notion of the

“hero”, a character archetype that evolves with each new generation and iteration. Simultaneously, the anti-hero also, by virtue of it positing itself against (anti) the hero, finds itself in the vicinity of the villain. Any definition of the antihero is thus forced to contend with trying to differentiate itself from both hero and villain, a paradoxical impossibility.

At the same time, the anti-hero also exerts a gravitational pull towards villains and heroes that, depending on the demands of the narrative and the changing of times, may find themselves becoming anti-heroes. Because of their fundamental liminality, anti-heroes question seemingly stable concepts they encounter, not only “hero” and “villain,” but also justice, truth, morality, democracy and more. The anti-heroes power does not lie in their being anti-heroes, but in the function they fulfil within the narrative and cultural contexts within which they appear and exert agency.

In my paper, I will re-interpret the concept of the anti-hero as a function, the anti-heroic, and, by utilizing Derrida’s notion of the pharmakon as elaborated in “Plato’s Pharmacy” I will show the oscillating function of the anti-heroic in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As the pharmakon can be both remedy and poison, so the anti-heroic can function as both hero and villain. I will look at Tony Stark as a prime example where the anti-heroic emerges as a major aspect of his character.

Keywords: Hero, Villain, Anti-Hero, Derrida, Tony Stark, MCU, Pharmakon

Ritika Chhabra

Independent Scholar

From Hero to Threat: Unstable Female Heroism and the Figure of the Witch in Contemporary Superhero Cinema

In contemporary adaptations of comic books to scripted media, there has been an increase in relatively more complex characters whose character trajectories frequently destabilise conventional forms of patriarchy (Madrid, 2009; Nicholson, 2017). Moreover, there has also been a rise in female heroines who destabilise from heroism into forms of anti-villainy or perceived villainy. This paper examines this pattern through the case of two Marvel superheroines in films: Wanda Maximoff in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Jean Grey in the X-Men films. While both these characters begin as heroic characters (in a way) aligned with collective protection, their narratives gradually reposition them as existential threats through emotional excess, psychic power, and narrative fragmentation.

Drawing on the concept of the “monstrous-feminine” (Creed, 1993) in feminist film theory, and the instability of identity in gender performativity (Butler, 1988), this paper argues that despite being female superheroes in the traditional sense, these two characters also reconfigure the cultural figure of the witch as a site of excessive and destabilising female power. In both cases, supernatural or psychic ability functions as a narrative mechanism through which trauma, emotional excess, and identity disruption are externalised into spectacle and villainy, aligning with broader patterns in trauma studies, and monster and fantasy cinema (Caruth, 1996; Clover, 1992). Wanda Maximoff’s arc frames grief as a catalyst for reality distortion, producing a shift from a sympathetic protagonist to a villain grounded in

emotional justification. Jean Grey’s transformation, albeit on different terms, also depicts psychic power as a destabilising force that fragments identity and undermines agency. Both these representations reflect what Mulvey (1975) identifies as the positioning of female figures as sites of cinematic anxiety and control.

Keeping that in mind, this paper ultimately argues that the reconfiguration of these characters through the figure of the witch within the superhero context reveals a persistent limitation within superhero narratives, that of the difficulty of sustaining powerful and traumatised female figures as stable heroes. Unresolved trauma becomes narratively intertwined with excess and instability, re-coding female power as threat. Within this framework, the movement from heroism to villainy is not incidental, but structural, positioning such power as something that is often rendered dangerous.

Keywords: Female Heroism, Monstrous-Feminine, Witch Archetype, Trauma, Identity

Priel Cohanim

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

“I’ll Destroy Everything … Including Myself”: Tomura Shigaraki and the Critique of American Superhero Storytelling in Kohei Horikoshi’s My Hero Academia

This paper examines the representation of the villain Tomura Shigaraki in Kōhei Horikoshi’s manga My Hero Academia as a critique of legacy-driven storytelling practices in American superhero comics.

The American production model of superhero comics relies on authors and artists eventually passing the responsibility for producing a superhero’s narratives to other contributors. This form of storytelling restricts comics contributors to these characters’ established histories, relationships, and legacies. As a result, American superheroes are viewed as iconic spectacles, while comic-book villains often function as iconic foils, thematically complementing their counterpart heroes’ philosophies across decades of publication.

Yet, the proliferation of superhero media in recent years has given rise to a global counter-movement of narratives that resist the American tradition of superhero comics. Horikoshi's My Hero Academia not only parodies iconic features of American superheroes, but also provides a modern reinterpretation of superhero comics that is unbound by tradition. More specifically, my paper argues that the manga’s villain, Tomura Shigaraki, challenges the American comics industry’s overreliance on legacy in storytelling by highlighting a tension between production models of American comics and Japanese manga.

To explore this tension, my essay juxtaposes Tomura with another major character—All Might—who functions as an abstract parody of the American superhero icon. I claim that while All Might’s superpower, “One for All,” represents the notion of “legacy” common in the production of American superhero comics, Tomura’s “All for One” alludes to the Japanese model of manga authorship where a single mangaka is in control of a story that has no limiting ties to any narrative histories or canon

authored by other creators. Thus, while comic-book villains typically function as foils to specific heroes and their philosophies, Tomura becomes a metatextual foil to storytelling practices themselves, commenting on the creativity and freedom involved in contemporary comics production.

Keywords: Manga, Superhero, Villain, Storytelling, Legacy, Authorship, Comics Production

Laura Crossley

Bournemouth University

“You Can Do Something About it Now, Or Live With it Forever”: Regret, Redemption and Restorative Justice in Thunderbolts* (2025)

Thunderbolts* (2025) brought Phase 5 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to a close and introduced a new team to replace the disbanded Avengers. This new team of antiheroes is united by trauma: human experimentation, torture, and brainwashing have shaped their violent pasts and limited their choices. When Bucky Barnes, himself a survivor of decades of torture as the brainwashed Winter Soldier, recruits this group to confront Sentry (also known as the Void), an unstable superhuman created through illegal human experimentation, he offers them something unexpected — redemption. But redemption, as Bucky insists, cannot be earned by running from the past: it requires accountability, acts of service, and reintegration into community.

These principles align with aspects of restorative justice — a framework that rehabilitates offenders through reconciliation with victims and communities rather than punitive measures. The Thunderbolts' climactic actions, focused on individual healing and community protection, appear to enact restorative justice principles. However, the team occupies a paradoxical position: they are both perpetrators seeking redemption and victims of systemic violence requiring their own form of justice.

This paper examines the ways in which the search for redemption allows the Thunderbolts to find justice for their own painful pasts. By focussing on how John Walker, Alexei Shostakov, and Bucky Barnes navigate this dual role, I argue that Thunderbolts* reframes restorative justice as bidirectional — addressing both the harm these characters have inflicted and the harm done to them. Through close analysis of their narratives, I demonstrate how the film uses restorative justice frameworks to explore questions of agency, accountability, and the possibility of reclaiming identity after systemic trauma.

Keywords: Restorative Justice, Agency, Trauma, Accountability, Redemption, Thunderbolts, Bucky Barnes, Alexei Shostakov, John Walker

Nina Fabianski

Independent Scholar

Supervillains in Marketing: Strategies and Why Supervillains Sell

“Darling, you have no idea what is possible.” – Hela, Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

The Joker, Loki, Hela, or Magneto – supervillains in superhero films are memorable, easily recognisable, and a key marketing factor in the promotion of the superhero genre. They do not only stand out as the superhero’s opponents; behind their appearance on screen, their popularity predominantly follows a marketing strategy that establishes villains as their own brand within the superhero genre. According to Adam Ardvisson, “Marketing has become less ‘bureaucratic’ and more ‘humanistic’ – better in touch with what people actually want.” (Ardvisson, Adam, Brands: Meaning and Value in Media Culture, p. 42)

Following his line of argument, and with the rise of the supervillain and their portrayal as icons, this paper explores the concepts behind two separate supervillains: Magneto and Thanos. Both occupy different positions within their own universes – two universes later joined in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) – in which they operate.

Magneto, first portrayed by Ian McKellen and later by Michael Fassbender, occupies a position between that of an anti-hero and a supervillain. His iconic reputation within the X-Men franchise is rooted in the character’s backstory, his intent for mutants and humans to coexist, his relationship with Charles, and the casting choices. Thanos, on the other hand, remains largely in the background, haunting the superheroes on screen before the final conflict in Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019). Both characters are essential to the marketing strategies of their respective franchises, embedded in a humanistic marketing approach that seeks to construct a stronger connection between the product and the (target) audience. This paper argues that anti-heroes and supervillains serve as key pull factors that promise audiences drama on screen and, in addition, drive ticket sales.

Keywords: X-Men, Avengers, Marketing Strategies, Brand Management, Media Culture

Mariano Falzone

University of Lincoln

To Kill or Not to Kill: Superheroes, Anti-Heroes, and Regeneration Through Violence.

Using the framework proposed by Lawrence and Jewett in The Myth of the American Superhero (2002) and Richard Slotkin’s studies of the mythology of the American frontier (1973-1992), particularly his concept of regeneration through violence, this study proposes a dichotomy of superheroes and antiheroes structured around the American Monomyth. The antihero has its roots

in the Puritan colonists’ time, when their “new world” was seen as besieged by the dangers and temptations of the wilderness, both in the sense of nature’s menaces and the violent conflicts with the Native Americans.

The omnipresence of Evil meant it could even lie within themselves if they were not vigilant enough. Lawrence and Jewett suggest that this is the basis of Old West and Frontier narratives. As the Enlightenment in the U.S. brought a new optimism to the post-Puritans, creating a utopia was now thought to be possible through education and hard work. Within this new paradigm, the hero of the wilderness evolved into the saint superhero, who through superior virtue and superhuman power can not only neutralise the intruding evil Other, but also maintain purity and a moral high ground in the process. In time, the frontier hero was transformed, through revisionism, into the anti-hero, as the super-hero became the vehicle of a brighter version of heroics.

To explore this hypothesis, I apply it to examples of antiheroes in superhero fictions and, more importantly, their relationships with traditional “pure” superheroes. Stories that team up or pit against one another superheroes and antiheroes interrogate the tensions between different representations of the American Monomyth. They potentially deal with the critiques of, on the one hand, the authoritarian subtext and naive idealism of superheroes, and, on the other, the violent cynicism and fascistic undertones of antiheroes.

Keywords: Anti-Heroes, Superheroes, American Monomyth, Frontier Myth, Regeneration Through Violence

Owen Farrington

Independent Scholar

Shadow of the Bat - Absolute Batman and the Legacy of the Dark Knight Returns.

2026 marks the 40th anniversary of Frank Miller, Klaus Janson and Lynn Varley’s iconic The Dark Knight Returns. This four-part epic is widely regarded as the definitive Batman comic and a series that changed the very nature of superhero storytelling forever. Its legacy can be interpreted and understood through countless comics published since that have adopted its trailblazing techniques, visual language and narrative themes, particularly when interrogating DC’s Caped Crusader. In 2026, the best-selling and most acclaimed Batman comic book is Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta’s Absolute Batman.

Alongside radically reinventing the hero for a new continuity, this project shares many thematic and stylistic parallels to Frank Miller’s work. Absolute Batman, in both its narrative, art and overarching themes, is a series defined by its relationship to The Dark Knight Returns, and can be interpreted as a modern day spiritual continuation of, and response to, Miller’s ambitious, politically-charged deconstruction of Batman.

This paper analyses how Absolute Batman exists in conversation with The Dark Knight Returns, how

Snyder and Dragotta attempt to update, critique and recontextualise the themes and iconography of Miller, Varley and Janson’s 1986 graphic novel, and what Absolute Batman’s current-day success can tell us about the enduring legacy of its legendary predecessor. This is achieved through close reading and analysis of the texts, examining interviews from creators such as Scott Snyder, Frank Miller and other notable figures and referencing the existing academic work and historiography on each title’s role in Batman’s contemporary context.

Keywords: Batman, Dark Knight Returns, Absolute Batman, Legacy.

Christian Feser

University of Duisburg-Essen

“It’s Just a Role, See, It’s Not Real”: The Mandarin as Transmedia Simulacrum

More than a decade after its release, Iron Man 3’s infamous twist around the Mandarin continues to divide opinion, and the scholarly debate around the way the MCU handled (or evaded) the question of the racial identity of the supervillain is still ongoing (cf. Youn-Heil & Mohammed 2025).

Notwithstanding the importance of such critical advances, I will try a different point of attack. I argue that the Mandarin turns from supervillain to anti-hero, and my paper wants to explore how this works. Rather than treating the supervillain as a stable identity, I will ask whether in the “Mandarin archive”, villainy is produced through the construction of reference itself. This, I believe, can most productively be done by reading the character as a simulacrum (sensu Baudrillard) whose (trans-)medial transformations react and point to successive crises of reference.

Drawing on “The Precession of Simulacra” and “Orders of Simulacra” (1983), I argue that in the earliest comics, the Mandarin occupies the position of an apparent original: he is a self-identical villain whose body seems to anchor the signs attached to him. This resembles Baudrillard’s first order, where the image still claims relation to an “original”, even if that is itself already a cultural construction. Trevor Slattery’s performance in Iron Man 3 (2013) initially appears to belong to the logic of counterfeit, since he is a “fake” Mandarin, a copy of what audiences presume to be the “real” villain. However, the movie pushes beyond simple imitation into a second-order logic: Slattery’s Mandarin is created by mass-media (through reproducible codes, managed spectacle etc.), making “the Mandarin” available as a model or a script. Furthermore, we see villainy split between Aldrich Killian as agent of violence and Trevor’s Mandarin as a “pure” simulacra villain-image without secure referent.

A similar logic is already prefigured in the rather self-reflexive Invincible Iron Man Annual #1 (2011), where the Mandarin forces a director to produce a biopic that will stabilise his mythic origin. Here, his villainy is the violent production and policing of the relation between sign and referent. By the time Shang-Chi (2021) introduces Wenwu (and re-introduces Slattery), the Mandarin archive has entered the third order of simulacra: Wenwu may appear to restore depth through his character’s origin story, but this occurs only after the sign has already become autonomous from any referent. Finally, the sign “Mandarin” becomes fully detachable from villainy: in the recent series Wonder Man (2026), Trevor exists not as villain but as an increasingly anti-heroic figure who, in a final redemptive act, reprises the

Mandarin persona not to exact terror, but to save the superhero protagonist.

Keywords: Baudrillard, Iron Man 3, The Mandarin, Trevor Slattery, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Simulacrum, Wonder Man

Alex Fitch

University of Brighton

Subversive Identities, Families and Relationships in The Joker Movies

The three Joker films - two starring Joaquin Phoenix and an unofficial LGBTQI+ variant - comment on how relationships affect monstrous behaviour. Joker (2019) sees the titular anti-hero abused in his youth by his mother’s boyfriend which, combined with a shared father with Bruce Wayne, informs the character’s trauma and damaged psyche. This leads to self-delusion and murder in the first film, and a shared misconceived reality with fellow asylum inmate in sequel Joker: Folie à Deux (2024).

A recent unauthorised film - The People’s Joker (2022) – reimagines many DC Comics figures as trans and LGBTQI+ characters, making parallels between the superheroes’ and villains’ ‘civilian’ identities with alternate gender identities. This includes a revisionist animated adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns as a transmedia flashback. These films show subversive reactions to environments the figures struggle to fit into, noting queer comic characters’: "monstrous powers... (and) multiple, contradictory identities and affiliations" (Fawaz, 2016: 11).

The Joker has often appeared as “a Queer Trickster” (Richardson, 2021: ch. 2), and this paper examines how while these films disrupt family and romantic relationships, they feature increasingly queer versions of his on/off love interest Harley Quinn – played in Folie à Deux by bisexual actress / singer Lady Gaga. One can note comic books': "formal queerness... of gender-performance- attachment in a misogynist world" (Scott, 2022: 66) with the 2022 film’s gender flipping, and subversion of previous incarnations, commenting on both transphobia and misogyny in society. Considering Gaga’s notorious 2010 ‘meat dress’ an example of “radical, feminist protest” (Iddon and Marshall, 2014: Introduction) linked to the public persona of the actress, and Vera Drew’s trans Joker wishing to derive powers from submersion in oestrogen, the female leads in the two recent films reflect on “the importance of gender in the construction of her monstrosity” (Creed, 1993: 3).

Keywords: Joker, LGBTQI+ Representation, Gender-Performance, Fan Films, Supervillain Relationships

Vincent M. Gaine

Lancaster University

Brightburn: A True American Hero

The superhero genre is inherently a hybrid. Incorporating action, science fiction, fantasy and crime, the superhero arose from the sea of genres, much as the Antichrist is foretold to arise from the sea of politics in The Omen (1976). Fittingly, when The Omen is cross-bred with director Richard Donner’s subsequent film, Superman (1978), the result is a hybrid of superhero and horror: Brightburn (David Yaroevsky, 2019).

I argue that the overt hybridisation of Brightburn facilitates a critical reading of the superhero genre. From its Kansas setting to an alliteratively named central figure to a parallel between puberty and superpowers, Brightburn openly declares its superhero credentials. Yet it also displays horror elements including visceral bodily injuries and a mood of escalating dread. Drawing on genre theory including Grant (2007, 2012, 2015), Altman (1999) and Reynolds (1994) as well as specific studies by Panjeta (2012), Hantke (2010) and Decker (2021), I argue that Brightburn’s positioning of extraordinary abilities within horrific set pieces satirises the idealistic and naïve fundamentals of superhero cinema. Whereas the superhero film typically relies on convenient notions of straightforward morality, exemplified by Superman’s mantra of ‘truth, justice and the American Way’, Brightburn offers the alternative view of superpowers as horrific.

Furthermore, Brightburn’s seemingly radical alternative may be more consistent with ‘the American Way’. Raised with ‘traditional American’ values, the super antihero Brandon Bryer emerges from a sea of fundamentally American politics including exceptionalism, bootstrap mentality and authoritarianism, a superhero for an era that rewards entitled and narcissistic individuals. Brightburn therefore presents a hero of, from and fit for contemporary America through its genre hybridisation, critiquing fundamental aspects of the superhero mythology and US ideology, and illustrating what may be a (horrifically) genuine ‘American Way’.

Keywords: Hybrid Genre, Horror, Brightburn, Satire, American Way, Entitlement, Ideology

Nicolas Gaspers

University of Dortmund

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly – Structural Significance of Supervillain Aesthetics

The aesthetics of supervillains have evolved into a distinct cultural and media phenomenon. They encompass visual, narrative, and symbolic strategies employed to create characters defined by the transgression of power, boundary-crossing, social marginalization, and problematic clichés. Analyzing supervillain aesthetics, determining their cultural function within popular media, and decoding their often subtle signifiers remains a crucial task for contemporary superhero research, especially since modern supervillains no longer function exclusively as foils for heroic figures; instead, they increasingly offer complex points of identification and spaces for audience reflection on their own terms.

In terms of methodology, this paper examines the significance and application of character analysis as a fundamental tool in superhero studies. While research constantly interrogates superheroes and villains, it rarely addresses how a systematic analysis of the character as a distinct entity actually operates. I will explore characteristic design elements—such as extravagant costumes, distinct color palettes, spatial staging, props, and scenic design—as well as their aesthetic interplay. This will show how the construction of supervillains is a highly stylised process that visually communicates core concepts of power, participation, justice, beauty ideals, and normativity. Concurrently, these designs

generate a compelling ambivalence between fascination and threat.

Supervillain aesthetics do not merely serve to characterize antagonistic role concepts; they also function as a means to symbolically negotiate central societal conflicts enacted by superheroes and villains alike. Themes such as technological control, political power, social exclusion, or identity crises are rendered visible through the staging of the supervillain. Ultimately, the character functions as a projection screen and a cultural distillation of the anxieties and desires of modern societies. Operating as a complex cultural sign system, they convey emotional, political, and social meanings. The resulting synthesis of attraction and repulsion constitutes a key element of their enduring fascination.

Keywords: Supervillains, Technological Control, Political Power, Social Exclusion, Identity Crisis

Danny Graydon

Richmond American University London

Fear & Loathing in San Futuro: Marshal Law and The Anti-Hero As Extreme Satire of The Superhero Genre

Published in late 1987 in the immediate wake of the seismic tonal changes wrought by both The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen (both DC Comics), the satirical Marshal Law took the superhero genre’s abrupt elevation to self-importance to task with singular and wholly uncompromising ferocity. Created by renowned British creators Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill – foundational talents of celebrated sci-fi comic 2000AD – and set in a dystopian future where a Vietnam-like conflict fought by superpowered soldiers has led to vast influx of traumatised, violent and aimless ‘heroes’ who are policed by a fascistic, Dirty Harry-esque lawman (himself a superpowered war veteran) with an undisguised hatred for “caped vermin”.

Gleefully ultra-violent, ribald in its humour and with a determined lack of reverence for its satirical targets, Marshal Law utilises anti-hero tropes to fuel Mills indignation about what he saw as the denigration of the hero concept and the troubling pseudo-messianic status of superhero characters, while also exploring political issues such as US military intervention and corporate corruption. The original series, Fear and Loathing, pitched Law against The Public Spirit, a startlingly cynical take on Superman who can now be seen as a direct precursor for Homelander in The Boys, while 1990’s Kingdom of The Blind presented a blunt and highly controversial take on Batman that was condemned within the comics industry as “mean spirited”.

This paper will argue that Marshal Law’s biting satire provided a vital and necessary pressure valve for the superhero’s rapidly-changing landscape and increasing sanctification in the late 1980’s, while also providing the satirical dynamics for future coverage of the genre most notably replicated in The Boys (both the comic and television adaptation). More crucially, Marshal Law’s flamboyant exaggeration illuminated the inevitable effects of the genre’s hard lurch towards violent realism, exposing the limits of the comfortingly reductive moralism that originally defined the superhero concept.

Keywords: Marshal Law, satire, parody, anti-hero, superhero, violence

Sasza Hinton

Queen’s University

Disembodied Villainy: Colonial Critique and Northern Realities in Super Shamou (1987)

While Adrian Dingle’s Inuit demigoddess, Nelvana of the Northern Lights, is often considered one of the earliest Canadian superheroes based on Inuit mythology, it is Barney Pattunguyak and Peter Tapatai’s Super Shamou that truly brought a uniquely northern perspective to the forefront. Beginning as an experimental piece for the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation (IBC) in 1987, Super Shamou aimed to counter white, southern superhero television content like The Greatest American Hero (1981-1983), Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends (1981-1986), and Super Friends (1980-1983) by placing an Inuk man in the central role.

Though the series was extremely limited, with only three of the 150 recorded episodes making it to air and only one comic ever being published, Super Shamou became an influential educational tool that exposed Inuit children to the traditions of their ancestors and to the Inuktitut language. While the series notably lacked a central villain, Super Shamou was consistently tasked with bringing peace and justice to Inuit communities by saving them from a variety of “dangers of the north.”

Building upon existing research by scholars like César Albarrán-Torres and Liam Burke regarding the representation of colonialism and postcolonialism within supervillains, this paper argues that Super Shamou integrates a critique of the Canadian government by refusing to materialize a central villain. While some embodied villains, such as the Kablunuts (“evil white ones”), directly take on the role of the colonizer by limiting resources for communities or wiping out populations, and others, like Killmonger, are shaped by the historic trauma of colonization, Super Shamou’s engagement with narratives of substance abuse and disconnection from cultural practices as “dangers of the north” create a disembodied villain that not only comments on the intergenerational impact of colonialism on Inuit communities but also critiques the colonizers’ refusal to support or engage with the communities they have harmed.

Keywords: Super Shamou, Disembodiment, Colonialism, Intergenerational Trauma, Inuit, Superheroes, Barney Pattunguyak, Peter Tapatai, Inuit Broadcasting Corporation (IBC), Canada, Indigeneity

Robert Hyland

Scholars School System (UKCAB)

It’s a Bizarro World: The Changing Face of the Doppelganger

With a hero as powerful as Superman, there are not many villains who have the strength, capability or resilience to pose a credible match to him. A logical outcome then is for writers to pit him against himself. Or perhaps some evil version of himself. It makes narrative sense, then, to create a negative version of Superman. But if Superman represents the Nietzschean ideal, then Bizarro Superman becomes the Freudian Id, the baser parts of the man.

Lotte Eisener, in the Haunted Screen explores the role of the Doppelganger in German Expressionist cinema, proposing that in the interwar years of the Weimar Republic there was a questioning of self and values and the Doppelganger reflects such questions of the audience: what does it mean to be an ‘I’ and am ‘I’ a good person or am I capable of great evil? The character of superman, produced at the end of the interwar years by the children of Jewish immigrants is a symbol of absolute goodness and yet even that character, by the 1958 comic ‘Superboy’ #68, is confronted by the possibility of his own inherent evil when he encounters his mirror image.

The Bizarro superman has a lasting legacy, with Superman facing a version of himself in various comic lines, film franchises, cartoons and recently in both the television series Superman & Lois seasons two (2022), three (2023) and four (2024), and again in the 2025 Superman film. But if the doppelganger in the Weimar cinema was reflecting a postwar anxiety about the nature of goodness, what is happening in our world today that would cause a similar psychological need for the Bizarro?

Keywords: Bizarro, Superman, Haunted, Freud, Nietzsche, Jung, Doppelganger, Eisner

Svenja Kolpack

University of Duisburg-Essen

Uncanny Bodies - Disfigurement as Signifier for the Villainous

The body “serves as palimpsest, as medium of political contention, as breathing symbol of disparate ideological colorings”. José Alaníz says in his book Death, Disability, and the Superhero. No body is just a body but a canvas on which “the narratives human beings tell about it” are drawn. The “super-body thus reifies nation, death-denying vigour, and sexual potency.”

If that is the case for the superhero’s body, what can we learn from the (super-)villain’s body? If the “mainstream visual culture uses the superhero signifier to ‘enhance’ the body to an imagined ideal – thereby displacing the disabled, dying or dead body”, how is the villainous body coded in the MCU?

This presentation analyses the visual coding of villains in the MCU. I will be focussing on the display of

the body as a signifier of moral integrity. I will therefore analyse Nebula’s bodily depiction up to and including Avengers: Endgame and discuss the influence other genres have had on these scenes as well as the idea of the disabled other.

Keywords: MCU, Disability Studies, Ableism, Impairment, Kalokagathia, Othering, Signifier, Signified, Saussure

Mikayla J. Laird

University of Hertfordshire

The Weight of a Symbol - Why Superman Maintains His Moral Code In An Age of Vigilantes

The late 1980s brought about what is considered the Dark Age of comics. Coming out of the socially conscious Bronze Age, the Dark Age allowed superheroes to enter a new era of grim and gritty storytelling. A character that largely seems immune to this, particularly in DC Comics is Superman. However, the Dark Age of Superman took an approach that allowed for the character to explore themselves in a different way. The idea of guilt, doubt, and self-judgement.

In this paper, the late 80s era of Superman will be examined and discussed in terms of Superman’s own view of himself as a hero or a vigilante. Superman’s view on humanity, the act of killing, internalised guilt, and personal identity. The John Byrne run of Superman, as well as the Exile saga, and work by Roger Stern and Jerry Ordway will be discussed in terms of Superman’s character, actions, morality, and personal identity.

In the Dark Age of heroes, what separates a hero from the vigilantes and Anti-heroes? If a hero does something they believe is immoral, can they still call themselves a hero?

Keywords: Superman, Morality, Death, Vigilantes, Anti-Heroes, Exile, John Byrne

Asha Lambson

Brigham Young University

“The Fallen Angel”: Understanding the Frankenstein Re-Invention of Heroic Ideals in Anti-Heroism through Batman: Under the Red Hood

Batman has often been examined as a modern Byronic hero. Incredibly intelligent and arguably self-destructive, Bruce Wayne is the archetypal moody, intelligent bad-boy that was popularized by Lord Byron in his Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. The parallels between Batman comics and Gothic literary figures are plentiful, and can be extended beyond just the titular character of the comics. Jason Todd, who was originally introduced as Robin in 1983 and then tortured and killed by the Joker in Batman:

Death in the Family (1988) and reintroduced as the anti-hero Red Hood in Batman: Under the Red Hood, is an example of one of these.

Plagued by the traumatic experiences surrounding his death and resurrection, Jason returns to Gotham determined to force Batman to kill the Joker, thereby breaking his rule against killing. As Jason sees it, Batman’s resistance to kill the Joker, despite his numerous crimes against civilians and heroes alike, is the reason that Jason has suffered what he has. Batman’s sense of justice and morality, therefore, has indirectly reinvented Jason’s character and identity as an antihero. This paper aims to examine how Jason Todd can not only be considered a Byronic hero, but can be paralleled with a specific Byronic hero: Frankenstein’s monster.

As a literally re-animated and an ideologically reinvented character, Jason Todd acts as a foil to Batman’s sense of justice and conception of morality—he represents what Batman can and must not represent. In doing so, highlights flaws in Batman’s logic and reveals another level of humanity and realism that subverts Batman’s sense of justice, which for him acts as a means to maintain his own humanity. In drawing connections between Batman, the Joker and Frankenstein; and Jason Todd and the monster, this paper will argue that the re-invention of Jason Todd’s character through violent enactment of justice on Batman and other characters, complicates the idea of justice and raises questions concerning what is truly humane.

Keywords: Batman, Jason Todd, Red Hood, Frankenstein, Re-Invention, Ideals, Anti-Heroism

Stephanie Lange

University of Duisburg-Essen

Ezekiel Stane, Villain or Anti-Hero? - Different Perspectives Within the MCU and MAU

The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) established a fixed set of ideas and characteristics the consumer can associate with different kinds of characters. For instance, every consumer has a rough idea of what constitutes a ‘villain’ in the MCU. However, are these ideas specific to American film landscape or are they translatable to Japanese cinema as well?

In order to analyse this hypothesis, I will focus on a Japanese adaption of Iron Man. In 2013 the Japanese movie company Madhouse released their own anime iteration of Iron Man in the movie Iron Man: Rise of Technovore. They collaborated with Marvel and introduce the character Ezekiel Stane as an opponent for Iron Man. Ezekiel is the son of Obadiah Stane, a former shareholder of Stark Industries. In the Japanese adaptation Tony Stark stands as a living symbol for technology as an advancement of society. Ezekiel opposes him in that world view and feels a need to redeem humanity from the “High Priest of Technology” for the greater good. In his determination and emotionally cold, flawless and pure character which resembles Nietzsche’s Übermensch-theory, it could be argued, that he comes across as a stereotypical MCU-villain. However, certain aspects of Ezekiel put to question whether or not he truly is a villain according to western cinema standard or should much rather be considered as an antihero. These differences put to question whether or not the character can be analysed on the

base of MCU villain characteristics or of their differences in the idea of what a villain is in the American and Japanese cinema?

In order to answer these questions, the paper is going to look at the different cultural approaches of anti-heroes and villains, their definitions as well as their resemblances. I will look at the cultural differences of how the characters are portrayed as well as the use of various symbols within the movie.

Keywords: Iron Man, Tony Stark, Ezekiel Stane, Cultural Differences, MCU, MAU, Japan

Ian Lunny

Richmond American University London

The Last Superhero: Anti-Heroism and the Collapse of the American Monomyth in Logan (2017)

“To ravage, to slaughter, to steal, this they give the false name of empire; and where they create a desert, they call it peace.” — Tacitus

In the contemporary superhero landscape, the rise of the anti-hero has frequently been framed as a development in tonal complexity, emerging from seminal works such as Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns. However, James Mangold’s Logan (2017) represents a more radical endpoint: not simply the moral complication of the superhero, but the exhaustion of the heroic paradigm itself.

Drawing on Richard Slotkin’s theory of the frontier myth and John Shelton Lawrence and Robert Jewett’s concept of the American monomyth, this paper argues that Logan presents the superhero as a terminal anti-hero, whose failure reflects the collapse of the cultural narratives that once sustained American identity. Where the traditional superhero restores order through regenerative violence, Logan depicts violence as empty, repetitive, and incapable of renewal. Logan’s desolate landscapes, border crossings and invocation of Shane draws upon the American Western iconography and underscores the end of the frontier as a site of national meaning.

In place of moral clarity, Logan constructs a world defined by corporate sovereignty and diffuse, bureaucratic violence. Antagonistic forces such as Transigen, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and paramilitary groups operate not as identifiable supervillains, but as systems of control, reflecting a shift in the genre from individualised villainy to structural domination. Drawing on Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics, this paper interprets the film’s mutant children as disposable subjects, whose survival depends upon escape from the nation that produced them.

Ultimately, Logan reconfigures the superhero not as a figure of salvation, but as a relic of a failed mythology, marking the endpoint of the anti-heroic turn and offering a stark vision of a genre and America’s national identity unable to imagine its own future.

Keywords: Logan (2017), Anti-hero, American monomyth, Frontier myth, Superhero Cinema, American Decline, Neoliberalism, Necropolitics, Border Studies, Genre Revision

Jonathan Macho

Cardiff University

‘Is It Navel Gazing If It’s the Novel of a Clone?’ - The Fall of Ben Reilly and the Spider-Man story

Superhero comics often foreground questions of morality, as their protagonists set heroic examples for readers to emulate or anti-heroic examples that challenge preconceptions of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. The story of former Spider-Man Ben Reilly fits both criteria: originally conceived as a means of correcting the hero’s increasing moral ambiguity, he eventually embraces anti-heroism and even supervillainy. Moreover, he does so while using the Spider-Man story as his moral guide, with his heroism and fall from grace both being tied to his obsession with the narrative he emerged from.

Initially introduced in 1975 as Spider-Man’s clone, Ben returned in 1994 when it was deemed the original character had become too dark and Ben could serve as a more ‘moral’ alternative. Through flashbacks, writer J. M. DeMatteis depicts Ben as a man with no past forced to build his identity from borrowed memories, or put another way, from the Spider-Man story itself. Ben overcomes his despair by making that story the basis of his behaviour, using it as a guide for how to be a ‘good man’.

This ‘Clone Saga’ storyline proved infamously unpopular, but Ben ultimately returned again decades later and his pre-occupation with the Spider-Man story returned with him. In Spider-Man Beyond, he is stripped of his borrowed memories and, without their story for guidance, becomes the villainous Chasm. Conversely, in his cinematic debut, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Ben is dedicated to maintaining the ‘canon’ above all else as an enforcer of the anti-heroic Spider-Society. In both cases, Ben’s devotion to the wider Spider-Man story puts him at odds with Spider-Man himself, with its absence or presence pushing him to ever darker places. This presentation will explore Ben’s journey from hero to antihero, and how it shifts from valorising the Spider-Man story to making a case for trying something new.

Keywords: Narrative, Heroism, Anti-Heroes, Morality, Fandom, Adaptation

Eric Maigret

Université Sorbonne Nouvelle

The Venomisation of Masculinity

Venom appeared in 1988 in the Marvel Classic Universe but it was first introduced in 1984 as a living alien costume. It evolved from an extra-terrestrial intimate threat for Spider-Man, rooted in violence and hypermasculinity to a symbiotic entity that bonds with various hosts, most notably Eddie Brock. The symbiote itself does not have a fixed gender; instead, its gender is perceived based on its current host. When bonded with a male host like Eddie Brock, Venom is typically referred to using masculine pronouns. The character is known for its complex anti-hero status, driven by a twisted sense of

morality and a deep-seated hatred for Spider-Man.

Venom's actions often blur the lines between heroism and villainy, reflecting a morally ambiguous and fluid gender identity that adapts to its host's personality and motivations. This portrayal challenges traditional gender norms by presenting a character whose identity is not fixed but rather shaped by its symbiotic relationship with its host (enjoyed by queer audiences).

Distinct gendered representations across the Marvel Universes are of course existing. In the various Ultimate Marvel Universes (2000 / then 2024), for instance, Venom's representation diverges significantly from its classic counterpart. Here, the symbiote is not extraterrestrial but is the second stage of a genetically created suit / then a picotech stealth suit. Venom is much more depicted as a monster, as a more straightforward villain, often aligned with malevolent forces such as the Maker (the evil Reed Richards of Earth-1610). The symbiote in this universe is a product of scientific experimentation and its hosts are typically portrayed as male. This version of Venom seems to lack the moral complexity and anti-hero qualities seen in the classic universe, instead embodying a more traditional masculine archetype of a ruthless and powerful antagonist.

Keywords: Venom, Marvel, 1988, Eddie Brock, Maker, Gender, Queer

Justin F. Martin

Whitworth University

“See, I’m not a Monster. I’m Just Ahead of the Curve”: The Joker’s Moral Understanding in The Dark Knight (2008)

Considering the questions bearing on sociality and morality that the Joker’s approach to villainy raises, the paper investigates the character’s portrayal in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (TDK) from the perspective of moral development. Specifically, the chapter utilizes multiple perspectives on the what, how and why of moral development—namely, the nature and nuances of individuals’ journey from a non-principled to principled understanding of social relations. These attempts vary across multiple dimensions (e.g., global vs. domain-specific, top-down vs. bottom-up, and intuition-focused vs. reasoning-focused). While the characterizations of these differences are generalizations, they provide useful contours for exploring the Joker’s actions and apparent motivations.

Notwithstanding the challenges of ascertaining fictional characters’ moral understanding (Favaro & Martin, 2023; Martin, 2024), the chapter contends that the field of moral development is well-suited to the task. However, the focus is less on which theory is “right” about the Joker and more on how his actions and suggested motivations can highlight similarities and differences across these perspectives. This shift in emphasis is particularly important, as whereas moral development theories are usually interested in assessing people’s understanding of moral and immoral behaviours that could reasonably be committed in real life, the Joker’s actions are usually well beyond such boundaries.

Specifically, the paper considers the relevance of the Joker’s frequent appeals to self-interest and

societal critiques for understanding how these approaches view personal and societal considerations in relation to morality. After discussing these appeals and critiques, the paper concludes by discussing how each approach could potentially address whether the Joker’s actions and motivations in TDK evidence a lack of moral understanding or an understanding that, at some point throughout his development, becomes significantly distorted. The first section, exploring the Joker’s approach to self-interest, only includes constructivist approaches (Kohlberg, 1981, 1984; Turiel, 1983, 2002, 2023). The subsequent sections, examining the Joker’s societal critiques and potential moral understanding, respectively, also include non-constructivist approaches (Atari et al., 2023; Graham et al., 2013; Grusec, 2023; Haidt, 2012; Kuczynski & De Mol, 2015). These approaches were added due to their substantive differences from constructivist approaches and the relevance of these differences for understanding the Joker through societal and moral considerations. Collectively, the paper adds to current Joker scholarship (Langley, 2019; Peaslee & Weiner, 2015) by contributing to a better understanding of why he is considered one of the best movie villains ever created (White, 2025).

Keywords: Joker, Batman, Moral, Development, Society, Socialization, Constructivism, Judgement

Yannik Nöhrhoff

University of Koblenz

Calendar Man: Gutter Villain

Among the rogues’ galleries of comics’ iconic and favourite villains, it would perhaps take while until a given reader, if asked, emphatically announces Calendar Man as their favourite antagonist. In his case, the problem is exacerbated by the fierce competition of evil doers in Gotham. While this is, perhaps, in some way a just response, recent interest in the character and the transformation he has undergone warrant an examination of the creative choices that make Calendar Man worthy of investigation alongside figures like the Joker or Bane.

Among recent notable adaptations are the highly popular and successful The Long Halloween (1996) to film and TV in 2015 and 2021 respectively and the meta-narrative Batman/Superman #22 (2021). These are joined by numerous other appearances in the last 10 years across DC media. This interest, and the common thread that they share, this paper contends, lie less in Julian Day’s overt gimmick of seasons, months, and holidays and more in the twofold implications of the calendar. Firstly, the inexorable rhythm of time before inevitably repeating mirrors the metafictional progress of individual runs of superhero comics, their wider universes and their differences in these repetitions.

Secondly, the layout, the compulsions and orders of the grids and boxes of the calendar allow for layered engagements with the comics’ own visual structures of frames, panels and gutters. Calendar Man, then, has come to emerge as a villain of the metafictional and the parerga. In this function, he appears as a gutter villain, a character whose superficially silly gimmick allows for an investigation of the frames within which the struggle of good and evil is carried out. Gutter villains, like Calendar Man, may then be apprehended as villains whose power lies not within the confines of a comic panel, but in what comprehends those panels.

Keywords: Calendar Man, Batman, Villain, DC Comics, Parerga, Metafiction

Ashika Paramita & Arsya Nararya Putri

Universitas Gadjah Mada

Not So Wicked: Reframing the Monstrous Feminine in Agatha All Along (2024)

Historically, the role of the witch has been “one incontestably monstrous role … that belongs to woman” (Creed, 2024, p. 72). In mainstream media, the witch’s grotesque physical appearance and destructive nature have been used to mark her danger, malice, and evilness. Read in the context of patriarchal ideology, this representation of the witch signifies patriarchal anxieties about female power and non-conformity. In recent years, however, there has been an increasing trend that reimagines the witch, moving away from this archetypal image and turning the witch figure into a site of feminist negotiation.

In this paper, I focus on Disney+ Agatha All Along (2024) as an example of contemporary superhero media that reconfigures the witch from monstrous antagonist to complex, if not sympathetic, anti-hero, through its main character, Agatha Harkness. Initially introduced as a villain in WandaVision (2021), Agatha is transformed into a morally ambiguous protagonist whose Otherness and “monstrosity” are reframed as a site of agency and resistance. While Agatha, as a protagonist, retains the opportunistic and manipulative streak often associated with villainy, Agatha All Along repositions these characteristics within a narrative of agency, survival, and self-determination.

Informed by Barbara Creed’s (1986) notion of the monstrous feminine, I examine the construction of the witch as an “Other” in Agatha All Along (2024). While focusing primarily on the main character, Agatha Harkness, my analysis also includes other witch characters in the series to examine how the witch’s “monstrosity” is rearticulated. This reading also situates Agatha All Along within broader shifts in contemporary superhero narratives, where villains are reimagined as anti-heroes. In so doing, the analysis also assesses the impact of this reimagination on gender representations in American popular culture, especially in the context of changing cultural attitudes toward gender, power, and morality in US society more broadly.

Keywords: Agatha Harkness, Monstrous Feminine, Gender Representation, Anti-Hero, Witchcraft, Otherness, Marvel Cinematic Universe

Bruno Porto

Tilburg University

Sounds of Evil: Sonic Villains and the Menace of Otherness in Marvel Comics

This paper examines the intersection of sound and villainy in Marvel Comics, analyzing how sonic-powered antagonists embody cultural and historical anxieties through the lens of otherness. Focusing on three key characters introduced in the 1960s — Black Bolt, Klaw, and Banshee — the study explores how their non-American origins and destructive sound-based superpowers position them as threats within Cold War-era narratives. Drawing on theories of otherness (Said 1978; Todorov 2006), we argue that sound — ephemeral, uncontrollable, and invasive — functions as a metaphor for deviance from normative identity, reflecting broader societal fears of foreign influence, technological misuse, and bodily transformation. These sonic villains emerge from a tradition of dehumanizing foreign antagonists that dates back to the World War II era, when Superhero comics frequently cast external enemies as embodiments of ideological conflict.

Methodologically, the chapter employs textual and visual analysis to trace how sonic abilities are narratively linked to themes of geopolitical tension, colonialism, and disability, revealing how sound operates as a destabilizing and subversive force. The discussion situates these characters within a broader cultural lineage of sonic menace — from mythological sirens to early comic book depictions of acoustic danger — and maps Marvel’s gradual shift during the 1970s from portraying villains as external (foreign) threats to internal (social outcast) figures.

Findings reveal that sonic villains are not merely antagonists, but complex sites of ideological negotiation, where fear of difference is weaponized and interrogated. Their eventual redemption often reflects a narrative imperative to neutralize otherness, reinforcing binary boundaries between self and enemy. It concludes by advocating for further research on the representation of sonic otherness in comics, suggesting that these characters exemplify how the medium translates cultural anxieties into speculative narratives — where sound becomes a visceral marker of alterity, fear, and control.

Keywords: Superhero Comics, Villain Representation, Marvel Comics, Silver Age Comics, Sound in Comics, Sonic Powers, Otherness and Alterity, Cold War Comics

Marc Rosado Salvador

University of Ramon Llull

Fluid Morality: Bisexuality and the Rise of the Queer Anti-Hero in Contemporary Superhero Comics

Over the past two decades, LGBTQ+ representation in mainstream superhero comics has expanded significantly. However, this expansion has not affected all identities equally. While openly gay superheroes have increasingly been incorporated into relatively stable heroic narratives, bisexual

characters frequently appear within a different narrative register: that of the antihero or morally ambiguous figure. This presentation argues that contemporary superhero comics are experiencing what can be described as a “bisexual turn”, in which bisexuality functions as a narrative marker of moral complexity and liminality. Within a genre historically structured around clear oppositions between heroism and villainy, bisexual characters often occupy positions that blur these boundaries.

To contextualise this phenomenon, the presentation situates contemporary bisexual antiheroes within the longer history of LGBTQ+ representation in superhero comics. During the mid-twentieth century, institutional censorship—most notably through the Comics Code Authority—prohibited the depiction of homosexuality, effectively erasing queer identities from mainstream comics for decades.

Drawing on both LGBT/Queer Media Studies and communication theory, this presentation examines how media structures and editorial practices shape the visibility of queer identities within the superhero genre. Concepts such as agenda-setting, framing, gatekeeping and the spiral of silence help explain how publishers, creators and media discourse negotiate which forms of LGBTQ+ representation become visible and how they are narratively constructed.

Through examples from Marvel and DC Comics—including characters such as Loki, Mystique, Daken, Harley Quinn and Catwoman—the presentation argues that bisexual characters frequently function as narratively flexible figures whose sexual fluidity aligns with antiheroic subjectivities. The figure of the queer antihero therefore reflects both the progressive expansion of LGBTQ+ representation and the persistence of narrative frameworks that associate sexual fluidity with ambiguity, instability and moral complexity within superhero storytelling.

Keywords: Superhero Anti-heroes, Bisexuality in Comics, Queer Anti-Hero, Moral Ambiguity, LGBT+ Representation, LGBT/Queer Media Studies, Comics Code Authority, Identity Construction, Marvel and DC Comics, Contemporary Superhero Narratives

Ranthild Salzer

Vienna University

Reading Female Villains as Antiheroic Femmes Fatales

My presentation investigates the possibility of reading female villains and antiheroines in superhero comics as femmes fatales. What are parallels between fictional females like Catwoman and Black Widow and femme fatale characters found in film noir?

American film noir has contributed numerous elements to popular culture, including memorable figures like the femme fatale. Long referred to as beautiful but treacherous women, who are fatal to the men around them, feminist film theory and gender studies have long discovered the potential of the femme fatale as a character through which gender constructions and gendered categories can be analyzed as well as critiqued (Kaplan, Cowie, Grosz). Refusing to be content with and settle into the places patriarchy assigns to them, femmes fatales embody male fears about sexually active and materially independent women. Too often read as ‘simply evil’, what femmes fatales really display is a

desire for female independence and agency as they are not so much fatal but hardboiled women (Grossman).

My analysis investigates DC Comics’ Catwoman and Marvel Comics’ Black Widow through the idea of the femme fatale. Both are female characters entering superhero comics as villains who over time develop into antiheroes. Both start out as rather one-dimensionally written female characters so often found in superhero narratives (Cocca, De Dauw), as nothing more than potential heterosexual love interests. But by now various artists and authors have applied their vision to these characters turning them into more complex creations. Permanently oscillating between the villainous and the antiheroic, between being erotic spectacles stylized for the male gaze and powerful subjects in control of their own fate, these fictional females share many traits and interact with femme fatale concepts. My presentation asks if it makes sense to read Selina Kyle and Natasha Romanova not just as femmes fatales but as hardboiled women.

Keywords: Film Studies, Comics Studies, Gender Studies, Genre Studies, Visual Cultures

Amy Scott-Ringrow

Bournemouth University

It’s Called White Genocide: Stormfront and The Digital Rebranding of Fascism

The Boys season 2 introduces audiences to Stormfront – a dry-humoured, down-to-earth hero who has amassed a huge social media following and steals the spotlight from other heroes who are members of premier superhero team, The Seven. Just as audiences begin to root for her, it’s revealed that she’s a hundred-year-old Nazi, with the mission of creating a ‘super race’ of white superheroes.

The main weapon in her arsenal to covertly radicalise the public is social media. From her first entrance, where she is seen live streaming to over two million followers, she is shown to be a ‘real’ character, constantly exposing and criticising Vought’s ‘woke’ capitalism to build trust in her audience. When that message shifts from raising awareness of corporate capitalism to calling her followers to rise up and fight the ‘super-terrorist’ threat, Stormfront’s audience are primed to become cultural warriors, targeting immigrants in an eerie echo of post 9/11 America. The culmination of Stormfront’s campaigning ends in a murder reminiscent of the ‘pizza-gate’ scandal. She manipulates the aftermath of this killing to benefit her cause, and the rallies continue until she is outed as a Nazi, at which point she says ‘people love what I have to say… they just don’t like the word Nazi.’ And, of course, she’s proven that to be true.

This paper examines how and why Stormfront’s character was adapted and changed from The Boys comic series to the TV show, and how the showrunners used her as a Gen-Z villain, satirising and critiquing the use of social media as a vehicle for far-right rhetorics in the context of contemporary US culture wars.

Keywords: Culture Wars, Fascism, Activism, Social Media, Woke Capitalism, Stormfront, The Boys

James C. Taylor

University of Warwick

Hulk Smash Norms: Monstrosity, Supervillainy and Superheroism in The Immortal Hulk

This paper explores the ways in which The Immortal Hulk negotiates between the figures of the monster, the supervillain and the superhero. I survey influential scholarship on the horror monster (e.g. Carroll 1990; Cohen 1996; Halberstam 1995) to identify points of intersection and divergence with the supervillain and superhero. These comparisons consider the formal construction and presentation of the figures along with their ideological functions. Following Umberto Eco’s (1972) foundational formulation of Superman, the superhero upholds the status quo while the supervillain disrupts it. Like the supervillain, the monster has been conceptualised as upsetting normative structures. Depending on the presentation of a monster, however, and despite typically being positioned as antagonists, their destructive role can be affirmational for audiences.

As Robin Wood argues in his discussion of horror monsters representing a return of that which society represses, “central to the effect and fascination of horror films is their fulfilment of our nightmare wish to smash the norms that oppress us.” (2018, 85) In The Immortal Hulk, Hulk manifests not just Bruce Banner’s repressed energies, but society’s more broadly and, in line with his famous catch phrase, sets out to smash oppressive social structures, thus mobilising the monster’s subversive potential.

In the paper I explore how, as Hulk becomes a figurehead for marginalised identities, reminiscent of how the Golden Age Superman was a “Champion of the Oppressed”, the relationships between monsters, supervillains and superheroes are illuminated and reconfigured. My analysis, however, is not limited to Hulk, but also pays particular attention to the presentation of Betty Ross/Harpy, to reflect on the ways in which gender factors into the series’ navigation of monstrosity, supervillainy and superheroism.

Keywords: Comics, Harpy, Horror, Hulk, Monster

Caleb Turner

Richmond American University London

Redemptive Violence and Supervillains: The Infighting of Ironic Sincerity, Globalised Protectionism and Reluctant Rapprochement Across Anti-Heroic Team Ups of 2020s Era Marvel and DC Films

As Antiheroic Cinematic Teams Ups began to emerge more frequently in the late 2010s and across the 2020s, these film productions have increasingly resonated with key social and political themes relating to how super-villainous vigilantes attempt to reach a compromise in achieving their collective goals. Particularly in a post-pandemic context, there has been the rise of an increased uncertainty or

disillusionment thereafter invested in an original ‘social contract’ that once used to promise aspirations of economic prosperity or expectations of ethical governance. In this era, there has been the deeper hope of a pragmatic, optimistic sincerity (in ‘returning back to’ an age of newfound stability and reassurance) that tries to find reconciliation with a more dominant self-aware cynicism, or namely an ‘ironic humour’, that can be termed as ‘metamodernist’.

Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker in ‘Notes on Metamodernism’ (The Journal of Aesthetics and Culture 2010), are among the first scholars to predict a pop-cultural reconciliation of the idealism of ‘modernism’ (that builds/constructs) with the scepticism of postmodernism (that breaks down/deconstructs). Productions released in the 2010s/2020s such as DC’s Suicide Squad (2016)/The Suicide Squad (2021) and Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020), alongside Marvel’s Deadpool and Wolverine (2024) and The Thunderbolts*/New Avengers (2025) each depend on this kind of conflated tonality, thematics and aesthetics as a matter of degree between positive and negative extremes.

These films each in turn show an increased awareness of just how increasingly protectionist the global order is becoming: looking pessimistically inward, resulting in a lack of international cooperation, rather than embracing ideals of globalisation that have defined the political governance of the last 20 years prior. The plotlines of these films all act as allegories to these sociopolitical circumstances, realised as the fundamental mission to find a reluctant redemption through violence by achieving an uneasy rapprochement with one another (and the societal values at stake in these storyworlds). By juxtaposing how the Antihero Team-Up compares to their more superheroic counterparts (of Marvel’s Avengers and DC’s Justice League), these deeper political allegories at stake will reflect just how much the current decade has become a time of seeking moral reassurance with great reluctance. In this current age of uncertainty, the key question is where to draw the line between collective heroism and villainy in ‘getting the job done’, and just how truly ironic or sincere such a hard-fought outcome shall ultimately become?

Keywords: Team Ups, Metamodernism, Ironic Sincerity, Redemption, Violence, Aesthetic, Political Allegory, Film, Marvel/DC

Tirion Williams

University of Exeter

A Witch’s Love: The Maternal Instincts of Agatha Harkness

At a basic reading, Agatha Harkness can be understood as a simple main antagonist. Her role in Marvel Entertainment’s WandaVision (2021) was to be the “nosy neighbour” that manipulated the world she and Wanda Maximoff are living in, in order to become a powerful witch. Therefore, she is positioned as a traditional supervillain. However, this presentation aims to explore how Agatha’s motivations behind the obstacles she places in Westview complicate her portrayal as a villain.

By using Agatha All Along (2024) as a case study, this presentation will demonstrate that whilst Agatha

Harkness embodies the characteristics of a traditional villain, her actions can also be understood as the desperate response of a mother grieving the loss of her child and navigating her way through grief. By positioning her as a grieving mother, it can be determined as to whether Agatha’s desire for power control is truly villainous, or whether it reveals a deeper, humane struggle of loss and sorrow.

The presentation will explore how Agatha’s grief reshapes her villainous role within the broader superhero narrative, offering a contrast to male-driven portrayals of loss and revenge. Often, a mother’s grief is seen as emotional and irrational, while a father’s grief is seen as stoic and vengeful. By drawing upon Agatha All Along, I will analyse how Agatha’s maternal instincts drive her actions and story and lead to her darker choices. Agatha shares a similar story with Wanda as they are both mothers shaped by their grief and loss of family, yet analysis of Agatha’s story is overlooked. This presentation will explore how like Wanda, Agatha navigates her way through grief and demonstrates how her love for her child is the driver of her motivation and actions. This exploration into Agatha Harkness will be useful for offering a new perspective on the intersection of grief, gender, power, and morality within villains in the superhero genre.

Keywords: Agatha Harkness, Wanda Vision, Motherhood, Maternal Loss, Female Villains, Marvel, MCU, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Gender, Power, Control

Carl Wilson

Independent Scholar

The Supervillain and Nature: Poison Ivy

Created by writer Robert Kanigher and artist Sheldon Moldoff for Batman #181 (1966), for most of her first fifty years, supervillain comic book character Poison Ivy’s plans are usually limited by the containing actions of the male superheroes of the story. In recent years, however, depictions of Ivy have been cultivated, including her first and only ongoing series: Poison Ivy (2022 -) - over 40 issues in print (at the time of writing) - written by G. Willow Wilson with art by Marcio Takara, et al.

Echoing Lee Gambin’s assertion that the driving force in the Natural Horror genre is that “Mother Nature is not happy, and she will slaughter the human population with the help of her friends”, in her opening 6 issue arc, Ivy attempts to bring about the “sixth mass extinction”, carrying and spreading a killer pandemic of fungal spores. Wilson offers that “Poison Ivy doesn’t see any of this as evil or disgusting [....] She’s a very appropriate monster for an age of plagues”. Certainly, when unchallenged by heroes, Ivy echoes COVID-19 anxieties and contemporary ecoFeminist concerns by way of ecoGothic notions of the grotesque, the monstrous, and Donna J. Haraway’s work on the “tentacular” nature of fungal trans-corporeal entanglements. Nevertheless, as Ivy herself offers on page one of issue #1: “this is not a story about revenge. This is a story about love”, presented not in a neatly tied bouquet of romanticised triumphalism, but as an ongoing process within an intricate, inter/intraweaving environment of compatible and competing, and frequently hostile, systems and selves - in a word: ‘nature’.

This paper will examine in greater detail the variety of themes that emerge from the presentation of Poison Ivy’s near-catastrophic acts of contagious monstrosity within Poison Ivy.

Keywords: Poison Ivy, Comic Studies, COVID-19, ecoGothic, ecoFeminism, Contagion, Monstrous, Grotesque, Fungus

The Superhero Project: IX Global Meeting

"The Multiversal Superhero"

Friday 5th to Sunday 7th September 2025

Ibtisam Ahmed

Independent Scholar

Great Power, Great Responsibility, Great Care – A Compassionate Approach to Heroism in the Spider-Verse

As one of the most well-known and oft-adapted superheroes in mainstream media, Spider-Man has multiple iterations who co-exist within the narrative as variations of the character within a multiversal “Spider-verse”. Initially introduced in the comics, the notion of different Spider-Man versions appearing together has been famously adapted to the silver screen in (as of 2025) three films – the animated features Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), and the live-action Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021). In this paper, I look at how the narratives in Across the Spider-Verse and No Way Home champion heroism that is predicated on compassion and care to create positive change.

In the live-action No Way Home, Peter Parker is forced to deal with supervillains from other universes and is told that the only way their incursion can be reversed is if they are returned to their original universes to face certain death. At the risk of his own safety, Peter rejects this premise by trying to cure the villains of their mutations and ultimately reform them. In Across the Spider-Verse, Miles Morales is told that, for the stability of the multiversal fabric, so-called “canon events” involving the death of a police officer close to him (and other Spider-heroes) must be allowed to happen. He too rejects this fatalism in favour of trying to protect as many lives as possible, refusing to sacrifice someone for the greater good.

In both films, the protagonists’ understanding of power and responsibility is informed by a sense of deep community-level care. Peter and Miles reflect the values instilled in them by family, actively choosing to be compassionate instead of taking the easier, pre-determined path to success. In challenging the rules of the multiverse, they embody what it truly means to be heroic.

Keywords: Spider-Man, Spider-Verse, Community Care Compassion, Autonomy, Agency, Great Power, Great Responsibility

Luke Billings

University College Jersey

Encountering the Quantum Shadow: Maestro Hulk, Free Will, and the Mythic Self Across the Multiverse

Among the many contributions of legendary Hulk writer Peter David, none is as epic—or as psychologically fraught—as the creation of Maestro, a tyrannical variant of the Hulk who rules over the ruins of a devastated future timeline. On Earth-9200, following a nuclear apocalypse, Bruce Banner is driven mad by loss and saturated with radiation, giving rise to a despotic, power-hungry alter ego. This paper explores Hulk’s time hoping journey to Maestro’s world, first depicted in the Future Imperfect storyline as more than a case of time travel. Framing this story through the lens of the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum physics—especially as expanded by Ovidiu Stoica—the Maestro isn’t Hulk’s future, but a real version of him that exists in another timeline. In that world, a devastating nuclear war and prolonged exposure to radiation push Bruce Banner’s mind and body to the edge, warping him into the tyrannical Maestro. But even though that path was shaped by extreme trauma, the encounter forces Hulk to realise that the potential for his own buried rage to spiral into something monstrous already lives within him.

Stoica argues that even in a universe where everything evolves by cause and effect, we still make real choices within our own branch of reality. So when Hulk meets the Maestro, he’s not seeing his fate—he’s seeing a warning. It’s a powerful glimpse of what he could become, and that moment of recognition gives him a stronger sense of his own agency. Seen through Jungian psychology, the Maestro represents Hulk’s inflated shadow—his darkest traits, magnified by nuclear devastation and unrestrained power. The encounter confronts Hulk with the terrifying clarity of his own inner potential, deepening the urgency of self-awareness and moral direction. He can’t change what happened in Maestro’s world, but he can decide who he chooses to become in his own. Finally, the paper explores how David’s narrative echoes the writers of Greek myth, who wove their stories with themes of fate, choice, and the use and misuse of power. Maestro becomes a mythic figure: not destiny, but consequence made visible.

Keywords: Maestro Hulk, Free Will, Many-Worlds Interpretation, Quantum Determinism, Future Imperfect, Jungian Psychology, The Shadow Archetype, Greek Mythology, Multiverse Theory

Sean Patrick Casey

Independent Scholar

Shattered Image: Creator Ownership and Continuity in the Image Universe(s)

“The kids…want to see superheroes, they want to see a shared universe, and that's what we're going to give them,” declared Image Comics co-founder Todd McFarlane in 1992. The shared universe has been an important part of the superhero genre almost since its inception, and being what Roz Kaveney refers to as “the largest narrative constructs of human culture”, the DC and Marvel Universes have rightly received the majority of the attention that has so far been paid to shared universes by scholars. The focus of this presentation, however, is on the creation, creative freedom, and creator ownership of McFarlane and his fellow co-founders’ Image Universe.

While it has never achieved the commercial or critical success of the MCU or even the DC Extended Universe, the Image Universe is arguably superhero comics’ third most popular shared universe, both in terms of initial interest based on the record-setting sales of its launch titles as well as on longevity. It continues 33 years after its creation, having survived its shattering following the exiting of co-founders Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee and the loss of their respective Extreme Studios and WildStorm Studios sub-universes.

“Creator ownership can come with many freedoms and those freedoms don’t always mix perfectly within a shared universe,” reflects Joe Casey. “Creators fell away and took their creations with them, [and] what was once a robust, evolving continuity was left fractured and confused.” While not co-founders, Casey, with Blood Squad Seven, Tim Seeley, with Local Man, and Robert Kirkman, with Invincible and Image United, have recently become co-creators and perhaps saviors of the Image Universe, trying to piece its shattered fragments back together. Have they succeeded, or has the Image Universe instead become a multiverse of sub-universes? That is the question this presentation will attempt to answer.

Keywords: Comics, Continuity, Creator Ownership, Image Comics, Multiverse, Shared Universe, Superheroes, World Building

Torsten Caeners

University of Duisburg-Essen

‘I see a Scheme, and in that Scheme I see Myself’ – Entanglement as a Figure of the (Non-) Structure of the Multiverse

In The Marvels the three protagonists Captain Marvel, Captain Rambeau and Kamala Kahn become entangled so that, every time they use their powers, they switch places. The film’s structure is based on the notion of involuntary entanglement which changes from a hindrance into a strength of the team that develops over the course of the narrative. But the notion of entanglement not only serves as an immaterial MacGuffin that focuses and drives the plot, but can also be read, on a meta level, as figuring and interconnecting the action and the interpersonal relationship of the characters: heroines, villains, sidekicks; all layers of the story are somehow entangled with each other in various ways. Seeing the film through the lens of entanglement thus lays bare connections that exist but are not necessarily perceived. Fundamental to the notion of quantum entanglement is that particles form a structure through their mutual interaction. However, that structure is always in flux and thus is effectively a non-structure as it cannot be described on the basis of individual particles that only have value in connection with the others.

With the notion of quantum entanglement, I propose, The Marvels offers a tool and a figure of interpreting the Multiverse saga. In my paper, I will look at the distorted and uneven Multiverse Saga of the MCU through the lens of the notion of quantum entanglement and show how the conflicting and confusing elements of the individual films of the Multiverse Saga are entangled and can thus be understood in relation to each other. I will show that, in contrast to the Infinity Saga, which relied on temporal sequentially and logical build ups, the Multiverse Saga is based on a palimpsest involuted (non-) structure that has to be approached and evaluated differently.

Keywords: Multiverse Saga, Captain Marvel, MCU, Kamala Kahn, Captain Rambeau, quantum entanglement, structurality

Monali Chatterjee

Gujarat Arts and Science College Ahmedabad

Bollywood’s Multiversal Spectacle: Myth and Identity in Brahmastra and Kalki 2898 AD

The multiverse, formerly an isolated theoretical notion, has developed as a dominating paradigm of modern superhero storytelling, broadening narrative possibilities across worldwide cinema. While Western franchises such as the MCU and DCEU are no strangers to the multiverse idea, Indian film has just begun to engage with it in novel ways. This essay analyses Brahmāstra: Part One - Shiva (2022) and Kalki 2898 AD (2024) as Bollywood's foray into multiversal narrative. The films negotiate mythical histories, speculative futures, and current indications through superheroic constructs.

Focussing on Henry Jenkins' idea of transmedia storytelling and Jean Baudrillard's concept of simulacra, this study contends that these films create a multiverse anchored in Indian mythology while adhering to worldwide blockbuster aesthetics. Brahmāstra has a superheroic pantheon based on Hindu mythology, with the protagonist joining a dynasty of astral warriors that transcend time and space. In contrast, Kalki 2898 AD combines Hindu eschatology with cyberpunk futurism to create a speculative dystopia in which holy avatars reappear throughout multiple eras. Both films use multiversal paradigms to address issues of identity, lineage, and national mythology, demonstrating Bollywood's expanding involvement with global superhero debate.

Moreover, this study investigates how these films combine visual spectacle, VFX-driven world-building, and intertextual connections to create an Indian multiversal aesthetic that differs from its Western equivalent. Finally, the research demonstrates how Bollywood's engagement with the multiverse goes beyond narrative experimentation, serving as a reimagining of India's legendary past in a transmedia, postmodern cinematic world. This paper incorporates to broader discussions of global superhero cinema by demonstrating how Bollywood's multiversal narratives illustrate the connection of cultural specificity and the universal superhero archetype, challenging the dominance of Western multiversal frameworks and forging new possibilities for South Asian speculative narratives.

Keywords: Multiversal narratives, Transmedia storytelling, Dystopia, Mythical histories, Superhero

Ishani Cheshire

University of California, Berkeley

Through the Fun-House Mirror: Why Can’t the MCU Take the Multiverse Seriously?

Superheroes are an inherently multiversal genre. When audiences see Spider-Man being put to the big screen, thoughts can’t help but drift to the differences between the film and the comics—or, as the case may be, differences between this Spider-Man and the last. Retelling the same story again and again inevitably invites comparison, as well as the ever-present question—“What would happen if they met?” Time and time again, Marvel’s answer has been: Something funny, probably.

Despite numerous successful examples of multiverse stories capturing not only the premise’s comedic but dramatic potential—such as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) and Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)—the Marvel Cinematic Universe seems unable to elevate the genre above its comedic roots. In Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), the three previous cinematic Spider-Men meet face-to-face for the first time, but despite attempts at overwrought dramatic moments between the trio, the most memorable scene remains the one where they jokingly discuss their “web” fluids and compare supervillains. (“I want to fight an alien,” Garfield says dejectedly.) In Loki (2021–2023), too, there is a tonal dissonance with its multiverse aspects—we jump from sober discussions about the TVA directly into a multitude of scenes featuring crocodile Loki.

In this paper, I will explore this disconnect by comparing live-action MCU properties to other multiverse-based media which manages to capture the dramatic potential the MCU lacks. I will also pay special attention to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)—a notable exception to MCU’s comedic multiverse rule. All multiverse stories contain both comedic and dramatic potential, as the genre, inherently, is one with limitless possibilities—so why, in the MCU, is the multiverse almost always relegated to a punchline?

Keywords: MCU, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Comedy.

Laura Crossley

Bournemouth University

Woman Out of Time: Captain Carter and the Guardians of the Multiverse

Captain Carter made her debut in the first episode of the Marvel limited series What If…? in a variation on the narrative told in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011). In the What If…? iteration, it is Peggy Carter who receives the serum and becomes the world’s first super-soldier. She appears regularly across all three seasons of the animated series and has also been seen in the live action Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) as well as an eponymous comic volume.

Some of the criticisms that were levelled at Peggy’s initial appearance as Captain Carter pointed out that the gender switch in that first episode had little impact on the overall narrative, which largely follows the plot and structure of The First Avenger. Captain Carter could be read as a female variant of Steve Rogers, rather than a superpowered version of herself. Season 2 of What If…?  expanded Peggy’s role and imbued the character with more agency as a superhero in her own right – this was further enhanced extra-textually through the regular tweets from showrunner AC Bradley, who highlights the much earlier successes of Feminist movements within that strand of the multiverse due to Captain Carter’s influence. The series also gives to Captain Carter something that Steve Rogers was crucially lacking in the Twenty-First century: a support system. Peggy has a close friendship with Natasha Romanov but also has support from her contemporaries in the form of Bucky Barnes and (apparently) Howard Stark. These networks are replicated across her multiversal travels and become central to readings of the character. This paper explores the evolution of Peggy’s character and her recurring relationships. It also examines how Peggy Carter is positioned and presented as an action heroine and superhero in the contemporary cultural landscape.

Keywords: Captain Carter, Multiverse, Feminism, Heroism, Agency, Gender, Action Heroine, Support Network

Francisco Saez de Adana

Universidad de Alcala

A Level Classification of Multiverses in Comics

Max Tegmark in his paper ‘Parallel Universes’ defines four different levels of multiverse. In short, Level 1 refers to the multiverse whose different universes have the same physical laws, but different initial conditions. At Level 2, the different universes differ by the constants and dimensions involved in their physical laws. Level 3 corresponds to the many possible worlds of quantum physics, and at level 4, the different universes have different physical laws. In superhero comics, since 1961 with the classic The Flash of Two Worlds, we know that the DC Universe is really a multiverse. In the Marvel Universe it would take a little longer to come up with this concept, but since ethe consequences of the Days of Future Past storyline published in 1981 began to be explored, it is also clear that we should talk about the Marvel Multiverse since what we know as Marvel Universe is nothing more than the conjunction of several parallel universes created by alternative timelines.

However, the concept of parallel universes is used differently in Marvel and DC comics. While, as mentioned above, in Marvel the universes are distinguished by their different timelines, being closer to quantum physics, in DC the universes are distinguished by their different initial conditions. They are, therefore, different levels of multiverse according to Max Tegmark. From then on, with the variations that the concept of the multiverse has had in superhero comics, different configurations of the multiverse have appeared that respond to other levels according to Tegmark’s classification. The aim of this article is to propose a classification in levels for the different types of multiverse that we can find in Marvel and DC Comics.

Keywords: Max Tegmark, Levels of Multiverse, Marvel Multiverse, DC Multiverse, The Flash of Two Worlds, Days of Future Past, Alternative Timelines

Randy Duncan

Henderson State University

The Corruption of the Best Gives Rise to the Worst: Multiverse Shadows of Earth 616’s Heroic Personas

The various multiverse versions of a character might be considered analogous to facets of a personality. If Marvel’s Earth-616 version of the character is the Persona then perhaps other versions of the character function as the Shadow (the hidden, denied, or rejected facets of Self). Carl Jung believed that individuation, the process of discovering and becoming who one really is, requires coming to terms with the suppressed and denied components of the personality. Most humans never achieve full awareness of Self. However, characters in the Marvel Universe have the advantage of connecting with multiversal versions and experiencing facets of Self in ways which are usually impossible.

This paper will focus on Nathaniel Richards and his son Reed Richards because they have encountered more multiversal versions of themselves than most fictional characters. All Nathaniel Richards across the multiverse were forced to participate in a Great Hunt until only one remained alive. Reed had a somewhat better relationship with his other selves who seemed to be working cooperatively in the Interdimensional Council of Reeds, although he eventually came into conflict with the Alpha Reed and his followers. While it existed, the Council of Reeds provided at least some possibility of synthesizing Shadow and Persona into an integrated, authentic Self through their technology (the telelacus and council badges that allow for the merging of experiences and memories).

As Umberto Eco and others have pointed out, no matter how bizarre and life-shattering their experiences, superheroes tend to revert to the status quo. However, the multiverse does provide a means for readers to see varied, often undesirable, facets of beloved characters while still loving them for the noble, heroic Personas they perform in our favourite comic books.

Keywords: Earth 616, Fantastic Four, Nathaniel Richards, Reed Richards, Council of Reeds, The Maker, Carl Jung

Owen Farrington

Independent Scholar (Owen Likes Comics)

Ultimates and Absolutes - How the Multiverse Revitalised Marvel and DC Comics.

In June of 2023, Marvel Comics launched the Ultimate Universe, a new publishing initiative which reimagines their most popular characters on the newly-created Earth-6160, and provides an accessible jumping-on point for new, lapsed and longtime fans. Meanwhile, DC unveiled the Absolute Universe in late-2024, a similar endeavour where the company’s flagship characters have been reimagined through the lens of a harsher world without hope. These universes have regularly been amongst the best-selling comics since their creation (both in terms of monthly single-issues releases, and collected volumes), with Jonathan Hickman and Marco Checchetto’s Ultimate Spider-Man and Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta’s Absolute Batman frequently topping the sales charts, and receiving near-widespread acclaim from fans and critics. This success presents a discussion about the multiverse’s role in producing new approaches to narrative storytelling and commercial prosperity, as well as what this success may suggest about the future direction of superhero comics.

Henceforth, this paper explores the commercial and critical success of Marvel’s Ultimate Universe and DC’s Absolute Universe, and how each have used the multiverse to revitalize their companies output. This is achieved through analyzing the available sales data for each universe’s titles, alongside a meticulous study of the two best-selling series, Ultimate Spider-Man and Absolute Batman. This paper also inspects  the percentage of Absolute and Ultimate titles in monthly best-seller charts since the former’s launch in October 2024, and how these universes have been received by fans, industry press and prestigious awards bodies.

Keywords: Absolute Universe, Ultimate Universe, Marvel, DC Comics, Ultimate Spider-Man, Absolute Batman

Sasza Hinton

Queen’s University

Miles Morales: Rewriting the Heroic Narrative

Miles Morales’ introduction as Spider-Man in Ultimate Fallout #4 represents a pivotal moment in the evolution of the superhero genre. Not only does Miles challenge the traditionally white, male portrayal of Spider-Man, but his identity as a Black Latino teenager redefines what it means to be a hero in a predominantly white superhero universe. This paper will explore how Miles’ race and gender shape his journey as Spider-Man and the ways in which these aspects influence his motivations, relationships, and interactions within the broader superhero community.

Unlike Peter Parker, whose heroic narrative is steeped in privilege and the weight of legacy, Miles is forced to navigate the pressures of being a first-generation American, while carrying the mantle of Spider-Man in a world where his racial and cultural identity often place him in opposition to dominant superhero norms. The paper will examine how Miles’ experience with heroism is informed by his intersectional identity, exploring how his race and gender informed by his intersectional identity, exploring how his race and gender inform his responses to challenges, his sense of responsibility, and his relationships with other characters. By considering the socio-cultural context in which Miles operates, this research will show how his character challenges traditional superhero archetypes, offering a more nuanced, diverse representation of heroism that reflects the complexities of modern identity.

In doing so, this paper will argue that, Miles Morales; Spider-Man narrative not only expands the superhero genre but also serves as a platform for critiquing and rethinking the universal nature of heroism. By rewriting the traditional heroic narrative, Miles offers a new, culturally rich vision of what it means to be a hero in a multiverse where diversity, race, and gender no longer remain peripheral but central to the story.

Keywords: Miles Morales, Spider-Man, Race, Gender, Identity, Diversity, Multiverse

Matthew Huh

Columbia University

Through the Multiverse: The Nostalgic Reinvention of Spider-Verse

In 1962, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko created Spider-Man. Over 60 years later, the character has appeared in all forms of media from the comic page to the silver screen. In 2018, the character transformed the expectations of the cinematic medium in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and its sequel, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse in 2023. Both films received large critical acclaim for not only their distinctive identity in a world dominated by live-action cinematic universes but more importantly, exist as an evolutionary form of blockbuster nostalgia via the representation of the multiverse. It is a reinvention of the past by taking the audience's knowledge of the Spider-Man mythology and accelerating it through a transformation of nostalgia. In Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the concept of the multiverse is expanded further, as we are introduced to an entire society of Spider-People. Through that discovery, the variations of Spider-Man become a stand-in for the vastness of the property, proving that we can no longer look at the film as merely a sequel, but only a small part of the interconnections of all Spider-Man media. And that expansion isn’t slowing down any time soon.

As the film’s characters discover the greater prospects of a multiverse, the audience is also forced to rethink the nature of the film sequel and franchising, while simultaneously being hyper-aware of its place as a comic book story. Through the use of pastiche, multiculturalism, and the expansiveness of multiversal storytelling, this paper examines how both Spider-Verse films serve as an apex of cinematic nostalgia. One that uses the past to forward a new form of cinematic newness not by means of references, but through transformation. Topics explored will include the history of Spider-Man’s cinematic representation, the emphasis on a hyper-stylized animation aesthetic, media convergence, and the importance of multicultural representation.

Keywords: Nostalgia, Pastiche, Multiverse, Spider-Man, Marvel, Animation, Film

Robert Hyland

Scholars School System

Fragmentation, Multiplication and Dissociation: Multiversal Sensibility in The Immortal Hulk

Marvel’s comic and cinematic universes have been exploring multiversal storytelling since the 1970s with the comic line “what if…?”   The superhero has since its inception been a transmedial property, crossing from comic books, to film shorts in the 1930s, to animated series, to television series, and of course housed on lunchboxes, stickers, video games and assorted paraphernalia, all of which contribute to the meaning of the superhero as text.  Such textual fragmentation has inevitably resulted in changed, truncated or transmuted story arcs or character values and sensibilities.  The multiverse is a logical means of consolidating discrepancies and contradictions in ‘canonical’ superhero text.

One character that has transmuted across comic lines, changing from a hulking grey monster to a hulking green hero, is the Incredible Hulk.  But split-ness and variance is endemic to the character, or rather, the psychologically split Bruce Banner / Hulk dyad.  How do these two characters interact?  Are they two distinct people, who along with their distinct physicalities have separate psychologies? In early iterations of the Hulk narratives in the MCU, Banner would awaken with little to no knowledge of what the Hulk had done. Eventually, inevitably, the two personas merge to become a single “professor-Hulk” persona, with qualities of both.  Conversely, She-Hulk, from the outset, is capable of finding balance between the Hulk body, and her own mind, the two bodies being different iterations of the same person(a). 

The 2018 comic book line Immortal Hulk is not a typical Marvel multiversal storyline, although the character does transverse worlds, entering into different realms, and exhibiting different character personas, psychologies and motivations.  The comic, if read as a contemplation of the complexities of self, eschews multiversal complications, suggesting that it is the self that contains multitudes.  There is a multiplicity inside us all.  This paper explores complexity and multiplicity of the ‘self,’ as explored in the Hulk narrative, with particular emphasis on the comic series The Immortal Hulk.  

Keywords: Hulk, Incredible Hulk, Fragmentation, Dissociation, Immortal Hulk

Svenja Kolpack

University of Duisburg-Essen

The TVA as the Campbellian Underworld

Loki’s story was over, when he was killed by Thanos. The anticipated resurrection did not come and in the end, the MCU’s superheroes had to face Thanos without the God of Mischief. While never being really resurrected he also never really died but lived a whole lot of different lives in the various timelines controlled and pruned by the TVA.

Over the course of two seasons of LOKI, the audience witnesses his transformation from deceased God of Mischief to God of Stories, from angry victim of his story to master of his fate and in the end from villain to hero. Through negotiations with his various embodiments – Sylvie, Kid Loki, Croki, President Loki to name just a few – he is reconciliated with his own history and can don his mantel of the superhero.

In this presentation I argue that the multiverse that Loki enters through his time in the TVA mirrors Joseph Campbell’s concept of the underworld. Here he passes the several steps of The Hero’s Journey. He enters a villain and – although he never really leaves – becomes the hero he always wanted to be. All of this only made possible through the myriad timelines and thereto connected challenges that came with MCU’s opening of the Multiverse.

Keywords: MCU, Loki, Campbell, Hero’s Journey, TVA

Mikayla J. Laird

University of Hertfordshire

Mapping the Multiverse: The Creation and Progression of the Multiverse and Multiversal Storytelling in DC and Marvel Comics

While the concept of the multiverse has taken the forefront in Superhero cinema for the past few years, its use in superhero storytelling expand to almost the dawn of superhero comics. Through the comics of both Marvel and DC, the multiverse has been included for both business and storytelling reasons. Creating a rich tapestry of character interactions and reader engagement. The use of the multiverse is so engrained into superhero comics, that adapted and parodied material have included this crucial element prior to the creation of the MCU or DCEU.

In this paper, the history of multiversal storytelling in DC and Marvel will be explored. Defining the reasons why multiversal storytelling exists, the frequent adaptations of this form of storytelling in animated series, and video games, as well as naming conventions. This paper will deliver a clear and cohesive timeline of multiversal storytelling, allowing for a re-analysis of the current superhero landscape as a clear evolution of the storytelling trope.

Keywords: Multiverse, Superhero, Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Marvel 616, Earth One, Earth Prime, Ultimate Universe, Absolute Universe

Eric Maigret

Universite Sorbonne Nouvelle

What if the Multiverse had Never Existed? Gender Transformation in the Marvel Comics before and after the Multiverse

The Marvel Multiverse, built on variations and repetitions, has been accused of creative exhaustion (“franchise fatigue”), leading to narrative demise, due to its industrial bias: corporate assets must be exploited regardless of the narrative cost. These critiques have been particularly harsh with regard to gender transformations, to alternate realities where characters’ genders are supposedly superficially swapped. In fact, the Marvel Multiverse can be seen as both a creative endeavour and a sign of creative exhaustion, as sociologist Edgar Morin (1962) has demonstrated regarding all creative industries processes: it is a double-edged sword, depending on how it is executed and received by the audience.

One way to approach the question is to compare the logic of the Marvel Comics before the invention of the multiverse and after its invention and discovering that the frontiers are quite blurred. All-Inclusiveness and infinite stretchability ruled the Marvel Comics long before the opening of say, the Marvel Ultimate Universe, with an expansionist representation of realities even if gendered identities were less diverse in the Marvel Comics. This communication will systematise a comparison between characters of the Marvel Ultimate universe and Marvel Comics 616 universe, showcasing distinct differences in characterization and narrative roles, and will conclude that the MCUs multiverse has accentuated inclusivity and gender fluidity but not invented with process.

One way to approach this is to compare the logic of the Marvel Comics Universe before and after the invention of the multiverse and discover that the boundaries are quite blurred. Inclusiveness and infinite extensibility reigned in the Marvel Comics Universe long before the opening of, for example, Marvel’s Ultimate Universe, with an expansionist representation of realities, even if gender identities were less diverse. This paper will systematize a comparison between character from the Marvel Ultimate and Marvel Comics universe, highlighting marked differences in characterization and narrative roles, and conclude that the Marvel Comics multiverse has accentuated gender inclusivity and fluidity, without inventing this process, reflecting a general tendency to multiply subjectivities.

Keywords: Marvel Comics, Earth 616, Marvel Ultimate Universe, Multiverse, Subjectivities.

Stephanie Martinez

College of New Jersey

Imagined Communities in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

A key component of the 2023 animated film Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is the introduction of the Spider-Society, an organization comprised of those who hold the mantle of Spider-Man or variations thereof across the multiverse. The Spider-Society forms the primary force of conflict for the film’s protagonist, Miles Morales, because of how he resists the society’s mission to maintain the integrity of the multiverse. The society fulfills this mission by ensuring that  “Canon Events,” experiences consistent throughout the multiverse for seemingly every Spider person, occur lest the universe in question collapses. The formation of the Spider Society and its habits mimic those of nation development and senses of nationality as understood through Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities. The Spider-Society is an imagined community whose shared vernacular is the “Canon Events” that they allow to define them, becoming a language for each member to understand one another. The technology that heightens communication of the shared vernacular, comparable to that of print capitalism for real-life nation-building, to create the national identity of the Spider Society are the multiversal watches provided by Miguel O’Hara, Spider-Man 2099 and the de facto leader of the Spider Society.

Miles’s resistance to sharing in the common vernacular of the canon of events highlights the exclusionary nature of the forming nation identity, finding those who lie outside the hegemony of the nation identity a threat to neutralize in the face of their difference. Paired with the fact that Miles Morales, an Afro-Latino character, is contrasted by the primarily white-coded identity of Spider-Man, the result is a critique of how the nation-state treats BIPOC bodies in exclusionary manners in trying to define itself, an especially pertinent topic in the modern age of global politics.

Keywords: Film, TV, Identity, Nationalism, Imagined Communities, Representation, Social Critique

Matthew Nickerson

Independent Scholar

Nostos, Kleos, and ‘Great Responsibility’: Homeric Reception in the Spider-Verse

Across his six film appearances in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it is clear that Peter Parker / Spider-Man (Tom Holland) stands out from other heroes of the franchise due to his youthful inexperience and secret identity. Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) marks the end of Peter Parker's time in high school, and moreover, the closure of his coming-of-age story. Yet No Way Home also ambitiously serves as a conclusion to two previous Spider-Man franchises, featuring various characters from across the "multiverse", returning from Sam Raimi's trilogy (2002-2007) as well as Marc Webb's duology (2012-2014). 

This paper argues that, due to the malleability of fate as a consequence of the multiverse, No Way Home resolves themes of duty and identity in a strikingly similar manner to the epics of the ancient Greek poet Homer. In Homer's two epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, the protagonists grapple with the choice of pursuing either heroic glory in death (kleos) or a peaceful but unassuming life (nostos). Therefore I analyse Peter's decisions once his identity is revealed through that Homeric lens, particularly in the context of knowing of and meeting characters from alternate universes such as the Green Goblin and Electro, whose resurrection leads them to contemplate their own destinies going forward, just as Peter does.  

This project will analyse the manner by which the film's heroes and villains follow Homeric norms but also contradict and invert them. While it will primarily focus on the Homeric epics, it will also explore the reception of these heroic themes via Virgil's epic poem the Aeneid, as well as in later Christian theology. In doing so, I aim to explore how the presence of the multiverse adds, rather than detracts, to the character development of the modern cinematic superhero.              

Keywords: Spider-Man, Marvel, MCU, No Way Home, Homer, Homeric, Odyssey, Iliad, Poetry

Yannik Nohrhoff

University of Duisburg-Essen

Choose Your Own Universe – Diegetic Mutiversality in The Riddle

When discussing the idea of the multiverse, it is often thought of as a kind of cosmology of parallel narratives, both metatextually and diegetically. One of the less commonly discussed concepts is that of the narrative being “less a puzzle to be solved than a construction kit that inspires free play with its elements” within a single text. The 2021 comic The Riddle, published as part of Batman Black and White #5, explores just this. Taking the shape of a choose-your-own-adventure story, The Riddle has the reader makes choices as to how the caped crusader navigates Edward Nygma’s challenges, establishing diverging timelines. Indeed, Batman’s survival may only be achieved in a single one of them by disregarding the rules the text itself establishes, as narrated by the Riddler in the form of reverse narrative metalepsis.

By gamifying the hermeneutic tension between narrator and reader, it blurs the boundaries of the intra- and extradiegetic universe. This paper takes this as its cue to investigate the narratological implications of a multiversal mode within single texts. How are categories such as duration, frequency, order, voice, and mood (sensu Genette) figured within a narrative that presents multiple competing universes, where the narrator overtly alters the very form of the text? How is the superhero genre particularly suited to such techniques, permitting various story worlds to exist in simultaneity within a single work? How is the comic as a medium utilized at the intersection of text and image in this regard? In investigating these questions, this paper aims to contribute a unique perspective on the idea of a multiversal mode in the context of superhero media.

Keywords: Multiverses, Narratology, DC Comics, Batman, The Riddler, CYOA

Jeffrey E. Peterson

Georgia State University

Multiversal, Multicultural, and Miles Morales: Diversity Through Multiversal Mediation

Among its multiple functions in superhero media, the multiverse functions as a plot device for the filmic mediation of Spider-Man to adroitly ‘catch up’ to the impetus illustrated in the character’s comic book interpretations. The first two Spider-Man franchises apply the traditional characterization of Peter Parker (white, cismale, straight, lower-middle class); the third version, starring Tom Holland and debuting in 2017, maintained the story of Parker while beginning to stretch the story of his associates. Homecoming (2017) introduces a new significant other, Liz Allan (Laura Harrier), a new mixed race version of “MJ,” though known as Michelle Jones (Zendaya) and not Mary Jane, and Asian best friend, Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon). One year after this live action release, Miles Morales, a new Spider-Man originally introduced in 2011, debuts in the film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018). Miles is the first Black male to take on the mantle of Spider-Man and the first afro-latino superhero in Marvel.

I argue that in the medium of film, whether live action or animated, the multiverse is the element that allows for this shift from traditionally white Spider-Man to racially specific Miles. While comic iterations of characters acquire new racial markers for various reasons, including new universes and creatives, film audiences only experience the shift in race through multiversal storylines. Marvel Entertainment and Sony have consistently shifted the gender and species of their characters through the use of the multiverse, but aside from Boastful Loki and Maria Rambeau, aka Binary, only Spider-Man iterations shift along racial lines.

Using Stuart Hall’s framework of cultural studies, along with Henry Jenkins work in fan studies, I will unpack the trajectory of racial and ethnic identity in Spider-Man, specifically focusing on shifts in Into The Spider-Verse and Across The Spider-Verse, and how they might affect the MCU’s present and future.

Keywords: Cultural Studies, Popular Culture, Fan Studies, Film and Television, African American

Ranthild Salzer

Vienna University

Reading Marvel’s Elektra Through Multiverse Storytelling

My paper investigates in how far the practice of multiverse storytelling by publishers like Marvel, is used to produce different stories about a character, or if even alternate versions of one and the same character remain subservient to an agreed-upon status quo for the character often tied to gender identity and origin story. Variations of the antihero assassin Elektra Natchios are the focus of my analysis.

As a character herself, Elektra is an intertextual heavyweight connecting Marvel to Greek mythology as well as a well-known literary character who has appeared in prose, drama and poetry for centuries. Transitioning her into a Marvel character connected to its narrative multiverse, contributes to understanding that “in the Marvel universe everything has happened” (Weaver, 2013).

But Marvel’s multiverse storytelling does not equally benefit all characters, it can also limit them. My analysis focuses on narrative variations Marvel has applied to the character Elektra in the comics and on the screen. Created in 1981 by Frank Miller as a love interest for Daredevil and influenced by film noir related ideas of femmes fatales, the character has gone through various re-imaginings over the last four decades. Among them the Ultimate Marvel mini-series Ultimate Elektra & Daredevil and Ultimate Elektra, published between 2002 and 2005, her depiction in the Netflix/Disney+ show Daredevil in 2016 and her recent guest-starring in the 2019 Daredevil comic book run. One persistent status quo when it comes to Elektra is the need to romantically tie her to Matt Murdock/Daredevil and show her as a character with questionable morals, vis-à-vis straightforwardly moral and heroic characters. My analysis shows how Elektra, no matter the Marvel storyworld she appears in, remains a character tied to narrative tropes about hyper-sexualized femininity, femmes fatales, hetero-romance plots and the overall subservient role of female characters in superhero narratives.

Keywords: Antihero, Storyworlds, Narrative Tropes, Gender Fantasy, Femme Fatale, Status Quo.

James C. Taylor

University of Warwick

What If… The Multiverse Found its Home on Television? The Adaptive and Intertextual Dynamics of Marvel Studios’ What If…?

This paper explores the ways in which Marvel Studios’ What If…? (2021-24), as post-broadcast television released on Disney+, occupies a position that facilitates a lively intertextual and trans medial negotiation of the contemporary mediascape. In her analysis of television adaptations of classic novels, Sarah Cardwell (2002) demonstrates that scholarly analysis of such adaptations needs to go beyond intertextuality between the adaptation and (meta-)text that it adapts and consider also television’s specific intertextual qualities. Writing in the broadcast era, Cardwell argues that television practices a postmodern form of intertextuality in which “television is full of parody, of pastiche, of overt references that link one television text with another” (92). Post-broadcast television’s neighbouring intertexts are reconfigured, since the shows are situated on streaming platforms directly alongside media including feature films, short films and video games.

Meanwhile, shows that contribute to transmedia stories and universes, such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), have their narrative interplay with texts in other media consolidated through their literal proximity to these intertexts on the interfaces of streaming platforms. The multiversal conceit of What If…?, in which each episode explores an alternate scenario in a universe that runs parallel to the MCU, enables the show to enact experimental play with not just the MCU’s narrative continuity (which it itself adapted from comic books), but also with the wider mediascape in which it is situated. For instance, in their simultaneous reworking of Marvel’s fictional history and other popular culture texts, episodes of What If…? enact intertextual dialogue with anime, classical Hollywood, neo-noir and kaiju eiga. Through providing textual analysis of such examples, this paper examines the intertextual qualities of post-broadcast television and opportunities these offer for multiversal textual expansion.

Keywords: adaptation, intertextuality, Marvel Cinematic Universe, post-broadcast television, transmedia

Joel W. Thurman

University of Boulder Colorado

Black Canary: A Multiverse “Era’s Tour”

Since 1947, DC Comics’ Black Canary has embodied the spirit of a self-made, independent woman who can compete with, and even defeating, the more well-established heroes and villains. It is no reason Tom King’s recent series declares Black Canary “best of the best” (2025). In the Golden Age, she owned her own florist shop. A commentary on domestic and gendered expectations that allows her to be completely unrecognizable as a costumed crime fighter.

In 2015, during the New 52 era, Black Canary was a singer. This newer version draws parallels with pop culture sensation Taylor Swift, both of which have become symbols of resilience, leadership, individualism, and feminine power in traditionally male-dominated industries. She has been portrayed by different actors in CW’s Smallville (2001-2010), Birds of Prey (2002-2003), Arrow (2012-2020), and the film Birds of Prey (2020), each carving their own unique take on the character. Consistently throughout her publication and on-screen appearances, Black Canary consistently reinvents female empowerment, sexuality, and agency through the expression of her clothing, independence, and leadership. In other words, this research aims to assemble an “Era’s Tour” of Black Canary’s greatest performances.

Keywords: Black Canary, Taylor Swift, New 52, DC Comics, Tom King

Caleb Turner

Richmond University

The Business of Managing Multiverses and Strategic Superhero Franchises: Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe versus Warner Bros Discovery’s DC Extended Universe in Genre Tactics, ‘Tonal Vision’ and Transmedial Expansion.

When the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first iconic ‘post-credit stinger’ at the end of Iron Man back in 2008 made a humorous, yet optimistic reference to an expanding world of other potential superheroes known as the ‘Avengers’, what was intended to initially act as a playful joke by the Head of Production Kevin Feige, would soon become the springboard for a ‘Tonal Strategic Vision’ that has driven the MCU over the course of its Six Phases (and counting). This would namely be a tactic of embracing generic eccentricity alongside managing the consistency of humorous escapism throughout. Such an approach is also distinctive to Disney as a studio style, adapting something ‘real’ or ‘unsettling’ into a carefully controlled and safe entertainment environment with familiar qualities. Disney is indeed a brand that, according to Flanagan, McKenny and Livingstone in The Marvel Studios Phenomenon 2016 (53, 58) has ‘learned to cooperate, compartmentalise, and even compromise’ its media as necessary, and this strategy has been very different to the earliest tonality of the first DCEU instalment released a couple of years later (from Iron Man) in 2013, Man of Steel, which from the outset favoured a far more gritty, serious, mature and ‘darker’ set of colour schemes, performance style and narrative themes. By consistently deconstructing the traditional superhero archetype for instance – exploring the complexities of heroes as god-like figures driven by fearful, real-world consequences – and then taking this impetus to extremes (e.g. during Batman verses Superman in 2016, in which two heroes clashed again one another, villainising both in the process) this decision would profoundly impact on the later films in the franchise. Warner Bros. Discovery’s initial approach to multiversal expansion resultantly over time became increasingly ‘morally grey’, fragmenting its heroic relationships, rather than unifying them under the banner of aspirational heroism (as seen in the MCU).

Under the leadership of CEO David Zaslav, who has recognised the DCEU’s ‘lack of coherency’, WBD’s newest vision now embraces the ‘Marvel Studio approach’ originally taken by Feige (of creating a unified creative vision via a longer-term plan) so as to avoid the DCEU’s previous tonally ‘disjointed heroic inconsistency’. With the reboot of the new DCU Multiverse being divorced and retconned from the DCEU, it is by comparison far more comedic, swashbuckling and stylistically colourful, as evidenced with James Gunn’s Superman in 2025. It is interesting that the next Phase of the MCU, which brings back the actor playing Tony Stark, Robert Downey Jr., as the potential villain Doctor Doom (and a firmer focus on the apocalyptic storytelling of a ‘Doomsday’ event), these competing strategies of Genre Tactics, Tonal Vision and Transmedial Expansion continue to gain momentum down similar yet divergent directions, so warranting further critical investigation.

Keywords: Blockbuster Storytelling, Transmedia, Franchises, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Film/Television, Business, Fandom.

Carl Wilson

Independent Scholar

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and the Death of the Video Game DC (Muli)verse

By the time that the collected volume of the comic MultiVersus: Collision Detection arrived on door mats in 2025, Warner Bros. Games had already announced the cancellation of the MultiVersus (2024) video game it was tied to. Likewise, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (2024) was designed around the player sequentially defeating 13 Brainiacs from multiple worlds; Warner Bros. Games cut their roadmap short at less than half of that, a couple of months after MultiVersus, in early 2025. Produced with industry foresight, the tie-in comics for Suicide Squad and MultiVersus were both prequels.

With ceased production of a new Wonder Woman title and the lack-lustre reception of Gotham Knights (2022), Warner Bros. Games would appear to have issues with their digital, ludic implementation of the various DC Comics licences available to them. Furthermore, with Suicide Squad alone causing a sizable $200 million hit to Warner’s quarterly revenue at the same time as Disney (owners of Marvel) buying a $1.5 Billion Stake in Epic Games (makers of the most profitable multiverse title, Fortnite), the factors that have led towards a potential ‘death’ of the DC videogame (multi)verse are both remarkable and worth investigating. 

Building on my current work, exploring analogous “Phase 4” developments in Marvel’s videogame strategies (Wilson 2024, 2025); as well as the studies being done on transmedia Marvel expansions by Matt Yockey (2017), Rauscher et al. (2021), and others; and using Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League as a case study, this paper will examine the industrial logic and cultural reprobation that has led to and stemmed from a sequence of ‘mis-steps’ by Warner and DC in their presentation of multi-verse video games in recent years. The wider impact of this study will relate to approaches to superhero multiverse creation in other media forms.  

Keywords: Transmedia, Video Games, DC Comics, Warner Bros. Games, Suicide Squad, Phase 4

The Superhero Project: VIII Global Meeting

"The Technological Superhero"

Friday 13th to Sunday 15th September 2024

Laura Antola

University of Turku

“One man’s tool is another man’s weapon.” - Technologically enhanced superheroes, power and responsibility.

Since their birth in the 1930s, superhero stories have told stories of exceptional people with uncanny powers, who fight against evil to uphold justice in the society. Superheroes are enhanced or improved versions of ordinary humans, meant to showcase what is best in humanity (Gavaler 2018, 106). Themes connected to the enhancing of people, the enhanced hero’s responsibilities, and the differences between heroes and villains are present in the films produced by both of the big superhero publishers, Marvel and DC.

While some superheroes’ powers are innate, many characters have science and technology to thank for their strength, speed, and other abilities. Especially characters such as Batman and Iron Man rely heavily on different machines, gadgets and military technology. In this presentation, we consider superheroes as enhanced individuals, and explore how Batman and Iron Man use technology to enhance themselves. Both characters are key examples of the idea of the “superman” as a “physically and mentally superior individual who acts according to his own will” (Coogan 2006, 161).

We focus on the films The Dark Knight Rises (2012) and Iron Man 3 (2013) and the technology presented in them. While the technology featured in the former is more tangible and realistic, Iron Man 3 shows Extremis, a super-soldier serum being used to enhance people. Both films also include the idea that the heroes are better suited to use the technology than the villains. Consequently, these films raise interesting questions regarding the responsibility of an inventor, whose technology can be used for both good and bad. Is all technology neutral and pure, and its quality defined by the people wielding it, or can some technologies be inherently evil? Moreover, who has the right to decide who has access to novel technology and who does not? We claim that the underlying message in both films is that in the right hands, all technology is good, even though it was designed for destruction.

Keywords: Batman, Iron Man, superheroes, enhancement, technology

Shravya Aradhyam

University of East Anglia

Transgressive Technology: Marvel’s Nebula as a Femme Fatale in MCU Films

The comic book narrative is one that has proven its generic flexibility in being able to absorb elements of different genres into its own, thereby experimenting with multiple generic forms while still essentially telling the well-known story of the superhero (Jenkins 2008: 18). This paper argues for one such character, Nebula, of The Guardians of the Galaxy franchise in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), as representing a confluence of two distinct generic tropes – the cyborg and the femme fatale. The humanoid cyborg has thus far appeared in all three films in the Guardians trilogy, in two of The Avengers films and has also made appearances in What If? episodes.

Each appearance has placed her in a group of misfits looking to rid the world of evil, while simultaneously finding value in the family that this group becomes. Nebula’s physicality as a cyborg is an essential part of her narrative, one that is brought up in every appearance and one that mutates constantly, shifting according to the needs of the narrative. And though her representation does not necessarily veer towards the obviously sexual, the focus on her cyborgian abilities works to place her as distinctly feminine, with the body being the source of trauma, and the only recourse being validation from her sister (Doane 2004: 182).

Nebula’s mission of revenge against her father, and the threat she represents to those around her – particularly of the male variety – invites viewing her through the lens of the femme fatale, a distinctly sexual being whose transgressions ultimately lead to her demise (Place 1978: 48). This paper argues how Nebula uses her weaponised cyborg body to enact her feminine revenge narrative, how it becomes a weapon that is ultimately destroyed by visually humanising the alien (Nast 2023).

Keywords: Marvel, Superhero narrative, Femme Fatale, Cyborg, Genre theory

Luke Billings

University College Jersey

The Heir to Prometheus! The Philosophy of Technics, a touch of Trickster chaos, and the mythological roots of technological innovation in the Incredible Hulk.

In Peter David's 2002 One-Shot Hulk tale, 'The End,' Bruce Banner is depicted as the lone survivor of a nuclear war, wandering alone in the wasteland once known as Earth. Bruce estimates he is 200 years old as The Hulk's regenerative abilities and grammar-infused cells have shielded him from the death that swallowed humanity. Bruce is forced to watch the Hulk be devoured by monstrous post-apocalyptic insects, only to regenerate back into a living nightmare over and over constantly.

Trapped in this never-ending cycle of death and rebirth a realisation dawns on Bruce. The irony is that only he can survive the radiation caused by the bombs he once worked to develop, making the Hulk a symbolic ancestor of the mythological Greek Titan Prometheus. The infamous figure from Greek mythology, who, believing humans lacked essential tools, defied Zeus by stealing fire and gifting it to humanity to help them progress. For his betrayal, Prometheus was chained to a mountaintop and tortured each day, only to regenerate at night to face fresh daily agony.

Known as the God of forethought, Prometheus' story has often been interpreted as a mythological framework for the human propensity towards technological innovation, from creating fire and harnessing electricity to nuclear fusion. Innovators of all kinds have embodied a Promethean ideal to gift humanity with ever-advancing technologies.

Using Bernard Siegler's philosophical discourse on how the Prometheus myth reflects how technology shapes human existence, know as 'Technics'. This paper will examine the story of the Hulk and its embodiment of Promethean ideals alongside its correspondence with the 'Trickster' archetype. Exploring themes of the human desire to understand the forces that shape us, the journey we take to harness those forces into technological wonders, and the potential dangers playing with the fire of the Gods can bring!

Keywords: Incredible Hulk, Technics, Prometheus, Technology, Innovation, Archetypes, The Trickster

Thomas Britt

George Mason University

Homemade Technology and Resourceful Heroes in Black Superhero Comedy Films

Robert Townsend's The Meteor Man (1993), Mike Binder's Blankman (1994), and Louis CK's Pootie Tang (2001) are films in which the absurdity of the titular Black heroes (the way they stand out against prevailing norms) provides both the characters and their communities with a salvific equilibrium. These films are partly parodies of conventional superhero narratives, with plots involving threats to family and community, constructing technological costumes for crime fighting, and uneasy relationships between the news media and the superheroes. These elements are played for laughs, and a substantial source of humor involves the unexpected low-tech solutions the characters develop in response to outsized problems.

The movies share the exaggerated aesthetic conventions of comic books and film/television treatments of superhero stories, further reiterating the relationship between these broad comedies and their source material. However, my particular interest in analyzing the characterizations and plots of these films is in how they positively express the Black superhero's resourcefulness. This comic superhero fulfills his purpose through homemade or handed-down gadgets and accessories, transcending the schemes and systems of powerful, wealthy criminals and fighting for his family and community.

There is an overarching optimism within the characters of Meteor Man, Blankman, and Pootie Tang that positions these heroes as capable of pursuing their destinies, despite institutional corruption and injustice. Their technological solutions exhibit their Otherness (their particular kind of double consciousness). Even the one figure among the three who is extraterrestrially enabled (Meteor Man) depends on homemade costumes and mundane objects to defend himself. Whereas so many contemporary dramas and superhero narratives concern the trauma of overwhelming power imbalances and their violent causes and effects, dramatized through CGI spectacle, the low-tech comic mode of Meteor Man, Blankman, and Pootie Tang highlights the characters' potential to succeed as both a relatable emblem and a force of good. These heroes utilize humble, unexpected technological defenses that are products of ingenuity.

Keywords: Black Superhero, Comedy, Crime fighting, Urban America, Race, Comic Books, Technology

Tosten Caeners

University of Duisburg-Essen

“Take that off and what are you?” – The technological Evolution of the Iron Man Suit as a Symbol for Tony Stark’s Character Arc

In the 22 films stretching from Iron Man (2008) to Avengers: Endgame (2019) Tony Stark appears in 10 films (11 if you count his strong presence in Spider-Man: Far From Home). In these appearances, Tony utilizes the Iron Man suit when circumstances force him to enact his superhero identity. Throughout these appearances, the Iron Man suit constantly evolves. Tony adapts, specializes, improves, diversifies, and modernizes the suit constantly so that it takes a different shape with every on-screen appearance.

Looking at the general trajectory of these improvements, one can detect a change in the morphology of the technology that makes up the suit. The early appearances showcase the mechanical elements of the suit’s technology, focusing on such elements as interlocking joints and the robotic assistance needed to get in and out of the suit. In contrast, the late suits have moved into the world of nanotechnology and are depicted as seamless and fully integrated elements of Tony’s body.

Based on the notion of the two identities of the superhero as one of the central defining feature of the superhero, I will analyse the continuous process of changing the suit and show how it runs parallel to the development of Tony’s character and his evolution from a narcissistic, neoliberal entrepreneur into a responsible superhero. The suit and its technological morphology thus externalize symbolically the becoming of a true superhero of Tony Stark.

Keywords: Iron Man, nanotechnology, identity, MCU, Tony Stark.

Giovanni Ciofalo

Sapienza University of Rome

Green Lantern and the Dialectic of Enlightenment: Technology, Power, and the Mediatization of Superheroes.

All cultural products, including superheroes, are representations of the social, cultural, and communicative systems that created them. These representations can both reflect specific aspects of the system and provide a mirror for exploring various possibilities of representation (Griswold 1997).

To gain a deeper understanding of the superhero genre, it is essential to examine the narrative worlds beyond the surface of the stories. For instance, analyzing the representation of Green Lantern and the narrative dynamics that characterize his evolution (1940; 1959; 1971;1994; etc.) in relation to technology can be particularly interesting. The story seems to embody an ideology that reflects a typical vision of progress achieved through the use of technology and the pursuit of power.

Horkheimer and Adorno analyzed the evolution of the Western system in their "Dialectic of Enlightenment," identifying the underlying assumptions that led to the perceived failure of modernity (Horkheimer & Adorno, 1947). They pointed out that instrumental rationality and domination exercised through technology could be held accountable for this failure.

From this perspective, even the second version of Green Lantern (1959) can be seen as an interpretative suggestion that prompts us to reflect on how technology (alien, capitalist, massified, etc.) has fueled a positivistic vision of progress embodied in the superhero figure.

This paper aims to analyze various characters such as Green Lantern, Batman, Iron Man, etc., and determine if traditional forms of storytelling still portray technology as a means of domination and power. Additionally, the paper will delve into the significance of technology in transmedia practices (Jenkins 2009; Leonzi 2022) related to superhero stories and explore how it is portrayed and can be portrayed as a specific form of mediatization (Couldry, Hepp 2017).

Keywords: Superhero; Technology; Power; Mediatization; Enlightenment; Progress; Ideology; Transmediality.

Laura Crossley

Bournemouth University

From Wakanda With Love: African Technology at the Heart of the Captain America Mythopoeic Construction

The second season of Marvel Studio’s limited series What If… confirmed that the vibranium used in the creation of Captain America’s shield was a gift from Wakanda to help with the war effort during World War II. While Wakanda had retained its isolationist policies in relation to international affairs

until the events of Captain America: Civil War (2016) – on screen, at least – the earlier gift of vibranium points to a tentative alliance between the African nation and the formation of Captain America.

The most obvious links between Wakandan technology and the construction of a new Captain America identity is in the suit gifted to Sam Wilson by the Wakandans and showcased in the season one finale of the series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021). With Sam Wilson (and his actor Anthony Mackie) being the subject of racist scrutiny and discrimination as a Black man taking up the shield of Captain America, that he is given a highly advanced protective suit by the most technologically advanced nation on earth – and, significantly, an African nation – is highly symbolic of racial alliance and solidarity. Alongside Sam Wilson, Bucky Barnes also showcases Wakandan technology in the form of the arm given to him by King T’Challa, a visual signifier of his freedom from his HYDRA captivity.

This paper explores the ways in which vibranium and Wakandan technology have been embedded into the mythic constructions of Captain America from the outset. It also examines how this reflects real world histories of colonial practices that stripped colonised nations of their natural resources in order to support and develop ‘First World’ nations.

Keywords: Captain America; Sam Wilson; Bucky Barnes; Steve Rogers, Vibranium; Wakanda, Colonisation; Post-colonial; Technology; Mythology.

Nina Fabianski

University of Duisburg-Essen

Technology and Philosophy in the MCU: Vision and the Ship of Theseus

In the final episode of Wandavision, Vision refers to the philosophical thought experiment concerning the Ship of Theseus to neutralise White Vision. Even before Vision’s creation in Age of Ultron, his technological existence has closely been connected to philosophy and ideals. Essentially, he is, at first, to be believed to be the embodiment of Jarvis after Tony and Bruce transfer the AI machinery of Jarvis into the vibranium body made by Ultron. Yet, the power of the mind stone, arguably magically or technically given, ultimately allows Vision to possess his own de-facto consciousness. Throughout his appearances on screen, Vision critically challenges his existence, wondering whether he possesses an own mind while being cinematically portrayed as something worthy to wield Mjölnir.

While Vision comes temporarily back to life through chaos magic without a body outside the hex in Wandavision, S.W.O.R.D creates yet another version of him in form of White Vision, impending a possible definition of what Vision is supposed to be – peace maker, war machine, or just another AI? During the final showdown, Vision disables White Vision’s reasoning by referring to the Ship of Theseus, therefore questioning the existence of the true version of Vision altogether. Both are the true Vision, and both are not, one without the mind stone, one without the original matter. But as Vision transfers his memories into his adversary, its artificial eyes change to human ones and he takes off with the words, “I am Vision.”

Does the case of Vision provide an answer to the philosophical discourse of identity metaphysics when being seen in the context of technological progress? My argumentation aims at answering how technology can either support or complicate the thought experiment regarding the Ship of Theseus by analysing it in the context of superhero studies.

Keywords: Wandavision, MCU, Ship of Theseus, Metaphysics, Ontology, Identity, AI, Vision

Owen Farrington

Independent Scholar

“Little Worse Than a Man, Little Better Than a Beast”: Examining the borders of technology, horror and humanity in Vision (2015)

The Vision has been a longstanding member of the Marvel Universe since his debut in The Avengers #57 (1968). Throughout his countless appearances over the next 50+ years, Vision has established himself as a featured player within Marvel’s stories, serving as a longstanding member of the Avengers and forming a beloved bond with fellow hero, the Scarlet Witch. As a result, several writers have sought to explore the boundaries between technology and humanity, highlighted by The Vision and the horror that comes with the blurring of these lines between man and android.

Tom King and Gabriel Walta’s Vision (2015) is a dark deconstruction of the hero’s psyche. The comic shows Vision attempting to live an idyllic suburban life with an android family and—finally—become human. This paper explores how King and Walta’s series comments on the relationship between technology, humanity and horror through their examination of the Vision character. It also explains what these discussions tell us about wider conversations surrounding technology in the fictional Marvel universe and the world outside our window. This will be achieved through close reading and analysis of the text, examining interviews from Tom King, Gabriel Walta and other comic professionals with a storied history with the Vision character, and consulting the existing academic work on the character and the broader themes surrounding his existence.

Keywords: Vision, Marvel, Humanity, Technology, Deconstruction, Suburbia

Danny Graydon

University of Hertfordshire

Worn Power: The Batsuit As Technological Construct

Eighty-five years after his published debut in Detective Comics #27, the character of Batman occupies a central and preeminent position within the superhero genre, an irreducibly iconic representation of the concept showcased via multiple media and replete with global popularity. Yet, Batman crucially does not conform to what Peter Coogan (2009), in his defining of the superhero, perceived as “one of the most identifiable elements of the superhero genre”: superpowers. Instead, Bruce Wayne’s dedicated training “to the peak of physical and mental perfection” allows his alter-ego Batman enough power to pursue a mission of crimefighting alongside his fellow supernaturally powered heroes.

However, Batman’s engagement with technology – specifically within his iconic, purposely-intimidating costume – has created a distinct form of heightened power that allows for a widespread augmentation of his physical and mental prowess, elevating him towards the arena of supernatural powers and reinforcing the character’s striking otherness. In the last 40 years – a period of rapid and intense real world technological progress – the Batsuit has gone from being a visual signifier of the super-heroic to an increasing and now-common representation as “technologically motivated assemblage” (Brownie & Graydon, 2015) – notably on screen in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins (2005) and Matt Reeves’ The Batman (2022) - eminently catering to an audience’s thirst for realism by prioritising function over form and providing the spectacle of gadgetry, compellingly grounded in existing technologies.

This paper will seek to argue that the technology-infused Batsuit – encompassing the likes of communications, data analysis, defence, offence and enhanced mobility – allows Batman to truly fulfil the definitional “Mission, Powers, Identity” paradigm per Coogan, further aligning with a contemporary world of everyday high technologies – that, like James Bond, he must stay just in front of so as to remain special – while providing the captivating (if slight) potential of being an ‘achievable’ superhero.

KEYWORDS: Batman, Costume, Technology, Otherness, Gadgetry, Power, Assemblage

Darren Harris-Fain

Auburn University at Montgomery

Myth, Maces, and Machines: Hawkman/Hawkwoman as Embodiments of the Mystical and the Technological

The multiple storylines involving Hawkman and Hawkgirl/Hawkwoman, introduced in 1940 and 1941, are complex and often contradictory, but in all versions of these characters, their powers of flight derive from a substance called Nth metal, which they control mentally and which possesses other power-granting properties. By turns reincarnations of ancient Egyptians or alien police officers from Thanagar, the Hawks combine advanced technology with ancient weapons, offering a fascinating juxtaposition between the archaic and mystical with science fiction technologies.

In this paper I plan to explore the tensions between the apparently atavistic weaponry of the Hawks and their amazing technology, which occasionally seems more magical than science fictional. Using selected examples ranging from comic books since the Golden Age to recent versions such as the television series Legends of Tomorrow and the 2022 film Black Adam, I will analyze the competing storylines behind these characters, discussing the juxtaposition of ancient weaponry with alien or futuristic technology.

My tentative thesis is that the Hawks, even if sometimes presented as aliens, represent aspects of human nature that can be viewed as either complementary or contradictory depending on the situation and the story: passion and reason. Though often shown as coming from an advanced civilization, the Hawks are ferocious warriors, with Hawkman’s bared chest evoking an ancient fighter more than a man of reason. And of course their hawk helmets and wings suggest an animal/human dichotomy identities even more than Batman’s cape and cowl. Further, as a couple (sometimes married, sometimes reincarnated lovers separated and reunited over the centuries), Hawkman and Hawkwoman have a passionate erotic life absent from much of the history of their superhero counterparts, again connecting them to physicality and passion even as they often use their formidable intelligence and technology in their heroic activities.

Keywords: Hawkman, Hawkgirl/Hawkwoman, technology, weapons, aliens, reincarnation, comic books, television, film

Mark Hibbett

University of the Arts London

When the world catches up with science-fiction: Doctor Doom and the missing view screens

Some science fiction technologies have yet to become reality - we don't yet have jet packs or meals in pill form, for example - but when they eventually do slip into everyday life their previous existence as futuristic wonders can be forgotten.

One example of this is Doctor Doom and his constant use of viewing screens during the Marvel Age of comics from 1961 to 1987. An empirical analysis of texts published during this period clearly demonstrated that this technology was one of Doom's key character signifiers, but a survey of over two hundred current fans and academics undertaken in 2020 showed that almost nobody remembered it.

This paper will explain how these two different methods of assessing a character came to such different results, and suggest that the survey respondents missed out viewing screens as a notable futuristic

technology because they had become part of their working life in the twenty-first century. It will then argue that this demonstrates the usefulness of taking an empirical approach to superhero research, rather than relying on unreliable memory and opinion, and provide other examples of this process in action.

Keywords: Comics Studies; Marvel; Supervillains; empirical analysis; fan studies

Robert Hyland

Scholars School Systems

Technological re-enchantment/disenchantment: Shifting views of technology in the MCU Captain America.

In Captain America, the First Avenger (2011), we see several technological marvels, which re-enchant the audience into the magic of computer generated imagery. The sight of a slight, powerless Chris Evans as the pre-super-serum Steve Rogers, returns to the viewer of the magic of cinema. The moment when the augmented Steve exits the bariatric chamber as the superhuman version of the self, is a moment of wonder. And yet, though the narrative insists that Captain America has become super powered, this is not a technologically augmented body. Through a sleight of hand - a bit of cinematic trickery, we find ourselves staring at the spectacle of Evans’ real body, and realize that we had been looking at a cgi reconstructed feeble body.

The film's ambivalent play with analogic and technologic wizardry operates at both imagistic and narrative levels. Captain America’s weapon of choice is a shield – a seemingly analogue piece of war weaponry, all but useless in the technology driven second world war and hilariously out-paced by the high technology equipped “chitari”, and yet the shield, developed by Stark industries, is a highly tuned precision instrument using the almost magic imbued properties of vibranium, enabling the shield to operate in a way that defies the rules of physics. The shield comes to embody Steve’s force of will so much, that Sam Wilson becomes reluctant to accept this technologic/analogic weapon.

This paper explores the ambivalent relationships to technology in the Captain America franchise and explores the dichotomy of disenchantment/re-enchantment of technology as deployed in imagery and narrative.

Keywords: Captain America, Augmentation, Technology, Disenhantment, Narrative

Adam El Daoud the Father King

Independent Scholar

Superhero Tech: Superman vs the B.R.A.I.N.I.A.C

Using Superman as the Superhero and the Brain Interactive Construct (B.R.A.I.N.I.A.C for short) as the Supervillain, this paper compares the Fall of Lucifer aka the Devil with the B.R.A.I.N.I.A.C technological virus.

Drawing upon 66 years of history for the iconic cybernetic villain, Brainiac has taken on multiple forms, beginning as a bald, green skinned humanoid, the character now embodies technological superiority and a sense of corruption in the pursuit of technology. Much like Lucifer and his early appearances in biblical storytelling, this corruption is a core part of his mythos and will thus be explored through a comparative study.

The Information has been gathered from a variety of source material including comic books, cartoons, movies, literature and novels. Connections are made between Superman and regular men;

Brainiac and computer Viruses; Brainiac and the Devil. Biblical mythology as well as decades of comic book storytelling are used to strengthen this connection.

Keywords: Superman, Brainiac, Technology, Virus, Mythology

Lorraine Henry King

London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London

Technology and the Costuming of Heroic Skin

When a superhero dons their costume in the iconic and usually beautifully edited suiting up scene, we are not yet aware how technology impacts the costume that becomes their second skin (Brownie & Graydon). This costumed skin serves several functions by operating as disguise, protection, armour, and weapon. Both the costume and the technology embedded within it signals the rank of the hero and the iteration of the narrative and where it sits in the timeline of the hero’s journey.

This presentation explores the impact of costumes and how they enhance and support heroism with technology (Bukatman). Superman, Spiderman, and Black Panther’s technology versus their superhero bodies is discussed and the presentation asks just how ‘super’ are these heroes without their costumes? Superman’s powers reside within him – his skin is his armour, yet the costume is iconic. In Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) the question arises about embodied natural ability and the technologically enhanced Spider-Man body and suit. Each incarnation of Spider-Man differs offering a unique comparison of nature versus technology and the new ways for the costume to support the heroism. Black Panther’s powers are bestowed upon him by eating the Heart-Shaped Herb. His Vibranium infused costume unites the power of science, of design, and of the techniques of consistent costume iconography.

Heroic skin (Henry King), the power of corporeal skin is discussed as a type of costume itself. It is the power of costume to move the superhero beyond our time and universe that makes costume fascinating in how it impacts the audience. Technology has the potential to create a supervillain as well as a superhero – so how in this abundance of excess is costume and technology manipulated to identify and support the super heroic.

Keywords: Spiderman; Black Panther; Superman; Costume; representation; technology; heroic skin; subtext

Svenja Kolpack

University of Duisburg-Essen

“I take from you your power!” – Mjolnir as the key to unleashing Thor’s powers

“So long entrusted with the mighty hammer Mjolnir, forged in the heart of a dying star, its power has no equal […]. ‘Tis a fit companion for a king,” says Odin about Thor’s weapon and the source of his superpowers. When Thor is exiled and separated from Mjolnir, he is still strong but powerless in summoning thunder. Without his weapon, Thor becomes ordinary.

As soon as he is reunited with Mjolnir, he is reunited with his superhuman powers and returns to his status as an Asgardian god and superhero. But when Hela appears and breaks Mjolnir, Thor is faced with the same old problem: with the source of his powers gone, how can he use his abilities? His premise becomes again a search for a new weapon to return to his powerful supperhero-self. In this endeavour he forces Stormbreaker, an axe with powers equalling those of Mjolnir.

This presentation focusses on Thor’s development as a superhero through his relationship with his weapons Mjolnir and Stormbreaker. How is his power linked to those weapons and how are they merely enabling him to focus and control and, eventually, master his power so that he can use it autonomously?

Keywords: MCU, Thor, Mjolnir, Stormbreaker, source of power, gadget, technology.

Mikayla J. Laird

University of Hertfordshire

Blinded by Science: The Technological Villains of Superman and how they Emphasis the Humanity of Clark Kent.

Despite the prestigious scientific achievements of Kryptonian culture, the planet’s destruction was inevitable. Regardless of the work and warnings of Jor-El, the scientific council could not save themselves. Many years later, his son now fights against scientific beings to keep his adopted planet safe. In this paper, the role of technology as a destructive force in the Superman comics will be looked at through the examples of Brainiac, Metallo, Cyborg Superman, and Lex Luthor.

The concept of the technological other, Marshall McLuhan’s concept of the extension of man, and Donna Haraway’s cyborg manifesto will be discussed to identify the continuous trend in Superman’s villains. The aim of this paper is to identify how technology has shaped Superman’s life and superhero identity, despite its frequent association with his enemies. Each villain will be used to represent a different aspect of technology in the DC Universe.

This paper will largely consider the Post-Crisis and Post-New 52 eras of DC Comics, with a specific focus on stories centred around the before mentioned villains and the culture of Krypton prior to its destruction.

Keywords: Superman, Cyborg Superman, Metallo, Brainiac, Lex Luthor, Krypton, Technology, Otherness, Cyborg, Extensions of Man.

Stephanie Lange

University of Duisburg-Essen

The Matter of the Suit – Ezekiel vs Iron Man

Superheroes and villains both use them - a suit. A suit is what defines a superhero. It distinguishes the normal human being from the superhero. What differences do we get when we take a look at various superhero suits? In which ways does the suit support the character?

With this question in mind, I want to take a closer look at differences in using a suit as a superhero or as a villain in ways of appearance, functionality and features. To explore this in detail I have chosen the Asian adaptation Iron Man – Rise of Technovore as an example.

This paper is going to look at different adaptations of suits in superheroes and villains. As an example, I will focus on the villain Ezekiel and the Iron Man adaptation by Madhouse, a Japanese movie company which worked in collaboration with Marvel to generate an anime version of Iron Man. I will look at the cultural differences of how the characters are portrayed as well as how the suits matter to the different characters.

Keywords: Iron Man, Ezekiel, cultural differences, MCU, MAU, Japan

Adam Lee Miller

Nanzan University, Japan

Painful Transformations: Japanese Cinema’s complex relationship with Technology

Technology is approached in a number of ways in Japanese popular culture, from being the root-cause of a post-apocalyptic landscape, an opportunity to fend of otherworldly or monstrous foes, or benign figures merely wishing to assist the protagonist. But there is a far more complex relationship that is often explored in Japanese cinema and television, one which posits the question of what this interaction between human and artificial material would look like.

This paper examines the physical implications of this relationship, looking at how the transformation towards a technologically enhanced human is often depicted as painful and traumatic; an ordeal that often leaves characters confused, altered, and oftentimes broken. The paper will refer to films such as Akira (Otomo, 1988), Tetsuo (Tsukamoto, 1989), as well as television shows such as The Guyver (1989-1992) and Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-1996).

Keywords: Technology, Post-Apocalypse, Monstrous, Transformation, Trauma

Marta Pastoriza González

University of Santiago de Compostela

My Body Is a Cage: Doom Patrol’s Robotman and Transhumanism as a Disability

Transhumanism and technological mastery are often seen as purely beneficial elements within the scope of superhero media. One must look no further than the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s flagship superhero Iron Man, and how he is elevated into a demi-god not by his physical prowess, but by his ability to enhance himself through technology. There is often a large degree of agency in the way most superheroes wield their technological marvels; Iron Man, at the end of the day, can walk out of his suit and return to his moderately normal life, and Batman can put his gadgets and enhancements away when he returns to the Batcave.

Such luxury is not shared by Doom Patrol’s Cliff Steele —alias Robotman— whose existence is, after a life-changing accident, reduced to that of a brain within a robotic body he has no hope of ever abandoning. Not only does the body Steele’s brain is shoved into deprive him of basic biological human processes, but it also removes any level of agency over his own physical form, which now needs to be constantly monitored and upgraded to keep the brain inside alive.

This paper will examine the ways in which transcending the flesh dooms Steele to an “omniplegic” (Peyer, 2004) existence, which sees the archetypical ‘strongman’ superhero subverted by presenting the very carapace that provides him with power as a marking of an alienating disability. To this end, I will draw from Steve Shaviro’s (1996) interpretation of René Descartes’ mind-body dualism, as well as works that deal with the dysfunction in the physicality of the superhero, such as José Alaniz Death, Disability, and the Superhero (2014) and Alaniz and Scott T. Smith’s Uncanny Bodies (2019).

Keywords: Disability, transhumanism, superhero, otherness, technology

Ranthild Salzer

University of Vienna

Superheroic technology and gender stereotypes: from perpetuation to innovation

My paper argues that Marvel Comics recently started to leave behind a gendered logic equating technological genius with masculinity enactment in favor of constructing technology as a more gender-neutral stomping ground. Characters like Captain Marvel or Ironheart illustrate a shift away from masculinizing technology.

Early on superhero comics demonstrated a willingness to connect technological innovation and savviness to successful masculinity enactment. During the 1960s Marvel Comics created several male superheroes whose special abilities were based more on technological inventions and gadgets than on supernatural causes or freak accidents. Tony Stark/Iron Man or Hank Pym/Ant Man were early entries on this list. Combining successful technological innovations with superherodom, such characters perpetuated ideas of technological ingenuity as male domains which were scarcely extended to female characters back then.

Janet van Dyne/Wasp, for example, first appears in 1963. Her relationship to technology is a different one. Janet gains her size-changing abilities from undergoing a technological procedure, yet she is not the inventor of said procedure. This role falls to Hank Pym/Ant Man. The Wasp’s origin story sets the tone for many early female Marvel superheroes: women do not invent technological devices which superpower them but rely upon male-made technological inventions.

My paper takes a closer look at Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel and Riri Williams/Ironheart. Danvers first appears in 1968 but has only recently been re-imagined as a character with technological might by having been a fighter pilot prior to her career as a superhero. Williams presents a much more direct connection between a female character and technical ingenuity. She is introduced in 2016 as a teenage black prodigy and engineering student who builds her own Iron-Man inspired suit of armor. Both add a new layer to the hitherto gendered connection between superheroes and technology as technological savviness is transformed into a gender-neutral stomping ground.

Keywords: Superhero, technology, stereotypes, gender constructions, masculinity enactment, diversity, equality, reimagination.

Caesy Stuck

University of Duisburg-Essen

What is it like to be Just A Rather Very Intelligent System? Conceptions of Conscious Artificial Intelligence in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

The negotiation of Artificial Intelligence has long been an integral part of media that explores technology. In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Measure of A Man" (1989) Data's sentience is negotiated in court. In his defence of Data, Picard points out that they can measure his intelligence and self-awareness but have no methods to measure consciousness, whether machine or human.

This is referred to as the measurement problem of consciousness in philosophy of mind and still a central problem. AI has also been a substantial part of the MCU with assistants, superheroes or antagonists. I will look at three central AI's in the MCU, Vision, Ultron and J.A.R.V.I.S, and their relation to each other, as their consciousnesses become somewhat intertwined after Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). In my paper, I will analyze conceptions of consciousness in AI in the MCU and how humans negotiate their relationship with AI, addressing central moral dilemmas and implications for public perception. The word consciousness is an umbrella term, referring to a range of mental phenomena rather than one monolithic concept. I base my analysis on the Descriptive Question, the

Explanatory Question and the Functional Question (Van Gulick, 2018) and the measurement problem of consciousness.

The measurement problem is central in the discussion of AI, as rather "than a question about the features of consciousness itself, this is a question about how we can come to identify the presence of consciousness or know of its properties" (Browning and Veit 200, p.88) and highlights our lack of indicators for consciousness measurement in AI (Ginsburg and Jablonka, 2019). This emphasizes humans' struggle to define AI's status, a central theme in fictional narratives like “Measure of a Man“ or Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), where consciousness is crucial for attributing moral status.

Keywords: consciousness, AI, MCU, problem of measurement, moral status of AI, Age of Ultron

James C. Taylor

University of Warwick

Are Superheroes Vertical or Horizontal? An Exploration of Aspect Ratios

Superman: The Movie (1978) opens on black and white imagery presented in a square(ish) aspect ratio associated with classical Hollywood cinema before colour bursts forth and the frame expands into a 2.39:1 aspect ratio, establishing widescreen as integral to the spectacle of the cinematic superhero. Audiences watching the film on VHS would, however, be denied this grand widening of the frame, the film’s images having been cropped to a 4:3 ratio to better fit the screens of contemporary televisions.

While the “narrow” 4:3 image in this instance curtails the cinematic superhero’s spectacle, in later years Zack Snyder determined to present his cut of Justice League (2021) in 4:3, to better suit IMAX projection and due to his contention that superheroes are vertical figures. In this case, the 2017 theatrical cut of Justice League, which crops material from the top and bottom of Snyder’s images to achieve a 1.85:1 widescreen ratio better suited to standardly formatted cinemas and twenty-first century television screens, becomes the version that removes an intended aspect of spectacle.

Through comparative analysis of versions of Superman and Justice League in both wide and narrow aspect ratios, this paper explores what different technologies of cinematic production and exhibition can add to the spectacle and characterisation of superheroes on screen. By analysing one superhero film designed in widescreen but then cropped to a narrow ratio, and one designed in a narrow ratio then cropped to widescreen, the paper hopes to give neither wide nor narrow ratios preferential treatment. While exploring the potentials of different aspect ratios specifically in relation to superheroes, the paper also intends to contribute to broader discussions about aspect ratio preferences in popular cinema at a time when widescreen televisions, tall IMAX screens and alternately wide and narrow phone screens all compete for audience attention.

Keywords: Aspect ratios, cinema, IMAX, Justice League, Superman, widescreen.

Caleb Turner

Richmond American University London

Beautifully Unethical and Dangerous: Exploring Spectacular Bat-Technologies of Augmented Intelligence (and Heroic Responsibilities Toward a ‘Digital Economy’) in the Film & Game Franchises of Batman

The scale at which Bat-technologies can potentially augment digital tools in order to transcend judicial systems and societal infrastructures is at once both awe-inspiring and terrifying. Whether through amazing feats of surveillance and covert evasion (in Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy, 2005-2012), or by collecting enhanced evidence and generating data-driven hypotheses (in 2022’s The Batman), or through swiftly neutralising criminal activity (in The Arkham Knight Game series, 2009-2015) or via transcending endless constraints of an urban grid (in Burton and Schumacher’s Batman film series, 1989-1997), each of these spectacular displays are profoundly – as Lucius Fox exclaims in The Dark Knight (2008) – beautiful, unethical and dangerous.

Such portrayals arguably invoke a ‘cultural crisis’, namely a ‘technological sublime’, which as Scott Bukatman explains, evokes both terror and euphoria in equal measure (1993: 4). This duelling conflict between positive and negative associations of ideas is at the core of contemporary concerns associated with the kinds of Augmented Intelligence that Batman employs, which prompts the issue as to just how regulated this advanced technology should be? This tension adheres to what Dave Elder-Vass (in ‘Lifeworld and Systems in The Digital Economy’ 2017) defines as the imperative of a ‘digital economy’: i.e. in which digital tools are responsibly coordinated by ‘communicative interaction’ as opposed to primarily driven by market forces of money or power. Spectators within these storyworlds (and also us as viewers) are tempted to embrace this spectacle of ‘AI’ being so beyond our comprehension so as to be ‘indistinguishable from magic’ (as advised by Arthur C. Clarke). This also brings to mind Dan Hassler-Forest’s similar warning of perceptions of a cyborg fantasy, in which ‘organic perception and technological data have become not merely inextricably intertwined, but also – and crucially – mutually beneficial and empowering’ (Capitalist Superheroes 2011: 182).

Spectacular feats of technological heroism, then, define Batman onscreen in film and games, raising a crucial thematic question: Where should super-heroic innovators of technology (and us as part of their societies) draw the line between trusting in the impressive power, awe and magical potential of this augmented intelligence (and physicality) versus implementing a responsible regulatory supervision of these unprecedented digital tools? Indeed, to what extent can The Dark Knight, whenever forced to become something ‘more than a hero’, truly act as a silent guardian and watchful protector able to seek out the most ethical course of action in the face of such unpredictable technological advances?

Keywords: Spectacle, Sublime, Magic, Surveillance and Regulation of Technologies, Augmented Intelligence, Digital Economies/Upskilling, Films, Games

The Superhero Project: VII Global Meeting

"Fifteen Years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe"

Friday 25th to Sunday 27th 2023

Kristin Aubel

University of Vienna

The Fragile Place of Hawkeye in the MCU

In The Avengers, Hawkeye is established as a founding member of the titular superhero team. This movie, however, is also Hawkeye’s first fulltime appearance in the MCU, already giving him a disadvantage in contrast to the other, previously established, main characters, who also receive more screen time as heroes and have for the most part more spectacular superpowers. Thus already overshadowed by the other Avengers, parody sketches amplified the fan perception of Hawkeye as a normal human among superhumans and therefore a useless member of the Avengers – a conclusion that is not shared by the comic book source material.

This perceived normalcy then becomes normative in the second Avengers movie when Hawkeye’s family life (and especially the ability to have children) is depicted as desirable and necessary in order to be fully human. While the movie gives Hawkeye a purpose within the superhero team, it also confirms that he is its weakest link and again reserves the visual spectacle, which is arguably a huge reason for the success of the franchise, for the other team members. His absences in multiple MCU projects severely weaken his narrative importance, questioning whether he is indeed a necessary part of the team on a textual level, while the meta- and paratexts seemingly confirm that assumption by making him the only founding Avenger without a movie and by further reducing his already small part in the opening logo and thus within the Marvel brand.

Fan responses in favor of Hawkeye reached its peak when his absence in Infinity War was used as a meme to explain the uncharacteristic loss of the Avengers, exaggerating and drawing attention to the conflicting textual and metatextual narratives about the character. With his own Disney+ series in the tradition of the Netflix shows and the introduction of Kate Bishop, there might be a future for Hawkeye in the MCU as a street-level hero.

Keywords: superheroes, MCU, street-level, fan studies, the spectacular, everyman, adaptation

Luke Billings

University College Jersey (UK)

The Hulks Character Arc in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: The Chaos of Anger as a Path towards Jungian Individuation.

Carl Jung described his theory of Individuation as the path towards psychological wholeness. Central to this is the refinement of the self and the acceptance of the unwanted and hidden aspects of the personality, known as the ‘shadow’.In many respects Dr Bruce Banner is a man battling with his shadow self. Moving through the Marvel universe, in a subverted form of the traditional Hero Archetype, he flits between the well-meaning scientist who is endlessly consumed by guilt. And a chaotic, uber powerful monster, thoughtlessly acting out in city destroying levels of rage!

The significant body of storytelling associated with the Hulk provides the greatest fictional representations of the human struggle to contain and resolve anger. Over decades worth of comics, TV shows and films we have seen the Hulk morph into various states and forms. But for all the back and forth wresting with his shadow, rarely do we see Bruce banner reach a stable ‘individuate’ state.

The MCU’s Incredible Hulk character arc is one of the most complete within his history. Moving from the familiar, vagrant style Bruce Banner, laying low and helping others at the edges of society. To the Banner-Hulk fusion of Professor Hulk, co-captain of the Avengers and eventually full Infinity Gauntlet wielding saviour of the Universe! This presentation will explore the journey of the Hulk in the MCU within the context of the theories of depth psychology put forward by Car Jung, particularly how it aligns to his foundational theory of Individuation. Throughout the presentation I will consider how the Hulks MCU arc fits alongside the more usual representations of the hero’s journey and mindless anger on the big screen. 

Keywords: Analytical Psychology, Anger, Archetype of the Hero ,Hero’s Journey, Individuation , Intermittent Explosive Disorder, The Shadow ,The Self

Rebekah Brammer

Independent Scholar / AACTA Professional Member (Film Writer/Critic)

Family Values: Forging Bonds in the Guardians of the Galaxy Films

Guardians of the Galaxy (James Gunn, 2014) and its follow-up, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (Gunn, 2017), heralded a refreshing direction for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Whilst known for their comedic contribution to the MCU, these films are among the most emotionally complex, pairing edge-of-seat action with a consistent focus on the characters' vulnerability and need for connection.  As is true with the best of the Marvel films, great characterization and an emotional core elevate the experience above pure spectacle. The Guardians are a group of characters thrown together largely by circumstance within a classic ‘quest’ narrative. They initially present as a group of ragtag adventurers, but, over the course of the two films, their interactions become far more familial in nature.

This theme of family bonds - whether biological or chosen – manifests in a number of ways. Some of the Guardians are bound by tragedy, with their experience of the loss of a loved one uniting them. Some are otherworldly orphans, who have never known or have lost the consistent love of a parental figure. Others have issues with fathers or father-figures shaping their attitudes and vulnerabilities. Siblings – blood and otherwise – display their love/hate rivalries. They are often connected by their parental love and care of Groot, as he regenerates from adult to baby. Through their adventures and interactions, the Guardians make the transition from unlikely allies to friends to a family.

This abstract is based on a previously published article (Screen Education Issue 96, 2020) which focused on the first two GOTG films plus their appearances in Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019). The presentation for the conference will be updated to include their appearances in subsequent Marvel Cinematic Universe films.

Keywords: family, orphan, father, siblings, MCU, Avengers, Guardians

Torsten Caenars

University of Duisburg Essen

The Sovereign and the MCU – Iron Man as a Nexus of Sovereignty in the MCU

The 22 films stretching from Iron Man (2008) to Avengers: Endgame (2019) constitute the first four phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Also referred to as the Infinity Saga, the individual films of these four phases are narratively connected by means of the infinity stones utilized in various ways of the individual films’ McGuffins. The intricacies of the intertextual and almost palimpsestuously involuted connections the MCU has set up by functionalizing the infinity stones have been a subject of academic scrutiny for some time now. Therefore, my paper will concentrate on the notion of sovereignty as a possible lens to organize and contemplate, not so much the MCU’s unity-in-difference constructed through intertextuality, but the MCU’s negotiation of the power in its superhero universe in terms of morality, politics, identity and conflict in general.

In my paper, I will draw on Derrida’s concept of sovereignty outlined (predominantly) in his lecture The Beast and the Sovereign and link it to Tony Stark’s statement “I am Iron Man” which, appearing in Iron Man and Endgame, frames the four phases of the MCU as an expression of power, similarly to Louis XIV’s L'état c'est moi! Taking a hint from Tywin Lannister, who notes that “any man who must say ‘I am the king’ is no true king at all” (A Song of Ice and Fire: A Storm of Swords (Book 3)), openly expressing one’s (alleged) sovereignty might actually have the opposite effect as a speech act and undermine one’s entire claim to sovereignty.

Based on this inherent uncertainty of sovereign power, I will look at the negotiations of the claim to sovereignty in the MCU through the first four phases. I will concentrate on Iron Man and his connection to sovereign (super)power, using him as an exemplary nexus to show how the MCU as a whole conceptualizes sovereignty as embodied by the superhero on the moral, political and personal planes.

Keywords: MCU, Sovereignty, Intertextuality, Iron Man, Nexus, Derrida

Laura Crossley

Bournemouth University

'She’s Kind of Awful Now’: Reframing and Interchanging Heroism and Villainy in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021).

When Sharon Carter is introduced into the MCU in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), she appears under the name of ‘Kate’, ostensibly Steve Rogers’ neighbour; in actuality, she is a SHIELD agent sent to observe him. Her identity as Sharon Carter, niece of Steve’s long-time love Peggy Carter, is only revealed in Captain America: Civil War (2016), where she becomes instrumental in helping Steve and Sam Wilson save Bucky Barnes from being recaptured. Civil War also introduces Helmut Zemo, a Sokovian general and aristocrat determined to take revenge on the Avengers after the destruction of Sokovia.

Neither character is seen again until The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021), where Sharon’s and Zemo’s relative statuses as ‘hero’ and ‘villain’ become increasingly blurred. Their positioning reflects some of the central concerns of a series that examines and interrogates the nature of heroism, especially through the critical lens of race. The ambiguity around these two characters is a contrast to the more straightforward, unequivocal heroism of Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes but also accents the problematic nature of the troubled, government-sponsored Captain America, John Walker.

This paper examines how concepts of ‘heroism’ and ‘villainy’ are questioned and recontextualised within the series, especially against the contemporary real-world backdrop of fraught international relations. In this light, the paper also explores the character of Karli Morgenthau, whose comic book origins as a wealthy white male are reconfigured as a displaced, mixed-race woman and whose narrative arc continually questions notions around ‘the hero’ and ‘the villain’.

Keywords: hero; villain; identity; race; gender; Sam Wilson; Bucky Barnes; Sharon Carter; Baron Zemo; Karli Morgenthau.

Owen Farrington

Edge Hill University

"Mr. Stark, you've become part of a bigger universe”: The Rise of the MCU and the History of Marvel’s Adjacent Universes.

Throughout its 15-year lifespan, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has become the world's most successful and dominant media franchise. Since 2008's Iron Man, the series - which encompasses live-action films, television series and one-shots - has brought the characters and stories of Marvel's comics into the mainstream. Consequently, this cinematic venture has revived interest in both heroes previously adapted for film and television (including Captain America, Spider-Man, and the Incredible Hulk) while simultaneously introducing audiences to numerous characters never before seen outside of the printed page (namely, Iron Man, Black Panther and the Guardians of the Galaxy). The MCU is Marvel's most successful effort to extend its storytelling beyond its long-running series of comics.

However, it is not the first of its kind. Instead, the MCU represents the culmination of three decades of attempts to create a secondary, adjacent interconnected universe. Since the mid-1980s, Marvel has attempted to launch numerous imprints and universes designed to introduce their characters to wider audiences, both within and beyond the printed page.

This paper examines the cultural significance of the MCU through a historical and comparative study of Marvel's prior attempts to launch adjacent and secondary superhero universes and how each endeavour reflects the context of the superhero genre and the changing nature of media at the time of its inception. It investigates why the MCU has succeeded to a greater extent than these other examples and how these various short-lived imprints are represented within the MCU’s narrative, themes and worldbuilding. This will be achieved by analysing primary source material published as part of these imprints, a close reading of written accounts and interviews from those involved with these initiatives, and the work of scholars and notable journalists, including Sean Howe, Reed Tucker, Danny Fingeroth and Brian Cronin.

Keywords: Marvel, cinematic, universe, adaptation, film, television, animation, comic books

Vincent M. Gaine

Lancaster University

Marvellous Women: Disciplined Bodies, Energy Disruptions

The development of the Marvel Cinematic Universe features a discursive struggle between female objectification and agency, illustrative of a long-running tension over the representation of women in cinema. This paper examines this struggle through analysis of Captain Marvel, Scarlet Witch and Ms Marvel, with focus upon the representation of the female body and agency through the visual rendering of ‘energy’.

A recurring trope for female superheroes in the MCU has been nebulous power in the form of energy. The superpowers of Carol Danvers / Captain Marvel, Wanda Maximoff / Scarlet Witch and Kamala Khan / Ms Marvel largely consist of such energy, generated by their bodies, in contrast to the more clearly defined abilities of Iron Man, Captain America and Doctor Strange. I argue that this ill-defined power represents the (perceived) unruly nature of female power. The narrative arc for these superpowered women, at least ostensibly, is the channelling of their power from unruly to disciplined, becoming what patriarchy deems acceptable.

However, this patriarchal containment of female power is disrupted through liminality. Liminality is central to the superhero figure, who may be between god and man (Thor) or between technology and biology (Iron Man). Danvers, Maximoff and Khan embody a liminal state between matter and energy, and their liminality disrupts straightforward objectification and containment. The energy auras of these matter / energy figures visually disrupt a clearly defined body, and the constantly rippling and shifting energy expresses an ongoing unruliness. Therefore, the undefined nature of these powers and the heroes that wield them constitute figures that are enduringly liminal, unruly, and disruptive to the identity politics of the MCU.

Keywords: female superhero, liminality, identity politics, unruly energy, Captain Marvel, Scarlet Witch, Ms Marvel, WandaVision

Muskan Garg

Independent Scholar

Exploring Disorder and Micro-Narratives in Captain America: Civil War Under A Postmodernist Lens

Film studies are one of the most popular disciplines in visual studies. Cinema has long been a part of the world's history, yet it is rarely treated as a serious discipline that can be studied in depth. Action movies, under film studies hold a large amount of quota. Action movies are by and large filled with destruction and the trope of superhero vs supervillain. This paper seeks to examine one of the most well-known films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise, Captain America: Civil War, through the lens of postmodernism.

Reflecting postmodernist ideas in a Marvel film will reveal that Marvel, a brand dedicated to order and stability, is in itself a story of chaos and micro-narratives. Through a line of movies and programs based on Marvel Comics, the MCU has established itself as a superhero vs. supervillain archetype in cinematic history. The process of bringing this research to fruition included multiple viewings of the film and a thorough comprehension of the MCU. While scholars have argued about numerous art films, the research for popular movies and series or franchises such as MCU remains mostly unexplored.

The study undertaken in this paper will broaden the scope of conducting research within the entire Marvel universe through a critical lens in academia and seeking to study films that impact the modern world and the human psyche in the contemporary world.

Keywords: Captain America: Civil War, MCU, Postmodernism, Film Studies, Visual Studies, Action Movies, Disorder, Micro-narratives

Danny Graydon

University of Hertfordshire

With Great Tech, Comes Greater Responsibility: The MCU’s refraction of Spider-Man’s Origin via a synthesis of Technological Patronage and Heroic Parentage

Released in 2016, Captain America: Civil War - the eleventh film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, opening Phase Three - bore the notable distinction of finally integrating Spider-Man into the MCU, his presence previously restricted by the character’s ownership on screen by Sony Pictures. Crucially, there was no evocation of the character’s origin story  - already showcased on film in 2002’s Spider-Man (dir: Sam Raimi) and in 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man (dir: Marc Webb) – with the teenage hero instead introduced in the narrative in media res, recruited by Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) in the earliest, makeshift days of his heroic endeavours and, Stark nonchalantly puts it, “in dire need of an upgrade… systemic… top-to-bottom”.

This introduction fosters some striking deviations from the character’s established origin story, not least of which is the positioning of Stark as a technological patron to Peter Parker. Stark’s provision of a superhero costume to Parker in Civil War is revealed in Spider Man: Homecoming (2016) to be richly infused with technological capability (“It’s like a skin-tight Iron Man suit!”). This allows Spider-Man to swiftly operate nationally (Homecoming) and globally (Far From Home) while his adoption of the nanotech “Iron Spider” suit in Infinity War (2018) allows him to operate cosmically, thereby directly aligning him with The Avengers. More fundamentally, this patronage frames Spider-Man as a tacit extension of Iron Man and therefore a potential heir apparent. This is reinforced by Stark’s role as a mentor in Homecoming, a de facto father figure in Infinity War & Endgame, and a burdensome legacy in Far From Home.

This paper contends that the reframing of Spider-Man’s origin within the MCU served a specific narrative calibration, allowing the character to swiftly join the front ranks of MCU heroes in anticipation of The Infinity Saga’s grand climax, while simultaneously reflecting Spider-Man’s central prominence in the wider Marvel Universe. However, it also allows for the centrifugal tragic component of Spider-Man’s origin to be refashioned as a loss of two parental figures – Stark as superhero father, May as moral mother – that cumulatively manoevures Peter Parker to a “homecoming” in No Way Home that finds the hero operating in more traditional parameters: alone, self-sufficient and driven by loss.

Keywords: Spider-Man, MCU, Technology, Costume, Identity, Cosmic

Rob Hyland

Queens University, Canada

Spider-Economics: Neoliberal economics in Marvel’s Spider-Man franchise.

After the 2008 financial crisis, US and British banking systems feared a lack of confidence in their respective economies.  In traditional Keynesian economics, banks can raise and lower interest rates in order to stimulate saving or spending and artificially regulate the economy.  In the context of neoliberalism, banks have been reluctant to implement such Keynesian economic structures.  Instead, the banks introduced quantitative easing.  Quantitative easing is an economic tool that is seen as separate from economic regulation.  In QE, the banks release more currency into the economy in order to stimulate faith in the economy, and consequently stimulate growth.  However, the fear of QE is that the release of more currency can spur inflation, that is the devaluing of the very property QE is attempting to rescue.  QE proposes that a calculated quantity of product (money) will restore interest in the economy without alienating the market. 

In 2022, the 9th Spider-man film in 20 years was being prepared for release.  However, there was a recognition that with so many superhero films, audiences may be losing interest in the superhero narrative and that particular spider-product.  The solution was what I am calling Spider-quantitative easing.  To combat falling interest (the devaluing of Spiderman because of over production) the solution was to release more spider-man characters.  The films Spider-Man, Into the Spider-Verse and Spider-Man No Way Home both use the conceit of multiple iterations of spider-man in the same film.  This can be understood as a form of quantitative easing – restore confidence in a property, not by restricting supply, but by flooding the market with a calculated amount of product in order to restore interest in that product.

Beginning with the concept of Spider-Quantitative Easing, this paper explores the concept of Spider-economics.  This research project will explore neoliberalism and contemporary capitalism in the Spider-verse narratives.

Keywords: Spider-Man, Economics, Quantitative Easing, Finance, MCU, Neoliberalism, Capitalism

Lorraine Henry King and Richard Reynolds

University of the Arts London

A Brave Space for Culture Wars? The MCU as the intersection between opposing ideologies

Who owns our superheroes? Who owns the MCU? Disney? The movie-going public? Or the fans? As Longinus observed in the First Century AD “Filled with joy and pride, we come to believe that we have created what we have only experienced….” With fandom’s sense of co-creation comes a powerful sense of ownership.  In earlier decades, fans were frequently spoken of as exhibiting a coherent set of attitudes and beliefs. But in the era of identity politics, the Comicsgate movement and debates about representation, wokeness and culture wars, this supposed homogeneity of superhero fandom has been exploded as an outdated myth.

Yet, paradoxically - and during this era of almost grotesquely subdivided fandom - the Marvel Cinematic Universe has emerged and grown into a dominant force in global cinema and entertainment. How can a discourse that divides its fans so sharply play so successfully across such a fractured audience?

This paper will examine the strategies (successful and unsuccessful) that the MCU has engaged with, to appease the warring ideologies of its customers. It will examine how deeply-laid themes and subtexts operate to support contradictory readings and oppositional sympathies. It will examine culture, costume and representation – for example, how black heroes have divided fans, and how changes in a hero’s gender (such as Captain Marvel’s) have been received by fandom. And it will examine how – as the thematic content of the MCU narratives have become more explicit in their positionality – this complex cultural and ideological truce has unravelled, perhaps spelling the slow but inexorable decline of the Marvel movie franchise. 

Keywords: MCU; fandom; ownership; identity; representation; culture; industry; context theme; subtext

Gülnisa İnankul

Boğaziçi University

Marvel Cinematic Universe's Portrayal of Rebellion

The quandary of whether to overthrow the status quo or to strive to reform within it has been one of the most frequently tackled questions in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Although the MCU legitimatizes the motivations for rebellion, whenever a character demands a structural change, the narrative framework goes to extreme lengths to portray them as irrationally violent. Both Black Panther's Killmonger and T'Challa are anti-racist, and both The Falcon and The Winter Soldier's Flag Smasher and Sam Wilson agree on the institutional maltreatment of refugees. What sets the hero and the villain apart is their approach to progress. While the villain aims to dismantle the structures of oppression that enable systemic injustice, the hero strives to reform the system from within.

However, when the MCU creates a villain with justifiable, resonating anarchic goals, it turns them into symbols of irredeemable and gratuitous violence. Killmonger's aspirations challenge a supremacist regime, as he endeavors to utilize Wakanda's excessive resources to liberate black people and wreck the hereditary, monarchical source of control that is the power-bestowing herb of the Black Panther. However, while the narrative acknowledges the oppression faced by black people, it also characterizes the anti-racist rebel as a sole villain. He is depicted to be a remorseless killing machine, a government spy with a body count so high that it earned him his title.

Similarly, the Flag Smasher aims to help refugees in her core, stealing basic resources for them. Nevertheless, as she exposes the systemic injustice imposed on the refugees of the "Blip", and as their cause becomes more tenable and ethical, she faces the same narrative curse as Killmonger, killing numerous people for no discernible gain. This paper aims to further elaborate on MCU's trend of utilizing extreme violence to illegitimize rebellion against the oppressive institutions.

Keywords: marvel cinematic universe, rebellion, black panther, the falcon, racism, anarchism

Svenja Kolpack              

University of Duisburg-Essen

Super Sick – Disability and Mental Health in the MCU

“Superheroes aren’t sick. They certainly don’t have chronic pain, sexual dysfunction, or diarrhoea. After all, spandex suits and sudden bowel movements don't mix. Do they?” This is the opening of the blurb to Allison Alexander’s book Super Sick. Making Peace with Chronic Illness.

In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, however, we encounter a number of superheroes who are indeed sick. Be it Bucky Barnes, Stephen Strange or James ‘Rhodey’ Rhodes who are all very obviously disabled. Bucky lacks an arm, Rhodey has lost his ability to walk in an accident and Stephen Strange spends most of his first movie fighting the disability in his hands after his car crash. Furthermore, Marvel has been hailed as being so inclusive after portraying Thor as affected by depression and potentially PTSD after witnessing the killing of his brother Loki and the impact of the Blip. And what about Clint Barton who finds himself on a rampage after his family has vanished?

All these are portrayals of disability and mental health issues. It seems, that superheroes are indeed touched by the same issues the average human being is affected by. The question arises, however, how disability is made visible and handled in Marvel’s superhero narrative and if this treatment can really be called inclusive.

Keywords: disability, visibility, mental health, super sick, ableism, inclusion, MCU

Věra Koukalová

Charles University, Prague

Loki the Trickster: Exploring the Representation of a Complex Mythological Figure in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

This paper focuses on the representation of Loki, the Norse god of mischief and trickery, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and proposes a new theoretical framework for understanding the role of trickster characters in narrative. Through an analysis of the character's mythological origins in Edda, his appearances in comics such as Sandman and Marvel Comics, and his portrayal in the MCU films and television series, the author traces the evolution of the character as he makes the transition to the big and small screens.

Drawing on transmedia narratology and storyworld theory, the paper argues that Loki's character serves as a unique source of narrative tension and complexity, enabling the growth and expansion of the fictional world. Using semiotic square, the paper proposes that Loki's disruptive and creative functions are key to the trickster archetype, and that if Loki becomes the hero or villain, he can no longer carry the role of trickster that is then assigned to another character/s.

Through an analysis of the character's evolution across different media, the author shows how Loki's representation reflects broader changes in the representation of mythological and literary characters in popular culture.

The paper also proposes a new theoretical framework for understanding the role of trickster characters in narrative, and argues that the trickster archetype can serve as a powerful tool for enabling the growth and expansion of fictional worlds. Through an analysis of the representation of Loki in the MCU, the author shows how the character has evolved from a complex and nuanced trickster figure to a more sympathetic and relatable anti-hero and hero.

Overall, this paper offers a new understanding of the trickster archetype in popular culture, and contributes to our understanding of the representation of Loki in the MCU.

Keywords: Loki, MCU, comics, film, mythology, trickster, transmedia, narratology, semiotic square, storyworld theory

Mikayla J. Laird

University of Hertfordshire

‘Part of the Journey is the End’ – The Conclusion of Myth in the MCU and the legacy of Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man.

The concept of conclusions in on-going serial superhero comics typically refers to the ending of a storyline, such as a major event or story arc. However, media adaptations of these narratives are capable of providing a different form of conclusion, namely, the conclusion of character myth. This paper seeks to highlight a fundamental difference between the superhero narrative surrounding death in superhero comics and on the big screen. While the films largely act as an adaptation of the material available through the comics, due to its reliance on real world actors to portray timeless characters, stories must conclude.

Through this paper, the concept of superheroes as a modern mythology will be looked at, in addition to the concept of concluding myth through the live action adaptations. A concept that is not available through the ongoing serial narrative of the comic books, and thus is something that is only achievable through the cinematic universe.

To do so, the death of the MCU’s depiction of Iron Man, as played by Robert Downey Jr, in 2019s Avengers: Endgame (Russo & Russo.2019) will be compared to the 1993 comic book The Death of Superman. Public reactions to these deaths will be discussed, as well as the wider concept of narrative mythology. Reviews, letters columns, critical literature, and sales figures will all be taken into consideration, with a quantitative standpoint taken with the provided data to show how the portrayal of death differs between comic books and their film counterparts. This data will be used to see if the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and superhero films in general, can provide an element that their comic book counterparts cannot, a conclusion to myth.

Keywords: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Serial Narratives, Conclusion of Myth, Iron Man, Black Panther, Death, Robert Downey Jr., Superman, Chadwick Boseman.

Anja Lange

Independent Scholar

The relationship between identity, languages and cultural diversity in the MCU

Movies like Black Panther and Shang Chi are very openly “non-American” movies but other languages and cultures play a significant role in the MCU. Consequently, there are numerous questions that arise regarding the impact of language: at what point of a movie, is non-English language used? (e.g. the introduction of Black Widow in the first Avengers movie); what roles do accents of people play and how do those accents change (e.g. Wanda Maximoff throughout the MCU movies); how is language related to identity (e.g. at which point does Shang Chi speak Chinese, at which point does he speak English?); how are non-American heroes introduced via dialogues in the MCU?

To answer the above questions, dialogues are examined. “Film dialogues normally try to represent real-life language and, in that sense, language in films is one of the devices used to build and portray characters” (Pérez, 2019, p. 97). Also, signs or descriptions in other languages will be analysed. The strong point of this article is aimed at languages, not at costumes or behaviour of the figures. It is intended to show the connection between languages and identity which implies a focus upon the symbolic functions of language (which is another one than the communicative function of a language). It will be shown how language is connected with the essence of identity (things that are identical are the same (Edwards, p. 19)). The theory of the article is that language in the MCU is used to construct a certain groupness with using foreign language, accents and signs and alphabets of a foreign language.

Keywords: identity, Language, Diversity, Black Panther, Shang Chi, Culture

Stephanie Lange  

University of Duisburg-Essen

Iron Man a terrorist? – Cultural differences in the MCU and MAU

Can we imagine Iron Man being the bad guy who is hunted down by S.H.I.E.L.D for terrorist attacks? Through the movies of the Marvel Cinematic Universe certain characteristics for characters have been created. Every member of the audience has got a certain image of what Tony Stark stands for in their mind.  We know Tony Stark as a rich, good-looking playboy who develops phenomenal technical things to save the world. Although the Asian version of him behaves similar in many ways except for looking a bit like Dr Strange and being chased by S.H.I.E.L.D.

 In the Marvel Cinematic Universe Tony Stark is not considered a terrorist but within the Asian adaptation Iron Man: Rise of Technovore he needs to redeem his name without getting caught by S.H.I.E.L.D for a terrorist attack he has not committed but is blamed for. But how can this be when the source is the same - the Marvel comics? How come this movie does not appear in the MCU but needs to be seen as part of the Marvel Asian Universe? Iron Man as an anime - can this work?

This paper is going to look at the different cultural approaches of superheroes and their resemblance. As an example, I will focus on the Iron Man adaptation by Madhouse, a Japanese movie company which worked in collaboration with Marvel to generate an anime version of Iron Man. I will look at the cultural differences of how the characters are portrayed as well as the use of various symbols within the movie. Are there similarities between the American and the Asian adaptation? What are the key similarities and differences in Iron Man – Rise of Technovore and Iron Man 3, which aired just a month later.

Keywords: Iron Man, cultural differences, MCU, MAU, Japan

Zhiyao Liu

University of Leicester

Kevin Feige: The real star of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Within MCU, the multi-phase setting, and the nature of Avengers being a collaborative group, means that none of the competing stars on-screen dominates the entire franchise. As a constant figure, Feige’s name is as well-known as the MCU actor stars, and he has managed to become a behind-the-scenes star. Indeed, as a producer or a spokesman of Marvel Studios, Feige stands in front of the camera nearly every time there are important marketing events, such as press conferences, panels with fans and the making-of documentaries, to speak for the studio and their franchise.

This study will argue that Feige is the central ‘star’ of the MCU and Marvel Studios. Like the stars on-screen, Feige performs a role; however, his role exists outside the films but firmly within the context of the MCU. Based on Richard Dyer’s idea of star image, scholars like Timothy Corrigan and Thomas Schatz started to consider director-auteur as director-star within a certain context. Therefore, the study of acting stars has developed into the study of director who has been considered a star. However, Feige’s position as the producer of all MCU films and the president of Marvel Studios challenges assumptions about stardom as associated with actors or directors.

This paper will demonstrate that Feige performs a unifying role within a diverse franchise that utilises various star actors and directors, arguing that when a single film extends into a film franchise, the requirement of continuity within the franchise sets up a context within which a continuous and sustained star image can most easily be depicted through a figure outside the filmic world – franchise author. Through an analysis of promotional materials around Feige, as well as the reception of MCU, this study will demonstrate that in franchise cinema, the star status can be beyond the limit of the actors or directors to finally settle on the franchise author.

Keywords: Kevin Feige, authorship, collective authorship, Richard Dyer, franchise author, star, franchise cinema, MCU.

Callista Mayberry

Shenandoah University

The Women of Shakespeare and Marvel: Exploring the Intersection of Gender and Trauma in Popular Culture and the Literary Canon

In The Madwoman in the Attic, literary critics Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar preface their critiques by stating, “We decided, therefore, that the striking coherence we noticed in literature by women could be explained by a common, female impulse to struggle free from social and literary confinement through strategic redefinitions of self, art, and society.” Although their primary criticism is focused on the works of nineteenth century female authors, the idea that women are restricted by their surroundings translates across multiple genres and mediums.

Characters created as far back as the Elizabethan era, such as Lady Macbeth and Ophelia, represent both passive acceptance and active resistance to patriarchal expectations of women; modern female characters, however, such as the Scarlet Witch, go through more complex character arcs and blur the line between accepted female behavior and undesirable villainy.

These women that directly oppose social expectations, however, are often considered unstable as soon as they begin to push back against the confines of society. This direct conflict poses the question: how do themes of femininity and trauma intersect in popular characters such as Marvel Comics’ Scarlet Witch as well as Shakespeare’s Ophelia and Lady Macbeth?

Keywords: Scarlet Witch, Lady Macbeth, Ophelia, trauma, gender

Ádám Nagy, Gábor Polyak, and Annamária Torbo

Excenter Research Center / Eötvös Loránd University / University of Pécs

The Multiverse of Lies - Explaining post-truth populism using MCU examples

Popular culture is an excellent, but little used intermediary for education and dissemination. Modern educational theory (e.g. constructivist pedagogy) has been long arguing that the only really integral parts of consciousness are those that can be related to earlier cognitive schemata.  Such is typically the case in works of popular culture, which, moreover, often reflect on important social problems. This is particularly important where civic education is virtually absent from school education. Hungary is such a country, that is why a series of books on well-known popular culture works for the purpose of science communication and education has had a strong resonance. The book series currently consists of 7 volumes with 83 papers by 72 authors. In addition to the MCU, examples are drawn from the Star Wars and Harry Potter universes, as well as from works such as The Handmaid's Tale.

The specific studies in the book series also show how the phenomenon of disinformation and fake news can be explained in terms of the MCU films. The films Iron Man 3 (2013) and Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019) are excellent examples to illustrate the post-truth situation. Iron Man exploits the audience's curiosity and fear of terrorism through the character of the "Mandarin", while Spider-Man is a spectacular illustration of the cognitive weaknesses behind disinformation. He makes us believe that he is stuck in spectacular clichés, and then asks us: how could we believe this transparent tale?  Furthermore, the lecture will analyse the parallels between the multiverse phenomenon and social polarisation. The central question of recent MCU films and series is what we do with the opportunity to live through different scenarios of life. Populist politics creates multiverses at the societal level and offers the possibility for different groups to interpret the same situation in completely different and contradictory ways. The different groups in a polarised society live coherent lives in their own universes, but serious social conflicts emerge when these parallel universes converge.

The presentation will focus on situations from the MCU creations where such clashes occur between universes that previously existed independently of each other. Excellent examples of this can be found in WandaVision (2021), Loki (2021) and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022).The indirect aim of the presentation is to discuss that in the current populist political environment of Hungary it is particularly important to find alternative discourses and narratives that make the problems of fake news and the post truth phenomenon articulable, understandable, and negotiable. The MCU provides an excellent framework for this.

Keywords: constructivist pedagogy, post truth, disinformation, populism, Hungary

Ashika Paramita

Deakin University

Beyond the Veil: The Representation of Islamic Veiling in Ms. Marvel

Marvel Comics’ Ms. Marvel (2014) is unique and important in the way it represents Muslim American communities, which has been underrepresented in popular culture and media. The series, which engages in a positive and meaningful representation of Muslim American communities, is significant in its challenge of dominant representations of difference and otherness in American popular culture (Landis, 2016, 2020; Wanzo, 2020). An important aspect of the Ms. Marvel comics is its representation of Islamic veiling as both religious and political acts, which offers a counter-narrative to the negative portrayals of veiling as a symbol of oppression and Otherness in American media (Alsultany, 2012; Considine, 2018; Karaman & Christian, 2022, p. 226; Shaheen, 1994, 2000).

In 2019, an adaptation of the Ms. Marvel comics into the Marvel Cinematic Universe was announced (Marvel, 2019). This announcement sparked both excitement and controversy, with fans expressing their opinions and concerns though social media, such as the #FixMsMarvel campaign (Bone, 2020; Garrity, 2021; Morrison, 2020; Siddiqui, 2022). One of the main issues addressed by this campaign was the casting of non-hijabi actors to play hijabi characters, raising questions about representation and authenticity in the portrayal of Muslim women in popular media.

While this paper will not delve into the casting controversy in depth, it will examine the representation of Islamic veiling in both the comics and MCU versions of Ms. Marvel. Focusing on the characters Nakia Bahadir and Tyesha Hillman, the discussion will examine questions of identity and negotiation of intersecting positionalities linked to nationality, race, and socio-political context, and assess the impact this representation has on the representation of Muslim women in American popular culture and the discourse of Otherness of Muslims in US society, more broadly.

Keywords: Ms. Marvel, MCU, representation, Islamic veiling, superhero

Bruno Porto
Tilburg University

Comic Book Logos Go To The Movies: Captain America

The first public visual piece of information about the vast majority of Marvel Cinematic Universe products, offered upon their announcement, is a logo. This symbolic sign of an upcoming project is conventionally derived from the comic books that served as the source material for their superhero films and television series. These logos frequently undergo distinct degrees of modification before being finalized for use in promotional materials, merchandise, and integration into future MCU phase charts.

This case study undertakes a comprehensive examination of the emblematic logos affiliated with the live-action depictions of Captain America to ascertain the degree to which the graphic elements of the character's comic book logos have been appropriated in these cinematic representations. We build upon a graphic analysis conducted in 2009 by veteran logo designer Todd Klein to construct a timeline showcasing the logos featured in Captain America's comic books since its debut in 1941 up until the present day.

By doing so, we identify and highlight the key typographic and symbolic aspects embedded within these logos, which serve as the foundation for a comparative analysis of the logos of the live-action portrayals of the character over the course of 80 years — from the 1944 Republic Pictures black-and-white 15-chapter serial films to the upcoming 2024 feature-length film entitled “Captain America: New World Order”.

Keywords: Marvel; MCU; Comic Book; Logo Design; Visual Identity; Captain America

João Senna Teixeira

Federal University of Bahia

Producer-in-chief: Kevin Feige authorship in the MCU

The concept of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a transposition of certain practices of super-hero comics creation to the cinema (also TV and streaming) is a well-trodden idea, the shared universe, the multiple authors juggling storylines and plot points and the big events capping it all. But, behind it all is a force that is constantly evoked, but rarely seriously discussed, the organizer, working mostly behind the scenes, Kevin Feige. Notwithstanding his understood importance, there are few who would put it as the of author of the MCU proper, or at least in an authorial position comparable with the directors of the movies.

Of course, such situation has echoes on the question of editorial authorship and interference in super-hero comic books (in all shared universes with shared authorship kind of endeavors). The problem is that such instances are normally framed in a negative capacity, when editors say “no” to the creative teams (you cannot marry Batwoman), or when they are made to create stories according to some mandates (put the Beyonder in every issue, kill Dick Grayson, dissolve Peter Parker marriage). The more positive contributions tend to be more diffuse and less uniquely identifiable (Gaiman praising Berger for creating an ambient shielded from outside influence in Sandman) or completely mixed with the writer own creation (Claremont saying that Louise Simonson always reminded him of dangled plot threads to bring back).

This paper aims to understand more of this issue in authorship, trying to disentangle the editors contributions to a super-hero comic book, using Mag Uidhir (2011, 2012) minimal definition of authorship and Baxandall (1985) concept of charge and directive, to trace the points in which editors can influence the works of the creative team. After that we will use these tools to approximate how Kevin Feige works within the MCU.

Keywords: Authorship, comics, editors, Marvel Cinematic Universe

Caesy Stuck

Universität Duisburg-Essen

The Marked Body: Negotiating Infertility and Monstrousness in Scarlet Witch and Black Widow

Superhero films have traditionally been an unlikely venue for discussing pregnancy and infertility. Regardless, two movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe depict these topics in very different ways, as they relate to the franchise's two most prominent female characters - Black Widow and Scarlet Witch. In Avengers: Age of Ultron (2017), it gets discussed, that Black Widow underwent sterilization during her training as an assassin. Scarlet Witch, however, is not explicitly described as infertile, yet her inability to have a real family is a key element of her character arc, especially in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). Black Widow is depicted as feeling ashamed of her infertility, while Scarlet Witch refuses to accept that she cannot be with her magically created children, resorting to brutal means to achieve her desire for a family. These two types of depictions can be summarized by their respective quotes: "I'm not a monster, I'm a mother." and " You still think you're the only monster on the team?".

In my paper, I will argue that their infertility is inscribed in their bodies as a form of “monstrosity”. This monstrosity represents the embodiment of the moral transgression of the woman who cannot have children. The negotiation of Scarlet Witch´s monstrousness is explicit in the film, like the scene where she kills Professor X by attacking out of the red mist. In contrast, the monstrousness of Black Widow is inscribed more symbolically and implicitly, like in her name.

The depiction of women being desperate to become mothers is a common conception, replete with moral implications surrounding motherhood. However, both Scarlet Witch and Black Widow are deprived of this option, and their bodies are marked with a sense of "insufficiency" that excludes and restricts them in their lifestyle choices.

Keywords: Scarlet Witch, Black Widow, infertility, embodiment, monstrousness, body politics

Caleb Turner

Richmond American University London

Marvel-ous Disney: Economic and Cultural Zeitgeists in The Marvel Cinematic Universe

Fifteen years ago in 2008, Iron Man (soon followed by The Incredible Hulk in the same year) set in motion a cinematic phenomenon that would eventually expand into a ‘transmedially-connected’ fictional multiverse consisting of 32 films, 25 TV shows and several other tie-in media products, unfolding over four phases and covering two distinct sagas. However, although the Marvel Cinematic Universe initially began its distribution under Paramount Pictures, it was Disney’s purchase of the franchise in 2009 for $4 billion that would drive the MCU towards grossing over $29.6 billion and ultimately rank as the highest grossing film series of all time. The economic success of the entire MCU is evidently due to this stewardship, but equally significant is Disney’s own approach to expressing cultural values and mythologies.

Disney, then, is a brand intrinsically interwoven with how Marvel’s storyworlds are able to respond to contemporary societal attitudes, or, in other words, the zeitgeist (i.e. ‘mood of the time’). This paper considers the way in which the MCU has undergone a process of Disneyfication over the past decade, namely as the ‘transformation (as of something real or unsettling) into carefully controlled and safe entertainment or an environment with similar qualities’ (Merriam-Webster). The critic Jack Zipes in “Breaking the Disney Spell” advises how Disney, by replacing several original fairy tales most popular in our collective imaginations, has in effect become the ‘cultural touchstone’ for generations (Cheu, Diversity in Disney, 2013: 2). Disney indeed attempts to remain relevant as a globalised media empire by responding to the current zeitgeist of how best to increase diversity of representation onscreen, which in turn has been caught up in an ongoing series of culture wars between progressive and reactionary attitudes concerning debates on the way identity and politics should be portrayed in popular media.

Importantly, Disney is a brand that, according to Flanagan, McKenny and Livingstone in The Marvel Studios Phenomenon 2016 (53, 58) effectively ‘channels’ these strategic desires and business expertise through Marvel, with this dual identity having ‘learned to cooperate, compartmentalise, and even compromise’. In the same vein that mythology is often likened to a means of collective education, the MCU similarly offers moral answers through heroic and villainous escapism, particularly in the face of ongoing financial crises over the past 15 years (which too have been fuelling prejudices at the heart of the culture wars). To what extent then, has this Disney-MCU brand managed to respond to these kinds of cultural concerns over the past 15 years? How has this dual branding attempted to resolve social tensions as our primary means of mythological zeitgeist to date? Ultimately, what are the commercial or economic strengths and limitations to achieving this feat?

Keywords: Economics, Zeitgeist, Disneyfication, Franchises, Transmedia, Recession, Financial Crisis, Branding, Corporations, Industry, Film, Television

Samina Yasmin

University of Sussex

Ms. Marvel: MCU’s shifted focus on conquering larger audience demographic

In the 15 years of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, for the first time they have showcased a young female Muslim superhero. Kamala Khan, the 16-year-old is the fourth Ms. Marvel character in Marvel Comics, which is highly contrasting to its previous blonde American versions, that later transpired to the MCU as an independent miniseries. Since its Phase 4, MCU has been deliberate in terms of bringing in diversity in their characters and including people from various ethnic and racial backgrounds who has strong roles unlike its previous productions where people of colour had appeared as part of plot devices or in supporting roles.

With Shang-Chi and Black Panther as the lead characters, MCU has also shown effort to portray more important supporting characters from diverse background such as Sersi in The Eternals, Karl Mordo and Wong in Dr. Strange, Valkyries in Thor and Michelle in the new Spider-Man. Yet, Ms. Marvel’s addition to the MCU has profound significance than its other characters. This is mostly because by introducing a Pakistani-American Muslim girl as a superhero, audiences got to hear the other side of the stories of immigrants and Muslim Americans. Especially considering the post 9/11 climate, where they are often seen as threats, this character represented both these worlds through its cultural values while being an American juggling between a hyphenated identity.

Identity and representation matter in the current context, and this character defies a monolithic representation of a female body or a race or religion that mirrors the struggle of a large number of immigrants living in the West. Hence, the character of Kamala Khan resonated with Millennials, Gen Z, Asian, Hispanic and Black households in the USA as well as in the South Asian diaspora around the world with an IMDB rating of 6.2 and 98% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Keywords: Ms. Marvel, first Muslim superhero, South-Asian superhero, transnational female superhero.

The Superhero Project: VI Global Meeting

"The Fragmented Superhero"

Friday 9th to Sunday 11th September 2022

Torsten Caeners

University of Duisburg-Essen

The Haunting of Achievement – The Tension between Unity and Fragmentation in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

In the serialized narrative world of the MCU, the task of the superhero is never done. At the end of every story, the villain is beaten, the threat is overcome, and the status quo reasserted, but the superheroes and the audience know that the next terror is just around the corner waiting to undo the heroic successes of the previous victory. A superhero’s achievement is always only temporary. This is a diegetic necessity, of course, as there cannot be a story and a superhero without a dangerous obstacle to overcome.

In my paper I will not look at the processes of serialization as such, but rather at the effects of the temporariness of achievement on the characters and the overall narrative. I postulate that the MCU exists in a constant tension between the unity of achievement and the fragmentation of and by future threats which is expressed through hauntological processes that distort and fragment the narrative and the characters. Every achievement is always already haunted by its future destruction and fragmentation by the next threat and every new threat comes into existence already hauntologically marked by its future defeat at the hands of the superheroes.

The MCU, especially in Phase 4, seems to be a place haunted by the past (the blip, the death of Iron Man, the death of Vision etc), but in fact it is haunted by the future. This distorted temporality of the narrative universe and the uncertainty of the temporariness of the superheroes’ victories, are central notions of haunting that have always torn at the presumed unity of the characters and the narrative universe of the MCU. Following a brief introduction of core hauntological processes, I will exemplify the pervasive effects of hauntological processes in the MCU via short readings of selected characters and films.

Keywords: Hauntology, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Iron Man, Serialisation, Fragmentation

Daniel J. Connell

Independent

To Gaze Upon The Infinite Remainder is Death: Intertextual Entropy Wears a Cape & Will Never Stop Punching You in the Face.

Post-credit scenes. Mid-credit scenes. Riffs on title sequences. Easter Eggs. Callbacks. Cameos. Signifiers upon signifiers upon signifiers, many not directly correlated to the story at hand. Has comic book film/TV become a Mandelbrot set, swirling into a hypnotic evermore that guarantees transfixed viewers? Or is it descending unknowingly into a death spiral, where the signifiers – remainders of other histories, other presents, other futures – have become more important than the text itself; where there is an ever-limited number of individuals able to appreciate and notice the compounding number of nods and references?

In this paper, several examples from popular Marvel films/TV shows will be assessed to answer the question: as we stand at a point where the narratives are splitting and our heroes are splintered, is the framework of their entire existence not also fracturing in a far more insidious and destructive way? Have algorithms and tick-boxes latched onto comic book media like succubae – and if so, can there be any reprieve?

Using Jean Baudrillard’s concept of the Remainder as a theoretical basis, this paper will investigate the journey we have been on so far within intertextual fracturing – and what the future might have in store for us.

Keywords: Intertextuality, Baudrilliard, Remainder, Marvel, Transmedia

Laura Crossley

Bournemouth University

The Star-Spangled Man: Race, Patriotism and Identity in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021).

The credits sequence of the final episode of Marvel’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier starts with a re-naming of the show: Captain America and the Winter Soldier. This is a clear statement that places the mantle of the embodiment of American values and American identity on to Sam Wilson, an African-American man and already established superhero in his persona as the Falcon. Sam’s progress towards accepting the role of Captain America and transforming that role into something new is at the heart of the series. Sam’s initial reluctance to take on Captain America’s shield is played out against a backdrop of racial tensions both contemporary and historic: his story becomes intertwined with the community in his poverty-stricken hometown in Louisiana and the discovery of a covered-up government programme that created black super-soldiers during the Cold War.

The question of race linked explicitly to ideas of patriotism and identity is made manifest when the US government puts forward its own new Captain America, the stereotypically blond-haired, square-jawed John Walker.

This paper examines the construction and deconstruction of the heroic persona of Captain America at a time when race relations in America are still in a state of flux in the wake of the George Floyd killing and the Black Lives Matter movement. Questions of identity and patriotism are also examined in the relationship between Sam and Bucky Barnes, the former Winter Soldier who is similarly struggling with a sense of self and purpose, but whose redemptive arc is empowered by his involvement with African and African-American communities. 

Keywords: America, Race, Race Relations, Identity, Patriotism, Heroism, Sam Wilson, Bucky Barnes.

Owen Farrington

Edge Hill University

“Sometimes it takes dyin' to teach a fella how to live”: A comparison of the fragmentation and reassembling of identity in Kraven's Last Hunt and Batman: Noël.

Ever since their creation in 1938, discourse and analysis regarding superheroes has been intertwined with the concepts of duality and identity. Gibson, Huxley and Ormrod cite the debut of Superman in Action Comics #1 as the moment where identity became a key component of the superhero myth, stating that “Superman’s success inspired a boom in characters employing three key characteristics: a secret identity, superpowers and a costume.” The relationship between these characteristics is what defines a superhero; many stories have examined what becomes of a hero’s identity when either a costume, powers or a secret identity has been taken away.

However, when discussing the idea of the ‘fragmented superhero’, there are two particular comic book stories that perfectly demonstrate the relationship between a superhero’s alter-ego and their fragmented identity. These two stories adopt a similar approach, deconstructing and reassembling their respective protagonists’ persona from the ground up, in order to redefine and reaffirm the core principles that define them. These two stories are Lee Bermejo’s 2011 graphic novel, Batman: Noël, and J. M. DeMatteis and Mike Zeck’s 1987 Spider-Man storyline, Fearful Symmetry: Kraven's Last Hunt. This paper will explore how themes of identity and duality (specifically the fragmentation and reconstruction of a superhero’s identity) are comparatively used in Batman: Noël and Kraven's Last Hunt, comparing the approaches used by writers Bermejo and DeMatteis to recontextualise their respective protagonists’ status quo and identity.

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the relationship that these iconic heroes have with duality, and how their self-constructed superhero personas, as well as their fragmentation and restoration serve as thematic indicators of the humanity underneath their costumes. This will be achieved through a close reading of both texts, as well as consulting interviews and written sources from both the writers of each respective story.

Keywords: Identity, Duality, Superhero, Spider-Man, Batman, Kraven’s Last Hunt, Batman: Noël, Lee Bermejo, J. M. DeMatteis, Mike Zeck

Marco Favaro

Otto-Friedrich-Universitat Bamberg.Universita Degli Studi di Verona

Flesh and Scars: The Role of Pain and Bodies in the Creation of Identity and Meaning.

The mask’s role is central in the superhero narrative. The mask is a second, non-human identity, which replaces the civilian, human one, sometimes forever. It is what happens for the majority of Gotham’s villains. While Batman can take off his mask and at least pretend to be Bruce Wayne, many of his enemies do not have the same privilege.

For characters like Two-Face, Joker, Clayface (and Mr Freeze, Zsasz, Man-Bat), the mask is not a piece of clothing that they could remove as they please, but it is carved directly into their bodies. Masks are replaced by scars, which give the body an ultimate meaning, thus relegating the villains to the non-human dimension.

Bodies and masks play a central role in ancient primitive rituals, especially initiation rituals. These ceremonies have the purpose of destroying a precedent identity to give a new one. This destruction occurs through the ecstasy, Caillois’ Ilinx, induced by drugs and fasting, and through the infliction of physical pain. This pain destroys but also has a creative meaning: the new identity is literally written on the body through scars or tattoos, thus receiving an “ultimate” meaning.

By comparing body- and mask’s roles in primitive rituals, this chapter aims to analyze the impact which scars and body’s transformation have on the identity of some of the most famous Batman’s adversaries, in particular Two-Face and Clayface. This analysis is based primarily (but not only) on Umberto Galimberti’s Il Corpo and René Girard’s Men and Play.

Keywords: Batman, Masks, Bodies, Transformation, Two-Face, Joker, Clayface, Scars

Teresa Forde

University of Derby

WandaVision: Cultural and Visual Fragmentation of the Female Superhero / Villain.

WandaVision explores the fragmented superhero in terms of Wanda Maximoff aka Scarlet Witch’s retreat into grief and self-preservation. This attempt to avoid grief at her lost love, Vision, is manifested in a deployment of the US sitcom framework where Wanda undertakes a variety of roles of women in situation comedy from the 1950s onwards. Each week plays out a version of the nuclear family, echoing Wanda and Vision’s relationship as a 1950s couple, complete with canned laughter and comic oneliners to the birth of their children and the family and parochial domesticity.

Wanda’s culpability in the construction of WandaVision is initially unclear as there are somewhat sinister clues to a potential external influence that is forcing her to hide within this space. However, we see that Wanda has fragmented her identity and splintered it across the decades of popular television, drawing upon cultural tropes to hide from her emotions and construct an idyllic life. The fabric of this world becomes torn when her adversary Agnes/Agatha Harkness reveals her manipulation and negotiates her own powers.  The inhabitants of the have been taken hostage and their memories supressed.

However, it is also the double standard of the interpretation of Wanda’s superpowers that partly lead her to galvanise her abilities as a shroud and submerge herself within the reliable and reassuring sitcom lifestyle. Sitcoms have also been a space for women to play a role that is equal to male characters in time on screen and within the narrative: initially Wanda’s vision emulates characters in I love Lucy, relishing the role of a comedy wife with witty ripostes. Wanda knows that she is judged more harshly for her abilities and their potential than many of the male superheroes, and finally has to reconstruct her fragmented self to come to terms with this realisation.

Keywords: Wanda, Superhero, Culture, Identity, Emotion, Grief, Love, Comedy, Reconstruction, Fragmentation.

Vincent M. Gaine

Lancaster University

Liminal Bodies as Sites of Fragmentation and Evolution in the MCU.

The superhero is a liminal figure, symbolising and occupying spaces between various social, cultural and political tensions. Indeed, the superhero body itself is a site of these tensions, fragmented between nature and artifice, mundane and exceptional, authority and anarchy. These bodies are in a constant state of flux, regularly reforming and adapting to developments within the surrounding narratives as well as changing patterns of production and consumption.

This paper uses the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a case study to explore the politics of social identity and technology, using the bodies of the superhero figures as canvasses for this exploration. This canvas is especially rich because of the creative tension between the constancy of the actors’ embodiment and the inconstancy of the characters’ embodiment. Tony Stark as well as Peter Parker move through different suit designs, roles and even universes. Steve Rogers alters to the state of Captain America and goes through different uniforms and equipment. Bruce Banner transforms into the Hulk and subsequently to Smart Hulk. Carol Danvers’ body develops from one fragmented by amnesia and inhibition to that of an elemental being; T’Challa’s body undergoes physical and political transformations that manifest the body politic of Wakanda; Stephen Strange transforms from surgeon of bodies to manipulator of time and space.

In these as well as other cases, the films and viewers negotiate the fluctuating superhero body as the intersection of physical and digital realities, an amalgam of narratological and spectacular cinematic devices, and an ongoing battleground for competing ideologies. My analysis therefore intersects with discourses around embodiment and digital effects as well as the relationship between visual text and viewer and the constituents of identity.

Keywords: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Liminal, Identity, Embodiment, Technology, Natural, Digital, Physical, Viewer.

Danny Graydon

University of Hertfordshire

The Ring of Steel: Fragmentation as Reinforcement in the Myth of Superman.

One of the signature facets of Superman, the archetypal superhero, is his possession of “the characteristics of timeless myth” (Eco, 1972) which has ensured that The Man of Steel has undergone comparatively little change since his debut in mid-1938. This is in notable contrast to Superman’s immediate genre progeny Batman, who has come to demonstrate considerable malleability and can withstand no shortage of fragmentary iterations. Yet, Superman is still subject to fragmentary versions, thanks to Eco’s key observation that Superman’s mythological timelessness is in constant tension with his required consumption as a construct of ongoing modern fiction.

These stories - such as the haunted, older and self-exiled version of Kingdom Come (1996), the tyrannical, violent despot of Injustice (2013) or the amalgamation of Superman with Batman in the Elseworlds story Speeding Bullets (1993) – allow for deconstruction of the character’s innate traits. However, a key aspect of these narratives is that, no matter the deviations, Superman ultimately returns to the fundamental position of the archetype understood by generations of audiences, replete with associated values and virtues, dedicated to a mission of right action.

Paul Levitz has observed that “as soon as you start to bend Superman, even slightly, the character’s magic dissipates very quickly”. As such, such common narrative destination indicates a consistent reinforcement of Superman’s mythological timelessness, akin to an impenetrable, protective ring of steel that firmly corrals any fragmentation from triggering such dissipation. The fractal shape known as Koch’s Snowflake – in which potentially limitless variations occurs within an inflexible boundary – serves as an illustration of this dynamic and this paper will argue that such a “Ring of Steel” not only ensures that Superman’s archetypal identity remains intact but also, by extension, that the fundamental; facets of the superhero genre itself remain inviolate as a result.

KEYWORDS: Superman, Myth, Eco, Fragmentation, Elseworlds, Comics, Genre

Mark Hibbett

University of the Arts London

The Fragmented Supervillain: Dimensions of Doctor Doom.

This paper will demonstrate how a unified catalogue of transmedia character components can be used to chart the fragmentation of a fictional character over time and media, taking Doctor Doom as an example.

The unified catalogue of transmedia character components was developed as part of a PhD thesis on early transmedia characters, and draws upon the works of  Pearson and Uricchio, Klastrup and Tosca, Marie-Laurie Ryan, Paolo Bertetti, Jan-Noel Thon and Matthew Freeman, as well as other conceptualisations from the fields of psychology and film studies. From these sources it identifies thirteen separate components, or dimensions, of fictional characters, which can be placed into four groupings related to the character themselves, their world, their behaviour within that world, and the authors responsible for the creation of their stories.

Examining characters using these dimensions provides a practical method for analysing fictional characters and providing empirical evidence of how they change over different texts, time periods, media or nationalities. This will be demonstrated by analysing a selection of appearances by Doctor Doom in different media - including comics, cartoons, games and movies - from his first appearance in Fantastic Four #5 in 1963 up to the present day.

Keywords: Fragmentation, Transmedia, Characters, Superheroes, Supervillains.

Robert Hyland

Queens University

Fragmentation, Diversification, Saturation: The Impact of Disney and Marvel’s Marketing Strategy on the China Film Market.

This paper considers how Disney has attempted to create further access to the Chinese film market.  Such films as Shang-Chi (2021) and The Eternals (2021) have been constructed around satisfying Chinese market trends and tastes, and yet both films failed to access the Chinese box office.  Further, while attempting to increase brand awareness through its Disney + streaming channel enterprise, the Marvel franchise in its phase 4 iteration has been further fragmented into story arcs that interlace television serials and films, creating multiple convergences between animated shows, live action serials and the feature films. 

Such a marketing strategy, while providing greater brand awareness, has not returned significant revenue on investment.  Rather, such market moves suggest market saturation, and Marvel film product which was formerly attaining revenue of as much as 500 million US dollars in Chinese box office sales per film, is now being eclipsed by Chinese box office features.  Indeed, due to certain controversial content, both Shang-Chi and Eternals failed to receive distribution licenses in China, resulting in significant loss in worldwide box office revenue.  This paper considers how the Marvel Franchise both won and lost the Chinese market. 

Keywords: Disney, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Shang Chi, Eternals, Marketing, China

Mikayla J. Laird

University of Hertfordshire

The Fractured Tabula Rosa: The Continual Cycle of Reboot and Retroactive Continuity of the DC Universe.

A recuring conversation in comic book discourse is the notion of continuity, and especially the reboot. While the concept of the reboot implies a blank slate with no back story, does the reboot still stand if the previous slate becomes retroactive continuity?

In this paper, I will be looking into the theoretical framework of both reboot narratives and retroactive continuity to explore the DC Comics Crisis events and the perspective of the characters.

Primarily, the work of William Proctor, Douglas Wolk and Daniel Stein will be examined, specifically in the context of DC Comics Continuity. Infinite Crisis and the Rebirth initiative will both be examined to determine whether the DC continuity has every truly been rebooted. Is there such a thing as a fresh start within the DC Universe?

Keywords: Reboot, Retroactive Continuity, Douglas Wolk, Daniel Stein, William Proctor, DC Comics, Infinite Crisis, Rebirth, Wally West, Superman.

Ashika Paramita

Deakin University

“Not my Captain America!”: Race and National Identity in Captain America: Sam Wilson (2015).

The character Captain America first debuted in Marvel Comics’ Action Comics #1 (1941) with an iconic cover portraying the hero landing a punch in Adolf Hitler’s face. The superhero’s alter ego is Steve Rogers, an artist from Brooklyn who was injected with the super-soldier serum which enhanced his physique to peak human condition.

Throughout his tenure, Captain America has become an emblem of American national identity – an embodiment of the idealized American values of patriotism, liberty, and justice (Stevens, 2015; Weiner, 2005). In this role, Captain America’s de-ethnicized white body has been used synecdochally to represent the demographic diversity of the United States, which suggests the power that whiteness has to be seen or positioned as the neutral, universal identity norm (Dyer, 2017).

So, when in 2014, Steve Rogers, who has lost his powers, names Sam Wilson, his long-time partner, as Captain America, it begs the question: what does it mean now that Captain America is a Black man? Informed by Jason Dittmer’s reading of Captain America as a “nationalist superhero” (Dittmer, 2012), this paper looks at Marvel Comics’ Captain America: Sam Wilson (2015), exploring the series’ representation of Sam Wilson’s tenure as a “replacement” Captain America — his sense of belonging in this new role and the push and pull with those who reject him. The analysis will also examine the inherent tension within the series’ construction of an African American as Captain America within the context of the divisive racialized political discourse used by the Trump administration.

Keywords: Race, Comic Books, Superheroes, Captain America, Sam Wilson, National Identity.

Bruno Porto

Tilburg University

Writer, Penciler, Inker, Colourist, Letterer … Who Makes it to the Cover? Authorship and Credits in Superhero Comics.

In its initial years, the Superhero comic book cover borrowed much of its multimodal structure from Science Fiction, Crime, and Adventure pulp fiction magazines of the 1920s-1930s. Both types of publications not only usually shared the same owners but also often employed the same editorial, graphic design, and illustration staff.

Although cover logos, trade dresses, letterings styles, and imagery layouts were heavily influenced by pulp magazines, not all cover elements were assimilated by the new kind of publication. While the covers of the average pulp would usually credit the writers of the stories featured in its issues — some of them prominently, like Edgar Rice Burroughs or H. G. Wells — it would take Superhero comic authors over four decades to achieve the same recognition on the covers of periodical comic books.

Chronicling the gradual introduction of comics creators’ credits on Superhero comic book covers from the early 1980s until the present time, as well as specific 1960s-1970s occurrences that contributed to that, this work examines and questions aspects of authorship in Superhero comics.

Keywords: Superhero, Comic Book Cover, Authorship, Credits, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee.

Joao Senna Teixeira

Federal University of Bahia

From Multiples to One: Pan-Batmanism in Grant Morrison’s Run.

Superhero comics tend to have very convoluted canons, this normally is normally caused by publication time and the very nature of multi-authored work. Creators focus on different facets of characters and the world, glossing over the inconsistencies and assembling a specific vision. But every version is still canonical, or at least can be canonical again, just not at the same time. Different stories and elements can be put in continuity (MEIER; TEIXEIRA, 2020) in a way that makes sense in conjunction with the story currently being told. This selective continuity is crucial for the understanding of seriality in superhero comics, as they make such gargantuan body of texts into more manageable chunks to be remembered and read.

In certain projects, nonetheless, there is a will to use everything, all of the canon at the same time (of course there are choices even in such projects), even the parts that does not make much sense when put together. I plan to analyze one such endeavor in the Grant Morrison run of Batman (2006-2013), especially the way that it tries to reorganize the Batman mythos by recanonizing Batman stories from the 40s and 50s that had been long put aside by the successive reformulations of the character (specially by Adams and O’Neal in the late 60s and by Miller in the 80s).

To this end, I will mobilize the idea of canon as a repository of narrative wealth (TEIXEIRA, 2019) and the concept of continuity as a relation between different stories and works (MEIER; TEIXEIRA, 2020) to plot the different ways the modern batman stories connects to the past and how they organize such different concepts of the character in a somewhat cohesive vision and narrative.

Keywords: Batman, Continuity, Canon, Coherence, Seriality

James C. Taylor

University of Warwick

“Or Is He Both?”: (Re)connecting the Superhero and Horror Genres in The Immortal Hulk.

The hybridity of the superhero genre has received significant scholarly attention (e.g. Walton: 2009; Jenkins: 2009) as has the influence the horror genre had on the formation of the figure of the superhero (e.g. Regalado: 2015). The Hulk is a character where the link between superheroes and horror has frequently been explicit, with the character’s first comic book adventure framing Bruce Banner’s transformations into the Hulk through audience understanding of figures such as Frankenstein’s monster and werewolves. This paper explores the ways in which The Immortal Hulk (2018-2021) brings the interplay between the superhero and horror genres back to the fore and through doing so offers commentary on both genres.

I examine the ways in which The Immortal Hulk harnesses the serial form of superhero comics to connect the dots between different horror subgenres, such as body horror and cosmic horror, and maps these onto superhero conventions, such as the bodily transformation and preternatural powers. In navigating these points of connection between the horror and superhero genre, the series also negotiates the fragmentation of Banner/the Hulk’s identity which, over years of comic book continuity and through the rationale of dissociative identity disorder, has accumulated more identities than the superhero’s usual division of civilian/superhero.

By exploring these different ways in which genre hybridity operates in The Immortal Hulk, the paper furthermore poses the question of whether the fragmentation of the superhero genre can somewhat paradoxically provide a means to synthesise its narrative and character multiplicities.

Keywords: Genre, Horror, Seriality, Al Ewing, The Incredible Hulk.

Eva Thury

Drexel University

“I am Your Father, Tony”: Walt Disney and the Stark Expo in the Neo-Baroque Narrative of Iron Man.

The first Iron Man movie launched the MCU and began its march into the contemporary neo-baroque era, a new form of seriality characterized by an emphasis on labyrinth and spectacle (Ndalianis  44). These  films are "part of a cohesive and developing whole which encourages participation … with film franchises to a degree not asked before of audiences" (McSweeney 67).

The story of Iron Man is narrated in the MCU in neo-baroque style, as shown by examining the Stark Expo (Iron Man 2) founded by Tony's father Howard, who, modelled on Walt Disney, reflects the latter's patriotism and concern for spectacle. The Expo also evokes the real-life 1963 World's Fair, which Disney participated in extensively while developing the empire that now includes the MCU.

In-world, the Stark Expo represents Tony's struggles with his father, and the salvific themes he participates in up to and including Avengers: Endgame. However, these struggles are magnified and fragmented in neo-baroque fashion in various Marvel formulations of Tony's story, including the comic Iron Man 2: Public Identity. Throughout the MCU, Tony tries to distance himself from Howard, an arms dealer; he argues repeatedly that he is in the peace business, despite the military's claim that Iron Man is a weapon to be controlled. Then, without intending to, Tony creates Ultron, the precursor to Thanos, as the ultimate weapon and parody of his peacekeeping efforts.

The Stark Expo also spawns the narratives of the Marvel Theme Park Universe in Hong Kong, California, and Paris. On three continents, guests participate in interconnected spectacles within the Marvel Multiverse. There, neither the Blip nor its sequelae from Avengers: Infinity War exist. Thus, the biography of Iron Man and his efforts at developing his own story apart from his father are further fragmented by the neo-baroque labyrinth of the Disney empire.

Keywords: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Avengers: Endgame, Stark Expo, 1963 World’s Fair, Walt Disney, Iron Man 2: Public Identity, Disneyland, Marvel Multiverse, Marvel Theme Park Universe, The Blip, Neo-Baroque, Labyrinth.

Caleb Turner

Richmond American University London.

Negotiating the Diverse-Verse: Fragmented Stereotypes, Genre Hybridity and (Resisting) ‘Superhero Fatigue.

This paper explores the extent to which stereotypes have been fragmented and deconstructed, in both positive and negative ways, through hybridised (and evolving) kinds of genre formula evident across contemporary superhero film and television. In doing so, the discussion will uncover how a diversification of repurposed tropes allows for nuanced forms of representation that keep the genre relevant as a source of social and cultural debate on diversity and inclusion. The paper will also respond to whether this ongoing plethora of productions will lead to an inevitable lack of innovation, ultimately allowing a feeling of oversaturated ‘superhero fatigue’ to set in among viewers? Indeed, in writing about the build-up to the 2000s-to-present superhero film cycle, Grant Morrison in his work Supergods (2011) has described the generic diversity evident in past movie adaptations as being ‘few-and-far-between’, with at best, 1990s adaptations in particular appearing along a spectrum of staccato extremes (i.e. from baroque-pulp to awkward-oddities to burlesque-mockery, etc.). Morrison points out it was only until Blade (1999) and Unbreakable (2000) that viewers began to see the start of convincingly sophisticated treatments coming through via ‘technology having caught up with the comics’ or bestowed with an ‘indie-auteur’ sensibility of moral commentary, which opened the door for innovative turning points such as Singer’s X-Men (2000), Raimi’s Spider-Man (2002)/Spider-Man 2 (2004), Nolan’s Batman Begins (2005) and beyond.

In the past 20 years, then, the superhero movie genre has attempted to achieve a sense of solidification, but through constantly being adaptive by creatively borrowing from a multitude of formulas. As Flanagan, McKenny and Livingston argue in The Marvel Studios Phenomenon (2016), although it is quite difficult to firmly pin down this genre fully, fans can nonetheless isolate its key features as those of hybridity tactics and ‘fractals’: that cut ‘inexhaustibly across types of platform… referential periods, and sectors of audience’ (87-88). In order to meet the expectations of different audience interests, the superhero genre has effectively mixed together elements not only from other sub-genres, but within its own fictional universe, allowing for characters to find representations in new contexts that would otherwise not be possible. Traditionally, stagnation is especially true in genres that, for much too long, have been very rigid and inflexible for purposes of achieving ‘formulaic purity’, e.g. like the Western from the late 1930s to early 1950s. Yet, as recently as the late 2010s/early 2020s, audiences have seen a hybridised diversity or ‘fragmentation of stereotypical formulas’ in superhero film and TV that includes role-reversals of a character’s race, ethnicity and gender in the MCU’s animation series What If? (2021) (e.g. ‘Captain Carter’; ‘Starlord T’Challa’) and a repurposing of identities also in Doctor Strange in The Multiverse of Madness (2022); as well as an eclectic reformatting of conventional character archetypes in DC’s Doom Patrol (2019-2022), Suicide Squad (2016; 2021) and Joker (2019) to challenge paradigms of mental health and body dysmorphia.

This approach of incorporating a series of ‘ancillary genres’ as an elastic hybridity compels the superhero format to reinvent itself in the face of Jeffery Brown’s concerns in The Modern Superhero in Film and Television (2016) of an upcoming ‘superhero fatigue’ (i.e. oversaturation via excessive sameness). The time has come to explore the full potential of the superhero genre’s impulse to embrace a diverse universe of styles, themes, story-worlds and socio-cultural identities onscreen, while critically interrogating the momentum it has left to maintain this negotiation.

Keywords: Diversity, Inclusivity, Film & Television, Representation, Stereotypes, Sexuality, Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Ableism, Mental Health, Genre, Formulas, Hybridity, Transmedia.

Alex van Ommen
Independent Researcher

Fragmentation of the Metanarrative: Captain America as a man out of time

In 1941 it was good guys versus bad guys. In the mainstream at least, the Second World War was an existential conflict between the Allies and the Axis powers, a worldview of right and good versus one of evil. Bright stars and colors emblazoned the uniforms and materiel of the Allies, whereas Nazi troops wore skulls on theirs. This was the world that produced Captain America, the personification of all that was good and right with mid-20th century America as it led the world to freedom.

Subsequent years saw the monolithic notions of good and right of victor’s might fragmented by narratives challenging the notions of America that Captain America embodied. Whereas the Allied powers were indeed champions of justice, liberty, and freedom, time revealed that these concepts were not always evenly shared, nor were they always built on false foundations. One doesn’t need to look far before they find the Tuskegee experiments or Oppenheimer’s use of slave labor.

Captain America was frozen at the end of WW2, only to be thawed later into a more complicated world. This key part of all Captain America narratives – comics, movies, television – is a constant juxtaposition of more modernist metanarratives and the smaller, fragmented postmodern and poststructuralist ones. Captain America’s very presence in a story demands consideration of whether the supposed truths of good and right he represents are even valid in a modern world.

These things are specifically highlighted in Morales’ “Truth: Red White and Black,” where the notion of Captain America’s origin story is upended in an exploration government experimentation on Black recruits, and also in Captain America’s longtime relationship with Falcon, a Black superhero.

This paper aims to examine instances where Captain America’s presence – either directly as an actor in a narrative or indirectly as a concept referenced in a narrative – exposes tension between the morally good metanarrative he represents and the fragmented world of smaller narratives we are confronted with today.

KEYWORDS: Captain America; metanarratives; postmodernism; cultural conflict; Falcon, Isaiah Bradley

Aanchal Viij

University of Sussex

“American God” to a Soviet Superman: Exploring the Cathartic Function of Counterfactual Narratives.

Putting counterfactual fiction in dialogue with American exceptionalism demonstrates the cathartic function of reparative narratives. I use two graphic novels – Alan Moore’s Watchmen (1986) and Mark Millar’s Superman Red Son (2014) – to assert that the manifestation of a nostalgic reparation of historical events performs a cathartic function for both an individual and the collective. Both visual narratives underscore the politics, and a spectacle, of such catharsis by demonstrating the desire to repair histories in the face of the Cold War.

I examine the suitability of counterfactual graphic narratives, already a fragmented form of literature, to host American exceptionalism within their alternate reality. At the same time, these texts challenge the cathartic release that is achieved through the reparative plot structure and demonstrate the futility of the pursuit of exceptionalism; the counterfactuals, then, underscore the stage of Freudian repetition in which both texts find themselves stuck in.

Through a close reading of both texts, I raise larger questions about the comics form and its suitability for such catharsis; the inextricability of counterfactual fiction and catharsis; and the complexity of the Freudian repetition and “working through” in the reparative narrative form.

Keyboard: Counterfactual History, Superheroes, Nostalgia, American Exceptionalism, Catharsis, Psychoanalysis.

Carl Wilson

Independent

From DLC to NFT: The Digital Franchising and Fragmentation of Spider-Man.

This paper is, in part, a continuation of the paper on video games I gave last year, where I ended the talk by stating “Worryingly, this signals a return to the days of varying quality-control cash-ins while also being a hyper-extension of [the] current attitude towards free-to-play mobile markets.”

In August 2021, Marvel unveiled their first official “crypto collectibles” NFT range, starting with – in the perfect world of J. Jonah Jameson – more photos (or more precisely: digital receipts) of Spider-Man, costing up to $400 each. In September, the video game Marvel's Spider-Man 2 was officially announced during the PlayStation Showcase 2021 as a console exclusive, and shortly after, in November, Spider-Man was released as a playable DLC character in the Marvel’s Avengers video game, but - again - only if you owned a Sony console, with him not appearing on Xbox or PC versions of the game. By December, Spider-Man was added as a playable outfit in ‘free-to-play’ Fortnite Battle Royale's purchasable Chapter 3 Season 1 Battle Pass, followed by the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe version of Spider-Man also later appearing as an outfit in the Item Shop. At the crest of this digital wave, the Sony produced movie, Spider-Man: No Way Home also released in December 2021.

Using transmedia and convergence theory to return to Derek Johnson’s work on media franchising and the role of “Franchise Tenants”, this paper will examine how ancillary streams continue to function within contemporary formulations of an attempted multi-verse, with the vying imperatives of varying cultural and industrial formations struggling against one another to make themselves both distinct and coherent, and of course, profitable.

Keywords: Spider-Man, Digital Franchising, Video Games, Marvel, NFT, Transmedia, Convergence.

The Superhero Project: V Global Meeting

"The Dark Knight"

Friday 10th to Sunday 12th September 2021

Lara Antola

University of Turku, Finland

Marvel Studios’ WandaVision as the Ultimate Transmedial Text.

After 23 blockbuster films in 11 years, it is easy to say that the epic supehero adaptation produced by Marvel Studios have perfected their storytelling, constantly producing films that the audiences want to see. Films in the MCU tell the stories of predominantly white male superheroes coming to terms with their insecurities and struggles, finally finding their strength and saving the world or at least some part of it. This repetition with variation (Hutcheon.2006) makes sure the audiences get what they signed up for, while the stories still feel fresh enough.

Marvel Studios’ new projects seem to have more diverse casting and focus on themes that can be described as progressive. The two new TV shows released so far both focus on depicting society and individuals after a catastrophic event, offering a new perspective to the lives of superheroes. WandaVision’s (2021) protagonist is going through the seven stages of grief, while other characters face the consequences of a worldwide disaster as well as Wanda’s intense mourning.

WandaVision is progressive not only in the way it centers a female character (still rare in superhero films), and focuses on mental health issues, family life and relationships instead of action, but also in its storytelling. In this presentation, I analyse WandaVision’s transmedial storytelling from the point of view of fan studies. Following Henry Jenkins’ (2006) famous definition, fans of transmedial franchises can be seen as hunters and gatherers who follow their favourite content from one platform to the other. Looking at the audience strategies (Beaty. 2016) used by the producers of WandaVision, I claim that the show is the ultimate transmedial product, inviting the audience into a world of references, hints and speculations.

Keywords: Adaptation, Transmedia, Fan Studies, Marvel, WandaVision.

Kristin Aubel

TU Dortmund / JLU Gießen

With Great Power Comes Social Responsibility: Precarity in Marvel’s Spider-Man (2018) and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales (2020)

Marvel’s Spider-Man and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales expand a superhero’s responsibility from protecting society to actively improving it by focusing on vulnerable communities, their precarious living conditions, and by making the protagonists members of those communities. In both games, the superhero work of the Spider-Men is complemented by the community service of their civilian alter egos, Peter Parker and Miles Morales.

In Marvel’s Spider-Man, both Peter and Miles help out in the F.E.A.S.T. shelters for homeless people run by Peter’s aunt May. The player interacts with the locale and its inhabitants in both identities – as a superhero and as a volunteer. The importance of this synergy is further stressed through the side character Gloria, a homeless woman whom Spider-Man saves from a group of thugs, convinces to seek help, and then interacts with in the shelter as Peter Parker. When Peter is evicted from his apartment, he and the player are, if only for a short time, even put into the precarious role of a homeless person themselves.

The game’s semi-sequel focusing on newly become Spider-Man Miles Morales deals with precarity at the same time more specifically and more generally than the first game. Instead of all of New York, the game centers around Harlem, but it is also Harlem’s whole population, consisting mostly of low-income minorities, that is marked as extremely vulnerable and ultimately disposable by corporate villain Simon Krieger. While Miles as a superhero is able to avert a crisis that would have destroyed Harlem, it is Miles’ mother Rio Morales who brings about positive change for their community through her political activism. Both games thus show that while superheroic deeds are certainly necessary, systemic problems affecting vulnerable communities have to be addressed by acting according to a social responsibility that is conveyed through the superheroes’ mother figures.

Keywords: Spider-Man, Peter Parker, Miles Morales, Superheroes, Video Games, Community Service, Homelessness, Minorities, Vulnerability, Precarity.

Rafael Alves Azevedo

Technical University of Dresden

“In Heaven, There Are No Pearly Gates, But Instead Revolving Doors”. Geoff Johns, Death, and Resurrection in New Sincerity Comics.

After comics like Marvels (1994), Astro City (1995-96), and Kingdom Come (1996) rehabilitated the sense of awe and wonder associated with the Silver Age and abandoned by the cynicism and irony of late ‘80s and early ‘90s postmodern works, writer Geoff Johns brought this Neo-Silver Age to its death-denying conclusion in the 2000s.

Countering the previous era’s focus on mortality and the physical and mental implication of life as a superhero – as exemplified by The Flash’s dead in Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985-86), Batman’s paraplegia in Knightfall (1993-94), and Green Lantern’s insanity in Emerald Twilight (1994), Johns brough back several dead characters, most prominently in Green Lantern: Rebirth (2004-05), The Flash: Rebirth (2009-10), and Blackest Night (2009-10). Embedded in that decade’s ultimate trivialization of superhero deaths with the further resurrections of Jason Todd (Under the Hood (2005)), Bucky Barnes (Winter Soldier (2004-06)), Oliver Queen (Quiver (2001)), Bruce Wayne (The Return of Bruce Wayne (2010)) and Steve Rogers (Reborn (2009-10)), Johns contributed to the aphorism that “no one stays dead in comics, except Uncle Ben”.

Informed by Jose Alaniz’s landmark study on Death, Disability, and the Superhero (2014), this paper examines the erasure of mortality and renewed propagation of the physical and mental ideal inherent in New Sincerity comics. By linking this phenomenon to discussions on the use of religious motifs, especially the Resurrection, and the relationship between nostalgia and grief typical for this movement, this paper aims to critique the New Sincerity’s amplification of the “immortalist, ableist core of the superhero” genre (Alaniz.2014:240).

Keywords: DC Comics, Geoff Johns, Green Lantern, The Flash, Death and Dying Studies, New Sincerity, Disability Studies, Superhero Comics, Nostalgia.

Rory Bines-Morris

University of Warwick

Military Marvel: Reading Captain Marvel as Propaganda for the U.S. Military.

Captain Marvel (2019) was the first of Marvel Studios’ films to feature a female superhero as the lead protagonist, and the first to be (co-)directed by a woman. As such the film engages with, and arrives alongside, the #MeToo movement, thereby operating as a social critique. Simultaneously, the film engages with a moment of greater longevity still, the post-9/11 era, and a genre with greater longevity still, the action genre. Captain Marvel therefore enters into, and is symptomatic of, a cinematic intertext with a long history of fascination for and direct affiliation with the American military. By failing to disabuse itself of these latter connections, some of the film’s potential for social critique is undermined.

This paper aims to demonstrate the ways in which Captain Marvel functions as propaganda for the American military, and explore the emergent complications from reading it so singularly. It does this primarily by developing a theoretically-informed framework based on Linda Hutcheon’s notion of complicitous critique, which in its most elemental form allows for two simultaneous and contradictory modes of reading a single text. Within the paper these modes are propaganda and social critique. Alongside this, the paper develops Jacques Derrida’s figuration of autoimmunity, a philosophical expression of geopolitical conflict engendering reciprocal and violent actions between warring states, usefully adapted by Justine Toh as a framework to examine conflict in a narrative context.

Through further close textual analysis of and application of the above frameworks to Captain Marvel, the paper examines how the film perpetuates and subverts the standard ideologies of its genre and industry. The paper aims to make a judgement on where Captain Marvel ultimately rests within a binary of propaganda and social critique, or whether it is positioned rather more centrally, embodying Hutcheon’s idea of complicitous critique.

Keywords: Captain Marvel, Propaganda, Complicitous Critique, Autoimmunity, Marvel Studios, Superhero Films.

Torsten Caeners

University of Duisburg-Essen

“Is This An Old Message?” Ant-Man’s Ghostly Return and The Marvel Cinematic Universe as a Hauntological Space.

In my paper, I will argue that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is essentially a hauntological space where characters and storylines are haunted by traces of their past (these themselves haunted by ‘real’ world history and the history of their comic book existence) and, as the MCU is designed as a continuous shared universe, simultaneously by traces of a future yet to come. In this sense, the MCU is fundamentally spectral.

While elaborating on the genre hauntological structure of the MCU, I will concentrate as an example on Avengers: Endgame. More specifically, I will define the return of Ant-Man as a ghostly apparition that disrupts the temporal structure of the MCU universe. Scott Lang is a man out of his time. Like ghosts, his appearance instigates “a disturbance of the distinction between beginnings and returns as well as between death and life” (Parkin-Gounelas). The essentially closed story of Infinity War (Thanos has won; the dead are dead and the world has to cope with it) is suddenly re-opened by the ghostly agency of Ant-Man. It is thus only fitting that the film centers on a time travel story.

In reading the spectral effects of Ant-Man’s return, I will argue that these expose the underlying hauntological structure of the MCU. By thus re-tracing functionalizations of hauntology processes in the MCU, I will show that spectral effects and connections are yet another layer of how the MCU manages to hold all of its divers and intricate element together and combine them into powerful and entertaining stories.

Keywords: Ant-Man, Hauntology, Marvel Cinematic Universe, MCU, Avengers, Scott Lang.

Daniel J. Connell

Independent Scholar

“That Was Diabolical!” Ultraviolence, Hypermasculinity and Depravity in The Boys.

What would real power look like? How would it inflict itself upon the world, and how would the world, in turn, evolve around it? These are the key questions shaping the narrative in Amazon’s The Boys (2019-), based on the comic book by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. In this universe, super-powered individuals have existed since WWII, but have been very much commodified and packaged into a corporate structure.

 The premier superhero team, The Seven, spend most of their time fulfilling the contractual obligations set out by their de-facto owners, Vought International. As a quid pro quo, Vought (mostly) helps to cover up the super-powered team’s crimes and misdeeds in order to keep the financial machine running smoothly. Things, however, are clearly coming to a head – with Vought struggling to keep their heroes in check, and The Seven struggling to assert themselves or even use their powers for any level of good.

From the very outset of season one, the narrative elements of ultraviolence, hypermasculinity and depravity lace each episode. At times comic, others shocking, the design of each element is to make a commentary on the nature of power, its abuse, and the fallout from its excess or misuse. However, in doing so, the show also revels in its display; this, in turn, creates a fascinating prism: is The Boys critiquing and deconstructing the reality of what would happen if the world had super-powered individuals, or is it glorifying it?This paper looks to explore these issues, asserting that whilst the position of the show’s moral compass is one set against its protagonists and antagonists, there is a voyeuristic glee running through the show that risks undermining its efforts.

Keywords: The Boys, Ultraviolence, Hypermasculinity, Depravity, Violence, Superpowers, Superheroes.

Stefanie Dullisch

Heinrich-Heine-University Dusseldorf

Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation from Traditional Genre Conventions.

This paper examines how DC Film’s Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn (2020) merges the genres of romantic comedy, “girlfriend flick”, and the superhero movie, and introduces the element of female community in order to subvert the regressive notions of each genre.

Mary Celeste Kearney’s (2002) argues that “coming-of-age [is] a homosocial process” and criticizes that female community in film is often restricted to young adulthood. The narrative of female friendship supposedly situates the characters in a regressive state of juvenile play that they have to grow out of in order to grow into heterosexual society. Alison Winch (2012) argues that the “girlfriend flick”, which focuses on characters beyond the teenage years, features either no female community or secondary female characters who function as personifications of societal forces that prepare the way for the heterosexual romance.

Birds of Prey (2020) revels in the “regressive” state of juvenile play and uses it in order to deconstruct traditional gender and genre conventions. As the first all-female “superhero” movie, Birds of Prey contrasts sharply with DC’s and Marvel’s other female led films. Instead of presenting an ostensibly lone female figure in a masculine universe, as in Captain Marvel or Wonder Woman, Birds of Prey is a “girl gang” movie set in a campy, candy-coloured world that presents five interconnected storylines of female characters dealing with the emancipation from sources of toxic masculinity. The narrative of each character’s independence is achieved through the element of female community. This paper argues that Birds of Prey intentionally uses the “regressive” state of juvenile play to deconstruct the traditional norms of the girlfriend flick and the superhero movie.

Keywords: Birds of Prey, Harley Quinn, Superhero Movie, Female Community, Chick Flick.

Sara K. Ellis

Meiji University

From Farm to Tablet: Superman as the Great Provider.

For much of his 81-year history, Clark Kent/Kal-El has been depicted as a farm boy. From comic books to films to television series, the Man of Steel’s alter ego is often shown hoisting tractors or making quick repairs to the barn on his parents’ Smallville homestead. Yet, the establishment of Superman as a farmer, and specifically a Midwestern one, came at the halfway mark, coinciding with the character’s first blockbuster treatment in Superman: The Movie (1978). Initially nameless, the Kents’ hometown was located near or in Metropolis, with Clark’s adoptive parents even selling their land in the early 1950s to open a general store. It was not until the film, and later John Byrne’s reboot The Man of Steel (1986) that the Kansas setting was firmly established. Certainly, the rural backdrop had aesthetic as well as cinematic value, contrasting the hayseed with the urban reporter and his more sophisticated Kryptonian origins.

Yet, it also reified Superman’s association with a particular image of American masculinity, a “deceptive” stereotype, writes Shelly L. Koch, of a male-dominated, patrilineal system of food production that largely omits the labor of women and immigrants. This amplification may have also reflected a growing anxiety over America’s identity as a food producer as the rising cost of mechanization exacerbated the farm crisis and the precariousness of U.S. agriculture. For while the Clark Kent of Metropolis has shifted from reporter to anchorman to blogger and back, his identity as a farmer has remained relatively static and picturesque. This paper therefore examines how the doubling-down on Superman’s role as farmer facilitated his leap from comic books to mainstream blockbusters, interrogating the ways in which his later iterations reflected a gendered and racialized anxiety around food production and masculinity.

Keywords: Superman, Comics, Media, Agriculture, Masculinity, Food, Eating, Technology.

Marco Favaro

Otto-Friedrich-Universitat Bamberg/Universita Degli Studi di Verona

Dystopic Heroes: Exploring the Possibility of Heroism in the Dystopias, From Alan Moore to WandaVision.

Superheroes do not change the world. Their mission is to protect society and its people from an “evil” threat and to preserve and restore a status quo that is overall “good”. However, what happens if there are no innocents to protect? If society is not “good” but corrupt, even dystopic? Is it possible to be heroes in a dystopic world? Can the superhero save humanity from itself?

Superhero narrative gives us numerous examples of dystopic realities in film, comics and series: zombie apocalypses like DCeased or Marvel Zombies, fascistic or socialistic totalitarianism like V For Vendetta or Superman: Red Son, but also “utopic” dystopias like the worlds of WandaVision or House of M created by Scarlet Witch and “realistic” worlds like the 80’s Gotham City of Todd Phillips’ Joker.

How are these worlds connected? What have the V For Vendetta’s fascistic dictatorship and the small and perfect town of Westview in common? They are dystopias, even if of a different kind, catastrophic realities in which the society as we know it ceased to exist. We can consider them to explore the common characteristic of a dystopic world and analyse the hero’s role in these kinds of reality – if we can still talk about heroes, of course. In fact, V of Moore, the socialist Superman of Miller or even Joaquin Phoenix Joker and Scarlet Witch have heroic qualities, but they are also forced to take decisions and actions that we define as “evil”. Typical of the antiheroic narrative, these universes put us in front of impossible moral choices.

Can a superhero impose a utopia, saving men from themselves? If society collapsed and there is nothing left to save, what role does the hero have? Is it possible to be a hero in a condemned world? To survive a dystopia, the superhero (and the reader) must adopt a new moral compass and confront himself with different and extreme worldviews. How long can he stare into the abyss without being a monster himself? Which actions can be justified to save humanity? Where can we trace a line between justice and revenge? These questions lead this analysis, which finds its philosophical bases, especially but not only on Friedrich Nietzsche and Albert Camus’ works.

Keywords: Utopia, Dystopia, Hero, Antihero, Conflict of Values.

Danny Graydon

University of Hertfordshire

“The Father Becomes The Son, And The Son Becomes The Father…”: Parenthood As An Evolution of The Superman Mythology

Superman is currently distinguished by a formidable and striking new frontier: parenthood. Having been controversially reconfigured as a younger and more brash figure during DC Comics’ universe-altering “The New 52” (2011-2016), the classic post-Crisis Superman returned in 2015’s Convergence mini-series, still married to Lois Lane but now father to Jonathan Samuel Kent, a family dynamic that joined his reinstatement to mainstream DC continuity in 2016’s Rebirth saga.

The intriguing notion of Superman and fatherhood has always existed within the character’s multi-media presences as way of exploring facets of the prototypical superhero. In the Silver Age of Comics, Superman as a father was primarily confined to amusing “what if…?” scenarios which would pit him against the trials of everyday domesticity. In Bryan Singer’s underrated film Superman Returns (2006), the presence of a previously-unknown son provides Superman with a complex emotional challenge that cannot be fixed with a showcase of superhuman physical power. Conversely, the 1999 graphic novel Son of Superman finds a teenage Jon Kent – raised without a father - discovering and reckoning with the massive and complex legacy that now rests on his shoulders.

A popular development, The Man of Steel as doting parent has been viewed as a beguiling revitalization of the character – both in the comics and the 2021 CW TV show Superman and Lois- in which the audience not only sees Superman’s innate kindness and moral decency given specific focus, but in a way that is universally recognizable and reflective of a singular moment of personal progression. Yet, Superman’s parental role encourages a revised view of the parameters of the superhero identity, augmenting Coogan’s mission-powers-identity (MPI) paradigm (2009) towards a reinforcement of the superhero’s underpinnings of right action and guidance

Keywords: Superman, Superheroes, Mythology, Father, Son, Identity, Parenthood, Domesticity, Jon Kent,

Jessica Hoffmann

University of Duisburg-Essen

Perfectly Imperfect (Anti-) Heroines: Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey.

Superheroes are meant to give us structure in the structureless uncertainty of life with all its uncalculatable surprises. They are the saviors of the day, the world, the universe. With their incredibly well-trained bodies, their intelligence and powers they can be perfect and for many decades most of them had to be so, otherwise repercussions awaited them, either in the form of some misery striking or in ridicule. They functioned as an unreachable ideal, something to aspire towards, but never reach.

Nonetheless, such an almost perfect hero is hardly what young people want, with their call for the re-thinking of masculinity, hate of body-shaming, open-mindedness towards mental health issues and general cry for acceptance. They want heroes as diverse as they are and heroes who do not only face villains, but also have the same issues they have to deal with without turning them tragic.

One rather recent movie which includes some topics many young people are concerned about, is the 2020 movie Birds of Prey: The Emancipation of Harley Quinn. This paper explores how the main characters function as more approachable superheroines, who face issues in a relatable and charismatic way, while still allows them to function as role models. Through the Birds of Prey and Harley Quinn’s depiction and acceptance of mental health issues, the over-coming of traumatic experiences in the past and their acceptance of new ways of life when the “normal” way will not work out, they fit the brief for a contemporary kind of heroine, who shows that not being perfect does not have to be a problem.

Keyword: Harley Quinn, Birds of Prey, Relatable Superheroes, Mental Health, Trauma.

Robert Hyland

Queen’s University

Big in Japan: Giant Monsters and Cold War Rhetoric in Japanese Superhero Texts.

This paper seeks to do two things: First, to track the origins of the Japanese superhero and secondly to explore the political and ideological contexts of the 1960s superhero boom. The paper begins with the earliest manifestations of hero narratives before probing the shaping of the early modern proto-superhero Ogon Batto (Golden Bat) who first appeared in 1931 Kamishibai picture storytelling. The paper then explores the commercial boom of the late 1950s and early 1960s, as Japanese film and television screens became populated with various growing, morphing, flying or robotic heroes doing battle with oversized monsters. The paper explores the socio-political relations between these texts and global soft and hard power and the shaping of modern Japan, through its imagined relationship to safety, history and technology. The paper will finish by exploring the apocalypse / post apocalypse narratives of ‘new’ Japan and consider how Cold War rhetoric of the twentieth century has become encoded into contemporary Japanese superhero narratives.

Keyword: Japan, Superhero, Kamishibai, Tokusatsu, Henshin, Cold War, Ideology.

Nicholas T. James

Morehead State University

“Only You Can Save The World! You Must (Not) Read This Comic!” Reader Agency in Narrative Completion in Grant Morrison’s Multiversity.

Narrative completion and textual completion tend to go hand in hand in reading; however, through the creation of metatextual or paratextual cues, these two versions of reading completion can be distinctly separated. The clearest example of this in written works might be the Choose Your Own Adventures series of books. The reader is given paratextual cues on how to engage in the reading of the text to compete their version of the narrative. They are given agency in narrative construction and completion as they determine the events that occur in the narrative within an existing framework. Grant Morrison’s Multiversity is a prime example of how readers still can be given or take agency in narrative construction through the active choice of reading.

Morrison’s Multiversity stands out due to its direct engagement with the reader and diegetic instructions about whether or not to engage in the act of reading. These direct instructions, most notably the command, “stop reading”, conflicts with the natural inclination towards textual completion as a means of narrative completion and allows us to create different criteria for what constitutes a “complete narrative”. This type of agency is already highlighted in the way comics narrative is co-formed by the reader through concepts such as “closure”. Multiversity takes this agency beyond just a theoretical framework and uses it to comment on the superhero genre and the ethics surrounding the act of (not) reading.

Multiversity is a text that allows for multiple “complete narrative” experiences by the reader that each holds equal textual authority. Its narrative completion is determined not by the textual object itself but through the act of reading or the reader’s intentional choice to “stop reading”.

Keywords: Narrative, Metafiction, Agency, Reader, Multiverse, Closure, Monitor, DC Comics.

Mattias Keidel

Independent

Don’t Mess With The Devil! Is There a Devil in Human Form in the Daredevil Netflix Series?

In a long talk between Daredevil and Pater Latum, they discuss the topic of the devil and if he exists in human form among us. Pater Latum accepts that Kingpin, Wilson Fisk, indeed is the devil himself, but he doesn’t conclude to Daredevil’s solution in his wish to kill him. That would bring guilt, that could destroy Matt Murdock’s personality and make him evil himself. How critics and scientists describe the existence of the devil on Earth and in the superhero genre? Which solutions are preferred in the conflict at the core of the Netflix series of Daredevil, how is the definition of the devil evolve and is Fisk really the devil at all?

Keywords: Daredevil, Wilson Fisk, Kingpin, Religion, The Devil, Netflix.

Martine Klein

University of Duisburg-Essen

Vaya Haargreeves – Negotiating the Depiction of Bisexuality and Supernatural Abilities for Future Superhero Representations.

In recent years there has been a shift in character development for female superheroes in favour of the LGBTQI+ community. Supergirl was depicted as a lesbian superhero since season 2, Batwoman is an openly gay superhero and Wonder Woman was recently confirmed as being bisexual. Although girls and women who see themselves as part of the LGBTQI+ community can draw on a few high-profile characters with supernatural abilities now, there is still room for improvement concerning openly bisexual female superheroes. Carolyn Cocca notes that “the superhero genre in comics, television, and film is among the many areas in our culture that underrepresents woman in positions of power, both as real-life creators and as fictional characters”.

In order to understand the significance of representing queer sexuality and super heroic abilities, I am going to focus on concepts of power, performance and sexuality as a means of an intersectional reading of the character Vanya Haargreeves from season two of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy. She is one of seven superhero siblings who is depicted as bisexual and has the most powerful supernatural abilities of all of them. This linkage is by no means random and operates on levels of power and performance. Vanya’s character in in itself a powerful tool and according to Peggy Phelan, “If representational visibility equals power, then almost naked young white women should be running Western culture. The ubiquity of their image, however, has hardly brought them political or economic power”.

But Vanya is one of a handful of superwomen who is not portrayed as an object for the pleasure of male viewers, which seams to make her an exception in the superhero realm. Here, the term performance is after Butler understood in relation to gender as a repetition of acts, and gender “is performative which means, quite simply, that it is real only to the extent that it is performed”. Vanya’s character can demonstrate that extraordinary abilities can be performed by reflective (bisexual) women. By focusing on sound and by controlling her emotions, she accesses her powers which makes her relatable to ordinary human beings, meaning the viewers. In my paper, I will argue that Vanya embodies a chance for future superhero representation of complex female LGBTQI+ characters because of her character not being objectified by her relatable way of using her superpowers and by being unapologetically bisexual.

Keywords: Superwoman, Female Superheroes, Representation, Rower, Bisexuality, LGBTQI+

Svenja Kolpack

University of Duisburg-Essen

“There is No Man Like Me” – Loki as the Embodiment of the Medieval Vice.

From today’s view, the Middle Ages seem so far away that the theatrical tradition of that time has been nearly forgotten. While Shakespeare and his plays are remembered, what came before, lies in the shadows of the past. However, it is worth digging deeper into history and learn how it has translated into today’s world. How characters have evolved and still carry the prototypical features from beyond our time.

Loki, however, dating way further back than medieval times, seems to be the perfect link between ancient mythology and modern cinematic spectacle. He acts, not only as the adopted brother of Thor, but as the God of Mischief, adding funny puns and wry humour to the movies. Loki is sly, thoughtful and creative in his plans to overthrow Odin and fool Thor to rule Asgard or, when it comes to that, Midgard. These characteristics make him appear refreshing next to his brother but is this really new and modern?

This paper will answer questions as: What is the connection between medieval theatrical practice and the Marvel Cinematic Universe? What is a morality play and what does that have to do with superheroes and/or supervillains? How can a god from northern mythology be ultra-modern and connected to the medieval stock figures at the same time? Who or what is the Vice? And how does Loki’s mischievousness and wickedness fit his characteristic humour?

Keywords: Loki, Medieval, Morality Play, The Vice, Stock Figures, MCU.

Mikayla J. Laird

University of Hertfordshire

“Because He’s My Father, You Idiot”: Batman as Literal and Figurative Father Figure to the Dark Age of Comics.

Through this paper, the idea of Batman as a literal father to Damian Wayne, and the figurative father to Dark Age Comics will be explored. The focus will be on how Damian Wayne reflects the darker tone comics took post Dark Knight Returns, and how Batman paved the way for the current state of superhero mainstream storytelling within comics. Damian Wayne’s character at the point of introduction, and during the opening arcs of Batman & Robin, represents the lack of restraint in terms of violence, and the arrogant nature of comics release post 1986. Through the relationship between Batman and Damian, we see the growth of the anger filled, violent character, to a fully fleshed out and realized state. With 2021, we see both the 15th anniversary of Damian Wayne’s introduction into cannon, as well as the 10th anniversary of the New 52 and 35th anniversary of The Dark Knight Returns, making SUPER V the perfect time to discuss these storylines.

Keywords: Batman, Robin, Damian Wayne, The Dark Knight Returns, Peter J. Tomasi, Patrick Gleason, Grant Morrison, Batman & Robin.

Ashika Paramita

Deakin University

“Make Comics Great Again” – Discourses of Otherness in Alt-Hero.

As cultural texts, superhero narratives are a site where ideologies are re-produced and or/challenged and resisted (Barker.1989; Duncan, Smith & Levitz.2009; Kellner.1995; Stromberg.2010). However, the meaning and function of superheroes shift, responding to and interacting with ideological and cultural changes in society (Fingeroth.2004). In recent years, there have been progressive representations of diverse characters in superhero comics, such as the Muslim American Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan), the Afro-Hispanic Spider-Man (Miles Morales), and the queer Latinx Miss America (America Chavez). These figures suggest a shift toward a more inclusive, multicultural acceptance of diverse ‘heroes’ in U.S. society. While this development has been generally lauded by fans, it has also received fan backlash, as some perceive this phenomenon as a degradation of the comic book industry (Flegel & Leggatt.2021; Lund.2018).

This paper looks at Alt-Hero (2018), a superhero comics series created as a response to the alleged “social justice” and “political correctness culture” takeover of mainstream superhero narratives. Pitched as an effort to “Make Comics Great Again” (Natan.2017), Alt-Hero echoes attitudes towards ethnic and racial minorities similar to those often expressed in Donald Trump’s discourse during his presidential campaign and administration. The analysis will focus on Othering discourses in Alt-Hero comic book series and the various ways in which these formations appear to resonate with the divisive racialized political speech acts used by Donald Trump. This paper is an effort to critically examine the Othering ideas and strategies represented in Alt-Hero, reading them as a form of counter speech that seeks to challenge the social acceptance of non-white heroes.

Keywords: Comic Books, Superheroes, Alt-Hero, Representation, Otherness.

Yago Paris

Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem

Diversity and the Superheroic Figure: Studying Frozen’s Elsa as a Superheroine.

Else, the iconic figure of Disney’s Frozen (2013), has become a massive pop culture phenomenon. Even through she has been studied in depth, mostly in terms of gender, new approaches are needed in order to deeper understand the repercussions of this character. One of these approaches could be studying Elsa as a superheroine. When it comes to thinking about her dramatic arc, it is possible to establish direct links with other characters belonging to the X-Men universe. One of the primary narratives of this universe is the constant differentiation between human and mutants, and the problems it generates in terms of acceptance and social integration. These difficulties are enhanced in certain superheroines, as we can see in characters that due to her mutations, are automatically rejected from society – Mystique and her blue skin -, do not have the chance to develop a normal life – Rogue and her inability to touch the skin of another person without hurting them – or have a power which is so strong that can become uncontrollable, leading to causing damage to the other members of society – Jean Grey and her extraordinary telepathic and telekinetic abilities.

These three characteristics – lack of integration, impossibility to live a normal life and the presence of an uncontrollable power – are present in Elsa, a fact which will allow me ot analyze her in superheroic terms. With this connection between a character who has been linked to the new wave of activisms, and these superheroines, I will expand the limits of the idea of the superheroic figure in order to include new variations of it, while at the same time address fundamental issues in the current global social agenda, such as diversity, inclusiveness, gender and racism.

Keywords: Diversity, Elsa, Frozen, Gender, Jean Grey, Mystique, Racism, Togue, Superheroine, X-Men.

Bruno Porto

Tilburg University

The Variant Cover.

The superhero comics fandom encompasses different types of collectors, ranging from the so called average fans – of a character, author, theme or genre – to obsessive completists. In Unpacking my Library, Walter Benjamin affirms that the collector develops “a relationship to objects which does not emphasize their functional, utilitarian value – that is, their usefulness – but studies and loves them as the scene, the stage, of their fate” (1999:63). In comics, no other items fit this description better than the Variant Cover. A Variant Cover is a secondary option of cover offered by publishers for specific comic book issues, that features the same contents of the regular copies. Upon its introduction in the mid-1980s Superhero comics, it expanded the functionality of an esthetic choice. To collectors, though, it amplified the possibilities of what a complete collection would be, in addition to strengthening the desire for rare, limited-printed, items.

To publishers, it provided a powerful marketing tool to incentivize comic shops to order larger quantities of copies, as well as to promote new titles and special occasions – such as a round number issue of a book or of a character’s anniversary. It generated more work opportunities for regular superhero artists, along with artists not usually associated with the genre, but who could now occasionally collaborate with publishers, and even break into the Superhero industry. It also allowed experiments with unusual paper stocks and sophisticated printing technologies such as metallic foil hot stamps; embossed and die-cut finishing; holograms and lenticular three-dimensional images; or glow-in-the-dark inks. Additionally, it enriched the fandom scene visual vocabulary by welcoming cover layouts that may not be regarded as commercially viable in regular periodical issues, such as covers devoid of logos and other conventional graphic elements; self-referencing tributes to classic covers; rough pencil sketches of the regular covers; and even black, illustration-less covers to be drawn on by artists at conventions. By reviewing its evolution, this research intends to describe and analyse the cultural and economic impact the Variant Cover has had in the Superhero comic book industry throughout the last three decades.

Keywords: Superhero, Comic Book Cover, Variant Cover, Collectionism.

Ranthild Salzer

University of Vienna

An Early Exercise in Progressive Action? Black Power, Masculinity and Marvel Comics’ Black Panther.

This paper discusses parallels between Marvel’s Black Panther as a black male superhero acting with masculine authority and Black Power masculinity constructions as they emerge in the late 1960s. Masculinities are socio-cultural and historical constructions about how males should be (Kimmel.1994 & 1996). Masculinities are structured along social hierarchies where all males need to situate themselves in relation to idealized masculinity: hegemonic masculinity(Connell, 1995): being strong, successful, capable and  in control. Superheroes hardly ever have troubles enacting hegemonic masculinity. However, in a society built on white and male privilege as in the US, idealized masculinity is not extended to black males. US popular fictions often center around the idea that black men are not ‘real men’ at all (Mercer, 1994).

This changes when Marvel introduces Black Panther in Fantastic Four #52 in 1966. He is the first African superhero and when T’Challa is introduced he comes with a lot of masculine capital (Anderson, 2009) attached to him. He is a head of state, incredibly wealthy, a scientist as well as a tough and muscular action hero. At the time, he has access to hegemonic masculinity like black male characters in US popular fictions almost never have.

When Marvel’s Black Panther first appears-a few months before the Black Panther Party is founded in California, he already has what Black Power activists argue all black men need to have: masculine authority. Black Panther’s debut thereby offers a progressive interaction between Black Power ideas and superhero narratives. For the first time, superhero comics are granting hegemonic masculinity to black males.

Keywords: Black Masculinities, Black Power, Hegemonic Masculinity, White Privilege, Black Superheroes.

James C. Taylor

University of Warwick

The Strangest Continuity of All: Traversing Timelines in the X-Men Films.

This paper explores how the fracturing of the X-Men cinematic universe’s spatial, temporal, and narrative continuity facilitates a process of (re)negotiating the franchise’s identity politics. The diegetic history of X-Men comics features an array of alternate timelines that articulate issues of social prejudice. Different art styles and narrative strategies are crucial means through which a given timeline’s meanings are shaped and expressed.

In this paper, I analyse the ways in which style and form are used in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) and Logan (2017) to adapt comic book visions of bleak futures. The analysis focuses on bodies and spaces. Days of Future Past heavily uses CGI to realise characters’ superhuman abilities and a technologically advanced dystopian future, while Logan sustains emphasis on the physicality of star Hugh Jackman’s profilmic body and the wilderness settings.

The presentation of, and interaction between, these elements expresses multifaceted, and at times contradictory, ideas about gender, race and social change that are complicated further when considering the films in relation to each other.

Keywords: X-Men, Adaptation, Film, Alternate Timelines, Identity Politics, Close Textual Analysis

Eva M. Thury

Drexel University

Katabasis in The Boys as an Expression of the Progressive Age of the Superhero.

Garth Ennis has a very clear vision of hell; his characters have been harrowing the place since the Saint of Killers ascended in Preacher to kill God. In The Boys, Ennis represents a world in which, as in Moore's Watchmen, the heroes are not all super, and the protagonists are not all heroes. Across the comics, the Boys embody a rag-tag mixture of human passions and transhuman identities. The Amazon series based on Ennis' comics takes a simpler path; the relationship between Billy Butcher and Hughie Campbell is a straightforward katabasis in which Billy's Virgil guides Hughie's Dante through the hell that is modern-day America. Rejection of religion is prevalent in each medium, but the morality of the television series is also more straightforward, as it both preaches and rejects the problematic modern-day values to which America pays lip-service: team spirit and cooperation. Hughie, who has suffered unimaginable loss, finds new meaning in life with the Boys: his struggle undergirds the plot of the first season. However, Starlight, the newest member of the Seven, learns right from her first-episode abuse by the Deep that teams are toxic.

Through their relationship, Hughie discovers compound fraud, the worst sin of The Inferno. The second season becomes a meditation on leadership, as Hughie fails in his attempt to lead the Boys after Billy abandons the team, and Homelander struggles with being displaced by Stormfront. However, as these season themes play out, the series highlights the layers of sin found in The Divine Comedy; we see Popclaw's lust explode the head of her landlord (0103), Kimiko's brother Kenji violently killed by racist Stormfront (0203), and throughout both seasons, the compound fraud perpetrated by the Superhero-manufacturing-mega-corporation Vought exposed over and over, to reemerge stronger each time, and needing destruction in an ever more toxic form.

Keywords: Garth Ennis, Preacher, Alan Moore, Watchmen, Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, The Boys, Katabasis.

Rabeb Touihri

American Studies

American National Identity Through The Lens of the Superhero and the Supervillain in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011).

American national identity has received much attention from multidisciplinary fields of research. Thus, this research deals with American national identity through heroes and villains in the American film industry—specifically in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011). It investigates the nexus between the binary opposition of the superhero (Captain America) and the supervillain (the Red Skull) in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), cultural trauma, and the American national identity after the September 11 terrorist attacks. A deep analysis of the characters’ symbolic meanings in relation to their historical context would articulate their role in rebuilding faith and trust in America’s ability to fight its enemies and empower the national sentiments through captain America. Using a qualitative research method is necessary to analyze the heroes and the villains’ archetypes in the movie.

The key theories on which this research is based are Claude Levi-Strauss’s Binary Opposition theory, Joseph Campbell’s Hero Archetypes, Jeffrey Alexander’s ideas of cultural traumas and collective identity, and Michael C. Frank’s Cultural Imaginary of Terrorism in the post-9/11 context. Thematic analysis is conducted, which involves decoding the main characters by examining their binary opposition and their representation of the US national identity and its foreign enemies, as well as decoding the meanings of key events within the movies to their social and historical contexts and their connotations within a post 9/11 context. The findings of this research suggest a link between the binary opposition of cinematic heroes and villains and their symbolic meaning in a post-9/11 context through Frank’s concept of the cultural imaginary of terrorism. It should contribute to a deeper understanding of the relationship between popular culture, identity, and geopolitics.

Keywords: The United States of America, National Identity, Captain America: The First Avenger, Superheroes, Supervillains, Post-9/11 Attacks

Daniel Trottier & Sarah Young

Erasmus University

The Superhero and the Digital Vigilante.

The superhero is a popular trope in pop culture used to entertain audiences about how altruistic (although possibly reluctant) actors can wield unworldly powers to save humanity. The title of the “superhero” isn’t limited to the milieu of pop culture, however, and the label is often imposed onto real-life actors who commit heroic acts. One particular group of actors that often self-nominate themselves (or at least imitate pop culture) are what the public might consider vigilantes, or groups of individuals who take it upon themselves to carry out the law.

While many times these vigilantes do reflect similar values of what might be considered the superhero like they are righteous, just, and preservers of society (Romagnoli & Pagnucci, 2013), the vigilante-as-superhero moniker is problematic, to include when the acts can be considered forms of digital vigilantism, or vigilantism carried out in digital means (Trottier, Gabdulhakov, & Huang,  2020).

Looking at examples of digital vigilantes who have also been called real life superheroes (Real Life Super Hero Project, 2021), this presentation will explore questions of, what is “superhero-ish” about the examples, and what does this tell us about both superheroes and digital vigilantes? We ultimately conclude that collapsing the two concepts is problematic for both directions and really asks if even our own superheroes would be problematic if they existed in real life.

Keywords: Data Practices, Digital Media, Digital Vigilante, Popular Culture, Superhero.

Caleb Turner

Richmond University

Super White Lies: Power, Privilege, Post-Truth and (Caucasian) Heroism Onscreen.

“It's a terrible privilege…” is a painful yet truthful statement uttered by the wealthy Tony Stark to his fellow Avengers on the joys and pitfalls of being a superhero, and this certainly speaks to the most dominant kinds of onscreen heroism we have seen over the past 20 years: all of which share similar traits of being white, male and cis-normative (e.g. Captain America, Thor, Hawkeye, The Incredible Hulk, Winter Soldier, Spider-Man, Antman in the MCU; Superman, Batman, Aquaman, Flash in the DCEU). This paper explores what onscreen Caucasian heroism can now offer to the genre today (and in the decades ahead). In his seminal work White, Richard Dyer is well known for arguing that whiteness and white culture are seemingly invisible, unremarkable and ubiquitous, yet a ‘standard’ to aspire towards, being the normalised template and neutral blank canvas on which all ‘difference’ and ‘otherness’ is painted. In the last half decade there has indeed been increasingly more diversity in the representations of onscreen heroism: of white women [e.g. Wonder Woman (2017), Captain Marvel (2019), Black Widow (2021)], men and women of colour [e.g. Black Panther (2017); Luke Cage (2016); Black Lightning (2017); Falcon, War Machine (Avengers), Cyborg (Justice League), Monica Rambeau/Photon (in WandaVision), Sister Night (in HBO’s Watchmen), and Ms. Marvel (in Captain Marvel, 2022)], and LGBTQ+ portrayals [e.g. Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarok (2017), and the gender fluidity of The Eternals (2021)].

However, the dominance of white culture still persists in defining exactly how ‘truth’ is explored in terms of the power and privilege that comes with super-heroism. Earlier this year, in the Disney+ show Falcon and The Winter Solider, the controversial social media debate surrounding John Walker’s irresponsible incarnation of Captain America (who jealously seeks out the super-soldier serum for personal vendettas) is a stark contrast to the idealised mantle held by Steve Rodgers. Walker’s approach to what heroism ‘truly stands for’ brings into play these very difficult kinds of question surrounding white privilege and power in a post-truth age, both on and offscreen. As Plato declared, “Only those who do not seek power are qualified to hold it”, and so ethical tensions inevitably occur when this truism is applied to other onscreen white superheroes and their own inherited types of empowerment (e.g. Bruce Wayne’s wealth; Clark Kent, Arthur Curry or Thor’s birth right; or even Peter Parker and Bruce Banner’s ‘having the right social contacts to be in the right laboratories, at the right time, so resulting in getting the right kinds of genetic enhancement’). How then, do these powerful and privileged figures responsibly respond to the expectations of inclusivity and diversity currently taking place in superhero film and TV? How can Caucasian Heroism allow us to better understand inherent inequities of race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, class and social mobility in this Progressive Age of the genre?

Keywords: Power, Privilege, Post-Truth, Whiteness, Heroism, Diversity, Inclusivity, Film & Television, Representation.

Alex Van Ommen

Independent

Captain America as a Vessel for American Cultural Yearning.

Captain America has always been a potent vessel of morality in Marvel Comics’ pantheon of heroes. As Captain America, Steve Rogers embodied the best that America could strive for. First appearing in December 1941, he punched Hitler in the jaw a year before the US entered World War II. In 1974, Rogers underscored the link between Captain America and a lofty set of ideals rather than an institution as he questioned the legitimacy of an evil and corrupt Presidency. The 2021 series Falcon and Winter Soldier presents a world where Rogers is no longer present, and there is nobody to wield the red, white and blue shield. His long-time friends and partners explore what he and Captain America stood for, tackling contemporary discussions of race, confronting historical narratives, and struggling to place America into a complex, global world where there isn’t necessarily one set of ideals or even one dominant culture.

This new adaptation sees a Black man pick up the shield, an action that is at once impossible and perfect, subversive and rebellious while fulfilling the destiny of a symbol which continues to grow with and reflect America. Captain America is a symbol perpetually out of context, an ideal which contrasts sharply with a reality that prefers pragmatism and compliance to struggle and ambition for something greater. By investigating historical and current examples where Captain America presents a virtuous moral counterpoint to contemporary events, this research hopes to broaden an understanding of the ideological struggle central to the character.

Keywords: Captain America, Patriotism, Social Responsibility, Race, Cultural Hegemony, Morality, Idealism.

Carl Wilson

Independent

Do You Wish to Save or Delete Your Progress? Representations of DC Comic Book Women in Contemporary Video Games.

In August, 2020, The Guardian newspaper ran the headline “Games firm Rocksteady accused of inaction over staff harassment.” In the article, one anonymous staff source offered that this same “dismissive attitude towards women had in the past carried over into the company’s output.” As a subsidiary to Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Rocksteady Studios is best known for its work in the Bafta award winning Batman: Arkham series. This is a franchise where senior character artist for Arkham City, Pablo Hoyos, stated their brief was simple: “Ugly men and beautiful girls”.

But going further, we also see the same tired tropes of exploitation; where the game designs are innovative, representations of women fall back on comic and game industry stereotypes. Meanwhile, in the Injustice series of games developed by another Warner subsidiary, NetherRealm Studios, one may see in a genre traditionally reserved for story-deficient ultra-violence echoes of female cooperation as seen in the Gotham City Sirens comics or empowerment in a storyline for Harley Quinn, leading her to become a member of the Justice League.

I propose a paper that surveys these contemporary cases of DC Comics women that have been adapted into video games. I will compare the content of the games within industrial frameworks and against cultural boundaries, and would also consider how these texts then feed back into comic books and other convergent media products. I will end the paper by examining the current games that are in development, seeing how – if at all – the Warner companies have reacted to their 2020 headlines and promises of change. 

Keywords: Video Games, Women, DC Comics, Convergence, Adaptation, Arkham, Injustice.

The Superhero Project: VI Global Meeting

"Endgame"

Friday 4th to Sunday 6th September 2020

Rafael Alves Azevedo

Technical University of Dresden

“A place to teach and build something”: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the redeeming qualities of communal experience

After the conclusion of the City at War storyline with issue #100 (2019), IDW Publishing’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles embarked on a new era. Replacing the creative team of Tom Waltz and Dave Wachter, writer-artist Sophie Campbell took over the reins of the critically acclaimed TMNT comic book series, the franchise’s first after its acquisition by Nickelodeon.

Campbell’s first story arc, which runs from issues #101 to #105 (2020), picks up after Splinter’s death and deals primarily with the invisible villainous triumvirate of trauma, change, and alienation. However, showing that neither the modern superhero archetype of the moody, brooding, anti-hero individualist (Raphael) nor a disillusioned abandonment of heroic ideals (Michelangelo) are valuable alternatives, Campbell’s first arc is about the value of family, friendship, and communal experiences.

Informed by John G. Cawelti’s concept of the reaffirmation of myth and current discussions on the influence of New Sincerity on comic books, this paper examines the ongoing re-evaluation of heroism in American mainstream comics, arguing that Sophie Campbell’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles presents a more socially sustainable form of heroism by focusing on community development and resilience instead of Manichean violence between good and evil. Eerily analogous to the real world with its portrayal of a quarantined area of New York City, TMNT’s communal heroism echoes widely-held perceptions of heroism in the wake of 2020’s global pandemic.

Keywords: Communal heroism; Generic transformation; IDW; New Sincerity; Nickelodeon; Post-postmodernism; Sophie Campbell; Superhero comics; Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Matteo Barbagello

Independent

Softening the Blow: deconstructing real life through nightmares in Dylan Dog

“Uaaaaaaargh!!” This is how most of his adventures start. With a knock and a scream. From the perspective of most Bonelli readers, this Is the ritualistic entrance to the nightmares of every Dylan Dog's client.  The detective of the nightmares, living in Craven Road 7 in London, has been portrayed in many ways along the years, but in the issue 100 his creatore, Tiziano Sclavi, decided to reveal Is the true nature of his character.

Dylan Dog has superpowers. He is the only one capable of seeing people's nightmares because he comes from another time, a time where minds were connected. That's why behind every impossible crime, he can see the truth. In this perspective, seeing an abstract explanation for a murder at the beginning of the case gives Dylan the time to understand the duality of human nature. Behind the physicality of a murder, there's the ephemeral face of a Nightmare, a nightmare with many names, sometimes ordinary, sometimes taking the shape of a vice, a stain of modern life. With my paper, I will explore three important issues in Dylan Dog's stories to highlight how Dylan's powers allow to unveil and deconstruct the facade of modernity.

Keywords: Superpowers, Modernity, Nightmares, Dylan Dog

Kirsten Baumgartner

University of Duisburg-Essen

“Is it just me or is it getting crazier out there?” Producing Urban Complexity via Storytelling in ‘The Joker’ (2019)

When in 2019 Todd Phillip’s Joker conquered the cinemas, several reviews retraced the history of protagonist Arthur Fleck, calling him “a pathetic loser and loner in Gotham City” (The Guardian),  “a painfully awkward figure” (The Independent), or “coping via meds and court-ordered therapy, which don’t offer comfort or represent caring” (The Verge). According to Ricoeur’s concept of “Narrative Identity”, reviewers tell stories of Arthur’s life and thus construct his identity around certain focal points.

Similarly, the identity of objects is constructed, evidenced by the extensive amount of literature dealing with planning cities (for example Lynch 1960; Throgmorton 2003; Van Hulst 2012). However, in connection with the Joker, it is indeed interesting how not only people in charge, but citizens often construct conflicting images of Gotham City. Especially Batman’s absence within the movie allows that Gotham’s story is told differently through the catalyst of the Joker, contrasting with the usual assumption that ‘Batman is Gotham’. Thus, this paper investigates how different characters in the Joker (2019) tell conflicting stories about Gotham and thus construct deviant images, finally leading to urban complexity.

To follow this aim, the paper initially clarifies how the city as a (complex) object has been received (Simmel 1903) and which images of the city became a fundamental part of the discourse (Lynch 1960). By including the storytelling approach results will show that perceptions of a city are largely dependent on the person telling the city’s story and that Gotham’s urban complexity is produced by a split society, its poor and wealthy side.  The presumed results of this investigation will help to define urban complexity not as a product, but as a continuous process in which citizens actively participate.

Keywords: the Joker, Simmel, Gotham City, Planning Literature, Storytelling, conflicts, Urban Complexity, discourse, split society

Anke Bock

University of Augsburg

Hyper-Masculinity vs. Disability – Doctor Donald Blake alias Thor and their shared personality

Blake is a partially paralyzed doctor who transforms accidentally into the strong and muscular god of thunder in the first issue on Thor. His slender body, leaning on his walking stick, highlights his disability and weakness. After losing his cane during his vacation in Norway, he picks up a twisted branch, which turns out to be Mjolnir, Thor’s powerful hammer. When a boulder blocks his way, he desperately tries to move it by knocking against it with this stick. This triggers the very first transformation into the god of thunder. His broken and almost useless body is replaced by a hyper-masculine body, which illustrates the change from weakness and disability towards strength and superiority.

The mind, however, experiences rather a supplementing of knowledge and intelligence. This means that one psyche does not replace the other; both seem to form a new and broader mind. Their bodies, however, remain distinct and separate ones and are subject to a clear hierarchy. This transformation from a human with a physical disability to an overly strong muscleman at first sight illustrates the overcoming of Blake’s lameness and turn towards physical superiority. His impairment is replaced by a stereotypical ideal of masculinity, namely physical strength, muscularity and anything but femininity. Yet the change is more than just the overcoming of impairment. After all, the disability is the very reason Blake undergoes the transformation. On the contrary, his impairment makes it possible in the first place. This not only emphasizes the fact that even handicapped people can become superheroes, but also at the same time foregrounds Blake’s individualism. From the start, his disability distinguishes him from the average person. This otherness allows him to become a superman.

Keywords: Alter-egos and secret identities, Costume and Disguise, Hyper-Masculinity, Disability

Torsten Caeners

University of Duisburg-Essen

“Gone But Not Forgotten: Spectrality and the haunting of Tony Stark in Spider Man: Far From Home“

Spider-Man. Far From Home is the first MCU film that deals with the fallout from the Infinity War storyline. It deals with a world that is haunted by the snap; but the snap itself is a ghostly moment that always happens and doesn’t happen. It happened in Infinity War, but then again it didn’t, as Endgame taught us, nullifying the Thanos snap from the previous movie. And the original snap was nullified in its effects but not erased. The snap of Infinity War is a ghostly figure of memory that haunts the living and the resurrected, those ghostly figures who returned from the dead, from, as the film coins it, being dusted. And the ghostly presence of that first Thanos snap (dis-)embodied by the ghostly, empty sound of the failed second snap – still being a snap, really, but one without effect, a truly spectral figure, without true presence, except as the evanescent sound – only becomes its own specter in the repetition of itself in Tony Stark’s snap, the snap to undo all other snaps…

Enough of snaps, perhaps, for now.

Spider-Man: Far From Home is a movie that is haunted on a variety of levels: by what I just circumscribed with regards to Thanos and the snap, but mainly by the ghostly figure of Tony Stark who haunts Peter Parker, Happy and, most strongly of all perhaps, Quentin Beck.  For Peter the stabilizing figure of Tony Stark has disappeared and he is haunted by that absence to the point of fixation for “that which appears to be not there is often a seething presence, acting on and often meddling with taken-for-granted realities” (Gordon, Ghostly Matters 8). Although dead and buried, Tony very much meddles with the living world as a spectral incursion that is indeed a hauntological presence precisely by being absent, thus replacing ontology thought of as presence. No longer being there for real – as presence – Tony still managed to occupy the center paradoxically by NOT being there. In his absence, he is more ontologically effective than before. This becomes obvious by means of the almost obsessive use of his name and the characters obvious need to refer to him time and again. Also, the use of what Derrida calls tele-technologies and associated modern technologies of surveillance (drones) link to the hauntological core of the film. After all, “techno-tele-iconicity […] spectralizes. It does not belong to ontology” (Derrida, Spectre of Marx 63).

In my paper I will elaborate on the above and the films heavy use of spectral themes and strategies and then delve into a close reading of the spectral and hauntological negotiations surrounding Peter Parker’s relationship to Tony Stark and Quentin Beck. In doing so, I will show how notion of hauntology re-situates the MCU as a spectral space of repetitive fluidity in light of the departure of Iron Man and, perhaps, in preparation of the Multiverse.

Keywords: Spider Man, Tony Stark, Hauntology, Spectrality,

Marco Favaro

Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg/Università degli Studi di Veron

Antiheroines: Be a Superwoman in a (Super)Man’s World

Superheroines are paradoxical figures: they are empowering, and yet hypersexualized, strong and independent, and yet they fight for a society in which women are subordinate to men. “The female superhero originates in an act of criticism – a challenge to the masculinist world of superhero adventures”, writes Lillian S. Robinson in Wonder Women. However, at the same time, as superheroines, they should embody the values of the society they are protecting, that means they embody the status quo and confirm its stereotypes; but in a prevalent male chauvinistic society, where men are in power and women must fight for their rights, how can they protect this kind of status quo?

Thus, an ambiguous situation is created in which the status quo comes at once protected and questioned. In the superheroine “stereotype and innovation work together” concludes Robinson. Even if they are objectified, drawn with hypersexualized bodies, provocative, with revealing clothes, superwomen always keep an antiheroic element, disruptive, potentially revolutionary – even monstrous when it appears in villainesses.  “The ambitious woman and the heroine are strange monsters”, writes Simone De Beauvoir in Le Deuxieme Sexe. Like antiheroes, superheroines are dangerous threats to the status quo; they challenge our stereotype about women and superheroes. Their hyper-sexualization appears then as a way to control them, to exorcise their potential threat. 

“In this modem era, the hero is a heroine; however, this 21st Century heroine still more closely resembles the antiheroic archetype”, writes Cynthia Lyles-Scott. Is it true? Are superwomen, today, still extremely antiheroic? How are they challenging our concepts of “hero” and “heroine”? I will try to answer these questions: through the analysis of characters like Wonder Woman, Jessica Jones, the new Ms. Marvel and Catwoman, and referring to Simone De Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre philosophy, I will focus on this antiheroic aspect of superwomen in comic books and its dialectic with the most normative and stereotypical ones. 

Keywords: Superheroine, Antiheroine, Antihero, Status Quo, De Beauvoir, Sartre, Stereotype, Hypersexualization, Competing Values.

Nicolas Gaspers

a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne

The Supervillain-Genre: A Plea for A New Paradigm of Superhero Studies

Over the last decade, superhero studies have grown tremendously! But while research on various superhero characters from multiple perspectives and disciplines seems to be on its provisional peak, supervillains on the other hand are regularly marginalized, if not even overlooked, in the academic landscape. Since Coogan’s landmark definition of the superhero genre (2006), superhero studies thus accurately turn their name into a program, apparently following the paradigm that understanding the superhero genre mainly means understanding the genre-dominating superhero character in all its thinkable facets.

But if we take the idea seriously that the genre essentially depends on its characteristic protagonist-antagonist structure, this makes the supervillain character just as much an integral part of the genre as the superhero, being an equal partner in the narration. Stan Lee already knew that no hero is possible without a charismatic villain. Therefore – given that the hero just reacts to the actions of the supervillain, who forces him into action and sets the narrative framework of the stories – the villain might even be (and by Stan Lee actually was) rated more important than the ubiquitous, omnipresent and genre-defining superhero.

According to Deis, this universal imbalance in the importance and significance of the hero and the villain consequently results in a massive blind spot within superhero studies, which still assume the superhero to be the key to any fundamental questions of its narrative form: “Ironically, as we ask challenging questions [...], it might in fact be the supervillain, and not the superhero, who reveals the most about foundational questions of power, politics and identity” (Deis 2013: 99).

In this light, I will argue that it is finally the time for our discipline to emphasize the role of the supervillain and to overcome the predominance of the superhero character. As a first step on this way, I also want to give a glimpse into my PhD project, which seeks to provide a theory, definition, and method of analysis of the supervillain character as a phenomenon.

Keywords: media studies, superhero/supervillain studies, hero-villain-relationship, genre theory

Danny Graydon

University of Hertfordshire

This Looks Like A Small Job For Superman! The Centrifugal Importance of Civic Responsibility and Kindness to The Man of Steel’s Enduring Cultural Impact

The superhero genre is now routinely framed in mythological and/or folkloric terms, via gargantuan and cosmic struggles between Good and Evil, particularly exemplified in the realm of cinema via the likes of The Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, a by-product of this is a significantly reduced focus of what Peter Coogan identified as a fundamental aspect of the superhero: a pro-social mission, in which “the fight against evil must fit in with the existing, professed mores of society” (Coogan, 77)

In the case of the archetypal superhero, Superman – framed from his very first appearance as “a Champion of the helpless and oppressed… sworn to devote his existence to helping those in need” (Siegel, Action Comics #1, 1938) – this shift has often left him in danger of being seen as “quaint and outdated” (Darowski, 2012), despite his position as “the perfect example of civic consciousness” (Eco, 1972). And yet, The Man of Steel’s pop cultural impact and enduring popularity remains undiminished, in the face of many other superhero characters who determinedly lack his innate and ceaseless sense of decency and kindness.

This paper will contend that Superman’s unyielding civic responsibility, underpinned by his overarching position as “a friend”, not only fuels his enduring popularity but is something that is increasingly yearned for by audiences, ensuring that Superman constantly reinforces the “aesthetic universality” of the superhero, by serving as “a reference point for behavior and feelings that belong to us all” (Eco, 1972), and reaffirming the fundamental principles of the genre, amidst the eye-catching grandeur of spectacle and action.

Keywords: Superman, Superheroes, Mythology, Civic Responsibility, Kindness, Society, Clark Kent

Jessica Hoffmann

University of Duisburg-Essen

Wonder Woman 2017: Grown Up War Hero and Naïve Teenager

In recent years DC started to produce new movie versions of the beginnings and trials of many of their famous superheroes such as: Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. What many people do not know is that almost simultaneously to some of these movies a series of books called DC Icons was published. They each tackle the origin story of one of the major DC heroes: Superman, Batman, Catwoman and Wonder Woman. The novels were published under the genre of YA, young adult fiction and written by extremely famous authors of that genre. YA has become widely popular, not only among younger readers, and thereby granting these iconic heroes a new target audience. Some of these origin stories differ greatly from the movies or even our ideas about heroes and are therefore interesting to look at.

In the following paper I will take a closer look at one of these heroes, namely Wonder Woman in her 2017 movie and the novel Wonder Woman Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo. It will show that the change of target group also brought forth a change in the heroine's depiction and in the way that their and their side kick’s stories unfold. By comparing their stories to Joseph Campbell’s concept of the ‘hero’s journey’ it will show, that although the new heroes can seriously differ from our ideas of what a hero should be like, they still fit into the traditional image of heroes. Furthermore, it will show that the classic superhero is somewhat outdated or has to adapt to modern day standards of heroism, while still following the traditional making of a hero and that the modern day young audience wants a hero more like themselves than some unreachable idol.

Keywords: Wonder Woman; Joseph Campbell; Hero’s Journey; YA; teenage heroes

Robert Hyland

Queen’s University (Canada), Bader International Study Centre.

The Joke’s on you:  Narrative incoherence and unreliability in Todd Phillips’ Joker. 

The box office success of Todd Phillips’ 2019 film Joker is partly due to narrative inconsistency.  The film was interpreted and understood in multiple ways by multiple audiences, in part because of a strategic use of narrative incoherence.  The film has been criticised for glorifying violence, while simultaneously being celebrated as a strongly political critique of a culture that produces violence.  This incoherence can be understood through a close analysis of the film’s aesthetic and narrative devices.  The film uses imagistic and story-telling strategies that are diametrically opposed to one another. The film uses a visual style that is strongly linked to social realist traditions.  This is characterised by certain aesthetic strategies:  the use of location shooting; high grain quick exposure film stock; and the execution of fluid and mobile hand-held camera work which suggests documentary immediacy. 

However this commitment to objective reality is contrasted by the film’s narrative story telling which is sympathetic to and often motivated by Arthur Fleck’s subjective experience of the world – he has visible hallucinations which the film shows, and the experience of the film’s narrative events are predicated by Fleck’s fractured subjectivity.  The film is conflicted by its realist aesthetic mode and its non-realist narrative mode.  These are paradoxical states of being. 

This allows the film to have two (or more) paradoxical realities that exist in simultaneity.  Arthur Fleck is and is not the film’s narrator.  He is and is not Thomas Wayne’s son.  He does and does not kill his single-mother neighbour.  This has resulted in undeniable tensions in the ways in which the film has been received.  While Joker celebrates and glorifies violence, Joker does not.  This is an effect of the dual modes of narrative storytelling which the film deploys.  This paper considers the narrative and aesthetic strategies in the film.

Keywords: Joker; subjectivity; social realism; objectivity; narrative structure;

Svenja Kolpack      

University of Duisburg-Essen

Days of Future… Past? Concepts of Time Travel in the MCU

“Basically, your body will go to sleep while your mind travels back in time. Now, as long as you’re back there, past and present will continue to coexist, but once you wake up whatever you’ve done will take hold and become history. And for the rest of us, it’ll be the only history that we know. It’ll be like the last 50 years never happened. And this world, and this war… the only person who will remember it is you.” Time travel, we learn in the 2014 movie X-Men: Days of Future Past, is not only a journey into a time that has gone by but a simultaneous intrusion into what has been and what will be. It is a traditional concept that can be found in many different contexts, e.g. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban or various episodes of Star Trek.

Opposed to this, we find a very dissimilar and clearly differentiated concept of time travel in Avengers: Endgame. Here, Professor Hulk explains, “[T]ime doesn’t work that way. Changing the past doesn’t change the future. […] If you travel to the past that past becomes your future and your former present becomes the past which can’t now be changed by your new future.”  This paper will try to explain the preconditions that led to the need for travelling back in time and explore the varying concepts underlying time travel in X-Men: Days of Future Past and Avengers: Endgame. It will aim at coming up with a possible solution to the problem of those two contradictory concepts existing in one universe.

Keywords: Time travel; X-Men; Avengers; MCU; past and future

Mikayla J. Laird

University of Hertfordshire

Beyond Time and Freedom: Darkseid, the Anti-Life Equation and 4th Dimensional perspective.

Jack Kirby’s creation of the New Gods mythology introduced a number of elements that have lived on through the DC Universe. However, Darkseid and the New God’s perception of reality and how this relates to reading a comic through a 4th dimensional perspective that perhaps gives Darkseid’s mission and abilities a more terrifying implication. The comics looked at primarily would be Jack Kirby’s original New Gods run and Mister Miracle. Walter Simonson’s Orion series, as well as other titles such as Final Crisis, The Great Darkness Saga and DC Legends. Theoretical framework will draw from Burelbach’s essay Look! Up in the Sky! It’s What’s His Name!, the work of Hayman and Pratt, as well as Proctor’s work on continuity.

The final goal is to tie Darkseid’s desire for the Anti-Life Equation back to a 4th dimensional reading of comics. A view in which all of time is happening at once. The way in which Darkseid, and the rest of the New Gods have been elevated and tied into the DC mythos has created a truly terrifying villain. The work of Charles Huber and his essay Darkseid’s Ring: Images of Anti-Life in Kirby and Tolkein, as well as others will help to ground Darkseid’s level of tyranny and malic before applying it to world/universe view. The final goal of the proposed contribution is to show how truly horrifying Darkseid’s goals are when you consider his place in the DC pantheon and how that relates to the 4th dimension.

Keywords: Darkseid, Jack Kirby, Grant Morrison, Time, 4th Dimension, Anti-life Equation, History, Tyranny, Evil

Freyja Alice McCreery
University of York

Westworld’s Super Androids: The Narrative and the Data Self

Westworld’s hosts are superheroes. Their status as nonhuman actors is hidden by their visual resemblance to the human form, their costume of skin. Their secret identities, both their past narratives and their status as androids, are secret even to themselves. They are (or can be) immortal, can be made to feel no pain, have extra-sensory abilities, can communicate telepathically, and sometimes control others’ actions with their voice or thoughts.

This paper will argue that the androids of Westworld provide apt figures through which to explore agency and (super)power in a networked era overrun with algorithmic superstructures. Westworld’s superandroids are superheroes of the now. Their multiple selves are performed, unknowingly, for capital gain, and data harvesting for furthering oligarchical biopower. Their kinship is based on their relationship with technological and mechanised production, their communication contingent on wireless networks.

The hosts’ journey to self-awareness entails rupturing of past memories, past narratives, into their current coherent self. The androids’ realisation that they are not human and that their life stories have been written by humans that are using them for commercial gain and data collection happens through a revelation that the events shown in sequence by the series are actually a composite of different memories occurring over decades. Trauma, and the rearranging of time that they and viewers experience simultaneously in the first season, is both catalyst of a realisation of agency and symptom of wider structures of exploitation, datafication, and hierarchy of the “real”.

In these ways, Westworld approaches contemporary experience of social media including anxieties around archived performances of self and the role of nonhuman agency in bringing those past performances back into the present. Westworld prioritisation of the androids’ self-realisation, rather than the human’s experience of androids, figures reconceptualisations of agency in a networked neoliberal era.

Keywords: agency, cyborg, self, algorithm, social media, anxiety, data harvesting

Derya Özkan

Izmir University of Economics

Genco: Superman with Limited Powers

Ali Kemal Çınar is an independent filmmaker who lives in Diyarbakır, a city populated dominantly with Kurdish people in southeastern Turkey. Since 2004 he has been making short and feature films as a member of a film collective at the Arts and Cultural Center funded by the city government. His films strike one as extremely low budget productions in which the actors and actresses are usually his family members and friends. This gives Çınar’s films a vernacular quality and an exceptional / unique cinematic aura.

Çınar’s third feature, Genco (2017), tells the story of a Diyarbakır-based superman, named Genco, who is different from the mainstream superman in commercially successful and globally popular superhero genre films, in terms of his powers. Played by Çınar himself, Genco has limited powers that are good for nothing. He is not a superman who heroically saves people from trouble miraculously under any condition. The film is not a comedy, but it makes an ironic comment on the cinematic mythology surrounding superhero films while at the same time breaking down the superhero’s stereotypically masculine representation.

Çınar takes delight in saying in interviews that “anyone can make a film, if I can” and creating a disillusionment about industrial filmmaking. Instead of producing a profitable brand out of a superhero, Çınar produces a critique of power and of idealized cinematic representations of masculinity by making low budget production a creative medium liberated from the constraints of the film industry. Low budget production gives him freedom to experiment with film form and to seek a non-commercial film language. This experimental quality has enabled his films to go beyond remaining amateurish affairs, to make it into prestigious film festivals around Turkey, and to receive various reputable awards.

This paper analyzes the film Genco in terms of its critique of power in two senses: the myth of the power of the masculine superhero and the hegemonic power of industrial filmmaking. Referring to Çınar’s filmmaking practice, I will discuss some possible lines of flight (Deleuze & Guattari 1980) from film industry’s often limiting impact on the potentials of film language.

Keywords: low budget filmmaking, Superman, Diyarbakır, Genco, Kurdish cinema, film industry, representation of masculinity in film, experimental film, independent film, superhero

Bruno Porto

Tilburg University

Translating Wonder Woman: Visibilities and Visualities

This work presents an investigation on the intersemiotic translation processes applied to comic book character Wonder Woman during almost seven decades of publication in Brazil. Along a brief review of the publishing trajectory of the iconic superheroine created in 1941 by William Moulton Marston and H. G. Peter, we build an account of the socio-cultural circumstances and transmedia aspects that led her to be renamed Super-Mulher (Portuguese for Superwoman) by Editora Órbis, between 1952-1962; Miss América by Editora Brasil América - EBAL, between 1966-1975; and since then, finally and cross-media wise, Mulher-Maravilha (Portuguese for Wonder Woman).

This essay focuses on how the character's multimodal language has been influenced by the most diverse media as well as international and local events - from the weekly supplements of comics published by A Gazeta and Diário da Noite in the 1940s and the Feminist Movement of the 1960s, to the advent of color television in Brazil in the 1970s and the increase of economic globalization policies observed since the 1990s. We conclude by presenting a graphic analysis that reflect the impact that these events and decisions had on the symbolic and visual identity elements of the superheroine, especially in its Made in Brazil logos, also identifying the role of recent developments in digital technology regarding the procedures of visual translation and the establishment of global parameters for mass cultural products.

Keywords: Superhero, Wonder Woman, Comic Book, Visual Identity, Logo Design, Brazil

James C. Taylor

University of Warwick

Tears of a Hulk and the Lonely Ranger: Configurations of Monster/Man in Television’s The Incredible Hulk

This paper examines the interplay between David Banner (Bill Bixby) and his monstrous alter ego Hulk (Lou Ferrigno) in television series The Incredible Hulk (1977-1982). While David is presented as an everyman in pursuit of a stable life, and Hulk a disruptive and fantastical force, through close textual analysis I dismantle this apparent binary to reveal how elements of stability and fantasy intersect in both figures. A fundamental tension between everyday stability and the fantastic comes from the series’ unique blend of tropes of Marvel superheroes, conventions of broadcast television and discourses on American identity.

The formula to which episodes conform is significant site where stability and the fantastic interact. This formula adheres to the televisual episodic structure in which a central problematic that is repeated but not resolved ‘provide[s] a steady state to which audience and fiction return each week’ (Ellis, 1992: 156). Interestingly, the show’s stable formula denies David the stability he seeks by demanding that he is forced to abandon his current dwelling at the end of each episode. The ways in which the show’s creators offer episode-to-episode variation within its formula – changing locations, supporting characters and generic frameworks – reconfigure the roles of David and Hulk each episode.

My analysis focuses on two staples of the show’s formula, one that pertains exclusively to Hulk and the other to David. I look closely at one instance of each in which David’s and Hulk’s roles of man and monster, and associated qualities of everyday stability and the fantastic, productively intermingle. Firstly, I examine one of Hulk’s twice-per-episode rampages, and secondly an example of David walking off into the distance at the end of an episode. The analysis of my two chosen scenes unpacks how, rather than having opposing functions, Hulk and David can contribute in complementary ways to discourses that develop within episodes and are often reiterated across the series.

Keywords: The Incredible Hulk, Television, Close Textual Analysis

Dr. Caleb Turner

Richmond University

Super-Powers Assemble!: Heroic Team-Ups and The ‘Multilateral Monomyth’

This paper explores the mythological significance of the heroic team up, in proposing that a new kind of monomyth has been driving the narrative impetus of superhero cinema over the past decade: as a clash of ‘competitive’ versus ‘cooperative’ heroism. Taking into account the socio-cultural aftermath of the 2008 Economic Recession - in which the primary cause was a ‘predatory’ form of capitalism that lacked ‘compassionate productivity’ - this prompted nations to respond in one of two ways. Firstly, a nation could be guided by ‘one-sided’ decision-making: protecting its sovereignty by closing down borders (i.e. so acting unilaterally to avert another economic collapse). Secondly, a nation could instead take a ‘many-sided’ mindset: generating international wealth via free trade by keeping borders open (i.e. by multilaterally discussing solutions between as many of the world’s nations as possible).

While there have been cinematic superhero team ups prior to the Great Recession (X-Men, Fantastic Four), in the Post-Crash era there has been the emergence of key thematic tensions of ‘how to deal with’ judicial, economic, militaristic and state systems. These cultural concerns consistently come through in such clashes as ‘competition’ versus ‘cooperation’ and ‘anti-authority libertarianism’ versus ‘pro-governmental intervention’. A true ‘unilateral protectionism’ is arguably evident in the individualistic antics and distrust of authority in Iron Man (2008), Iron Man 2 (2010), The Dark Knight (2008), and Man of Steel (2012). An evolving ‘multilateral cooperation’ is also invoked with Tony Starks’ choices in the Avengers series (2012-2019) and particularly Captain America: Civil War (2016). The same can be said for the developing heroic relationships in The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Batman versus Superman: Dawn of Justice (2015) and Justice League (2017). Indeed, both the ‘Classic’ and ‘American’ Monomyth are crucial to interrogating the role of societal responsibility that heroism plays in the contemporary superhero film.

Yet, in either case, these versions of the monomyth place too great an emphasis on the efforts of the individual hero being so often faced with ‘one-sided’ decision-making. Individual heroes must leave their nation to seek out and collect knowledge and boons before returning to their borders to enrich the community (Campbell). Individual heroes must also search several borders to save vulnerable communities - by bringing equilibrium to disequilibrium - and then head off into the sunset for the next adventure (Jewett and Lawrence). This paper however argues for a far more multilateral understanding of the Monomyth that depends on the endeavours of the ‘collective superhero’ that is without borders, contributes essential traits, makes decisions together, and shares resources. It is this team effort that enriches multiple communities as a whole: with these superheroes being very much here to stay.

Keywords: Team-Ups, Monomyth, Heroism, Unilateralism, Multilateralism, Competition, Cooperation, Recession, Individualism, Collectivism.

Alex Van Ommen

Independent

"Other Heroes -- bridging Super and Hero in HBO's Watchmen"

Although considered part of the superhero genre, the graphic novel and recent HBO series Watchmen have a surprising dearth of superheroes. There is the “hero” element of masked men and women struggling for something larger and better than themselves and there is the “super” element in Dr Manhattan’s transcendence. It is the struggle to bridge the "super" and the "hero" in Watchmen where the narrative's message comes to bear. It is no mere exploration of Nietzsche’s Übermensch theory, as the people of the divided and dystopian world are clearly not looking to Dr Manhattan to improve themselves, nor is Dr Manhattan called down from on high to lift up the people in the world. Rather, Watchmen presents a view of division, otherness, and alterity, and examines this by the myriad attempts in the stories to link the “super” and the “hero” while endemic racism screams from the void between the two, demanding to be addressed.

This resonant howl reminds audiences that it is impossible to reach for any concept of unity or reparation without confrontation of truth -- beyond the squids to the horror and lies at the heart of Veidt's imposed utopia, beyond the godliness of Dr Manhattan to either his Jewishness in Nazi Germany, his Blackness in Tulsa, or the terror he unleashed on the Vietnamese countryside. Different characters represent different approaches to and creations of the narrative landscape of otherness, and each, in turn, helps the audience build an understanding of different approaches to valuation of different lives. Veidt creates what to him are empty vessels, yet his creations are nonetheless life. Hooded Justice is caught between his own existence (queer, black) and his supposed heroic actions (selfish rage, donning a hood to legitimize his violence). Angela Abar is forced to confront the rot of bigotry hiding behind Judd Crawford. The Seventh Kavalry works to replace one person (Osterman, a Jew, then Calvin Abar, a Black man) with their own (white man). The list goes on, and interacts with concepts of justice, rights, and reparation and enforcement by way of (masked) policing.

Looking at the super/hero juxtaposition and the struggle to bridge the two is central to this examination. This demands a foundation on the link between Arendt’s observations on the banality of Eichmann’s crimes and Sontag’s work on horror and imagery, which I combine into the "banality of horror." Ocular bombardment results in both hypersensitivity and desensitization not just visually but culturally, the concurrent ability of people to avert their gaze from injustice to the ability of people to bristle at the perceived injustice of attack on their privilege. It is seeing what isn't there and not seeing what is where villainy and evil is found. Rorschach may have been right to say there was something rotting in the city, but his mask -- symbol of his amorphous yet uncompromising libertarian ideology -- obscured his ability to see it.

Key words: alterity, other(-ing, -ness), banality of horror, sontag, arendt, foucault, sartre, racism

Sarah Young

Erasmus University Rotterdam

Learning Surveillance from the Superhuman

Many popular superheroes deal with themes of surveillance. For DC Comics’ The Watchmen, this group of superhumans gets its name from the phrase “Who Watches the Watchmen” (McMillan, 2009) and focuses on surveilling those that surveil. Also, Marvel’s The Punisher follows Frank Castle seeking revenge for his family’s killings, and as depicted in the contemporary Netflix iteration, features scenes of camera monitoring, mysterious identities, conspiracies and monitoring (Netflix, 2019). Overall, themes of surveillance even dominate the whole idea of a superhero – a character that watches over loved ones of the community to ensure safety and sustainability is steeped in surveillance themes even if the surveillance is motivated by benevolence and care.

Each of these superhumans facilitates a fictional world through which we can examine surveillance. This is especially helpful in the classroom because the superhero genre can create a “Bakhtinian notion of third space” where instructors don’t have to function as an authority on the subject and students can equally share their knowledge of comics and superheroes (Schrems, 2016). A space for more popular texts that students may be more familiar with can provide students with the confidence in understanding and analyzing the plotlines of stories (Schrems, 2016, Williams, 2014).

With this premise in mind, this proposal aims to look at several superhumans through the lens of surveillance and explore how to pedagogically combine the superhuman into discussions of surveillance. I ultimately argue that the superhuman provides a fitting and useful lens to help students understand the importance and the dimensions of surveillance in an increasingly surveilled society.

Keywords: surveillance; pedagogy; superhuman

The Superhero Project: III Global Meeting

"Monomyth"

Friday 20th to Sunday 22nd September 2019

Laura Antola

University of Turku, Finland

Cutting, pasting and gatekeeping: Adapting Marvel’s superhero comics for the Finnish audience.

In this presentation, I analyze the Finnish adaptations of two of the most popular Marvel comic books in Finland, X-Men (Ryhmä-X) and Spider-Man (Hämähäkkimies), during the 1980s and 1990s. It has been claimed that comics as a medium transcends national, cultural and linguistic borders and is thus accessible to a wide audience. Although superhero comics are widely regarded as a typically American product of popular culture, throughout the decades they have crossed borders globally and been distributed and translated into several languages. Firstly I want to find out what were the adaptation strategies used by the Finnish editor, and secondly how did the editor communicate these changes to the readers.

While currently film adaptations of superhero comics raise the interest of both audiences and comics scholars, I approach the adaptations of superhero comics from another perspective by analyzing domesticated translations as adaptations. I investigate the Finnish publications of Marvel’s superhero comics and especially the editor’s role in bridging the gaps between the American originals and the Finnish adaptations.

One of the reasons behind superheroes’ growing popularity in Finland in the early 1980s was the editor and translator of the Finnish publications, who went by the pen name “Mail-Man”. He made changes such as cutting pages and panels from the original comic books and arranging them to form new stories for the Finnish audience, streamlining the action and plot advancement of Marvel’s complicated comics universe. Moreover, the editor had a double role in the adaptation process. He was, at the same time, responsible for the letters pages in the Finnish comic books. By answering readers’ questions and explaining his editorial choices, Mail-Man became a gatekeeper between the comic books and their audience. In this presentation, I focus on the editor’s role as a gatekeeper and the strategies of adaptation he used.

Keywords: Superheroes, adaptation, comics studies, Marvel

Rafael Alves Azevedo

University of Duisburg-Essen

“It’s a strange world. Let’s keep it that way” – Warren Ellis and the Dominance of New Sincerity Superheroes

In the mid-1990s, comic book creators like Kurt Busiek, Grant Morrison, and Alex Ross aimed to reconstruct a heroic narrative with a sincere belief in hope, challenging the dominant postmodern cynicism in superhero comics. This New Sincerity emerged both as a post-ironic reaction to the deconstruction of superheroes and as an expression of nostalgic longing for the Silver Age comics of these creators’ childhood. The success of comics like Marvels (1994), Astro City (1995-96), Kingdom Come (1996), and JLA (1997-2000) proved that this post-postmodern approach was viable. However, by the late 1990s the co-existence of postmodern deconstruction and New Sincerity gave way to the dominance of post-ironic heroes.

As the writer of Ruins (1995) and Stormwatch (1996-98), Warren Ellis was one of the figureheads of postmodern irony and the deconstruction of heroism in the 1990s. His New Sincerity comics in the late 1990s and their commercial and critical success are emblematic of the shift in development in the superhero comic genre’s history from postmodern cynicism to a sincere belief in hope. While his earlier Stormwatch book was a commercial failure, its successor series, The Authority (1999-2000), became a best-selling title and is sometimes regarded as one of the most influential comic books of the last decades. Similarly, his comic book Planetary (1999-2009) emphasizes the New Sincerity’s focus on wonder and joy as opposed to the destruction and bleakness in Ruins, while Planetary/Batman: Night on Earth (2003) is a post-ironic reconstruction of the caped crusader and his previous incarnations. A look at Warren Ellis’ work in the late 1990s and early 2000s allows a glimpse at the moment New Sincerity comics emerged as the dominant force in American superhero comics, paving the way for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Legacy, and DC Rebirth.

Keywords: New Sincerity; Nostalgia; Superhero comics; Post-irony; Post-postmodernism; Warren Ellis; Planetary; The Authority; Batman

Matteo Barbagello

Independent Academic

Daredevil: a review of the Nemesis

How Evil can prevent evil from happening but, most of all, what is the measure of Evil? In the history of comics as much as in the one of literature, there have always been characters whose aim, traits, personality were in contrast with their actions. However, this is what made all those heroes, or better anti-heroes, sometimes better than their wholly good counterparts.

In this paper, I will make a survey of some of the most important anti-heroic characters, starting with Daredevil and Lucifer, and by analyzing their personal stories I will try inform on the audience on what are the most common features of them. In particular, I will focus my attention on Daredevil’s personal story, whose morality and struggle with his faith have put him many times at the edge of heroism, slightly touching that border where good and evil merge for a second, leaving the audience with the everlasting doubt of what is the difference between them.

Keywords: Daredevil, Nemesis, Evil, Heroism

Torsten Caenars

University of Duisburg-Essen

Derridean Responsibility in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – Tony, Steve and the Uncertain Certainty of Death

Superheroes exceed the limitations of ordinary humans which is why people expect more of them. Superheroes have to lead by example and should embody the best of humanity not only physically, but also morally and through responsible actions. Responsibility is thus central to superheroes whose very essence, it can be argued, consists of taking on (superhuman) responsibility and, in consequence, carrying the burden of that responsibility. On the one hand, superheroes transcend the boundaries of normal society, but, on the other, they are to adhere to that society’s moral and legal framework. When superheroes actions go beyond the confines of the law, they are depicted as acting according to a moral code that justifies their actions as responsible which, in turn, deconstructs the legal code they violate as a flawed and rigid human construct. The ends justify the means here as the actions of the superhero turn out to have been the right thing to do.

The superhero’s responsibility is therefore to know when to be irresponsible towards the existing codified framework of (human) responsibility as represented by the moral and legal systems. This nexus between responsibility and irresponsibility has been elaborated at length by Derrida. In my paper, I will discuss Derrida’s notion of responsibility as outlined in his The Gift of Death in the context of the often irresponsible decisions of the often flawed superheroes in Marvel’s Cinematic Universe. Tony Stark will be the prime focus as he constantly oscillates between responsibility and irresponsibility. Steve Rogers will serve as counterpoint as he is arguably the most morally steadfast and responsible hero in the MCU. In my analysis, I will concentrate on Avenger’s Endgame as both Tony’s and Steve’s story come to a conclusion here. Derrida’s notion of absolute responsibility and the close connection between responsibility and death contain in Derridean responsibility become particularly pertinent in Endgame, thus allowing for a reading of the film’s ending through the lens of a revaluation of the concept of responsibility in a superhero context.

Keywords: Responsibility, Death. Derrida, Avengers, Superhuman, Morality

Jean-Guy P. Ducreux

Université Lyon

BATMAN THE TIMOCRAT: Platonist reflections on the Darkest Knight

In the Republic (Book VIII) Plato distinguishes five potential political régimes in human societies. Conveniently enough we can represent each of them by a superhero type: the aristocrat (Superman) free of any mundane cravings; the timocrat (Batman), still very much preoccupied with the concept of honor, but also endowed with considerable material assets; the oligarch (Iron Man), who is equally interested in both; the democrats, a group of followers such as The X-Men, who are mostly self-absorbed and care little about fame; and finally the tyrant, who is the enemy of all the previous types but also the logical conclusion to this never-ending cycle. Plato considers that the last four types are essentially decadent and that they all tarnish the perfect model of the philosopher-king.

This paper will focus on on-screen versions of Batman, a superhero whose inherited worldly possessions give him an ambiguous silhouette, one of a tycoon who basically gives chase to his alter egos (themselves successful entrepreneurs and nabobs) on the one hand, but is also a guardian of pure capitalism, even beyond the tenets of social justice.

This dichotomy will guide my leisurely observations, which will concentrate on the period 1989-2019. I’ll strive to demonstrate how the character of Batman goes through a roller-coaster of contradictory poses and emotions over three decades, from being a well-liked superhero, perfectly adapted to his epoch in the last century, to becoming an utter misfit in contemporary texts. This discrepancy is best illustrated in Nolan’s trilogy, and more especially in The Dark Knight Rises (2012), a film in which Batman faces throngs of angry democrats who obey a populist leader and thus pave the way for the inevitable advent of a tyrant amongst them.

Keywords: Batman, Superhero, Timocrat, Plato, Aristocrat, Oligarch

Marco Favaro

Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg

Masks, Values and Society: Evolution of Superheroes and Anti-heroes since the Dark Age

Unhappy is the land that needs an anti-hero: a land in crisis, without a clear moral, without truths. The anti-hero embodies competing values; on the one hand he is born of a crisis, on the other exasperates it, leads it to the extreme consequences.During the 1980s these characters have their greatest success in superhero comics. The so-called Dark Age follows a profound crisis in American society, marked by the Vietnam War, the fear of nuclear conflict, but also by alternative cultural and social movements. A profound social transformation that inevitably brings with it a crisis of certainties, morals and values. Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, together with Alan Moore’s Watchmen and V for Vendetta, are the graphic novels that more than any other represent this transformation.

Today, the western world faces a new crisis. Economic uncertainty, mass migrations, encounters and clashes with different cultures, terrorism: our worldview and our truths are wavering. Superhero universe mirrors all of these. Antiheroes become more and more numerous, and superheroes lose a clear definition. Marvel’s Civil War, saga directly linked to the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent PATRIOT Act, is probably the most emblematic example, an ideal beginning of this new Age.The historical moment is comparable to the Dark Age. We are not just witnessing a new proliferation of anti-heroes: even superheroes and the way we perceive them are changing. The line between superhero and anti-hero becomes confused. The classic superheroes have begun to kill – the latest Batman and Superman films are emblematic. Superheroes’ relationship with the mask, with society, becomes much more problematic and "anti-heroic".

I will refer to Nietzschean concepts, such as the mask, the Apollonian and the Dionysian, the Übermensch, to distinguish the superhero and the anti-hero, in his relationship with the mask and the society, in his morality. Comparing Dark Age’s anti-heroes (Miller’s Batman, Rorschach, V) with contemporary films and comics like The Authority, Civil War, Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight, I will show how our perception of anti-heroes and superheroes has changed.

Keywords: Anti-hero, Mask, Übermensch, Society, Competing values, Batman, The Authority, Dark Age, Civil War.

Danny Graydon

University of Hertfordshire

Darker Knights: Negotiating The Boundaries of Violence and Sovereignty in late-1980’s Batman comics.

The publication of Frank Miller’s “violent operatic myth” (Morrison, 2011) The Dark Knight Returns by DC Comics in 1986 triggered an extraordinary period of activity with the publisher’s flagship character of Batman, often regarded as the character’s zenith of popularity. A defining, controversial and enduring consequence of Miller’s seminal and striking work was that the “gritty realism” that Batman progressively returned to throughout the 1970’s was swiftly infused with a potent level of violence, both savage and retributive.

The Dark Knight Returns and key subsequent works such as Batman: Year One (1987), The Killing Joke (1988), The Cult (1988), A Death In The Family (1988) and Arkham Asylum (1989) moved firmly beyond Alsford’s (1989) observation that “much comic hero violence is symbolic and avoids bloodthirsty excess”. Such works secured a more adult audience, while reflecting the rise of violent crime in America as well as achieving a firm exorcism of the “campiness” of the 60’s Batman TV show – and yet are also deemed to have significantly contributed to the bedrock of the “grim and gritty” era of comics.

However, the pointedly-increased violence of this era of Batman also provides an arena in which to discuss the superhero’s “sovereignty” in relation to his position as a vigilante as well as to the ‘monsters’ with whom he is in perpetual conflict. Batman is the de facto sovereign of Gotham City, yet deploys violence that is extra-legal – a clear antithesis. Using the work of Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Derrida’s analysis of the relationship between the sovereign and the beast, this paper will argue that this era of hard-edged stories reinforced Batman’s fundamental position within a zone of indeterminacy that generates the compelling ambiguity at the heart of the character. Batman becomes an embodiment of the Ancient Greek poet Pindar’s notion of “the sovereign of all / leads with the strongest hand / Justifying the most violent”, unifying the law and violence in the persona of what Neal Curtis described as “The Law’s violent shadow”.

Keywords: Batman, Superhero, Heroism, Violence, Sovereignty, Vigilantism, Derrida, Agamben

Jessica Hoffmann

University of Duisburg-Essen

Ready Player One and The New Mirror Stage: Superheroes, Virtual Reality and the Ideal-Self

Social media and virtual reality (VR) are increasingly important for our lives. The novel Ready Player One by Ernest Cline and its movie-adaption combine social media and VR and depict a world in which people spent most of their time online as avatars. Every user can create a perfect version of themselves, one that comes close to what they expect their Ideal-Self to be. They create for themselves a new mirror image, one that also takes the shape of superheroes which the users can, however, never live up to in reality. This paper will analyse the effects of living in one’s dream superhero body on a person`s “real” identity and self-esteem. I will focus on three characters of Ready Player One by means of a psychological approach with a focus on Lacan’s theory of the Mirror Stage.

Although these three characters treat their VR- and real-selves differently, there is one thing all three of them have in common: they use their real selves as a Clark-Kent-like alter-ego, indicating that they perceive their avatars as superheroes. The characters in Ready Player One enact the interplay between identity and the super-heroic that are made possible in a VR-world. This virtual negotiation and confrontation with ideal selves in turn influences the “real world”: I will concentrate on three such effects: 1) living out superhero fantasies in VR effects a change in the “real” self,; 2) erasing an identity aspect perceived as a flaw in the superheroic avatar aggravates the negative feelings towards the “real” self for having it and 2) living as the person one feels born to be in VR leads to a denigration and a feeling of shame towards the real-self.

Keywords: Ready Player One, Lacan, Virtual-Reality, virtual identity, superheroes

Robert Hyland

BISC, Queen’s University, Canada

The Superhero Film in the Neoliberal Age.

Neoliberalism is often spoken about as an economic structure that has been changing the world;  changing the nation-state; and changing global markets, as various nations move toward a new form of laissez fare economic structure which puts primacy on an imagined (now stateless) ‘free market.’  But while neo-liberalism is a set of economic policies, it is also an ideology – a belief system that favours free market individualism in an age of global capital, rather than state control, which was largely seen as a product of 20th century nationalism.  But the nature of the ideology behind neo-liberalism and how it manifests in culture (in this particular example – the entertainment culture of block-buster super hero films), has been little discussed. 

As arm chair political pundits threw their hands in the air, asking ‘how did Donald Trump, a brash, go-it-alone billionaire who puts his name on buildings ever get elected leader?’; we were steadily consuming images of Tony Stark, a brash, go-it-alone billionaire who puts his name on buildings, successfully assume leadership of a team of mercenaries, after the state-run quasi-military entity SHIELD proved porous, corrupt, and fundamentally, not fit for purpose.  Donald Trump, then, an industrialist, is an example of the ideology of neo-liberalism in action, as he insisted we ‘drain the swamp’ and replaced career politicians and state employees with capitalists who were colloquially coined ‘the cabinet of billionaires’. 

This paper will look at super hero texts of the late 20th, early 21st century, and explore the ways in which laissez faire free market ideologies of the 20th century have morphed into neo-liberal ideologies of the 21st century.  This paper will look at the change in Batman, from an altruistic billionaire philanthropist who worked with the state, to a vengeance seeking narcissist who works despite the state.  The paper will also look at a shift in the finances of the characters in both Marvel and DC universes, where a rag tag group of photo journalists, newspaper clerks, or office secretaries who all required day jobs to fund their heroics, became a collection of gods, kings and princesses, who are independently wealthy or whose mercenary actions are funded by the private capitalists Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne, respectively.  

Key words:  Social responsibility; Neoliberalism; laissez-faire; economics; batman; Trump; politics; ideology

Svenja Kolpack 

University of Duisburg-Essen

Thanos – The Machiavellian Hero

“Little one, it’s a simple calculus. This universe is finite, its resources finite. If life is left unchecked, life will cease to exist. It needs correction. […] I’m the only one who knows that. At least, I’m the only one with the will to act on it.”1 With this remarkable statement right in the middle of the third Avengers movie, supervillain Thanos explains to his adoptive daughter Gamora and the entire audience his motif for the snap: to end world hunger and to preserve resources, albeit with drastic measures.

Roughly 500 years before the cinematic audience witnessed Thanos killing half the world’s population to save the other half, Italian political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli pinned down his opinion on what the perfect ruler should be like. In Il Principe – or The Prince – he elaborated on, among other qualities a sovereign should have, two questions that shaped modern political theory until today. The first question being, whether or not a prince should be virtuous.2 The second question being, “whether it is better to be loved than feared, or the reverse.”This paper will apply Machiavelli’s theories of the perfect ruler to Thanos’ characteristics as portrayed in the MCU movie Avengers Infinity War and, thus, try to answer the question if Thanos is, in fact, the perfect ruler.

Mikayla J. Laird

University of Hertfordshire

Leather Wings and Broken Things: The Childhood Trauma at the heart of Batman and his use as a source of inspiration and strength.

A look at the trauma at the heart of Batman’s origin, and his journey and choices along the way, as well as how his story has inspired many that have undergone similar hardships, both in his own fictional universe and in the real world. Looking at the characters mythology through an academic lens, leaning on the works of Richard Reynolds, particularly ‘A Modern Mythology’, Umberto Eco, and Glen Weldon, as well as works such as Frank Miller’s ‘Batman Year One’, Kurt Busiek’s ‘Batman: Creature of the Night’, and Dean Trippe’s ‘Something Terrible’. With other stories providing evidence of repeated patterns such as the short story ‘People in the Dark’ by Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV.

As fiction, and not only that but an ordinary man in a world of gods, the reader finds it easy to sympathise with him as being the same as them. Filled with pain from childhood trauma. The legends and myths surrounding the modern superhero perfectly demonstrates how we connect with these characters, and there is an abundance of proof to demonstrate how those also dealing with such pain have used Batman as an inspiration to carry on. Through this paper, I plan to bring to light the strong connection between Batman and his readers, especially as a source of strength by examples, trends and those using the bat emblem in their everyday life through clothing and cosplay.

Keywords: Batman, Trauma, Childhood, Mythology, Busiek, Weldon, Eco, Trippe, Miller, Reynolds

Bruno Porto

Universidade de Brasília

The Superhero Logo

Established as the first superhero, Superman is the result of an intense dialogue within the mass media in the United States cultural industry from the beginning of the 20th century. Developed by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster between 1933 and 1938, the Man of Steel was influenced by Sci-Fi and Adventure narratives disseminated through pulp magazines, movies and newspaper strips, as well as other cultural expressions from that time, namely literature, radio and circus. The subsequent and constant assimilation of Superman’s visual features - the caped uniform, trunks worn over the pants and a chest emblem - by hundreds of fictional characters determined the uniform as a convention of the Superhero genre.

At the same extent that the likeness of such uniform became a key to identify a superhero, the visual codes of Superman’s comic strip and comic book title logo have been continuously imitated for eight decades to a point that it became the basis for the visual communication of anything Superhero related: transcending the character’s publications, merchandising and even its publishing company, three-dimensional telescopic letters can be seen in an array of products from different medias that want to be associated with the genre. Guided by the works of Peter Coogan, Gerard Jones, Todd Klein and Arlen Schumer, among others, on visual identity applied to superheroes characters and publications, this study will examine the origins and influences behind Superman’s title logo - developed from 1938 to 1940 by Shuster and Ira Schnapp - as well as how it went on to shape the visual identity codes of the entire Superhero genre.

Keywords: Superhero, Superman, Comic Book, Logo, Visual Identity, Graphic Design, Typography

Karen Sugrue

Limerick Institute of Technology

HEROES IN CRISIS: WHEN HEROES NEED CARE 

Heroes in Crisis is a nine issue DC Comics limited series which debuted in September 2018. The series expands on a concept that Tom King introduced in Batman, of a rehabilitation centre for superheroes called The Sanctuary, and addresses the emotional cost of being a superhero. The Sanctuary itself was created to help superheroes dealing with mental health issues resulting from their frenetic and perpetual attempts to save the Earth and its people.

Working with health care workers and community activists, the everyday heroes of the real world, compassion fatigue, vicarious traumatisation and burnout are very common and the burden of emotional labour weighs heavy on them all. Added to this are the profoundly gendered scripts that exist about care giving and care receiving and the lack of real life role models within activism for self-care practices which would allow their work to be sustainable.  In addition, new insights into the devastating impact that isolation and loneliness have on health are a continuing theme.

I was initially very excited to see how this topic would be treated in this series because it is possible to imagine the clear parallels between community activists and Heroes in Crisis. I envisaged being able to use the series to engage with young activists and health care workers to address some of the stigma, shame and sense of failure they feel when they experience mental health distress.

In therapeutic practice best practice in mental health care involves community care and supports, social integration, and talk therapy. Effective treatments are available, but according to the WHO, nearly two thirds of people with a known mental health disorder never seek help from a health professional. Stigma and discrimination are a key part of this pattern – as is the deeply ingrained notion that mental health struggles are a sign of personal failure and weakness.

Heroes in Crisis explores some of these issues and poses many interesting questions about the humanity of the superheroic and the incremental impact that trauma, violence and shame of failure have on their sense of self, and their ability to be well and continue their work. The series also examines the notion that the emotional labour required to seem ok while feeling fear and grief is sometimes as burdensome as the fear and the grief itself. A recurring theme in the DC world is the loneliness and isolation involved in the superheroic life and this is examined in this series also.

This paper examines the Heroes in Crisis series through the dual lenses of psychotherapeutic best practice and gender performativity.  It also interrogates gendered understandings of emotional labour and connection building in the fight to create structures of wellness for heroes on and off the pages of comics. It draws on the work of Connell, Farrell, Butler, Hochschild and Lynch to examine representations of care needing and care getting.  It explores the notion that care needing disrupts the normative gender matrix, making it imperative that interventions (such as The Sanctuary) be hidden and secretive. The paper investigates whether it is possible ever to unpick the enmeshment of care giving with the docile feminine, and whether heroes (super or real) can ever find a way to move to a place that is a rejection of the old care binary of performative stoical suffering (Batman) or performative hyper-mothering intrinsic to disempowered femininity. And finally, it explores the encouraging possibilities that lie in the construction of a new heroism, embedded in the all too human traits of vulnerability and care and, yet, all the more superheroic for it.  

James C. Taylor

University of Warwick

Into the Superhero-Verse: Self-reflexivity and Critique in Animated Superhero Cinema

In recent years there have been high-profile superhero blockbusters featuring franchise characters that take self-reflexive perspectives on the genre, e.g. Deadpool (2016) and Logan (2017). Concurrent to the proliferation of “live-action” superhero blockbusters (which typically feature significant amounts of digital animation), the last few years have also seen a selection of purely animated superhero films receiving wide cinematic release. This paper analyses three animated features – The Lego Batman Movie (2017), Teen Titans Go! To The Movies (2018) and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) – exploring how their animated form enables them to undertake self-reflective critique of the superhero genre in distinct ways from live-action films.

Animation engenders an ontological distance from live-action, creating an outsider status for these films that allows them to cast an interrogative eye on more dominant forms of superhero cinema. Of course, superheroes originated, and continue to develop, in drawn images in comic books. The animated films under analysis playfully acknowledge these roots in direct gestures to their characters’ range of comic book incarnations, while also cultivating distance through styles and motifs specific to animation. The elastic stylisation of these films exhibits the self-reflexive intertextuality that is central to Catherine Constable’s (2015) understanding of postmodern aesthetics in Hollywood cinema. Constable’s framework privileges Linda Hutcheon’s (1989) position that postmodern cinema’s parodic reworking of other texts facilitates compromised forms of critique. Adopting this framework enables me to explore the ways in which the plasticity of animated superhero films’ postmodern aesthetics, and the use of this to negotiate their live-action and comic book counterparts, might perform critique of the superhero genre. The Lego Batman Movie’s interrogation of hypermasculinity, Teen Titans Go!’s parodic take on the superhero cinema boom and Into the Spider-Verse’s discourse on diversity are discussed.

Keywords: Animation, Adaptation, Cinema, Aesthetics, Postmodernism, Lego Batman, Teen Titans Go!, Spider-Man, Spider-Verse

Eva M. Thury

Drexel University

Campbell or Vogler? Guidelines for their Use in Understanding the Contemporary Hero and the Community

Joseph Campbell’s monomyth has been "an analytical tool for literally hundreds of secondary studies" (Doty 241). However, sources on the internet, and with them my mythology students, have been confusing and conflating Christopher Vogler's analysis of the hero's journey with that of Campbell's monomyth. This set me thinking about the differences between Campbell and Vogler and the perspectives on the hero and the superhero that each produces.

In particular, the analyses developed by Campbell and Vogler work differently for heroes and superheroes who are women and for heroic teams. Palumbo's monomyth-based analysis of Terminator shows the difficulties involved with the shift from protagonist Kyle Reese to the agency of Sarah Connor. In fact, any story with a woman protagonist is difficult for Campbell's hero, as shown by Tricia Barr's Fangirl Blog about The Force Awakens.

Vogler's three-act structure provides a useful framework in which "interwoven journeys … present a full spectrum of heroic possibilities" (282). By contrast, the monomyth's hero stems from initiation rituals which are undergone by individuals (Hero 8-13); Campbell heavily psychologizes rites of passage, removing their communal context (Doty 143). Thus, Vogler continues in the direction begun by Campbell of de-contextualizing the hero.  Victor Turner notes that our society has ceased "to govern its activities by means of common ritual obligations" (68). Instead we rely on freely chosen works of art for communal messages (77).

Richard Reynolds describes the "deconstruction" which lately operates on superheroes whose "fragmented virtues and signs" are manifested in isolation but draw strength from "shared cultural roots" (123). As a way of discussing this, I examine I Am Legend according to Vogler's views -- he worked on the film, after all -- considering the significance of the film in his view and examining its alternative endings in the context of a communal message.

Keywords: Joseph Campbell; Christopher Vogler; The Hero's Journey; The Writer's Journey; the superhero; The Force Awakens; Terminator; I Am Legend; Victor Turner