This Companion explores the evolution, representation, and meaning of superheroes within the broader popular media and culture landscape, as connected to both contemporary and historical frameworks.
This Companion explores the evolution, representation, and meaning of superheroes within the broader popular media and culture landscape, as connected to both contemporary and historical frameworks. The volume proposes itself as a comprehensive resource in the interdisciplinary field of ‘Superhero Studies’, acknowledging it as its own area of scholarly and cultural interest. Superhero Studies brings together perspectives from a number of intersecting disciplines, such as comics studies, film studies, television studies, fandom studies, game studies, and beyond. In answer to the evolutionary portrayals of superheroes in our cultures, histories, and narratives, The Routledge Companion of Superhero Studies addresses the development, transformation, and meaning of these iconic figures, by taking a transnational, multimedia and interdisciplinary approach to assessing their importance in our evolving representational contexts.
Introduction: Approaching Superhero Studies as a Field PART I Creating
and Selling the Superhero
1. Creators and the Creative Processes Behind
Comics
2. The Flash and the Ages of Superheroes: Racing Through History
3.
The Creation of Superheroes and Supervillains Through Alchemy, Science
Accidents, and Violent Scientific Delights
4. Experimentation and
Containment: The Metafictional Superhero
5. What The Kids Want: Superheroes
and Shared Universes
6. Out of the Multiversal Closet: Alternate Realities,
Reboots, and Transmedia Coming Outs
7. Punch-Ups on Parade: Celebrating and
Marketing Queerness in Marvel and DCs Pride Month Anthologies
8. Super
Powers and Secret Wars: The Cultural Value of Superhero Action Figures
9.
From Zero to the Heros Journey: The Masters of the Universe Franchise across
Audiovisual Transmedia
10. How Externally Licensed Intellectual Property
Dictated Changes in Marvel UKs Publishing Output of the 1970s-1990s PART II
Adapting the Superhero
11. Batman and the Body on Screen
12. The Umbrella
Academy: Re-imagining the Subversive Superhero Family, from Panel Scenes to
Netflix Screens
13. Princesses vs Power: The Animated Depictions of Original
and Rebooted She-Ra
14. The Divided Fourth Phase of Marvel Licensed Video
Games (2013-)
15. Financial Kryptonite: The Foiled Attempts to Bring
Superheroes to the Stage
16. Life and Death in Gotham City: Batman: The Audio
Adventures Aural History of the Superhero Genre
17. Rehearing the Superhero
in the 21st century: Superman, Wonder Woman, and Music
18. Cosplay Capers:
The Twinned Genealogies, Cultural Imaginaries, and Affects of Superhero
Cosplay
19. Renegotiating Canonicity: Fanboy, Parody, and Mark Garveys Union
Jack (2019)
20. Winter Soldiers: National Identity and Responsibility in
Captain America Fanfiction PART III National Superheroes and Translations
21.
Flying British Superheroes of World War II and Beyond: The Historical Turn in
Britains Aviation War in Popular Culture
22. Canadian Superheroes and the
Struggle for National Representation
23. Modern Czech Superheroes: Miracle
and the Spring Man as the Defenders of the Nation
24. Look! Up in the Sky!
It's a Bird! It's a Plane. No, it's Super-French!
25. Rat-Man: An Italian
Superhero Parody
26. Superhero Toys, Nostalgia, and the Assassination of Abe
Shinzo
27. The Tokusatsu Heroes and Magical Girls of Senki Zessh Symphogear
28. Chinese Translations of American Superhero Films and Television Series
PART IV Superhero Identities
29. With Great Power, Comes an Armored Corset:
Clothing as Empowerment for Female Superheroes
30. What it Means to be Free:
Disability, Neurodivergence, and the Super Freak
31. The Legal Aspects of
the Ownership of a Superhero Identity
32. Companions, Apprentices, Enemies:
The Many Roles of the Sidekick
33. Morality and Familial Relationships in the
Marvel Cinematic Universe
34. When the Gods Walk Among Us: Superheroes as
Dangerous Divinities
35. Not Like the Others: Catwoman as Transgressive Hero
36. Supervillains are the Real Heroes
37. The Cult of Marvels Loki(s), and
their (Queer) Redemption
38. The Power in Seeing Yourself in Another: X-Men,
Audiences, and Queer Rights through X-Men 97 PART V Evolving Superhero
Debates and Concerns
39. Swamp Thing: EcoGothic Monster or Environmental
Champion?
40. Animal Man: The Countercultural Superhero of the Anthropocene
41. Wakanda and Technology in the Anthropocene: Black Panthers Lesson on
What a Sustainable Coexistence Looks Like
42. Green Lantern, Structural
Racism, and N.K. Jemisins Far Sector
43. The Shield or the Skull: The
Civil-Military Gap, the Militarized Superhero, and Veteran Stereotypes in
American Myth and Memory
44. Trauma in Superhero Films: The Case of Tim
Burtons Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992)
45. The Phoenix and Dark
Phoenix Sagas: Moral Ambiguity, Disagreement, and the Superhero Mission
46.
The Unbelievable Gwenpool and the Limits of Empathy
47. Legacy, Memory, and
Fatherhood in All-Star Superman (2005)
Lorna Piatti-Farnell (PhD) is the Academic Dean at SAE Creative Media Institute in Auckland, New Zealand. She is the Founder and Director of the Australasian Horror Studies Network and sole editor of the "Routledge Advances in Popular Culture Studies" book series.
Carl Wilson is a freelance scholar and author based in the UK.
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