The Hyper-Referential Style of Storytelling

Mining and utilizing cultural heritage resources and creating and developing creative and cultural industries have become the priority direction of economic development, setting off a wave of cultural heritage resource development, and industrial transformation. Which cultural heritage resources can have the high value of industrial transformation has become one of the research topics that have attracted much attention. In view of this problem, research is of great significance to the development of cultural heritage resources and the field of industrial transformation. With the in-depth research on resource development and industrial transformation, the research on artificial neural network (ANN) in cultural industry transformation is gradually carried out, and its performance advantages are of great significance to solve the problem of value evaluation. This paper aims to study the application of the value assessment method based on the BP neural network (BPNN) in the development of cultural heritage resources and industrial transformation. Through the analysis and research of BPNN and cultural heritage resource development and industrial transformation, it can be applied to the construction of resource value assessment methods to solve the problem of improving the value level of cultural heritage resource development and industry. This paper analyzes BPNN, cultural heritage, and value evaluation methods, conducts experimental analysis on the performance of the algorithm, and uses related theoretical formulas to explain. The results show that the evaluation method has passed the random consistency test, and the results are valid. The obtained index popularity weight value is 0.134, the economic benefit weight value is 0.093, and the resource correlation degree weight value is 0.074, which can be used as the key criteria for resource value evaluation. The classification of resources through resource value assessment can provide theoretical support for the development and industrialization of cultural heritage and can meet the needs of improving the value and quality of cultural heritage development and industrial transformation, and the development level and satisfaction have been greatly improved.

Reviewed by: Gender and the Superhero Narrative ed. by Michael Goodrum, Tara Prescott, and Philip Smith Sam Langsdale (bio) Michael Goodrum, Tara Prescott, and Philip Smith, eds. Gender and the Superhero Narrative. University Press of Mississippi, 2018. ix + 292 pp, $30, $90. Superheroes have once again become culturally relevant in the US across a number of media including comics, Hollywood blockbusters, and video games. While many characters and story arcs that originated in pre-WWII America persist in popularity, what is [End Page 218] perhaps most remarkable about the current proliferation of superheroes is the increased inclusion of diverse characters, creators, and readers—particularly with respect to gender. As editors Michael Goodrum, Tara Prescott, and Philip Smith argue, women have always been involved in the creation and consumption of superhero comics (even if in problematic ways), and although they are far from equally represented on or in front of the page currently, female characters, creators, and readers are growing in number. More intriguing than their increased visibility, however, are the myriad ways women's presence has been, and continues to be, "quietly disruptive of the superheroic status quo" (3). Thus, the primary aim of Gender and the Superhero Narrative is "to contribute to the growing number of voices, from both fan and academic communities, who argue not only that diversity is the future of the superhero genre, but that diversity has always been present, if sometimes hidden, in the genre's history, readership, and concerns" (3). The first section of the collection, titled "Politics and Intersectionality," contains four essays that employ (to greater and lesser extents) intersectional feminist analyses to examine various superhero narratives as they manifest in serial comics, TV shows, and satire. Mel Gibson begins the section with a chapter focused on Marvel's Ms. Marvel to argue that a diverse creative team; a narrative that incorporates issues such as faith, ethnicity, and gender; and representations of multiculturalism all combine to make the book evocative of "intersectionality and fourth wave feminism" (24). The chapter that follows, by Maite Urcaregui, similarly aims to make use of an intersectional lens to argue that Image Comics' Bitch Planet offers readers "an absurd yet familiar reminder of the ways that society and state institutions continue to uphold patriarchal and racist values at the expense of women, queer folks, and communities of color, among others" (45). Samira Nakarni then turns her attention to the Marvel TV series Jessica Jones to examine how female detective narratives, crime fiction, and film noir combine to depict complex gender politics that disrupt and even subvert patriarchal, colonialist norms in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Finally, Christina Knopf's essay focuses on the "adult/satire" book series from Image, Bomb Queen, to analyze how political satire, parody, and irony work to both criticize and perpetuate "the gendered politics of the comic book industry and the superhero genre" (101). While each of these essays is a valuable contribution to the still-growing field of feminist comics studies, their coherence as a section—and in some instances, their adherence to the stated aims of the volume—is debatable. Gibson's chapter suffers from a lack of clarity around her use of the term "intersectionality," which she seems to see as interchangeable with "fourth wave feminism," "call-out culture," "diversity," and "inclusion." Not only does this make the argument of the chapter somewhat hard to follow, it also perpetuates the pressing problem within feminist scholarship of obscuring and diluting the intellectual history of intersectionality. Urcaregui's essay does provide a clear description of the origins of intersectionality in black feminist theory and deftly applies this framework to her analysis of Bitch Planet. However, there is a lack of explicit discussion on how this comic (one that draws from the exploitation film genre) can or should be considered relevant to [End Page 219] superhero narratives. Nakarani gets closer to bridging the aims of the anthology with the themes of the section, but her essay also lacks clarity in places, particularly in relation to models of colonialism. Why, for instance, would Kilgrave's coercing of Malcolm into drug addiction be more indicative of British creations of opium dens than of the introduction of crack...

Superheroes can serve as role models for the youngest media consumers. Think of children pretending to be their favorite characters. But is this engagement innocuous or does it have serious consequences? Questions about whether role-playing fosters moral development, or potentially hinders it through stereotyping or promoting aggressive behavior, remain relevant.The article Mini Marvels: Superhero Engagement Across Early Childhood indicates that even the youngest audiences actively engage with superhero characters through role-play and identification. While most forms of superhero engagement had no impact on later behavior, high early identification and toy use were found to predict future aggressive and defending behaviors. These findings serve as a reminder that superheroes are not merely sources of fun; they also play a role in the behavioral development.Given that superheroes may shape children's development, could they also serve as tools in therapy. The case study Regression in the Service of Bibliotherapy-What Can "Captain Underpants" Teach Us? showcases how superhero narratives can aid therapeutic work. The author describes his work with David, a child with learning disabilities, who used Captain Underpants to playfully engage with social taboos such as bodily excretions.. Creating his own storylines helped David express emotional states, with identification with a self-created villainous superhero serving a therapeutic role. Reflecting on fictional characters, be it villainous or heroic, and linking them to real-life experiences can be profoundly empowering.Educators are undoubtedly champions of children's growth, but can superhero narratives also offer insights for teaching? The opinion piece Master Splinter and the Challenge of Personalization examines different forms of personalized education. The authors argue that Master Splinter's teaching style invites more active and counterintuitive forms of personalization than commonly assumed by contemporary educators; for instance training each turtle with a weapons that challenges, rather than aligns with, their personalities. This piece adds an innovative perspective to discussions of educational differentiation and student development.Superheroes vs. Villains -or a Joint Adventure?While the first set of contributions focuses on how superheroes function in early development and education, the second set turns to the complex psychological appeal of both heroes and villains in later life and media engagement.Early comic books often drew a stark line between good and evil. Yet, heroes and villains may have more in common than expected. While villainyis often rooted in suffering and pain, heroes also possess vulnerabilities and may cross into moral grey zones. Recognizing positive and negative traits in both heroic and villainous characters deepens audiences engagement and emotional resonance. This complexity is addressed in the article Faces of Depression. Why Do We need Batman, Joker, and Bane?'. The authors argue that Christopher Nolan's Batman Trilogy mirrors depressive symptoms that many viewers may experience. Characters like Batman, Joker, and Bane represent internal conflicts related to grief and guilt. Through identification with these symbolic "masks", viewers may externalize their own struggles, gaining psychological distance, and potentially, hope for healing.A similar interplay of moral ambiguity emerges in The Attraction of Evil. An Investigation of Factors explaining Women's Romantic Parasocial Relationships with bad Guys in Movies and Series. The authors ask why some women are drawn to "bad boy" characters and explore the development of romantic parasocial relationships (RPSRs) with them. Results show that a playful, non-committal love style and a high level of sensation seeking are associated with stronger RPSRs. Morally ambiguous characters allow audiences to safely engage with their own "darker sides" and reflect on identity, emotions, and connections. Sometimes, it takes both good and evil for growth to occur.The five contributions in this Research Topic reflect a diverse range of methods (longitudinal research, case study, conceptual analysis, and opinion pieces) underscoring the richness and complexity of this area. Together, they attest to the many roles and meanings superheroes (and their villains) carry in the contemporary world. These stories of extraordinary deeds influence children, therapy patients, educators, and general audiences alike. Future research could further explore how superhero narratives function across cultures, life stages, and media formats, or how individuals internalize and reframe moral ambiguity over time. We hope that this Research Topic encourages continued inquriy into how superhero narratives help people understand themselves and others, while offering pathways for resilience, reflection, and connection.

INTRODUCTION:In this new digital media age, children face significant new opportunities of encountering different cultures. Engagement with global media texts and artefacts not only involves a complex intersection of visual images and information, ideas and narratives across an array of multimodal formats, but also offers opportunities for children to be creative and knowledge producers. In other words, children are not merely consumers of media texts; they are actively engaged in a range of activities - fantasies, make believe play, drawing, writing and other forms of meaning-making - reflecting, incorporating and commenting on these media texts. Some of these activities involve the purchase of particular media products - for example branded toys or games - others such as role-play, drawing or storytelling. Children as storytellers, players and artists draw upon familiar elements from media narratives to create their own meanings.The world of Japan is one that attracts them and they are exposed to Japanese initiatives through superheroes to face the challenges posed by this new mediated global environment. Japanese cultural products can shape not only how the child thinks about herself, but how she relates to others and the Japanese society at large. Interestingly, Japan has a segment of her popular culture devoted to fantastic stories about individuals or characters with superhuman powers. These stories tell of heroes with strengths that children may identify with in the hope becoming as successful as these characters. It then becomes imperative to understand how these heroes play an important role in shaping children's media cultures. To understand this phenomenon, a study was designed to provide evidence-based insights to inform current understanding on children's media cultures in Malaysia and Singapore with regard to favourite and influential Japanese superheroes. This study gave insights on the ways Japanese Superheroes were incorporated in their growth as young people.PROJECT FRAMEWORK AND DESIGN:This study addresses the various ways in which children engage with the Japanese superhero narrative that cross media boundaries - comic books (manga), animated television shows and films (anime), video games, toys and other design products (stickers, posters, accessories, stationery). The work of (Buckingham, 2008) and (Fox, 1993) are helpful in developing our understanding of how children use superhero stories to make sense of their world and how these stories develop skills that are key to their social-cultural development. Paley (1984) argues that young children construct stories based on superheroes in order to explore inner fantasies of control and empowerment over their environment. Media culture can further be a site for exploring some of the most powerful elements of our psyches (Kress, 2003), (Muramatsu, 2002) and the discourses of superheroes can be particularly appealing for young children who are constantly involved in exploring oppositional binaries of right and wrong, good and evil, male and female ( (Dyson, 1996); (Davies, 1997).The research works by (Clerkin, 2012), (Yamato, et al., 2011) and (Martin, 2007) highlight that other than ideological values and mythic elements, research on superhero narratives also reveal three main impacts on the children's media cultures:(i) Bringing children from different countries and cultural contexts together;(ii) Allowing superhero narratives and media practices to cross borders to children's other lifestyle interests in fashion, design, music and toys products;(iii) Enhancing intellectual and creative development, helping children in their learning, specifically as creators and meaning-makers in media literacy and skills development.The superhero genre in very broad terms can be seen as narratives, encompassing stories of action and adventure in which the main protagonist uses some form of supernatural power in order to overcome one or several antagonists. …

With the rapid development of the global digital economy, there has been an increase in research on the digital transformation of the tertiary industry, including the culture and tourism industry. The digital transformation of culture and tourism industry is influenced by various factors including Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH). However, existing research has not proposed a measurement tool for the digital transformation of culture and tourism from the perspective of the digital economy. Through a systematic literature review of 3082 manuscripts published in top-tier journals indexed in CNKI and Web of Science scholarly databases, this study combines the cross-validation results of statistical analysis and thematic analysis to comprehensively expound the measurement factors of digital transformation of culture and tourism industry and future research trends. The main measurement factors are summarized from four perspectives: digital industrialization, industry digitalization, digital governance, and data valorization, and the digitization of ICH is found to be a key factor in the digital transformation of cultural and tourism integration. And five research development trends are proposed accordingly: First, the green sustainable development trend of industry; Second, the digital transformation path of cultural tourism industry; Third, the development situation of digital co-governance of digital government; Fourth, the data utilization and information security construction in digital society; Fifth, the construction of general measurement standards for the digital transformation of cultural tourism industry.

The Bat and the Spider: A Folkloristic Analysis of Comic Book Narratives by Wesley Colin Van de Water, Master of Arts Utah State University, 2016 Major Professor: Dr. Lynne S. McNeill Department: English This thesis examines and argues that superhero narratives, beginning with their comic book origins in the early twentieth century, exhibit many of the qualities found in folklore. Furthermore, these narratives not only demonstrate a folkloric evolution across multi-media formats, including printed work, television, and film, but that they fit within classic hero narrative structures posited by various folklore theorists. The hero theories presented by Lord Raglan, Vladimir Propp, and Joseph Campbell, along with traditional folklore patterns of dynamism and conservatism discussed by Barre Toelken, Alan Dundes, and others, support the assertion that folklore can, and does, exist and propagate in the mass media popular culture sphere. What follows is an academic analysis of core folklore elements, as well as a presentation of how these core qualities can be found in superhero narratives, and how the discipline of folklore may benefit from a study of these narratives. (123 Pages)

In April 2017, Marvel Comics vice president of sales David Gabriel told an interviewer that the company’s recent slump was due to its move toward a more diverse roster of characters over the preceding year: What we heard was that people didn’t want any more diversity. They didn’t want female characters out there. That’s what we heard, whether we believe that or not. I don’t know that that’s really true, but that’s what we saw in sales. We saw the sales of any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character, people were turning their nose up against. That was difficult for us because we had a lot of fresh, new, exciting ideas that we were trying to get out and nothing new really worked. (Griepp 2017)After a quick backlash, Gabriel issued a correction. Even so, his framing and phrasing are enlightening; when he says “people didn’t want any more diversity,” he is staking a claim to having a monocultural audience. When he calls the situation “difficult for us because we had a lot of fresh, new, exciting ideas that we were trying to get out and nothing new really worked,” he is suggesting that bringing diversity to comics is an innovation and one that has not worked out for his company financially.The assumption embedded in Gabriel’s statement, that the audience for comics is limited to straight white men who want the same kind of superhero story with characters from their childhood handed to them year after year, is common to both the popular discourse about comics and certain strains of academic discourse on the subject. With the growth in academic comics studies over the last decade, however, there has been a shift in the latter. Recent comics scholarship has emerged from many different kinds of academic departments—the traditional liberal arts disciplines, the fine arts, art history, communications studies, and information science—as well as from interdisciplinary scholars working primarily in ethnic studies, black studies, American studies, and women’s and gender studies, among others. With important work coming out of a variety of discourses, one of the most exciting aspects of recent developments in the field is its necessary interdisciplinarity. While it has taken more than a century of academic scholarship to arrive at the idea that text, paratext, context, audience, and reception are all necessary components for understanding cultural production, comics studies is in a position to grow as a discipline in which scholars are and have always been able to close read a text itself and then discuss the way that text was produced, disseminated, and circulated. Scholarship within the field, like Ramzi Fawaz’s The New Mutants (2016), Jeffrey Brown’s Black Superheroes, Milestone Comics, and Their Fans (2001), and Tahneer Oksman’s How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses? (2016), has taken extraordinary advantage of this possibility. One of the important consequences of this interdisciplinary method is that it becomes impossible to imagine an ideal audience for comics in the way that Gabriel does. Instead, this mode has enabled scholars to establish that comics, far from being only a popular cultural form that circulates among a particular audience and in particular ways, have been used and enjoyed by a variety of audiences through a variety of different but related forms (comic books, comic strips, graphic novels, webcomics, and so on).Comics studies, therefore, is a discipline in which good work requires the acknowledgment of the multiplicity of audiences that comics reach. In particular, it demands acknowledgment that fans with many different kinds of intersectional identities exist and have always existed. In this context, it is easy to see that Marvel’s strategy, which maintained a narrow view of the demographics of its audience, was always doomed to fail. Half-hearted, ahistorical gestures toward diversity are not enough to remediate the comics industry, the comics underground, or the academic comics discourse’s mutual long-standing issues with the representation of women, people of color, and LGBTQ characters. Recent studies of comics and identity elucidate the obstacles that make it difficult for the voices of women, people of color, and LGBTQ cartoonists to make headway. What the following books show is that, against those obstacles, diverse voices have emerged anyway.We can see this, for example, in José Alaniz’s monograph Death, Disability, and the Superhero: The Silver Age and Beyond. Although the discourse on ability has clear and important political valences, the notion of disability as a kind of identity is often left out of conversations about diversity, both within the academy and outside of it, that focus on gender, race, and sexual orientation. One of the major tasks of Death, Disability, and the Superhero is to show that the scholarship on disability and disability activism is important to defining the intersectional frameworks that construe identity as a matrix rather than a data point.In Death, Disability, and the Superhero, disability emerges as a particularly compelling lens through which to view superhero narratives because considering it means reconsidering the important but facile understanding of superhero narratives as adolescent male power fantasies. Instead, the book places the vulnerability of the body at the center of its understanding of the superhero. Focusing on the period of comics history beginning in the late 1950s, which comics fans know as the silver age, Alaniz demonstrates how the “anxieties and desires of the [post–World War II] age” (20) begin in this moment to assault the previously nigh-invulnerable superhero body. A comparison between the superhero and the “inspirational” figure of the supercrip, whose disability should elicit pity but instead provides an obstacle that, once overcome, renders the supercrip beyond pity, establishes the superability of the superbody as an important site for the examination of postwar anxieties and desires. What the superbody can and cannot do and how it arrives at a position outside of the bodily norm reveal for Alaniz exactly how postwar Americans, and in particular postwar American men, were afraid of what might become of their bodies in a changing world.Death, Disability, and the Superhero includes an extraordinary wealth of images and takes a broad range of examples from the last half century of mainstream superhero comic books, but its most compelling cases are drawn from the Marvel comics of the 1960s and 1970s. Alaniz considers, among others, the Thing (whose exposure to galactic radiation turned him into living stone), Daredevil (an acrobatic hero who, as a boy, suffered an industrial accident that led to both blindness and supersenses that compensate for that blindness), and Dr. Doom (a supervillainous scientist who hides the disfiguring results of a lab accident behind a metal mask). Alaniz combines acute visual and textual observation with insights from the analysis of fan reactions that caused the early ending of storylines and the abandonment of characters like the She-Thing (a striking athlete and superhero who is cast as the Thing’s love interest and is eventually turned into living rock herself) to understand the way that the “supercrip” archetype is reinscribed within the superheroic body. This archetype forces characters with disabilities to either paper over their experience of the world by attempting to pass as able-bodied or go into isolation on the fringes of culture and society, situations that mirror many of the challenges that disabled people face. In each chapter, Alaniz is particularly attentive to how disability reads in ways that are gendered and racialized, stressing that it appears above all as an assault on the typical white male body. Extending a perspective on how the undesirably racialized and feminized disabled come to be represented either as deserving of hatred and fear or as inspirational—rather than as individuals with important perspectives on the world, not all of which are informed by their bodies—Death, Disability, and the Superhero clarifies important issues in the study of the early twenty-first century’s most important genre.Situated in the context of a significant and growing scholarship, Frederick Luis Aldama and Christopher González’s anthology Graphic Borders: Latino Comics Past, Present, and Future is an important intervention that recognizes that the category of Latina/o comics represents a range of output that is as broad as the medium itself. In their introduction, Aldama and González run through examples of common genres of Latina/o graphic narrative—science fiction, noir, erotica, superheroes, and autobiography, among others—to demonstrate that identifying a comic as Latina/o, either because the cartoonist is or the characters are, will explain little about the work in question. In this way, they resist the notion, common among both academic and popular discussions of ethnic literature, that in literary terms race and ethnicity represent a kind of genre with identifiable forms and tropes. Instead, they write that “Latino comic book creators” use the form to “open the reader’s eyes to different ways of being in the world—ways typified by the respective Latino (Chicano, Dominican, Puerto Rican, Cuban) experience” (16). Common to the creators and characters discussed in the collection, then, is an alienation caused by their identity, which is perceived by the culture at large as being outside the national mainstream. The essays in Graphic Borders largely deal with the specifics of this alienation, which takes not only the national forms of Aldama and González’s list but also those that intersect with culture, race, gender, sexuality, and class.Graphic Borders is an entry in the University of Texas Press’s World Comics and Graphic Novels and Nonfiction series, of which Aldama and González are also the editors. Given the laudatory transnational goals of that series, the essays’ focus on comics artists from the United States and Mexico and on works produced for those markets presents an opportunity for further work on comics and creators with ties to other parts of Latin America. Similarly, although it is difficult to overstate the importance of Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez, and Mario Hernandez (fondly known to comics fans as “Los Bros”) and their 1980s comics anthology series Love and Rockets on both Latina/o comics and US alternative comics more generally, their presence here is overwhelming. Essays and an interview about their work make up the whole of the book’s first section, and another deals in part with some of Gilbert’s stories. Four out of the volume’s fourteen pieces are explicitly about Los Bros. Essays on cartoonists like Roberta Gregory, Graciela Rodriguez, and Liz Mayorga, who are mentioned in the introduction, would have been a welcome addition.Given the nearly impossible task of capturing the whole of the Latina/o experience in just one volume, however, Graphic Borders is admirably capacious. Importantly, it emphasizes intersections that make up Latina/o experience, with standout essays on blatinos in US popular culture, by Adilifu Nama and Maya Haddad, and gay Latina/o superheroes, by Richard T. Rodríguez. It also thinks across types of comics publishing, from mainstream superhero comics (Isabel Millán’s essay on Marvel’s Mexican–Puerto Rican Spider-Girl, Anya Sofía Corazón, and Brian Montes’s essay on the blatino Miles Morales, otherwise known as the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man) to less covered but equally important forms like indie publishing (the essays on Los Bros), the comic strip (Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste’s essay on Baldo), and the political cartoon (Juan Poblete’s essay on the cartoons of Lalo Alcaraz). The picture of Latina/o comics that appears in Graphic Borders is a bright one, with recent growth in production and audience showing no signs of stopping. Even while celebrating these developments, however, Aldama and González are realistic about the importance of Latina/o creators to keeping the trend moving. “Simply put,” they write, “mainstream DC and Marvel publishers are not interested in innovation—unless it sells. . . . For working Latino creators, maintaining control over their product is essential” (15).Frances Gateward and John Jennings’s edited collection The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art, while similar in construction to Graphic Borders, in some ways takes the opposite tack. While Graphic Borders is built around the idea that it is important to separate the identity of the creator from the genre of the work, Gateward and Jennings make “an attempt to start constructing ideas around ‘Blackness’ as a type of medium,” later clarifying, “Blackness is a medium that Black people of the world have inherited and have added on to as the story has unfolded throughout history” (4). Interestingly, the volume puts forth a notion of the construction of blackness as an identity that resembles the collaboration common to the production of mainstream US comic books, which often feature contributions from separate writers, pencillers, inkers, colorists, and letterers, all of whom provide essential input. Gateward and Jennings make a compelling argument for the long-standing and continued relevance of sequential art as a method of understanding African and diasporic African identities, which sometimes speak with “one voice” and sometimes “ha[ve] a collection of many voices” (3). In this way, Gateward and Jennings suggest, there are both fundamental and contingent qualities of blackness that are essential to understanding black experience, and both of these can be seen by examining the history and form of black comics.The essays in this volume generally deal with comic strips, comic books, and graphic novels and range across a wide swath of time periods and contexts. Although the collection is mostly focused on production in the United States, it notably features an essay by Sally McWilliams on Aya, a series of French graphic albums written by the Ivorian author Marguerite Abouet. More essays on international black creators and characters would have made a welcome addition. In other ways, though, the volume deals with many varieties of black identity, strains of black thought, and ways that black bodies have been represented in comics, including a piece by Patrick F. Walter on the intersection of postcoloniality and queer theory in the Vertigo series Unknown Soldier and another by Rebecca Wanzo on humor, citizenship, and the challenge to the cultural illegibility of black heroism in the comic strip The Boondocks and the superhero comic Icon. Importantly, although Gateward and Jennings begin and end their introduction by discussing Power Man, the urban superhero who has recently entered the broader cultural conversation as the subject of the Netflix / Marvel Studios television series Luke Cage, only a few of the essays deal with well-known mainstream superhero characters; for Gateward and Jennings, the crucial work on blackness being done in comics comes from other directions.Although individual essays in both Graphic Borders and The Blacker the Ink deal with female characters or creators, they do so in the context of other categories. Deborah Elizabeth Whaley’s strikingly designed Black Women in Sequence: Re-Inking Comics, Graphic Novels, and Anime is one of the first book-length works to deal specifically with the construction and experience of black women in sequential art rather than treating that experience as a subset of broader black or women’s experiences. Although there is a distinct paucity of African American female characters and creators in mainstream and independent American comics,1 it is simply untrue to say that they are not present. Indeed, Black Women in Sequence takes us beyond well-known characters like the X-Men’s mutant weather goddess Storm to characters like Nubia (Wonder Woman’s black sister) and the Butterfly (a character from a series of 1970s exploitation comics that Whaley identifies as the first black superheroine). Similarly, it is in the book’s first and last chapters, in which Whaley considers the creation and consumption of sequential media by black women, often erased from conversations about fan culture, where Black Women in Sequence makes its most important contribution. There she acknowledges innovators in the field like Jackie Ormes, who drew comic strips for the Pittsburgh Courier in the context of early twentieth-century cultural-front leftism; Barbara Brandon-Croft, whose comic strip, Where I’m Coming From, was the first syndicated comic strip by a black female cartoonist; and the community of black creators and consumers of sequential media Whaley calls “Afrofans” (xi).Black Women in Sequence is an extraordinarily ambitious work that draws on a range of discourses and methodologies to examine the way that black women are figured as what Whaley calls “sequential subjects” (8) across a broad range of time periods and media. In order to explore this topic, however, Whaley draws a rigid distinction between comics studies—which she says is narrowly focused on comic books, comic strips, and so on—and what she calls “sequential art studies” (13), which includes adjacent forms like animation and comics adapted into film. Approaching the topic in this way allows Whaley to include a significant number of examples from media outside of comics and graphic novels, but it also elides crucial differences among related forms and among disparate temporal and spatial contexts. Even so, Black Women in Sequence is an important addition to the literature on identity within comics, as it suggests possibilities for further research on a subject with very little coverage and in particular on figures like Ormes and Brandon-Croft. Whaley’s work serves as an admonition to the field at large, a reminder of the vast variety of experiences contained within the matrices of intersectional identity and of the importance of specific attention to those experiences.Although not primarily a book on comics, André M. Carrington’s work in Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction is focused on an adjacent paraliterary field. Speculative fiction, as a genre, encompasses many of the subgenres—superheroes, science fiction, utopia, fantasy, horror, paranormal romance—common in mainstream comics publishing, and the book’s argumentative through-line is applicable to understandings of blackness within the medium of comics. As in The Blacker the Ink, which includes an essay by Carrington, Speculative Blackness is interested in teasing out blackness as a kind of mode. It is important, Carrington argues, that we consider a plurality of audiences when we talk about genre: “Whole segments of society experience genre traditions in different ways according to their sense of how these mediations pertain to their lives and the lives of others” (15). In order to make these arguments, Carrington draws on a long history of black speculative fiction fandom, providing a counterpoint to fan studies scholarship, which largely considers examples contemporaneous to its writing. His historical study of black fandom, which reaches the present in a consideration of the participatory practice of fan fiction, both honors the fact that black fans (who in debates about diversity within comics and genre fiction are often assumed to be newcomers) have been around for as long as there has been speculative fiction and clarifies the fact that fandom is historically contingent, responding to the differing needs of black audiences at different points in time. In order to work this point through, Carrington reads popular science fiction reparatively. Rather than focusing on the variety of ways that speculative genres are racist, already well-trod ground, he seeks out examples of the genre that have something to say about what a black future or a different version of a black past might mean for black identity in the present. In the encounter between blackness and speculative fiction, Carrington argues, we can see both the overwhelming whiteness of the genre, usually hidden from view, and the ways in which black people have found in speculative fiction a way to imagine otherwise.In making his case, Carrington situates himself not only in the context of fan studies but also within the history of feminist science fiction critique, seeking to apply arguments made by writers and scholars on the role of women in speculative fiction to race. He honors this legacy by centering two chapters on black women—Nichelle Nichols’s Lieutenant Uhura from the original Star Trek series and Storm. He has an additional chapter that focuses on the African American–driven publisher Milestone Comics’s comic book Icon, which features the titular African American superhero. His focus on cultural production that is outside of much of the scholarship on speculative fiction, like television and comics, is also notable for what he chooses to leave out; even as he acknowledges the importance of black writers of science fiction like Samuel R. Delany and Octavia Butler, he seeks to move the study of black speculative fiction beyond the scholarship on those two authors.Indeed, books like Carrington’s mark an important point of for the study of comics within academic literature, that their use as in scholarship outside the specific field of comics As the field and as the academic study of comics of this will become more and not all of them will be as as Carrington’s Even so, the books in this a future for the field, one that takes it from narrow understandings of the medium like Gabriel’s and toward broader and more and methodologies of is a in the of American at the University of Texas at He serves on the of the Comics and is the president of the of the Comics

Welcome to the succession-centric era of leadership. Where leadership transitions take center stage as 3 powerful narratives converge: cultural storytelling, industry transformation, and scientific insight. Entertainment juggernauts like Succession and Shōgun depict leadership transitions as deeply engaging human dramas, while $56 trillion in mergers and acquisitions over the last 2 decades demonstrate the staggering real-world stakes. The Center for Creative Leadership’s comprehensive analysis of succession planning spans 161 Emmy- and Golden Globe–nominated television shows,190 case studies across 19 industries, and 1,000 peer-reviewed articles on succession planning. The evidence is unmistakable. As the number of companies from the original Fortune 500 list continues to shrink, organizations face record-high CEO turnover and hemorrhage $1 trillion annually through poor transitions. Yet 70% still operate without formal succession plans, navigating tomorrow’s challenges with yesterday’s ad hoc tools. Global forces drive this era. Leaders must navigate through societal polarization, adapt to shifting regulatory landscapes and demographics, and prepare for extreme weather events. They must harness artificial intelligence, leverage social media, and manage geopolitical tensions. Each new challenge reminds us that the old playbook for leadership transitions is closed. We believe an important opportunity lies within these challenges. Organizations that understand the succession-centric era as a convergence of 3 narratives — cultural storytelling, industry transformation, and scientific insight — will write the next chapter of leadership. The future belongs to those who recognize that succession planning is more than a process or a system. Succession planning is a mindset. One that understands and leverages the powers of culture, experience, and science to get it right, right now; keep getting it right; and reimagine what’s right for the future. Those who don’t get it right risk becoming cautionary tales. In our research, we’ve connected the stories and data we’ve collected to megatrends and real-world outcomes. Our research is presented across 4 reports that provide the leadership pulse and lists of leaders to watch, along with playlists, frameworks, strategic recommendations, and scenarios designed to help leaders and their teams provide continuity for the entire business and develop the unique capabilities to anticipate what’s coming next. The succession-centric era is here. Leaders must transform succession planning from a reactive necessity into their greatest competitive advantage. The future of leadership begins now.

In the post-epidemic era, comprehensive industrial transformation and upgrading is strong support to promote cultural tourism high-quality development, to cultivate new business forms, and an important force to boost rural revitalization. From the Wuli—Shili-Renli (WSR) methodology perspective, this paper constructs the three-dimensional inner logic framework of cultural tourism transformation and upgrading, and further puts forward the behavioral logic framework with seven main steps. Then a practical path for the cultural tourism transformation and upgrading with “three integrations” is also construed. Finally, it summarizes relevant reflection to cultural tourism transformation and upgrade. Combine with the WSR system method, this paper can not only enrich the logic mode analysis of industrial transformation and upgrading, but also provide certain methods and practical reference from a systems way of thinking. It also enriches the WSR systematic research to a certain extent.

Sales leadership icons and models: How comic book superheroes would make great sales leaders

The concept of identity in superhero narratives has become a burgeoning field in academic studies of this increasingly popular cinematic genre. Women in Marvel Films provides the first rigorous analysis of the portrayals of women, heroic and otherwise, in films based on Marvel comics from the 1980s to the present. It explores the relationships between this cultural phenomenon and wider issues of gender equality, considering the cultural moments in which Marvel films are made and incorporating complex histories of the comic book and Hollywood industries. Highlighting characterisations of women, narratives and cinematic elements such as music and mise-en-scène, and questioning how these elements collectively engage with gendered discourses, the discussion also positions previous iterations of women in Marvel comic book narratives as highly relevant. Women in Marvel Films thereby considers how feminist issues surface within superhero adaptations and how they are dealt with via Hollywood and comic book conventions. This book ultimately shows how the Marvel superhero film taps into political complexities regarding gender and related identity issues, such as women’s roles in society and their relation to men, and provides a fascinating insight into gendered power dynamics in contemporary American popular culture. The films discussed include The Punisher (1989), Blade (1998), the X-Men series (2000–2020), Elektra (2005), and the films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including Black Panther (2018) and Captain Marvel (2019).

In literary studies, "speculative" is an umbrella term for a wide variety of fields and approaches that can include science fiction, fantasy, horror, the gothic, superhero narratives, folklore and fairy tales, magic realism, alternate history, and other subgenres belonging to or overlapping with those fields. Speculative works may intersect with other genres like romance, thrillers, mysteries, or Westerns. Speculative fiction is often contrasted with literary realism, though they can also overlap. Speculative works include high and low art, literature and popular culture, and cover a wide variety of formats, including novels, short stories, poetry, memoir, visual art, television, film, comic books, and more. Its reach is wide and its borders are fuzzy, but use of the term indicates that there is something happening beyond the real: it might be magic, it might be fictional technology, it might be an alternate version of the past, but it is always something other.

The purpose of this article is to analyse the main trends in the development of cultural and creative industries in Ukraine in the first quarter of the 21st century. It examines the influence of cultural, social, and economic changes on the formation and transformation of cultural and creative industries, including artistic projects, national brands, and cultural initiatives. The research methodology is based on general scientific principles of systematisation and generalisation, which enabled the author to identify and scientific prove the key trends of the development of cultural and creative industries in Ukraine. The implementation of the systematic approach provided an analysis of cultural and creative industries as a complex and dynamic system that interacts with socio-cultural and economic processes. The comparative method allowed for the analyse of the development of cultural and creative industries in European countries and the identify their specificity in Ukraine. The analytical method facilitated the identification of conceptual foundations and characteristics of cultural and creative industries as a tool for cultural transformation. The historical approach ensured an understanding of the evolution of cultural and creative industries in the context of global trends and transformations of the Ukrainian cultural space. Using the descriptive method, the current state of the development of cultural and creative industries, their impact on Ukraine's artistic environment, and the international cultural brand of the country were analysed. The scientific novelty of the article lies in conducting a cultural analysis of the main trends in the development of cultural and creative industries in Ukraine in the first quarter of the 21st century, particularly through studying their interaction with European and global practices. For the first time, conceptual approaches to the formation of Ukraine's cultural brand based on artistic projects in the context of globalisation challenges and contemporary cultural transformations are examined. Conclusions: The development of cultural and creative industries in Ukraine in the first quarter of the 21st century occurs amidst dynamic changes in the socio-cultural environment, driven by globalisation, digitalisation, and the activation of artistic initiatives. An analysis of international experience confirms that cultural and creative industries play a key role in shaping the national cultural brand and enhancing Ukraine's international competitiveness. It has been established that artistic projects are an effective tool for developing cultural and creative industries, contributing to creative self-expression, creating new opportunities for artists, and strengthening cultural ties at both national and international levels. Integrating global practices and adapting them to Ukrainian realities opens up prospects for the further development of cultural and creative industries as an important element of the country's cultural transformation.

This chapter reflects on maritime industrial transformations through the lens of a series of artists’ f ilms, that capture the transindustrial mutations of European port cities from the 1970s to the present. The selected films can be seen as articulating critical narratives that interrogate the identities and developments of European maritime history and heritage. Each depicts the lived experience of individuals and communities immersed in those industrial and cultural transformations, reflecting on the changing relations between machine and body, the local and the global, and crucially giving voice to the actors and landscapes they represent.

In the past few decades, with the industrial transformation and upgrading of many Chinese cities, a large number of obsolete industrial buildings have appeared in the central areas of the cities. Although these former industrial buildings have lost their original functions in manufacturing industry, they have great spatial structure and geographic locations. Some post- industrial areas also bear the expectations of the older generation since they have witnessed the historical changes, cultural transmission and development of the cities. Many western countries have experienced the transformation of post-industrial buildings earlier than China and some successful regeneration projects incorporated the transformation of post-industrial buildings with their national development plans and conducted in-depth theoretical studies and practical case demonstrations. Similarly, China has been actively conducting the research and practice for the transformation of post-industrial buildings in the past few decades. These former industrial buildings are effectively employed to maximize the economic benefits and enhance the historical values and cultural connotations of these old industrial buildings. This paper analyzes the purpose of innovative transformation of post-industrial building space and the significance of the transformation from the perspective of national economy, ecological environment, and national policy. It also explores the issues concerning the innovation of micro spatial change and cultural transformation.