Superhero Comics Research Articles

From superhero to Super Sikh: (re)constructing Sikh identity in Super Sikh comics

ABSTRACT Superhero comics established their distinctive literary conventions and narrative patterns which have been further widely adapted to create new superhero characters in different cultural contexts. Although superhero comic books have been extensively read across cultures, the Sikh community has recently discovered their pedagogical potential in disseminating the Sikh theological values and cultural ethos to Sikh children, and familiarising the western public with Sikh history and traditions. This paper analyses how superhero traditions are appropriated to create a Khalsa template of the Sikh superhero, Super Sikh, and the distinctiveness of Khalsa Sikh identity is highlighted and differentiated from the Muslim identity to address the issue of ‘mistaken identity’ hate crimes in the aftermath of 9/11.

Generate Comic Strips Using AI

The art of storytelling through comic strips has long been a favorite, grabbing the interest of readers of all ages and developing into a variety of genres today, from superhero comics to political comics. Comic strip readers are more literate, empathic, and open to social issues, according to studies. Comics have the power to change the way we see the world. This research paper presents a system (ComicGenie) for automatically creating comic strips for Batman based on user-entered text descriptions. The proposed system consists of distinct components such as character detection, environment detection, text bubble generation, and voiceover over the scenario, each specializing in different aspects of comic strip creation. SVM and fastText technologies in NLP were utilized for text classification when developing models. Overall, this research contributes to the field of comic strip creation, offering a comprehensive web application. The ComicGenie holds significant potential to revolutionize the comic industry and inspire new avenues for computer-generated storytelling.

In Defense of the Effete Superhero: Theorizing the First Queer Latinx Superhero, Extraño/Gregorio de la Vega

ABSTRACT: Debuting in the 1987 eight-issue miniseries Millennium , Extraño/Gregorio de la Vega lays claim to being the first gay superhero in superhero comic history. He is also one of the first queer Latinx superheroes to be depicted in the genre. This article examines the mediations and transformations of Extraño/Gregorio de la Vega’s character across the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, analyzing how his disruptive queer effete superheroics runs counter to representational agendas that seek to fix or erase gender transgression and nonnormative sexualities in superhero comics. In order to do so, this article proposes a critical reading practice called superheroic minorness. By looking to one-shot issues, double-page team spreads, back covers, letters to the editors, and splash pages, this article examines how his superheroic minorness entails sleuthing across a constellation of details, minutiae, and arrangements in order to compose a comprehensive sketch of an otherwise undervalued or underexamined character who, nonetheless, helps articulate repressed, negated, and/or erased aesthetic-political possibilities. Reading for superheroic minorness is a conceptual strategy for theorizing the importance of the effete superhero and the interpretive frameworks the effete opens up for interrogating the majoritarian sphere and minoritized representation in comics, superhero aesthetics, and popular culture. Rather than situating the minorness or stereotyping of Extraño/Gregorio de la Vega as a lack or a problem for critical inquiry, this essay positions it as a means of revaluing and imagining the effete superhero, the abject, peripheral queer Latinx character who overloads straightforward notions of respectability, assimilation, and conformity.

The USSR State Leader in the U.S. Superhero Comic Strips in the 1980s: Constructing and Broadcasting Stereotypes About “Russians” in the Historical Context of the Cold War

Introduction. There has been a rich tradition of using stereotypes and cliches of Russians in U.S. comic strips since the 1940s. Russian characters represent statehood, cultural dominants, and ethnic stereotypes. They convey the political agenda and civic values and demonstrate reactions to historical cataclysms. The leaders of the USSR represent the state as a political system in comic strips. In the 1980s, the interpretation of the “Russian threat” changed significantly, as did the methods of representing the General Secretary of the Soviet Union. Methods and materials. The article is based on the principles of historicism. The analysis was carried out using a set of methods: descriptive, elements of discourse analysis, and semiotic tools. The work used a range of sources, among which the most important were the issues of graphic comic strips regulating censorship documents and visual representations of Russians. Analysis. The author analyzed the dramaturgy of the 1986–1989 comic strips about the “Russian threat,” in which Mikhail Gorbachev appears. The key motifs that made up the image were identified, an iconological analysis was performed, and the speech characteristics of the protagonists and antagonists of superheroics were analyzed. The dynamics of the image of the leader of the USSR in superhero comic strips were determined by the transition from a caricature image to a Machiavellian ruler of the “Evil Empire,” ready, among other things, to collaborate with the United States. Results. From the point of view of iconography, a number of techniques for depicting Mikhail Gorbachev in comic strips correlate with the techniques of representation of Ronald Reagan. In some comic strips, the strategic superiority of the leader of the USSR over American superheroes is indirectly emphasized. The appearance of realistic features in the image of Gorbachev makes it possible to talk about the expansion of cultural ties between the USSR and the United States, a well-known social demand of the target audience, completely dissatisfied with the stereotypical images of the leaders of the USSR and the country itself.

I’m Not a Hero, I’m Just Drawn That Way: A Review of Super Bodies: Comic Book Illustration, Artistic Styles, and Narrative Impact

This article discusses Super Bodies: Comic Book Illustration, Artistic Styles, and Narrative Impact by Jeffrey A.Brown (University of Texas Press, 2023).  The book covers six modernartistic styles prevalent in American superhero comics, as well as providingbackground on the historical reception of comic book art.  The review concludes that, while the text maybe less approachable for non-specialists, the book highlights a comparativelyunderexamined aspect of the field of Comics Studies and is a valuable resource.

ИСТОРИЯ ВОЗНИКНОВЕНИЯ И РАЗВИТИЯ КОМИКСА В США

The article provides a historical overview of such a literary and artistic phenomenon as a comic book in the United States of America. The most popular definition of a comic book in special literature to date has been characterized. The history of the appearance of the comic book and its individual artistic features are examined in detail. Conclusions have been drawn about the origin of comics in Europe and their gradual spread to the United States. The most significant works of European authors (R. Töpfer, W. Busch) and the first American authors (R. Outcolt, W. Mackay and G. Herriman) are considered. It is shown how, after the first stages of development, a specific, purely American comic book genre began to form - superhero comics (superheroics) and its influence on the entire further history of these works in America. The periodization of the history of the comic book by "centuries," characteristic features of comics of each century, the most iconic or typical works of each of these periods, is considered. In addition, the works of the most iconic and important authors and artists of the superhero comic book genre are considered and the development of other comic book genres, as well as the influence of the state and the specific historical situation on the subject of works, are characterized. The article is based on scientific and popular science literature on the topic of research.

ОБРАЗ ПРЕЗИДЕНТА И ЕГО КРИТИКА В СУПЕРГЕРОЙСКИХ КОМИКСАХ В ИСТОРИЧЕСКОМ КОНТЕКСТЕ РОССИЙСКО-АМЕРИКАНСКИХ ОТНОШЕНИЙ 1980-Х ГГ

The aim of the study is to determine the specifics of criticism of a politician and the institution of the presidency in popular culture using the example of the critique of Ronald Reagan in the comics during his tenure. The object of the analysis is the representation of the US President in the issues of the industry leaders of print superhero comics; the subject is the mechanisms of criticism of the institution of the presidency. The research methodology is based on a semiotic and iconological analysis of the visual material; a descriptive method is used to introduce the historical context. The image structures are analyzed using the film studies tools (analysis of dramaturgy, camera angles, film editing). The superhero comic book from the 1980s consistently deconstructs the image of the President, and particularly, the media component of that image. The article for the first time identifies the cinematic clichés that the comic book authors use in the construction of a critical narrative about Reagan, analyzes the ways of implementing the motive of the puppet nature of the institution of the presidency and studies the representation modes of the policy towards the USSR. The author concludes that by the end of the 1980s, a steady set of techniques and a repertoire of plots for the critical assessment of the US President had been formed in the superheroics.

Representation of Islamic symbols in Ms. Marvel series

Ms. Marvel is an American television series based on the same-named Marvel Comics superhero. It is the nineteenthMarvel Cinematic Universe television series and the twelfth chapter of Phase Four. This study intended to find and analyze the Islamic symbols represented in Ms. Marvel series so that the writers could elucidate them. As this is qualitative research, the writers, who have role as the primary instruments, analyze the data which were downloaded from internet (Ms. Marvel series) and they found that Islamic symbols in them can be analyzed through verbal and nonverbal data. The analyzed verbal data consists of expressions such as assalamualaikum and walaikumsalam, whereas the nonverbal data, which are in the forms of symbols, consists of Islamic clothing and mosque. Based on the data, the nonverbal symbol is the most prevalent in the movie series.

It’s not all black and white: A text analysis of racially diverse versus legacy superheroes in Marvel and DC Comics

Comic-book publishers have responded to growing racial diversity by strategically creating multicultural superheroes to diversify their publishing lines. While extant research has examined representation and broader-level themes surrounding diverse heroes, limited research has focused on the story text in diverse titles. This is the first study to explore and analyse the story text to uncover themes in diverse versus legacy superhero comics. Through a Leximancer text analysis of superhero comic books from Marvel and DC Comics, this study (1) identifies the prominent themes exuded in legacy titles versus diversity titles, (2) examines the cultural authenticity of the themes, and (3) compares the themes with those in past research. Identifying the different themes and their authenticity is critical for creators and marketers appealing to diverse segments, who now represent 19 per cent of consumer spending in the USA. Findings indicate varying themes across diverse and legacy superhero comics. Diverse comics focus on time struggles between superhero-ing and school, family and home. Legacy comics evoke themes of mastering time and space and then returning home. In contrasting Marvel and DC diverse superhero comics, Marvel themes focus more on the personal journey of the hero from doubt to confidence, while DC themes focus on the resilience of the heroes in their downtrodden neighbourhoods. In comparing these themes with themes identified in past content analyses, there is similarity and authenticity. The paper concludes with strategic implications pertinent to cultural marketing and media representation and inclusion. Marketers trying to reach diverse segments must continue to present diverse youth with authentic stories developed by credible creators. They may also move beyond common themes to those embodying greater empowerment.

A Ramayana for Our Times: Superheroes, Science Fiction and Myth

Recent retellings of Indian epics draw upon science fiction. This article discusses an Indian superhero comic based on the Ramayana in which Rama, the central figure in the epic, is portrayed as the superhero Nagraj. The story uses the figure of the avatara (reincarnated one) to align the world of the epics with the contemporary world by incorporating science-fiction elements into their stories. It may seem that these retellings are drawing on strategies within science fiction to update the epics for the present so as to make mythic figures equivalent to superheroes. However, these strategies are not new. Parallel compositional techniques within folk epics prefigure these science-fictional strategies. This is borne out by the fact that Nagraj is an avatara of Rama, said to be reborn in the dark Kali age to fulfil unfulfilled desires from the past. In other words, instead of being for the sake of the present, superheroes are in the present to complete a quest from another time, drawing the present within the ambit of the mythic. There is a juxtaposition of a cyclical view of time associated with myth with the eventful linear time of superheroes, reorganising assumptions about chronicity in both superhero comics and epics.

A Woman is Being Side-Kicked: Gothic Superheroes and the Suppression of Female Autonomy Amid Feminism’s Second Wave

This essay examines the treatment of women in the Gothic superhero comics of the 1970s through the lens of Michelle Massé’s In the Name of Love: Women, Masochism and the Gothic (1992). While superhero texts generally neglected women even at the height of second-wave feminism, the Gothic superhero sub-genre goes even further, drawing on the regressive trope of the suffering woman to ‘side-kick’ female characters and deny their agency and autonomy. Exploring four female characters who share this fate, we examine their different responses to the Freudian beating fantasy enacted in their narrative arcs, delineating the high costs and limited gains of traumatised women who dream of triumph.

The size of the fight in the girl: Violent girlhood in Ms. Marvel

AbstractThe rise of girl protagonists in superhero comics creates a dilemma, since violent girlhood is surrounded by cultural anxieties, yet super‐girls are expected to engage in violence. One of the most popular super‐girls of this century, Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan, embodies this ambivalence in the fraught intersection of girlhood, racialization, and physical violence. This article investigates the affective economies and haptic line work of the Ms. Marvel series with the aim of discussing the visual strategies used to explore violent girlhood: pauses, lines of orientation, color work, and cuteness as a visual mood.

Comics Anthropocenes: visualizing multiple space-times in Anglophone speculative comics

ABSTRACT Comics and graphic novels have not typically been foregrounded in accounts of Anthropocene fictions. This article argues that speculative comics are particularly suited to visualizing the Anthropocene through their verbal-visual strategies for representing multiple scales of space and time. Defined as the era in which human-driven processes have become detectable in the Earth’s geological record, the concept of the Anthropocene has also been challenged by postcolonial and Indigenous theorists for presuming an undifferentiated humanity responsible for ecological crises. Speculative comics offer strategies for representing multiple scales of space and time that call into question the ‘human’ as a geological force. While autobiographical and documentary comics represent the scale of individual human experience, speculative comics feature nonhuman spaces and times on multiple, asynchronous scales. This article first contextualizes the representation of space and time in speculative Anglophone comics from early superhero comics to the contemporary period, then focusing on three case studies drawn from contemporary Anglophone comics: Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham’s Nameless (2015), Warren Ellis and Jason Howard’s Trees (2014–2016, 2020), and Ram V and Filipe Andrade’s The Many Deaths of Laila Starr (2021).

Superman as the Measure of All Things: Black Gods and White Saviours in Watchmen and Doomsday Clock

Abstract While the groundbreaking graphic novel Watchmen (1986) responded to Cold War paranoia with a nihilistic critique of a benevolent God, recent spinoffs have taken radically different approaches to race and Christology in the Trump Era. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ original Watchmen has spawned two unlikely and unauthorised—by Moore, at least—quasi-sequels in different media: HBO’s limited TV series Watchmen (2019), created by Damon Lindelof, and Geoff Johns and Gary Frank’s graphic novel Doomsday Clock (2020). Like estranged siblings, HBO’s Watchmen and Doomsday Clock take the same source material in opposite directions. HBO’s Watchmen explores themes of racial justice by foregrounding 1921’s Tulsa Massacre and vesting Black characters with divine power. In contrast, Doomsday Clock departs from the original Watchmen’s cynicism about cultural and political change, embodying its message of hope and renewal in a white saviour. This article contributes to the growing body of literature examining how pop culture circulates Christological concepts by exploring the racial and theological significance of two of DC Comics’ most iconic characters—Superman and Dr Manhattan. I examine how Black theologians conceptualise Christology, discuss the deistic portrayal of Dr Manhattan in the original Watchmen, analyse the character’s incarnational iteration in the television series, and contrast this with how moral influence Christology underpins the relationship between Superman and Dr Manhattan in Doomsday Clock to show that superhero comics in particular, and pop culture more broadly, are crucial sites of Christological imagination and negotiation over race.

“Becoming Fantastical” in Black Superhero Comics

“Becoming Fantastical” in Black Superhero Comics

Superhero Storytelling: the Law, Sovereignty and Time

In both Comics Studies and Cultural Legal Studies, questions about the relationship between superheroes and the law have most commonly been treated in terms of vigilantism or in relation to the concept of sovereignty. With regard to sovereignty, though, the tendency has been to explore the concept in relation to its fundamental spatial organisation. In this article, however, I would like to consider law and sovereignty in relation to time. In particular how they are linked to the regulation and control of stories that recount histories and with that determine how identities and the legal and normative frameworks that support them are imagined in the future. To do this the article firstly introduces the work of Robert Cover and his definition on nomos as a normative universe in which we dwell. To this I add the work of Scott Richard Lyons to talk about expressions of ‘rhetorical sovereignty’ in two superhero comics: Captain America: Truth: Red, White and Black, and Blue Marvel. These are read as examples of legal storytelling that seek to change the mode of public discourse; challenge dominant (racist) representations, and reset the debate in the search for and application of justice.

Of Auction Records and Non-Fungible Tokens: On the New Valences of Superhero Comics

This article examines a recent form of marketing superhero comics that has garnered extensive media attention and has been promoted as the next big step in comics production: the decision by companies like Marvel Comics and DC Comics to offer selections of their intellectual properties as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Focusing specifically on Marvel Comics’ collaboration with the VeVe app, which serves as a digital auction house through which customers can buy comics and related merchandise, this article suggests that we are witnessing the popularization of an already popular product (superhero comics) in a process that is indicative of larger transformations of the popular. As an agent of such transformations, superhero comics were introduced in the 1930s and 40s as a “low medium” with mass appeal that was critically devalued by proponents of high culture, but they are now widely celebrated as a “popular medium.” We argue that this transformation from a popular but devalued (“low”) product to a popular and culturally valued (but not necessarily “high” cultural) artifact marks a shift from qualitative to quantitative valuation that was driven at least in part by popular practices of collecting, archiving, and auctioning that have enabled the ongoing adaptation of these comics to new social, technological, and media demands. The article uses the newsworthiness of big auction sales and the sky-rocketing prices that well-preserved comic books can garner as a framework for assessing the appearance of superhero NFTs and for gauging the implications of this new media form for the cultural validation of comics.

Ms. Marvel and those Persian guys: unpacking Kamala Khan’s layers of crazy

ABSTRACT Upon her introduction as the new Ms. Marvel in 2013, the Pakistani-American superhero Kamala Khan was celebrated, by audiences and critics alike, as a welcome addition to the world of superhero comics. Familiar superhero tropes and ethical dilemmas were given an added twist for Marvel’s first Muslim protagonist as the teenage girl strives to reconcile her newfound powers with the moral authorities of her family and her faith. Many comics scholars reserved special praise for the nuanced and unobtrusive way in which the new Ms. Marvel introduces American readers to Muslim culture by following its eminently ‘relatable’ heroine on her search for moral guidance, whereas others were more sceptical of the extent to which the comic’s representation of Muslims can be considered progress. This article probes this ambivalence by analysing the cultural authorities invoked in the first eleven issues of the series. Instead of resolving the critical disagreement, a close reading of Kamala Khan’s implicit and explicit appeals to authority allows for a more complicated and richer understanding of the comic’s, as well as its eponymous intersectional superheroine’s, ambiguity.

‘You’re a refugee, are you not?’ ‘Extraordinary bodies’, monstrous outsiders and US refugee policies in superhero comics

In the 1970s and 1980s, comic book publishing giants DC and Marvel sought to diversify their cast of superheroes to better represent their US readership. While the publishers’ increasingly diverse cast of numerous US constituencies sought to reflect a shift towards greater representation, the flow of migrants/immigrants/refugees that marked the cold war years of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s remained largely out of the pages of mainstream comics. However, Marvel’s Chris Claremont and DC’s Marv Wolfman and George Perez introduced Vietnamese refugees to two teenage teams in the early 1980s. This article seeks to examine the way these characters, Marvel’s Karma and DC’s Thunder and Lightning, reflect US political rhetoric concerning the South East Asian refugee crisis in the late 1970s/early 1980s. Marvel’s and DC’s characters represent two poles of political thought concerning refugees; Karma is depicted as a victim of communism who is rescued by the United States, while Thunder and Lightning are villains who seek to upend US patriarchal relationships with Asian nations. Using comic studies’ scholarship and current discussions in critical refugee studies, this article argues that the depictions of these refugees reflect national discourse concerning the ideals of the United States.

“Fourth‐wall breakiness or whatevs”: Presumed self‐awareness in American superhero comics

AbstractStudies on reflexivity in the field of comics studies have been scarce and, more often than not, disconnected from each other, which has resulted in overlapping, and sometimes even contradicting, classifications of reflexive devices. Therefore, this article analyzes different instances of self‐awareness in American superhero comics, as it has become quite a popular feature in recent years. In order to systematize the corpus of American comics which feature self‐aware characters, Pardo's theoretical model of reflexivity results highly advantageous due to the fact that its transmedia categories provide a useful framework to explore those elements which are particular to comics narration, such as panels, speech balloons, splash pages, and more of the like. At the same time, this theoretical model connects comics' self‐consciousness to the larger storytelling tradition of Western culture—after all, some of the most important studies on reflexivity stem from literary and film studies, from scholars such as Alter, Hutcheon, Waugh, and Stam, to mention a few. This article, then, provides a theoretical review of key definitions from the field of reflexivity before applying said categories to a corpus of American superhero comics which includes titles such as The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Black Hammer, and Empowered, as well as some Bat‐Mite strips and a few Deadpool and Harley Quinn issues. The analysis mainly focuses on the diegetic disruptions that self‐aware characters trigger in comics—particularly considering the formal elements of the medium—to prove that reflexivity, despite having been deemed as a tool to tackle serious existential and ontological issues in canonical works, operates as a bridge which brings readers as close as possible to the fictional realities in their favorite superhero comics.