Bending Steel: Modernity and the American Superhero

BENDING STEEL

BENDING

STEEL

Modernity and the American Superhero

ALDO J. REGALADO

www.upress.state.ms.us

The University Press of Mississippi is a member

of the Association of American University Presses.

Copyright © 2015 by University Press of Mississippi

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

First printing 2015

∞

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Regalado, Aldo J.

Bending steel : modernity and the American superhero / Aldo J.

Regalado.

     pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-62846-221-0 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-62674-614-5 (ebook)

1. Comic books, strips, etc.—United States—History. 2. Superheroes

in literature. 3. American fiction—20th century—History and

criticism. 4. Modernism (Aesthetics)—United States—Influence.

5. Superhero films—History and criticism. I. Title.

PN6725.R44 2015

741.5’973—dc23                     2015005899

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

To Melissa Regalado—My Wonder Woman

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

CHAPTER ONE

Secret Origins

CHAPTER TWO

Jungle Lords, Haunting Horrors, and the Big City

CHAPTER THREE

From Strange Visitors to Men of Tomorrow

CHAPTER FOUR

From Steel and Shadows to the Flag

CHAPTER FIVE

Domestication, Dysfunction, and the Rise of Superhero Fandom

CHAPTER SIX

From Renaissance to the Dark Age

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

Anybody who’s worked on a project as complex as a book knows that the debts incurred over many years are myriad and impossible to fully acknowledge. For that reason, I would like to offer a general thank you to everybody who supported me in this endeavor in ways large and small, silent and vocal, direct and indirect, known and unknown.

A special thanks go to my mother and father, Maria de Lourdes Regalado and Aldo Regalado, for giving me life and love. Papi, in particular, put me on the path to write this book when he introduced me to Star Wars and the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs back in 1977. I also thank my brother and sister, Mia Regalado and Otto Jose Regalado, and the rest of my family. The love, encouragement, and acceptance that they offered me over the years was (and continues to be) an indispensable blessing.

Thanks to Gregory Onley (who introduced me to Marvel Comics superheroes when he taught me how to play Champions back in 1981), to Fernando Regalado (who showed me that DC Comics characters were worth reading too), and to The Guys. This group of lifelong friends directly shaped many aspects of this project. J. Michael Lundstrom, in particular, inspired me with his encyclopedic knowledge of comic book lore and his infectious enthusiasm for all aspects of the geek subculture that we share. Mario Cubas, Alex Cubas, Jason Cubas, Daniel Hupp, Russell Kirkham, Andrew Yañez, Jennifer Moore, Jan Argilagos, Emilio Flecha, Dan Doyle, Patrick Griffin, and the rest of the gang also inspired and supported me throughout. If I listened closely enough to their wisdom and insight, this book will resonate beyond the confines of academia’s ivory towers. Thanks also to my more recent friends Rus Boyd, Walt Robillard, and Andrew Collas. Our collaboration on SUPERS! Revised exposed me to new ideas and provided fuel for my engine during the final phases of this project.

I thank the Skokans (George, Beatrice, Nicolas, and Christopher) and the Schwabachs (Aaron, Zhou, Veronica, Jessica, and Daniel) for their friendship as well as for modeling the family priorities that helped to keep me sane and sensible throughout the writing process. I am also grateful to my students, colleagues, and friends from Palmer Trinity School (especially Mark Hayes, David Cutler, Ruthanne Vogel, Tom Collins, Kirk Hatcher, Bill Stanard, and Sean Adderley), who celebrated and encouraged my progress at every turn. Equally special are the students who sat for my Comics in America class at the University of Miami.

None of this would have been possible without the intellectual guidance, mentorship, and support of my colleagues at the University of Miami. Robin Bachin, Don Spivey, Edward Baptist, and Joseph Alkana served on my dissertation committee, held me to high standards, and showed unyielding faith in my ability to produce quality work. I owe similar debts of gratitude to Whittington Johnson, Michael Krenn, Hugh Thomas, Gregory Bush, Edmund Abaka, Tim Huebner, Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, Lenny del Granado, Don Carreau, Craig Likness, Rochelle Pienn, John Crocitti, Michael Paul, Greg Lightfoot, and the many other professors, graduate students, and support staff who provided feedback, support, direction, and friendship over the years. The same goes for the broader world of comics scholars, especially Peter Coogan, Randy Duncan, Jeff McLaughlin, and Ian Gordon. Their example kept me going, and their feedback improved my work. Randall Scott, George McWhorter, and their support staffs at the Michigan State University and University of Louisville libraries, respectively, deserve special mention for the assistance they provided during the research phase of the project and beyond.

Thanks to Mark Evans and all the other folks at Outland Station, my friendly neighborhood comic book store of many years, who kept this project joyful with their stories, reviews, tips, and laughter. Thanks also to the long list of comics professionals, past and present, who produced the stuff of superhero comics. Their work brought wonder and joy to my life, both personally and professionally.

I reserve my most profound expression of gratitude for my immediate family. I am forever indebted to Melissa, my wife and best friend, who in addition to love, affection, understanding, kindness, advice, and encouragement offered absolutely unconditional support for the project despite the sacrifice that it exacted on our time together. Finally, I am eternally grateful to my dear daughters, Athena Renee and Ayanna Thandiwe, for their sustaining love and their boundless and infectious energy. They are my little heroes and my hope for the future.

BENDING STEEL

Introduction

Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!

Although first broadcast over the radio in 1940, millions of people the world over still recognize these three simple phrases as an introduction to Superman, the first modern superhero.¹ Reactions to these phrases undoubtedly vary. For some, they might evoke wonder, power, and the thrill of adventure. For others, they might usher forth a flow of childhood memories or yearnings for a simpler time. Still others might catch themselves in the midst of an eye-roll response to what they perceive as a corniness or absurdity inherent in the genre. Few, however, stop to ponder what these phrases hint about Superman’s origins, about the cultural form he inspired, or about American society as a whole. Indeed, for most people superhero fiction remains a rather uncomplicated cultural form. The stuff of animated cartoons, video games, summer blockbuster movies, action figures, and, less frequently for twenty-first-century consumers, comic books, superheroes are broadly viewed as mindless entertainment par excellence: the type of fun that kids enjoy and eventually outgrow, the kind of fantasy that adults might revisit on those moments when they want to escape from reality, a sort of cultural background noise, easily understood for the naïve morality that it conveys, instantly appropriate for acculturating and entertaining children but otherwise unworthy of much attention. This normative status of superheroes, however, is precisely why they deserve greater scrutiny, for it is at this level of practice that culture is most able to articulate myths that define the value systems and power structures of a society.²

Considered in this light, a more critical examination of Superman’s introductory litany points us towards a deeper understanding of the genre he represents. By measuring Superman’s powers against those of the bullet, the train, and the skyscraper, these phrases offer clues that hint at the cultural, social, and historical origins of this uniquely American phenomenon. In order to understand these clues with some measure of historical accuracy, however, one should try to understand them in their original context—that of Depression-era America on the eve of the United States’ entrance into World War II. To such audiences, bullets and the guns that fire them would have conjured up images not only of speed, but also of violence and power—violence and power employed in imperial ventures both on the North American continent and abroad as well as in urban crime and in law enforcement. The train—instrumental in conquering the West, essential to the expansion of American commerce, and a testament to the vast industrial capacity of the nation—became for many Americans of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the ultimate symbol of progress. Similarly, the skyscraper transformed American society, dwarfing the residents of already populous cities and housing within their walls a growing number of office workers who, according to many social critics, found their opportunities for personal freedom curtailed by the realities of mass-market capitalism. Notably, then, the Superman of the late 1930s and early 1940s was defined by his triumph over technological, institutional, infrastructural, and bureaucratic forces that most would celebrate as markers of American military, economic, and global supremacy. Furthermore, Superman was not alone. Most of the superheroes created to follow in the wake of his success were similarly defined by their oppositional or transcendent stance towards indices of American power and progress. At their genesis, therefore, superheroes are cultural responses to American modernity.

Understanding modernity, therefore, is essential for fully grasping the cultural significance of the American superhero. As used here, modernity refers to the condition that began to emerge sometime in the sixteenth century, when societies that were linked together in the aftermath of the Columbian voyages began to shift from premodern ways of living, as defined by enchantment, agricultural modes of production, and hierarchical governance, to the allegedly more liberalizing arrangements that found expression through rationalism, capitalism, representative government, technological innovation, industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and the rise of modern societies. A centuries-long process, modernity passed through many phases, several of which are relevant to the production of American heroes and superheroes. The first of these, which I refer to as republican modernity, involved the rapid development that occurred during the nineteenth century as a consequence of expanding the early Republic and the onset of the Market Revolution. In the years after the Civil War, republican modernity gave way to industrial modernity, which saw its fullest expression in the years leading into World War II. I use the term atomic modernity to refer to modernity’s suburban, Cold War phase, and the term postmodernity to refer to the period from 1980 to the present. Although many equated (and continue to equate) such developments with progress, modernity also undermined traditional systems while creating new and unpredictable realities. Sometimes modernity produced winners, but many people experienced dislocation and loss as a consequence of its rapid, rambling, and variegated trajectory. Consequently, Americans experienced the onset and evolution of modernity with equal parts excitement and anxiety. Superheroes are the embodiment of such sentiments.³

Although Superman was created during modernity’s mature industrial phase, Americans had been employing heroic fiction as a means of navigating modernity’s challenges as early as the nineteenth century. The work of authors writing in the genre during the early national period is rife with considerations of how democracy, capitalism, slavery, westward expansion, immigration, urbanization, technological innovation, and increased mobility shaped the nation’s character. Initially written and distributed by people of privilege, these stories too often served to underpin the power of traditional elites at the expense of those marginalized by ethnicity, race, class, or gender. Such categories, therefore, became significant for defining the contours of modernity. The work of such authors is important, not only because it encapsulates nineteenth-century American worldviews, but also because the aesthetics and archetypes they generated remained present in the culture, thus setting the parameters for future authors writing heroic fiction. Superman, therefore, needs to be understood in relationship to his antecedents as much as he should be considered a product of the age that produced him. The Man of Tomorrow began his career confined in a cultural cage forged from the stuff of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century heroic archetypes, and ideologies regarding race, class, gender, and nationalism are counted among its bars.

Superman, however, was originally imagined by young men who stood at the margins of society. Consequently, he struggles against his cultural confines, promising to overcome them just as he bends steel with his bare hands. The never-ending battles that Superman, his creators, and his audiences wage against these metaphorical restraints have not resulted in the cage’s utter destruction, but they have led to the continual reconfiguration of its structure and, by extension, to transformations of American culture and society in the context of an ever-evolving modernity. Bending Steel is my effort to explore the nature and substance of these transformations.

Because I am interested in how superheroes shaped both individual lives and broader social and cultural realities, this study focuses on the lives of producers, creators, and consumers as much as it does on the ways in which superheroes were actually rendered on the comic book page. I examine how these various stakeholders experienced American modernity, how these experiences informed their commercial and creative choices with regards to the publication and interpretation of superhero fiction, and how this process shaped the formation of personal and national identities. Much of this analysis is generational in nature. How, for example, did Americans living through the Great Depression experience American life, and what did superheroes mean to them in that context? How did baby boomers understand superheroes while growing up during the early stages of the Cold War? Pursuing such questions uncovers the meaning and significance of superheroes at a particular moment in time. My analytical approach also involves a cross-generational approach. How, for instance, did the work of nineteenth-century authors inspire, constrain, and otherwise influence the imaginations of early twentieth-century artists and writers? This line of inquiry allows me to chart lines of authorial influence and account for how the past is always alive in present day cultural discourse.

Whether generational or cross-generational, I aim to move beyond simply considering the roles played by writers and artists in articulating meaning through superhero fiction. To that end, I explore mainstream responses to superhero fiction as well as the formation and evolution of fan communities centered on superhero fiction. These voices give us a more robust sense of what Americans were actually doing with superheroes in their own lives. Drawing from personal testimony in the form of memoirs, letters, interviews, trade magazines, fanzines, and Internet fan forums, therefore, as well as from an examination of the heroic fiction itself, Bending Steel reveals how the big forces of American modernity shaped the lives of Americans on an individual level and how these individual responses were articulated through culture industries to shape and reshape mainstream notions of American identity.

Chapter One begins by considering how early nineteenth-century American authors employed heroic fiction to define the national character at a time when the United States was engaging modernity on its own terms for the first time in its history. For this generation of Americans, coming to terms with modernity involved negotiating the terms of the revolutionary promise that all men are created equal and have an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the context of the Market Revolution. The republican modernity that emerged in this era promised to realize the American Revolution’s liberalizing sentiments through opportunities created by improvements in infrastructure, as well as transportation and communications technologies. Foremost among those who responded to these changes through heroic fiction was James Fenimore Cooper, who created Natty Bumppo, the renowned frontiersman of his Leatherstocking Tales, as a means of explaining the national character to both his audiences and himself. Hailing from an elite New York family, Cooper worried that the turbulent and disputatious politics of post-Revolutionary America would overthrow traditional arrangements that kept men of his ilk in positions of privilege. Consequently, he imagined an American hero who embraced the competitive spirit of nineteenth-century America, while affirming traditional notions of race, class, and gender. In this way, he gave voice to his more conservative inclinations while simultaneously finding a commercial niche for himself in the emerging market economy. Incredibly successful, the heroic template established through Natty Bumppo served as a starting point for future heroic formulations.⁴

The chapter continues by examining the ways that other antebellum authors challenged Cooper’s heroic paradigm as the Market Revolution intensified. First, the work of writers we now associate with the American Gothic countered some of the more triumphalist elements of Cooper’s fiction, suggesting that the nation was doomed as a consequence of the violence and corruption that accompanied slavery, westward expansion, and other unsavory aspects of America’s modern enterprise. The ineffectual protagonists appearing in some of Edgar Allan Poe’s fiction are indicative of this trend. Dime novel writers, however, proved more forceful in countering Cooper’s literary wishful thinking, creating working-class heroes that openly challenged the legitimacy of elites, sometimes even by appropriating the lineaments of the frontiersman for proletarian ends.⁵ Laced with concerns over race, class, gender, democracy, and nationalism, the cultural exchanges resulting from these clashing visions certainly informed nineteenth-century cultural politics, but they also fashioned the aesthetic, literary, and thematic tools employed by future authors writing in the same tradition.

Chapter Two explains the ways in which this earlier heroic fiction developed in the immediate post-Civil War era and into the early twentieth century as republican modernity gave way to the industrial modernity. Responding to new heights of immigration, industrialization, urbanization, mechanization, and modernization, the next generation of American authors to write heroic fiction updated earlier heroic archetypes as creative and personal responses to industrial modernity.⁶ Generally speaking, their fiction involved imaginative withdrawals from modern society that affirmed white middle-class masculinity in the face of those forces they perceived as threatening to its viability.⁷ Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan of the Apes, for instance, allowed him and his readers an imaginative escape from modern urban society. Central to this escape was a rejection of cities, technology, bureaucracy, and business culture, as well as the celebration of white, male Anglo-Saxonism over others defined by gender, class, race, and ethnicity.⁸ Burroughs and his fiction are particularly relevant for understanding superhero fiction because of his influence. Tarzan especially became a national sensation, appearing not only in the pulps, but also in books, comics, radio, film, television, and advertising. Among those who consumed his enduring image as children were the young men who started the comic book industry and imagined the modern superhero in the 1930s. The chapter also considers the work of H. P. Lovecraft, who worked in the less triumphalist genre of horror fiction. The paralyzed protagonists appearing in Lovecraft’s works illuminate the contours of characters like Tarzan through contrast. Furthermore, the work of Lovecraft and others working in similar genres helped to preserve the aesthetics of the American Gothic, which also informed superhero fiction.

Chapter Three and Chapter Four examine the transition from these earlier characters to the American superhero. Analyzing the lineaments of characters like Superman, Batman, Captain America, and Wonder Woman, among others, I argue that superheroes were instrumental in recasting the way that Americans engaged modernity during the 1930s and 1940s. Unlike previous fictional heroes, who often fled urban environments to prove their manhood in the wilderness away from the corrupting influences of the industrial city, superheroes tackled modernity head-on. Sometimes they did so in rage, but more often, they did so with playful wit and carnival humor. Always, however, they did so with confidence and prowess. In short, superheroes expressed a resolve to accept the city as a reality of American life and treated the industrial landscape as a space to play in and triumph over. This shift reveals the sensibilities of new immigrant creators, many of them Jewish, who had different experiences, dreams, and fears than the Anglo-Saxon creators of the previous century. Effectively excluded from the promise of America by anti-Semitic social and cultural politics, these young men negotiated their way into the cultural mainstream through their characters and through the creation of the comic book industry itself.

The immigrant and ethnic backgrounds of these creators also informed the ways they engaged the use of race in the crafting heroic identities. While nineteenth- and early twentieth-century heroes were usually imagined as being explicitly Anglo-Saxon, sometimes even drawing their power from this fact, Superman was imagined as an alien from another planet. Superman, therefore, was imagined as a super-immigrant and decidedly not as an Anglo-Saxon. As such, he subtly (but definitely) muted the racial and ethnic requirements for defining American heroism. In this way, he served both to usher in and to help navigate notions of pluralism that were gaining currency in American society during and after World War II.

More generally, the superhero of the 1930s and 1940s articulated shifting cultural priorities regarding the relationship of the people to the state. Rejecting earlier notions that Americans could achieve success solely on the merits of their own work and efforts, early superhero fiction embraced the notion that some problems are too big to be solved by individual citizens alone and therefore require intervention from a pro-social outside force. In this way, superhero fiction sometimes conveyed New Deal sensibilities of an activist state that provides safety nets for Americans experiencing hardship. Through their selfless acts of service, these superheroes highlighted the value of self-sacrifice for the sake of the greater community. Even while doing so, however, superhero fiction of the time conveyed skepticism that governmental or business institutions would act according to these prosocial dictates without occasionally forceful reminders that they should. Sometimes serving as the agents of such reminders, superheroes affirmed New Deal sensibilities without necessarily conveying faith in the systems, agencies, and organizations charged with implementing policy.

Although culturally and socially significant, I argue that care should be taken to qualify the extent of these seemingly progressive transformations. Superheroes were, after all, crafted to suit the needs of their creators. In many ways, their original forms were inclusion fantasies that extended only as far as necessary to take new immigrants and their children into the mainstream. Superman, for instance, arguably broadened the definition of whiteness to include a wider spectrum of European immigration, but whiteness remained operative in superhero fiction. Traditionally masculine in orientation, superhero fiction generally failed to bend the bars that confined women in cages of sexism and objectification. Linked to notions of American patriotism and military might during World War II, superhero fiction often served to reaffirm notions of American exceptionalism at home and abroad. Despite these limitations and others, however, superheroes effectively contributed to changing the nature of American social and cultural discourse in the 1930s and 1940s.

Chapter Five begins with the waning popularity of superheroes in the post-World War II era, a phenomenon that coincided with many second-generation new immigrants achieving their dreams of inclusion by moving into suburban communities. The chapter then moves to examine the anti-comics crusade of the 1950s. Rooted in the ethos of an atomic modernity in which the suburban home was thought of as a vanguard against internal and external threats, this mainstream movement identified the comic book industry as a threat to children and hence to the nation’s virtue and security.⁹ Although crime and horror comics bore the brunt of this assault, superheroes were also targeted; they were accused of undermining gender norms, atomizing families, promoting violent and antisocial behavior, subverting democracy, and otherwise making Americans more susceptible to the values of a capitalist economy run amok. The success of the anti-comics crusade bolstered the success of superheroes (at the expense of other genres) but only after the comic book companies reworked their characters. As a result of these changes, superheroes were stripped of their more transgressive qualities and made to conform to Cold War consensus culture. The chapter concludes, however, by examining the ways in which baby boomer aficionados of the superhero genre organized themselves into fan communities and reactivated the superhero’s anti-modern potential during the 1960s as part of a broader rebellion against consensus culture.

Chapter Six begins by noting that this fan activity eventually transformed the comic book industry, as evidenced by the rise of Marvel Comics in the 1960s. Savvy about tapping into the energies of fan interest, Marvel Comics pioneered a new type of superhero that captured the alienation that Americans felt in Cold War America. As the era unfolded, the company attempted to refine its approach by responding to the countercultural movements of the 1960s. Being a business, however, Marvel Comics always tried to appeal to such sensibilities without offending the broader culture. As a consequence, the transgressive potential of Marvel’s superheroes was muted by market concerns. Chapter Six proceeds by charting the ways in which the superhero paradigm introduced by Marvel Comics in the 1960s evolved over the course of the twentieth century, ushering in what many theorists refer to as a postmodern sensibility. Characterized by fluidity, plasticity, alienation, freedom, and a free reign of possibility, this new postmodern approach to superhero fiction pervaded the industry as a whole, and reflected the ways in which creators and fans oriented themselves toward the genre, toward their professional lives, and toward society in general. Increasingly cynical, the American superhero became a vehicle for expressing disgust with and disdain for the meta-narratives of American society.¹⁰ Even the narratives traditionally employed by superhero fiction came under attack by creators and audiences themselves, as evidenced by deconstructionist works like Alan Moore and David Gibbons’s Watchmen, which aims to unveil the social dysfunctions that allegedly lie at the heart of superhero fiction. The book concludes with a brief reflection on the decline of the comic book industry, on the various market strategies used by comic book companies to survive in the limited market of the twenty-first century, on how superheroes are affected by these strategies, and on how these various sensibilities have transitioned into the superhero films of the twenty-first century.

In summation, Bending Steel argues that the American superhero has served, and continues to serve, as an important cultural response to American modernity. The producers, creators, and audiences of American superhero fiction engage the promise, problems, and contradictions of American modernity in a number of ways. They employ them as economic vehicles for the making of profit, but they also use them to articulate longings for freedom and agency in the face of modern forces. The transgressive potential of superhero fiction, however, is limited by the race, class, and gender norms that have shaped its contours (and those of the broader culture) since its origins, as well as by the worldviews and agendas of those who engage in its production and consumption. Finally, in their critique of modernity, superheroes have helped to usher in a new, postmodern consciousness. While this postmodern consciousness offers room for new levels of freedom and expression, it can also be exploited by the culture industries that profit from the production of superhero fiction, therefore strengthening systems that contribute to the social and cultural alienation that make superheroes so appealing to begin with.

Before proceeding, I should clarify a few points regarding the subject matter and scope of Bending Steel. First, one should understand what is meant by the term superhero. For fans, as well as for many casual consumers of American popular culture, this might seem self-evident. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, Spider-Man, and the X-Men are all superheroes, while Natty Bumppo, Calamity Jane, Tarzan, Captain Kirk, Luke Skywalker, Indiana Jones, and Rambo are not. Because the distinction is not obvious to some, however, comics scholar Peter Coogan advances a working definition in his Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre. Using Thomas Schatz’s notion of genre as a story form that has been refined into a formula because of its unique social and/or aesthetic qualities, Coogan sets out to define what those qualities are with regard to superhero fiction.¹¹ Drawing on various sources, including definitions of the superhero appearing in non-academic publications, creator/artist Abner Sundell’s 1942 guide on how to write a good superhero story and the court ruling of Judge Learned Hand, which was written in response to a superhero-related copyright dispute in 1939, Coogan settles on mission, powers, and identity as crucial elements that define the superhero. A superhero, he contends, is

a heroic character with a selfless, prosocial mission; who possesses superpowers, advanced technology, or highly developed physical and/or mental skills; who has a superidentity and iconic costume, which typically express his biography or character, powers, and origin (transformation from ordinary person to superhero); and is generically distinct, i.e. can be distinguished from characters of related genres (fantasy, science fiction, detective, etc.) by a preponderance of generic conventions. Typically, superheroes have dual identities, the ordinary one of which is kept secret.¹²

Among those generic conventions alluded to by Coogan are colorful skintight costumes, billowing capes, intrepid female reporters, helpful police commissioners, sidekicks, superteams, irritable newspaper editors, supervillains, iconic fictional cityscapes, and other elements familiar to most American consumers of superhero fiction. To some degree, it is problematic to have such precise definitions. They threaten to limit dialogue by sharply delineating what can and cannot be discussed in the context of a given genre. A focus of this book, for instance, is the transmission of themes and meanings across genres. Nevertheless, Coogan’s definition is useful for centering this study in the fantastic, colorful, carnivalesque, high-action universes appearing primarily in American comic books since the late 1930s.

Coogan also emphasizes the importance of visual media to the superhero genre. Drawing on Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, Coogan notes that visual cues—such as the S emblazoned on Superman’s chest or the stylized Bat chevron that adorns Batman’s costume—serve to amplify meaning by stripping down an image to its essential idea. Superhero costumes, therefore, provide audiences with a visual iconography that serves to emphasize a superhero’s identity and recognizability through abstraction, a notion with powerful implications for superhero’s cultural and commercial power.¹³ As the visual media primarily responsible for the production of superhero fiction for most of their history, therefore, comic books and the culture surrounding them are the focus of this book. One, however, should not mistake media for genre. While the Archies, Mickey Mouse, the Spirit, and Dennis the Menace have all appeared in comic books, they are not superheroes and will not be discussed in this study.

With a few notable exceptions, superhero stories appearing in film, television, video games, and advertising are not extensively analyzed in this book. While superheroes have appeared in media outside of comics since their inception, comic books remained the primary media for their creation and articulation for decades. Only at the start of the twenty-first century, with the decline of the comic book industry and the sudden rise in popularity of superhero movies, has this begun to change.

Comic books themselves are important to this study because they provide unique opportunities for observing the interactions between producers, creators, and fans. They therefore provide fertile ground for exploring the role and nature of power in the creation and consumption of popular culture. As a response to earlier fictional narratives steeped in nineteenth-century concerns, comic books certainly engaged and perpetuated notions of race, class, gender, and nationalism that continue to underpin America’s social and cultural landscape. This fact, however, does not necessarily imply a lack of audience agency. Indeed, the aforementioned shift from Tarzan to Superman implies that the production of superhero comic books was undertaken in the spirit of transgression. Only through analyzing the ways in which creators and audiences applied (and continue to apply) heroic and superheroic archetypes to their lived experience can we assess the power dynamics of these appropriations. Comic book culture complicates such analysis by blurring the lines between creator, producer, and consumer, sometimes to the point where such lines are indiscernible. Early creators, for instance, were also fans of earlier narratives that shaped their own creative visions, and this fannish sensibility often remained evident well after they entered the industry. Similarly, comic book fans sometimes enter the comic book industry as creators and occasionally rise to positions of significant power in the corporate structure of comic book companies. Additionally, fans engage in their own non-industry related creative endeavors. Using popular superheroes as a springboard for their own artistic expression, these fan productions can nevertheless vary significantly from the industry’s official product. Furthermore, the nature of the industry, along