Gender and the Superhero Narrative

305 Pages·2018·11.956 MB·English

by  Michael Goodrum (editor), Tara Prescott-Johnson (editor), Philip Smith (editor)

GENDERAND
THE

SUPERHERO

NARRATIVE

GENDER
AND

THE

SUPERHERO

NARRATIVE
Edited by
MICHAEL GOODRUM
TARA PRESCOTT
& PHILIP SMITH
University Press of Mississippi / Jackson
www.upress.state.ms.us
The University Press of Mississippi is a member of
the Association of University Presses.
Copyright © 2018 by University Press of Mississippi
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing 2018
∞
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Goodrum, Michael D., 1983– editor. | Prescott, Tara, 1976– editor. |
Smith, Philip, 1983– editor.
Title: Gender and the superhero narrative / edited by Michael Goodrum, Tara
Prescott, and Philip Smith.
Description: Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, [2018] | Includes
bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2018011388 (print) | LCCN 2018016149 (ebook) | ISBN
9781496818812 (epub single) | ISBN 9781496818829 (epub institutional) |
ISBN 9781496818836 (pdf single) | ISBN 9781496818843 (pdf institutional)
| ISBN 9781496818805 (cloth)
Subjects: LCSH: Women superheroes. | Sex role in mass media. | Women in mass
media. | LCGFT: Literary criticism.
Classification: LCC PN1995.9.S76 (ebook) | LCC PN1995.9.S76 G46 2018 (print)
| DDC 791.43/6522—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018011388
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
CONTENTS
VII Acknowledgments
IX Foreword
Ryan North
3 Introduction
Michael Goodrum, Tara Prescott, and Philip Smith
POLITICS AND INTERSECTIONALITY
23 “Yeah, I Think There Is Still Hope”: Youth, Ethnicity,
Faith, Feminism, and Fandom in Ms. Marvel
Mel Gibson
45 Intersectional Feminism in Bitch Planet:
Moving Comics, Fandom, and Activism beyond the Page
Maite Urcaregui
74 “I Was Never the Hero That You Wanted Me to Be”:
Feminism and Resistance to Militarism in Marvel’s Jessica Jones
Samira Nadkarni
101 The Queen of Burlesque:
The Subtle (as a Hammer) Satire of Bomb Queen
Christina M. Knopf
VI Contents
QUEER IDENTITIES
124 “Curiouser and Curiouser”:
Revisiting “The Woman Question” in Batwoman: Elegy
Lisa K. Perdigao
144 Rule 63: Genderswapping in Female Superhero Cosplay
Christopher McGunnigle
180 Faces of Abjectivity: The Uncanny Mystique and Transsexuality
Dorian L. Alexander
INDUSTRY AND FANDOM
205 From Princess to Protagonist: Redesigning the Video Game Superhero
Vanessa Hemovich
221 The Evolution of Female Readership: Letter Columns in Superhero Comics
Tim Hanley
251 The Gwenaissance: Gwen Stacy and the Progression of Women in Comics
Gabriel Gianola and Janine Coleman
285 About the Editors and Contributors
289 Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The editors would like to extend their gratitude to Vijay Shah, editor at the Uni-
versity Press of Mississippi, for his support of this project and the opportunity
to further the conversation about the role of gender in contemporary comics
and other media. We are honored to have worked closely with the eleven schol-
ars who devoted themselves wholeheartedly to crafting the essays presented
here. We are especially grateful to the Unbeatable Ryan North for providing
an introduction that perfectly matches the spirit of this collection. Several oth-
ers offered their insight to this collection as well, including Aaron Trammell,
Assistant Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, and
Osvaldo Oyola. Finally, we would like to thank Stephanie Stella, who created
images for our collection.
Michael Goodrum would like to thank his fellow editors for putting up with
him while he blundered from pneumonia into paternity leave and out the other
side. He could not have got through the former without Errol Flynn (thanks,
Errol!) and either without his wife, Emma. Thanks also go to the rest of the
Goodrum Girls, Anna and Elise, for smiles, songs, and snuggles. He would also
like to thank the students on his Comics module at Canterbury Christ Church
University, and Gavan Lennon, who helped him teach it in its first year. Michael
Goodrum plays Fender and Rickenbacker basses, and uses Electro-Harmonix
pedals and Ashdown amplifiers.
Tara Prescott is grateful to her coeditors for the opportunity to collaborate
with them once more and for their striking, original insight into the “four-color
fantasies, which include men in brightly colored costumes fighting endless soap
opera battles” (to quote Neil Gaiman). She would also like to thank contributor
Maite Urcaregui for being a scholarly inspiration and first-rate national confer-
ence companion, and contributor Gabriel Gianola, whose unparalleled passion
for visual art (comics, television, film, Nightmare Before Christmas tchotchkes)
is a treasure. If the library in the Dreaming has a comics section, then Gabe
would be its Lucien.
VII
VIII ACknowledgments
Philip Smith wishes to thank his platonic academic life-partner, Mitch, and
Tara, who blew us away with her chapter in Firefly Revisited and has never
stopped bringing the thunder since. Thanks also go to Stephanie, the superhero
who saved him with boundless love and tea throughout this project and beyond.
FOREWORD
Ryan North
Hi, I’m Ryan! I’m the writer of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, a book me and
Erica Henderson (on art!) and Rico Renzi (on colors!) create together. Squirrel
Girl’s origin is pretty well known at this point, so I’ll sketch it in only briefly: she
was first created in 1991 by Will Murray (writer) and Steve Ditko (artist), and if
Ditko’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he also co-created Spider-Man (and
if Spidey’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s been in lots of movies, includ-
ing several that were good!). This story introduced us to Doreen Green, age
fourteen, a young woman who has the proportional strength of a squirrel, can
talk to squirrels, and in her first appearance—which was also all but guaranteed
to be her last—helped Iron Man defeat Doctor Doom, thanks to her army of
squirrels.
It was fun, but goofy, and that went against the darker and grittier style of the
time. And then nothing really happened with Squirrel Girl for over a decade.
Over this time—as part of the larger trend toward “realism”—most of Doctor
Doom’s losses were retconned. This is a thing that happens in comics not infre-
quently, where authors go back and change what we thought we knew. It’s got
lots of uses: updating a character for a more modern time, undoing a story that
doesn’t work, and patching over the seams that inevitably show up when you’ve
got dozens of writers working in a shared universe. These retcons were designed
to restore Doctor Doom to an actual threat and revealed to readers that it wasn’t
Doctor Doom HIMSELF who suffered all those losses after all: it was a look-
alike Doombot, and everyone was just confused!
And that would’ve been the end of it, except for one thing: because of
Squirrel Girl’s obscureness, nobody ever got around to retconning that one
time she defeated Doctor Doom—who was, by now, one of the most powerful
villains in the Marvel Universe. And eventually people noticed, and “Hey, did
Ix