Table Of ContentSUPERSEX
WORLD COMICS AND GRAPHIC NONFICTION SERIES
Frederick Luis Aldama and Christopher González, editors
The World Comics and Graphic Nonfiction series includes monographs
and edited volumes that focus on the analysis and interpretation of comic
books and graphic nonfiction from around the world. The books published
in the series use analytical approaches from literature, art history, cul-
tural studies, communication studies, media studies, and film studies,
among other fields, to help define the comic book studies field at a time of
great vitality and growth.
OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES
ALLAN W. AUSTIN AND MATT YOCKEY, ED.
PATRICK L. HAMILTON Make Ours Marvel:
All New, All Different? A History of Media Convergence and
Race and the American Superhero a Comics Universe
JORGE SANTOS MARK HEIMERMANN AND
Graphic Memories of the Civil BRITTANY TULLIS, EDS.,
Rights Movement: Reframing Picturing Childhood:
History in Comics Youth in Transnational Comics
BENJAMIN FRASER DAVID WILLIAM FOSTER
The Art of Pere Joan: El Eternauta, Daytripper,
Space, Landscape, and Beyond: Graphic Narrative
and Comics Form in Argentina and Brazil
JAN BAETENS CHRISTOPHER PIZZINO
The Film Photonovel: A Cultural Arresting Development: Comics at
History of Forgotten Adaptations the Boundaries of Literature
MARC SINGER FREDERICK LUIS ALDAMA
Breaking the Frames: Populism Graphic Borders: Latino Comic
and Prestige in Comics Studies Books Past, Present, and Future
SUPERSEX
Sexuality, Fantasy, and
the Superhero
EDITED BY
Anna F. Peppard
University of Texas Press Austin
Copyright © 2020 by the University of Texas Press
All rights reserved
First edition, 2020
Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to:
Permissions
University of Texas Press
P.O. Box 7819
Austin, TX 78713–7819
utpress.utexas.edu/rp-form
♾ The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO
Z39.48–1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Peppard, Anna F., editor.
Title: Supersex : sexuality, fantasy, and the superhero / edited by Anna F.
Peppard.
Description: First edition. | Austin : University of Texas Press, 2020. | Series:
World comics and graphic nonfiction series | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020008797
ISBN 978-1-4773-2160-7 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-4773-2161-4 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-4773-2162-1 (ebook)
ISBN 978-1-4773-2163-8 (ebook other)
Subjects: LCSH: Comic books, strips, etc.—United States—History and
criticism. | Superheroes. | Superhero films—History and criticism. |
Superhero television programs—History and criticism. | Sex in literature. |
Sex in motion pictures. | Sex on television.
Classification: LCC PN6714 .S88 2020 | DDC 809/.9352—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020008797
doi:10.7560/321607
To all the space aliens, mutants, sorcerers, inhumans, androids, and cos-
mic demigods I’ve loved before. Thank you for your tights, electric skin,
supersenses, fur, metallic lips, and occasional thigh-high boots. I couldn’t
have made it through adolescence or my PhD without you.
To my family: my mother, who took me into my first comic book store; my
father, who took me into my first university classroom; and my sister, who
has always taken me seriously, even when I’m being ridiculous.
And to this book’s wonderful contributors, without whose passion and
brilliance this project could not exist.
THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION. Presence and Absence in
Theory and Practice: Locating Supersex 1
ANNA F. PEPPARD
PART I. COMICS
1. Tarpé Mills’s Miss Fury: Costume, Sexuality, and Power 31
RICHARD REYNOLDS
2. Superman Family Values: Supersex in the Silver Age 57
MATT YOCKEY
3. A Storm of Passion: Sexual Agency and Symbolic
Capital in the X-Men’s Storm 79
J. ANDREW DEMAN
4. Dazzler, Melodrama, and Shame:
Mutant Allegory, Closeted Readers 103
BRIAN JOHNSON
5. “Super-Gay” Gay Comix: Tracing the Underground
Origins and Cultural Resonances of LGBTQ Superheroes 129
SARAH M. PANUSKA
6. Parents, Counterpublics, and Sexual Identity
in Young Avengers 151
KEITH FRIEDLANDER
PART II. FILM, TELEVISION, AND FAN CULTURE
7. X-Men Films and the Domestication of Dissent:
Sexuality, Race, and Respectability 175
CHRISTOPHER B. ZEICHMANN
8. Over the Rainbow Bridge:
Female/Queer Sexuality in Marvel’s Thor Film Trilogy 199
SAMANTHA LANGSDALE
9. “No One’s Going to Be Looking at Your Face”:
The Female Gaze and the New (Super)Man in
Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman 221
ANNA F. PEPPARD
10. The Visible and the Invisible:
Superheroes, Pornography, and Phallic Masculinity 245
JEFFREY A. BROWN
11. “I Think That’s My Favorite Weapon in
the Whole Batcave”: Interrogating the Subversions of
Men.com’s Gay Superhero Porn Parodies 265
JOSEPH BRENNAN
12. “That’s Pussy Babe!”: Queering Supergirl’s
Confessions of Power 291
OLIVIA HICKS
13. Meet Stephanie Rogers, Captain America:
Genderbending the Body Politic in Fan Art,
Fiction, and Cosplay 317
ANNE KUSTRITZ
EPILOGUE: The Matter with Size 341
RICHARD HARRISON
CONTRIBUTORS 363
INDEX 367
viii Contents
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