Abstract
The global success of comic book films with women in the title roles such as Wonder Woman (2016) and Captain Marvel (2019) have fostered a greater interest in representations of gender in superhero and comics culture. Coupled with the rise of female comics fandom and a lucrative female consumer market, conversations around social and cultural expressions of femininity, masculinity, and sexuality are the norm in twenty-first-century popular culture. The collection Gender and the Superhero Narrative provides an engaging and productive introduction to feminist theories and methods of scholarship focused on superhero culture and comic studies. Editors Goodrum, Prescott, and Smith argue the appeal of superheroes is part of a popular change in social demographics and cultural movements that go beyond academic interests and also impact creators and fans of the industry. Divided into three sections, Politics and Intersectionality, Queer Identities, and Industry and Fandom, the chapters in the book offer a variety of interdisciplinary approaches and methodologies including character and comics genre analysis, ethnographic studies of fandom, and historical overviews and theoretical applications of feminist and queer studies. The chapters examine comic book storylines, fan responses to characters, the gaming industry, and film and television superhero stories. The range and depth of topics covered make the anthology optimal for use in classes that discuss gender and sexuality, popular culture, media studies, comic studies, and for fans of superhero narratives.
In their introduction, the editors pose key questions that are addressed by the chapters in the book: how do feminist innovations and re-creation of a female superheroes expand, innovate, and change the traditional (posited as male, patriarchal, and militaristic) narrative of the superhero story? How does a feminist narrative offer alternative visions of how (super)power can be utilized to promote social change in the twenty-first century? One way is to consider alternatives to violence as a solution to conflict. Stories that feature heroes such as Superman, Batman, and Captain America rely on physical confrontations that subjugate their opponents and emphasize destruction in visual and textual terms (i.e., POW!). Characters such as Squirrel Girl (writer Ryan North pens the foreword for the collection) and Wonder Woman, however, advocate for peace, love, and reformation as guiding principles in the fight for justice. The opening article argues that the 2014 reinvention of Ms. Marvel in the form of Kamala Khan, a Pakistani American teenager from Jersey City, delivers a character who represents “intersectionality” with regards to gender, faith, and race in a post–9-11 and social media–influenced environment. All the chapters in the book offer narrative realignments of how women are positioned with regards to patriarchy, power, and privilege.
Many of the chapters argue that the most effective female superhero narratives focus on character development and relationships as alternatives to male-driven storylines that feature women (even those who have super abilities) as sexual objects or side-kicks. Dorian Alexander explores physical expressions of male and female bodies in the analysis of illustration and the text in shapeshifter Mystique from the X-men Comics. He extrapolates from trans theorists, such as Gayle Salamon, to discuss how Mystique “destabilizes” the notion of body (p. 183) through the representation of body morphology and reframes the hero/villain binaries associated with the character. In another chapter, authors Gianola and Coleman discuss how Gwen Stacy is no longer Spider-man’s dead girlfriend but the superhero Spider-Gwen who is also a woman with a close-knit circle of female friends. As the authors say, “She is not limited by her gender, or the roles the men in her life want to impose on her” (p. 275). In the section on Queer Identities, Christopher McGunnigle’s ethnographic study is particularly effective in examining the freedoms and constraints of female fans who engage in gender swapping cos-play or costume play at New York’s Comic Con in 2011 and 2015. Through interviews and photos, he shows how female fans are active agents who address female sexuality and empowerment in their costume and character choices. The chapters could be especially useful as case studies in courses in sociology, media, literature, and gender and sexuality studies.
As a whole, the collection provides a variety of interdisciplinary approaches that address both academic and fan interests. The collection could benefit from attending to trends in the industry such as the development of web comics and international and transnational comics’ depictions of gender. Overall, however, this compilation provides an engaging introduction to central issues regarding how female superheroes address representations of equality, justice, and female empowerment that are absent in law and in government policies. The collection addresses the conception of the female superhero narrative that not only resists institutionalized systems of oppression (including comics production and marketing and the entertainment industry) but also asks consumers and creators to question and push our ideas and definitions of who and what comprises a superhero.
