The Superhero Multiverse

Blitzed with cascades of superhumans that zip like quicksilver betwixt and between print, podcast, videogame, as well as big-tent and smartphone silverscreens, virtuoso comics scholar Lorna Piatti-Farnell, and her league of extraordinary cultural critics, invite us to take a critical pause. From incisive analyses of transmedial recreations of Wonder Woman, Scarlet Witch, Blade, Captain America, Spidey, and Jessica Jones as well as the Umbrella Academy and Power Ranger teams, we’re finally handed the roadmap we’ve been longing for: insight, understanding—knowledge. The Superhero Multiverse wakes us to long and deep histories of class-, race-, and gender-based societal traumas. It shouts from rooftops the emancipatory power of superhero narrative performativities!

-- Frederick Luis Aldama, University of Texas at Austin

This collection of 16 essays “follows in the footsteps of existing scholarship in the field ... and focus[es] on the textual and cultural impact of the superhero icon on transmedia production, with an emphasis on re-adapting, re-imagining, and re-making” (p. 2). The volume considers an array of topics in an accessible, intelligent manner. This includes analysis of the dramatic podcast Wolverine: The Long Night, engagements with streaming programs such as The Umbrella Academy and Jessica Jones, and considerations of Batman across cultures. Focused almost exclusively on contemporary iterations of the superhero, often beyond the confines of the printed page, this volume will appeal to students and scholars of popular culture. Recommended. Undergraduates through faculty and general readers.

* Choice Revie