Impossibly muscular men and voluptuous women parade around in revealing, skintight outfits, and their romantic and sexual entanglements are a key part of the ongoing drama. Such is the state of superhero comics and movies, a genre that has become one of our leading mythologies, conveying influential messages about gender, sexuality, and relationships. Love, Sex, Gender, and Superheroes examines a full range of superhero media, from comics to films to television to merchandising. With a keen eye for the genre’s complex and internally contradictory mythology, comics scholar Jeffrey A. Brown considers its mixed messages. Superhero comics may reinforce sex roles with their litany of phallic musclemen and slinky femme fatales, but they also blur gender binaries with their emphasis on transformation and body swaps. Similarly, while most heroes have heterosexual love interests, the genre prioritizes homosocial bonding, and it both celebrates and condemns gendered and sexualized violence. With examples spanning from the Golden Ages of DC and Marvel comics up to recent works like the TV series The Boys, this study provides a comprehensive look at how superhero media shapes our perceptions of love, sex, and gender.

Artificial Generation: Photogenic French Literature and the Prehistory of Cinematic Modernity investigates the intersection of film theory and nineteenth-century literature, arguing that the depth of amalgamation that occurred within literary representation during this era aims to replicate an illusion of life and its sensations, in ways directly related to broader transitions into our modern cinematic age. A key part of this evolution in representation relies on the continual re-emergence of the artificial woman as longstanding expression of masculine artistic subjectivity, which, by the later nineteenth century, becomes a photographic and filmic drive. Moving through the beginning of film history, from Georges Méliès and other “silent” filmmakers in the 1890s, into more contemporary movies, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017), the book analyzes how films are often structured around the prior century’s mythic and literary principles, which now serve as foundation for film as medium—a phantom form for life’s re-presentation. Artificial Generation provides a crucial reassessment of the longstanding, mutual exchange between cinematic and literary reproduction, offering an innovative perspective on the proto-cinematic imperative of simulation within nineteenth-century literary symbolism.

Panthers, Hulks and Ironhearts offers the first comprehensive study of how Marvel has racially diversified its lineup and reimagined what a superhero might look like in the twenty-first century. It examines how they have revitalized older characters like Black Panther, recast legacy heroes like Ms. Marvel, and developed new ones like the Latina Miss America.

Acknowledgments -- List of Illustrations -- Introduction: Representation Matters -- Chapter 1: "The Sexier the Outfit, the Fewer Questions Asked": Wonder Woman -- Chapter 2: "When You Go Out At Night, You Won't Be Alone": Batgirl(s) and Birds of Prey -- Chapter 3: "Somebody Has To Save Our Skins!" Padmé Amidala, Leia Organa, and Jaina Solo in Star Wars -- Chapter 4: "No Such Things as Limits": The X-Women -- Chapter 5: "Slayers. Every One of Us": Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- Chapter 6: "Part of Something Bigger": Ms. Marvel(s) and Captain Marvel(s) -- Conclusion: Superwomen, Diversity, and Representation -- Bibliography -- Index

The Routledge Companion to Gender, Sex and Latin American Culture is the first comprehensive volume to explore the intersections between gender, sexuality, and the creation, consumption, and interpretation of popular culture in the Américas. The chapters seek to enrich our understanding of the role of pop culture in the everyday lives of its creators and consumers, primarily in the 20th and 21st centuries. They reveal how popular culture expresses the historical, social, cultural, and political commonalities that have shaped the lives of peoples that make up the Américas, and also highlight how pop culture can conform to and solidify existing social hierarchies, whilst on other occasions contest and resist the status quo. Front and center in this collection are issues of gender and sexuality, making visible the ways in which subjects who inhabit intersectional identities (sex, gender, race, class) are "othered", as well as demonstrating how these same subjects can, and do, use pop-cultural phenomena in self-affirmative and progressively transformative ways. Topics covered in this volume include TV, film, pop and performance art, hip-hop, dance, slam poetry, gender-fluid religious ritual, theater, stand-up comedy, graffiti, videogames, photography, graphic arts, sports spectacles, comic books, sci-fi and other genre novels, lotería card games, news, web, and digital media.

From Superman, created in 1938, to the transmedia DC and Marvel universes of today, superheroes have always been sexy. And their sexiness has always been controversial, inspiring censorship and moral panic. Yet though it has inspired jokes and innuendos, accusations of moral depravity, and sporadic academic discourse, the topic of superhero sexuality is like superhero sexuality itself—seemingly obvious yet conspicuously absent. Supersex: Sexuality, Fantasy, and the Superhero is the first scholarly book specifically devoted to unpacking the superhero genre’s complicated relationship with sexuality. Exploring sexual themes and imagery within mainstream comic books, television shows, and films as well as independent and explicitly pornographic productions catering to various orientations and kinks, Supersex offers a fresh—and lascivious—perspective on the superhero genre’s historical and contemporary popularity. Across fourteen essays touching on Superman, Batman, the X-Men, and many others, Anna F. Peppard and her contributors present superhero sexuality as both dangerously exciting and excitingly dangerous, encapsulating the superhero genre’s worst impulses and its most productively rebellious ones. Supersex argues that sex is at the heart of our fascination with superheroes, even—and sometimes especially—when the capes and tights stay on.

"It's no secret that superhero comics have historically included problematic depictions of women, racial and sexual minorities, and others who do not fit the standard straight white male model of a hero. Rather than focus on these negative depictions, Langsdale wants to take a more positive approach by looking at recent comics that can be called feminist, with female heroes and creators of all genders that tell new types of stories within the genre. Although these books have usually been marginalized and have suffered premature cancellation, she argues that this marginalization has enabled innovative stories to be told in ways that not only advance the genre but also interact with contemporary social justice concerns. Incorporating intersectionality and feminist theory, Langsdale analyzes complete stories focused on various heroes -- Spider-Woman, America Chavez, the Unstoppable Wasp, and Ironheart. By exploring different elements of these characters, e.g., Spider-Woman's pregnancy, America's identity as a queer mestiza, and the Wasp's creation of a female-run STEM facility, she examines what makes these texts feminist and how they interact with larger issues of inclusion and social justice in ways that more traditional superhero narratives don't and probably can't. She also examines how these characters' appearances in other media have played a part in their development. By focusing on marginalized runs of comics, Langsdale demonstrates how even these can make powerful statements about feminism and the world"--

Superheroes and Masculinity: Unmasking the Gender Performance of Heroism explores how heteropatriarchal representations of gender are portrayed within superhero comics, film, and television. The contributors examine how hegemonic masculinity has been continually perpetuated and reinforced within the superhero genre and unpack concise critiques of specific superhero representations, the industry, and the fan base at large. However, Superheroes and Masculinity also argues that possibilities of resistance and change are embedded within these problematic portrayals. To this end, several chapters explore alternative portrayals of queerness within superhero representations and read the hegemonic masculinity of various characters against the grain to produce queer possibilities. Ultimately, this collection argues that the quest to unmask how gender operates within superheroes is a crucial one.

Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics offers the first thorough exploration of Latino/a superheroes in mainstream comic books, TV shows, and movies--Provided by publisher.