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Comic book fandom has long been a participatory culture. As comic book characters made the transition to film, the fans, eschewing media boundaries, began effectively applying their collaborative traditions to cinema. This process became more intensive and far-reaching in the digital age. Consequently, filmmakers, many of whom initially adopted a protectionist stance, have chosen to (or been forced to) recognize the merits of comic book publishing practices. In recent years, this has led to a refocusing of marketing campaigns, the development of new production practices, greater fidelity between texts, as well as a number of other strategies that position fans at the center of comic book adaptation production.

The Phantom (1996) was a feature-film adaptation of the American comic strip character today regarded as a forerunner of the superhero. However, The Phantom film was an American box-office failure and is routinely overlooked in academic studies of the ‘comic-book movie’. By contrast, The Phantom was a commercial success in Australia, ranking amongst the Top-5 films upon its cinema release and, therefore, this chapter investigates The Phantom’s localized success. The Phantom film provides the basis of a broader inquiry into the global circulation of the superhero phenomenon beyond its American ‘homeland’ by examining the film’s industrial production and cultural reception in Australia, the where character has paradoxically become an ‘indigenous’ superhero. Moreover, it explores how The Phantom’s embodiment of ‘old-fashioned’ heroism – cited as a key reason for the film’s domestic US failure – resonated with Australian audiences, who embraced The Phantom precisely because it was the antithesis of the American superhero archetype.

This chapter considers the comic’s demise and Misty’s dwindling appearances in Tammy, looking closely at the material produced after Misty’soriginal run ended and the memories of its readers. It discusses the possible reasons for the comic’s termination and looks more closely at the process of merging Misty into Tammy, demonstrating how Misty’s rolewas significantly altered and weakened. It identifies some of Misty’s international appearances in countries such as France, Sweden, Germany and Canada, and analyzes these reprints. It closely examines the material included in the British annuals and reprints during the 1980s, and summarizes the millennial re-emergence of Misty in fan websites, fanzines and other tribute publications, and reprinted and new material from Egmont and Rebellion.

Although quiz shows often encourage us to ‘play’ along, and they encode the participation of the audience into their textual form, there have been virtually no audience studies in this sphere. This chapter seeks to address this neglect. Moving from the early broadcast origins of the quiz show up until the advent of ‘interactive’ television, it considers the ways in which the viewer at home has been encouraged to participate. It then moves on to explore how fan cultures on the internet offer insights into audience interaction with the quiz show (and its cultural politics). But as such fans are also often contestants, the chapter returns to the questions of ‘performance’ and ‘authenticity’ examined in Chapter 5.

Robin Anne Reid, in “Bending Culture: Racebending.com’s Protests Against Media Whitewashing,” ruminates on the extent to which the gap between the categories of cultural, or fan activism, and political activism may be changing, especially with regard to younger people participating in online activist sites. Reid concentrates her inquiry on one internet community, Racebending.com, which originated in a protest against the casting of white actors in M. Night Shyamalan live-action adaptation The Last Airbender (2010). She argues that the group’s online activities since the release of the film shows the overlap between fan and political activism, thereby demonstrating connections between critical race and intersectional studies.

Through her essay “The Mako Mori Fan Club,” Cait Coker examines the subversive nature of Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim (2013) by utilizing fan works as sources of viable criticism to decenter the white American male action hero with a Japanese heroine. To this end, Coker delves into the major motifs of Pacific Rim fandom online and considers its relationship with a film that seemingly “failed” in the American market but exploded internationally, even prompting a sequel slated for 2017. She also reflects on how the depictions of close, but not necessarily romantic, relationships are celebrated in both the film and in fandom as illustrating a cooperative ideal generally not seen in popular, mainstream media.

This chapter focuses on the meaning fans, readers and critics give to particular television texts, the affective dimensions of this 'meaning making,' and considers a way to rethink the 'dangers' of 'sitting too close to the tele'. It draws on work by David Bordwell, Michel de Certeau and Henry Jenkins in particular. It also considers new theories on fandom and the relationship between consumerism and television viewing practices.

Alex Naylor’s “‘My Skin Has Turned to Porcelain, to Ivory, to Steel’: Feminist Fan Discourses, Game of Thrones, and the Problem of Sansa” explores debates on Tumblr over the sword-fighting, genderbending figure of Arya Stark and her princess-turned-stoic-survivalist sister, Sansa. Fan perspectives on Sansa, Naylor finds, take the form of intense appreciations of her, reflections on how her narrative refracts issues of young women’s victimization and survival, and “defenses” that confront her detractors and implicate the role of sexism and misogyny in some fans’ vocal dislike of the character. Because, for many young women, this kind of online popular culture critique is their first introduction to feminist ideas, argues Naylor, it is most productively explored within the context of a wider debate in both feminist and fandom social media spaces about what a modern feminist ethics of media consumption might look like.

By tracing the trajectory of Chinese danmei fandom in the past two decades, this chapter explores the possibility of danmei as a model of grassroots globalization. The chapter focuses on three key aspects of Chinese danmei fandom: the establishment of online and offline infrastructures, the formation of different danmei circles, and the emergence of a women-dominated online public sphere. The authors seek to use the example of danmei fandom to challenge the masculinized, top-down model of thinking about transnational cultural flows that overemphasizes national origin, the industrial player, the official economy, and the competition for soft power at the expense of other glocalized, noninstitutionalized, nonprofit, noncompetitive ways of cultural exchange.

Hetalia: Axis Powers (2006–) is one of the most popular Japanese comic and anime series in China in recent years. Through a critical analysis of diverse fan discourses and two canonical fanzines, this chapter examines the intersections between gender politics and geopolitics, nationalism and transnationalism, and localization and globalization in online Chinese Hetalia fandom. The Hetalia boom in China shows that BL not only can function as a tool to reshape configurations of gender and sexuality, it can also be employed by young women and others as a vehicle for political expression.

This chapter studies the gender politics of a legendary queer icon, Dongfang Bubai, in post-Mao China. In Jin Yong’s original novel (1967–1969), this character is a self-castrated man who satirizes Mao Zedong and his Great Cultural Revolution, and then Tsui Hark’s film (1991) cast a female star into this role, invoking Hong Kong’s postcolonial experiences. In Yu Zheng’s television drama (2013), this character was changed to be a woman played by a female star. Yet, this seemly conservative change did not stifled fans’ queer reading tactics in cyberspaces. Using internet ethnography, the author found that at least three reading tactics had emerged: (1) gay readings which imagine Dongfang Bubai as a gay lover even though now a female role played by a female star; (2) heterosexual readings which understand Dongfang Bubai as a “leftover woman,” which is a newly coined term that stigmatizes those unmarried highly educated women with relatively high age and high professional status; (3) lesbian readings which celebrate transgressing both incest taboo and heterosexuality but at once reject gay readings. By studying the complicated case of Dongfang Bubai, this chapter contends that there are simultaneous symbiosis and conflicts of queer and nonqueer articulations in fan cultures.

This chapter features the fastest growing of the new Downtown Mardi Gras organizations, the Intergalactic Krewe of Chewbacchus. New Orleans culture is not conventionally associated with science-fiction or futurism; however, this krewe has tapped a rich and vibrant vein, blending conventional Carnival with science-fiction fandom—the mash-up of Bacchus and Chewbacca from Star Wars. This chapter examines the egalitarian impulse of Chewbacchus, which clearly situates itself in opposition to traditional Uptown krewes. The chapter also investigates its relation to the Downtown neighborhood of Bywater and how the color and energy of the enterprise both reflects and contributes to the gentrification of the area. Finally, the chapter speculates upon the krewe’s fantastical expressions and implicit utopianism, how its carnivalesque, otherworldly aspect might alter or impact actual social realities.

Ms. Marvel originally formed part of the All-New Marvel Now! comic book branding of 2015 aimed at attracting new readers to Marvel titles. As such the comic is able to offer new ways of thinking about the character Ms. Marvel, while also maintaining links with the longer history of the character. Kamala is a complex and nuanced character who, even before gaining superpowers, is caught between the two worlds of her Pakistani and Muslim family background and her New Jersey teenage peers, thus making the narrative, in part, about issues around assimilation and integration.

Writer Kelly Sue DeConnick’s and artist Valentine De Landro’s comic Bitch Planet (2014-present) offers readers an absurd yet familiar reminder of the ways that society and state institutions continue to uphold patriarchal and racist values at the expense of women, queer folks, and communities of color, among others. Its hyperbolic investigation into the depths of patriarchy and racism draws from and expands the superhero narrative’s exploration of power and oppression.

Genderswapped characters are rarely a canonical part of a company’s intellectual property, but rather a concoction of fan creativity. However, as Rule 63 made its way around the internet, variations in its wording showed a bias in the adage’s primacy of gender. The male character and his female genderswapped version is shown to be the rule while female to male genderswapping is an often-missing corollary. Such a gendered hegemony is present not only online but also in general fan culture. This chapter interrogates the processes that underpin this and also investigates the nature of cosplay through ethnography.

The comic book industry is currently experiencing a renaissance of female readers across all genres, including superhero books. By every conceivable metric, women have engaged in superhero fandom in ever-increasing levels over the past decade. However, historical demographic breakdowns for the readership of superhero comics are essentially non-existent. There is one way to construct our own data, however. In the early 1960s, letter columns became a regular feature in superhero comic books, and remained a constant in the genre through the 1990s. This chapter uses letters pages as a way of estimating the level of, and investigating the nature of, female readership of superhero comics.