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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN COMICS AND GRAPHIC NOVELS

DATA AND
DOCTOR DOOM
An Empirical Approach
To Transmedia Characters

Mark Hibbett
Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels

Series Editor
Roger Sabin, University of the Arts London, London, UK
This series concerns Comics Studies—with a capital “c” and a capital “s.” It
feels good to write it that way. From emerging as a fringe interest within Liter-
ature and Media/Cultural Studies departments, to becoming a minor field,
to maturing into the fastest growing field in the Humanities, to becoming
a nascent discipline, the journey has been a hard but spectacular one. Those
capital letters have been earned.
Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels covers all aspects of the
comic strip, comic book, and graphic novel, explored through clear and
informative texts offering expansive coverage and theoretical sophistication.
It is international in scope and provides a space in which scholars from
all backgrounds can present new thinking about politics, history, aesthetics,
production, distribution, and reception as well as the digital realm. Books
appear in one of two forms: traditional monographs of 60,000 to 90,000
words and shorter works (Palgrave Pivots) of 20,000 to 50,000 words. All are
rigorously peer-reviewed. Palgrave Pivots include new takes on theory, concise
histories, and—not least—considered provocations. After all, Comics Studies
may have come a long way, but it can’t progress without a little prodding.
Series Editor Roger Sabin is Professor of Popular Culture at the University
of the Arts London, UK. His books include Adult Comics: An Introduc-
tion and Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels, and he is part of the team
that put together the Marie Duval Archive. He serves on the boards of key
academic journals in the field, reviews graphic novels for international media,
and consults on comics-related projects for the BBC, Channel 4, Tate Gallery,
The British Museum and The British Library. The ‘Sabin Award’ is given
annually at the International Graphic Novels and Comics Conference.
 Mark Hibbett

Data and Doctor Doom

An Empirical Approach To Transmedia Characters
Mark Hibbett
University of the Arts London
London, UK

ISSN 2634-6370 ISSN 2634-6389 (electronic)

Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels
ISBN 978-3-031-45172-0 ISBN 978-3-031-45173-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45173-7

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2024

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher,
whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation,
reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any
other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation,
computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in
this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher
nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material
contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains
neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover credit: Mark Hibbett

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Paper in this product is recyclable.

 Acknowledgements

Thanks to the dream team of Roger Sabin and Ian Horton for their ongoing
support throughout the whole process of creating this book, which they have
guided with enthusiasm, advice, and jokes. I’m similarly grateful to the Comics
Research Hub at UAL, notably my two Ph.D. siblings Guy Lawley and Tobias
Yu-Kiener.
A major turning point in my thinking about the topics discussed came when
I attended the Tubingen Winter School in 2018. Many thanks to the organ-
isers and other attendees for making me feel so welcome and giving me so
much to think about.
Thanks to the members of The Montgolfier Group, the COMIX-
SCHOLARS-L mailing list and the Facebook groups Comic Book Historians
and London Loves Comics, who were always happy to answer my questions.
Thanks to Paul Lambert, Peter Buckley Hill and Neil Brown for their help
with statistical questions, to Michael Larkin for his advice about the Big Five
Index, and to Noah Hibbett for his thoughts on Doctor Doom’s costume.
Also thanks to everyone who promoted the signifier survey online (especially
Ryan North) and those who took the time to answer it.
Thanks to my former boss Ted Melhuish, whose advice to ‘eyeball the data’
has rung in my head throughout this process.
Thanks to Steven Carter, Pradeep Bali, Sanjiv Bali and Paul Myland for
being there when all this started, and to the late Pete Wells at The House On
The Borderland for accepting our dinner money in order to facilitate it.
Finally, thanks above all to Charlotte Wadsworth for suggesting I do this in
the first place, and for all the ideas, suggestions, and discussions since.
Thanks!

v
 Contents

1 Introduction 1
References 5
2 Methodology 9
Comics Studies 9
Interdisciplinary Research 10
Empirical Research 10
Grounded Theory 12
Existing Models of Transmedia Characters 13
Transmedia Storytelling 13
Transmedia Archaeology and Early Transmedia Characters 15
Characters Carrying the Storyworld 17
Global Transmedia Character Networks 18
Character Signifiers 19
Storyworld Components 21
Story/Worlds/Media 22
Existential and Fictional Identity 24
Behaviour 26
The Psycholexical Approach 27
Personality Traits and Characters 28
Motivation 30
Behaviour Summary 32
Character-Building, World-Building and Authorship 33
A Unified Catalogue of Transmedia Character Components 34
Character-Specific Components 35
Appearance 35
Names and Titles 35
Physical Actions 35
Dialogue 35
Storyworld-Specific Components 36

vii
viii CONTENTS

Locations 36
Other Characters 37
Objects 38
Previous Events 38
Behavioural Components 38
Perceived Behaviour 39
Personality Traits 39
Motivations 39
Authorship Components 39
Market Authors 40
Textual Authors 40
Summary 40
References 42
3 The Corpus and Sample 51
Choosing Doom 51
Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria 55
Inclusion Criteria 55
Exclusion Criteria 58
Identifying the Corpus 59
Sources for Comics Texts 59
Other Types of Text 64
Selecting a Sample 65
Sample Significance and Representativeness 65
Sampling Methodology 69
The Signifier Survey 71
Survey Design 73
Setting Up the Online Survey 74
Finding an Audience 75
Cleaning the Data 76
Signifier Survey Analysis 80
Your Experience of Doctor Doom 81
About Doctor Doom 85
Doctor Doom’s World 89
Creators and Marketing 95
Anything Else 96
Signifier Survey Conclusion 97
Effectiveness of the Survey 97
Overall Results 98
Using the Results to Generate a List of Signifiers 99
Appearance 99
Names and Titles 100
Physical Actions 100
 CONTENTS ix

Behaviour 100
Dialogue 100
Other Characters 101
Objects 101
Locations 101
Previous Events 101
Textual Authors 101
Market Authors 101
References 102
4 Analysis 109
Collecting the Data 109
Database Design 110
Data Entry 112
Names and Titles 113
Physical Actions 113
Dialogue 113
Locations 114
Other Characters 114
Objects 115
Previous Events 115
Perceived Behaviour 116
Personality Traits 116
Motivation 116
Market Authors 117
Textual Authors 117
Data Entry Conclusion 118
Analysis of Character-Specific Components 119
Appearance 119
Names and Titles 121
Physical Actions 123
Dialogue 128
Summary of Character-Specific Components 131
Analysis of Storyworld-Specific Components 131
Other Characters 132
Objects 140
Settings 142
Previous Events 148
Summary of Storyworld-Specific Components 152
Analysis of Behavioural Components 152
Perceived Behaviour 152
Behaviour—BFI 160
Motivations 167
x CONTENTS

Summary of Behavioural Components 170

Analysis of Authorship Components 172
Market Authors 172
Textual Authors 175
Summary of Authorship Components 177
Conclusion 177
References 179
5 A Tale Of Two Menaces 183
The Sample 184
Data Entry 186
Character-Specific Components 187
Appearance 187
Names and Titles 188
Physical Actions 189
Dialogue 191
Character-Specific Summary 191
Storyworld-Specific Components 192
Other Characters 192
Objects 194
Settings 195
Previous Events 196
Storyworld-Specific Summary 196
Behavioural Components 197
Perceived Behaviour 197
BFI 197
Motivation 199
Behavioural Summary 199
Authorial Components 200
Market Authors 200
Textual Authors 200
Authorial Summary 201
Overall Analysis 201
References 202
6 Discussion 205
The Corpus and Sample 207
Data Design and Data Entry 210
Data Analysis 213
The Signifier Survey 214
Comparison with Main Analysis 215
Conclusion 221
Does the Catalogue Work? 221
Using Doctor Doom 223
 CONTENTS xi

Donald Goes Dutch 225

Other Possibilities 226
References 228

Appendix A: Using the Unified Model of Transmedia Character

Coherence 231
Appendix B: Doctor Doom Corpus 235
Appendix C: Example of Signifier Survey 249
Bibliography 263
Index 293
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 A gleeful Doctor Doom in Spidey Super Stories #53 28

Fig. 2.2 10 item short version of the BFI 30
Fig. 2.3 Doom speaks his motivation out loud in Fantastic Four #59
[139] 31
Fig. 2.4 Spider-Man’s motivation to help runs into J Jonah Jameson’s
perception of him as a publicity-seeking phony in Amazing
Spider-Man #1 [141] 32
Fig. 2.5 Relationship between dimensions and sources in unified
catalogue of transmedia character components 42
Fig. 3.1 Doctor Doom as seen in The Official Handbook of the Marvel
Universe #3 [10] 53
Fig. 3.2 Number of different series for leading super-villains, by year 63
Fig. 3.3 Sample page from the online survey 75
Fig. 3.4 Tweet asking for help with survey 77
Fig. 3.5 Experience of media types by users 82
Fig. 3.6 Familiarity by decade 82
Fig. 4.1 Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott depict Doom in Fantastic Four #85 112
Fig. 4.2 Credits box for Fantastic Four #237 [16] 117
Fig. 4.3 Doom’s gun comes and goes in Fantastic Four #10 120
Fig. 4.4 Doom striking power poses in Astonishing Tales #1 [35]
and Dazzler #3 [36] 124
Fig. 4.6 Dialogue groupings by period 129
Fig. 4.5 Frequency of recoded dialogue groupings 129
Fig. 4.7 Dialogue by media type 130
Fig. 4.8 Other characters per text by period 134
Fig. 4.9 Adjusted number of different characters featured per period 135
Fig. 4.10 Average number of characters per text by interaction and period 136
Fig. 4.11 Grouped number of characters per text by period 136
Fig. 4.12 Average number of characters per text by interaction
and media type 138
Fig. 4.13 Grouped number of characters per text by media type 139
Fig. 4.14 Average number of previous events per text, by period 149

xiii
xiv LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 4.15 Number of previous events per text by period 150

Fig. 4.16 Further recoded descriptions 155
Fig. 4.17 Recoded behaviours by period 157
Fig. 4.18 Period by recoded behaviours 157
Fig. 4.19 Recoded behaviours by media 159
Fig. 4.20 Openness to experience 162
Fig. 4.21 Conscientiousness 162
Fig. 4.22 Extraversion 163
Fig. 4.23 Agreeableness 164
Fig. 4.24 Neuroticism 164
Fig. 4.25 Neuroticism by media type 165
Fig. 4.26 Neuroticism for comics in each period 166
Fig. 4.27 Recoded motivations by period 168
Fig. 4.28 Recoded motivations by media type 169
Fig. 4.29 Doom joins forces with Henry Kissinger in Super-Villain
Team-Up #7 [73] 171
Fig. 4.30 Logo for Curtis circulation (‘CC’) in top left corner of The
Invincible Iron Man #74 [78] 173
Fig. 5.1 Dennis The Menace from the UK [3] (left) and USA [4]
(right) 184
Fig. 5.2 British Dennis receives a beating from his father [14] 190
Fig. 5.3 American Dennis talks to Mr. Wilson as an equal [17] 192
Fig. 6.1 Theoretical underpinning of the unified catalogue
of transmedia character components 206
Fig. 6.2 Doom (bottom right) as part of a Secret Wars recap in The
Spectacular Spider-Man #111 [18] 218
 List of Tables

Table 3.1 Definition of ‘The Marvel Age’ and its sub-periods 57

Table 3.2 Recoded titles of texts in which Doctor Doom appeared 68
Table 3.3 Corpus texts by period 68
Table 3.4 Sample texts by period and media type 69
Table 3.5 First ten texts in corpus in new randomised order 70
Table 3.6 Survey response recoded 78
Table 3.7 Initial coding for ‘Names And Titles’ 79
Table 3.8 Awareness of comics series 83
Table 3.9 Awareness of animated TV shows featuring Doctor Doom 84
Table 3.10 Awareness of video games featuring Doctor Doom 85
Table 3.11 Aspects of Doctor Doom’s appearance 86
Table 3.12 Names and titles for Doctor Doom 87
Table 3.13 Physical actions 88
Table 3.14 Behaviours 89
Table 3.15 Things that Doctor Doom says 90
Table 3.16 Other characters 91
Table 3.17 Objects 92
Table 3.18 Locations 93
Table 3.19 Previous responses 94
Table 3.20 Creators 95
Table 3.21 Marketing 96
Table 4.1 Aspects of appearance 119
Table 4.2 Names and titles by number of texts 121
Table 4.3 Names and titles by period 122
Table 4.4 Names and titles by media type 123
Table 4.5 Physical actions 124
Table 4.6 Physical actions across time periods 125
Table 4.7 Physical action signifiers per text, by period 126
Table 4.8 Physical actions by media type 127
Table 4.9 Dialogue overall and by time period 128
Table 4.10 Other characters interacted with by number of texts 133
Table 4.11 Other characters by period 134

xv
xvi LIST OF TABLES

Table 4.12 Other characters by media type 137

Table 4.13 Objects by number of texts 140
Table 4.14 Objects by media type 142
Table 4.15 Settings that appear in at least 10% of texts 143
Table 4.16 Settings by period 144
Table 4.17 Settings interacted with by period 145
Table 4.18 Ranked settings by media type 146
Table 4.19 Previous events by texts 148
Table 4.20 Previous events by media type 151
Table 4.21 Most popularly used descriptions of Doom 153
Table 4.22 Recoded descriptions of Doom 154
Table 4.23 Perceived behaviours by period 156
Table 4.24 Perceived behaviours by media 158
Table 4.25 Overall results for Doom’s big five personality traits 160
Table 4.26 Recoded motivations across all texts 168
Table 4.27 Recoded market authors 172
Table 4.28 Recoded market authors by media type 174
Table 4.29 Textual authors with 5 or more texts 175
Table 5.1 Dates for sample of UK and US Dennis The Menace strips 186
Table 5.2 Appearance 188
Table 5.3 Physical actions 189
Table 5.4 Dialogue recoded 191
Table 5.5 Other characters (US) 193
Table 5.6 Other characters (UK) 193
Table 5.7 Objects 194
Table 5.8 Settings 195
Table 5.9 Perceived behaviour for Dennis The Menace recoded 197
Table 5.10 BFI scores (with MAD) 198
Table 5.11 Menace motivations 199
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

This book sets out to define a straightforward methodology for empirically

analysing transmedia characters as they move through time and across different
media types.
The methodology was created so that researchers could use it to create
datasets and perform statistical analyses on transmedia characters in a way that
could then be shared and compared with the results of other studies, in the
hope that this will generate further research and insights into such characters.
The Marvel Comics character Doctor Doom was chosen as the main case
study for three reasons. Firstly, Doctor Doom is a wandering character who has
moved between different series and media ever since he was first created. The
fact that he has usually been portrayed as a ‘super-villain’ means that almost all
of his appearances have been as a guest character, rarely maintaining a series
of his own. This allowed him to develop independently of a specific creator
or creative team in much the same way that modern transmedia characters are
developed by large teams rather than a single ‘auteur’. This was true of several
characters within the early years of the Marvel storyworld but, as Douglas
Wolk has said, ‘Doom was absolutely the most interesting’ [1].
Secondly, Doctor Doom is not Batman. There is much to say about
Batman’s long history of appearances in comics, films, television shows, radio
and all other forms of popular media for the past eighty years, but a great
deal of this has already been said in books such as The Many Lives of The
Batman, Batman Unmasked: Analyzing a Cultural Icon, Many More Lives
of The Batman and countless other chapters, journal articles and conference
presentations [2–4]. By contrast there are very few outputs concerning Doctor
Doom, and those that do exist concentrate on aspects of his fictional char-
acter—his disability, ethnicity or villainy—rather than his transmediality [5–7].

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2024
M. Hibbett, Data and Doctor Doom, Palgrave Studies in Comics and
Graphic Novels, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45173-7_1
2 M. HIBBETT

This, however, is likely to change if he is used in the long-awaited Marvel

Studios Fantastic Four reboot [8, 9].
The final reason for choosing Doom was a purely personal one. As a life-
long comics fan, one of my favourite series is John Byrne’s lengthy run on
Fantastic Four from 1981 to 1986, particularly those issues featuring Doctor
Doom. This run of comics is one of the few aspects of my teenage comics
collection that I have retained to the present day, and my initial plan was to
use this project as an excuse to re-read and hopefully re-enjoy many of those
texts. However, like so many of Doctor Doom’s own schemes, this did not
come to pass as planned—the fact that I eventually identified a corpus of 266
texts containing Doctor Doom meant that it would be several years before I
was able to read any of John Byrne’s run.
This personal history with the character, and superhero comics overall,
means that I fall under Matt Hill’s definition of an ‘Aca-Fan’—a scholar
working within a field which they also happen to be a fan of [10]. An Aca-Fan
can take an auto-ethnographic approach, using their own experiences as part
of their methodology [11]. This was certainly the case with my process blog,
Marvel Age Doom, which was used as way of note-taking, with most entries
consisting of a review of a single text taken from the corpus [12]. It thus
contained a mixture of academic analysis and my own personal opinions of
the texts, especially for the later comics where I discussed my own memories
of buying and reading them when they were first published.
I have generally tried to keep these remembrances out of this text as a
whole, but must admit that they do slip in occasionally, especially in the
chapter ‘A Tale of Two Menaces’. Rather than examining one character across
media, this chapter further tests the catalogue by using it to compare the
British and American characters who share the name ‘Dennis The Menace’,
looking for differences and similarities between them.
With its focus on a character originated and primarily developed in comics,
and a research corpus dominated by comics texts, this book therefore sits
within the field of Comics Studies, and especially the sub-section related to
superhero comics. Definitions of comics and Comics Studies are discussed
in the ‘Overall Methodology’ chapter, focusing on the history of superhero
comics as a genre, specifically the use and meaning of super-villains such as
Doctor Doom. Comics Studies is an inherently interdisciplinary field, existing
partly within the digital humanities ‘at the intersection of digital technologies
and humanities’ and this interdisciplinary use of different methodologies is also
discussed in this chapter [13]. Special attention is given to the use of empirical
methodologies, which is a growing area of interest in Comics Studies, and has
been employed to quantitatively analyse diverse topics such as the structure
of comics, audience reception, corporate identities, and corpus construction
among many others [14–20].
One of the key methodologies used in this book is Transmedia Theory.
Henry Jenkins’ original definition of transmedia storytelling stated that it
involved a storyworld that operates ‘across multiple media platforms, with
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole’
[21]. The Marvel storyworld of this period was not transmedial under this
definition. Stories did branch out across many different texts but they always
operated transtextually, staying within the same media type. For example, the
storyline featuring Doctor Doom that began in Daredevil #36 [22] continued
in that series up until Daredevil #38 [23] before concluding in Fantastic Four
#73 [24], which contained links to Thor #150 [25] and an appearance by
Spider-Man. However, none of these texts shared any story with the contem-
poraneous Fantastic Four [26] or Spider-Man [27] cartoon series, nor did
these latter pair have any links to each other, as they existed in entirely sepa-
rate storyworlds. Even today, although the Marvel Cinematic Universe of the
twenty-first century links together movies, television series, video games and,
occasionally, one-off comics set within that storyworld, it never interacts with
the still-ongoing storyworld of the main comics line.
However, theories of ’Transmedia Archaeology’ argue that earlier forms
of transmedia storytelling did not rely on shared storyworlds operating
across different media, but were instead focused on individual characters who
retained their core aspects across media even as the worlds around them
changed [28]. Examples of this included silent movie characters like Charlie
Chaplin’s ‘little tramp’ or earlier comics characters such as The Yellow Kid and
Ally Sloper, all of whom carried their core identity with them in a way that was
variable but recognisable, whatever storyworld they were placed in [29–33].
The characters themselves were transmedial, even when their storyworlds were
not.
There are many fascinating, thought-provoking research outputs which
describe ways in which questions about such transmediality could be
approached, but they are often frustratingly abstract. My own professional
background is in data-led research, largely medical statistics and epidemiology,
where clear methodologies exist to get clear answers to research questions.
Even where researchers cannot be entirely sure that the answers arrived at
are unarguably correct (as is often the case in statistics) there are ways to
work out exactly how confident one can be about them [34]. There are
even practices such as Bayesian Statistics which not only allow for but actually
include personal bias as a quantifiable part of the research process [35]. By
contrast many transmedia theories appear to be generated either as philosoph-
ical discussion points or personal attempts to quantify thoughts about specific
characters, rather than practical tools which other researchers might be able to
usefully employ. Thus this chapter concludes with an attempt to find a solution
to this issue by bringing key theories together into a unified catalogue defined
in such a way that it can be used as a practical tool to empirically measure
transmedia character coherence.
With the unified catalogue of transmedia character components defined, the
next chapter attempts to set out a way to test it and then use it in practice.
The first part, ‘Choosing Doom’, explains the rationale for using this character
as a case study. Here the inclusion and exclusion criteria for the generation of
4 M. HIBBETT

a study corpus are explained, including the proviso that the corpus be taken
from a specific period in time, rather than being left open-ended or relying on
some other criteria, and the process by which the time period of ‘The Marvel
Age’ was chosen is detailed here.
This is followed by a description of how the corpus was actually identified,
using a mixture of online databases, internet searches and a close reading of
texts. The eventual corpus contained 266 texts, mostly comprised of comics
but also including cartoons, games, radio plays and other media. This was
too large a dataset to analyse in full using the unified catalogue of trans-
media character components, and so the next section, ‘Selecting a sample’
explains how sampling was undertaken in order to reduce the corpus down to
a representative sample of 69 texts.
At this point the initial analysis of the texts began, but I very quickly
found that I was relying on my own knowledge of Doctor Doom to decide
what should be recorded, running the risk of simply confirming my own
pre-existing, non-empirical, beliefs. For example, I knew that Doctor Doom
regularly called people ‘dolt’ and wore a green cloak, so would always be on
the lookout for these signifiers. However, if he had other signifiers that I was
not already aware of—for instance, his use of viewing screens or regular meet-
ings with Namor The Sub-Mariner—I would not necessarily realise that these
were worth recording. This problem was tackled by conducting a survey which
asked a range of other people familiar with Doctor Doom to give their impres-
sions of him. The intention here was that this would expose me to a much
wider range of characteristics which could then be used as a starting point for
the main analysis.
With all of this completed the task of analysing the corpus could finally
begin. To facilitate this an online database system was built into which data
about the text themselves could be entered, based on the structure of the
unified catalogue of transmedia character components. The process of devel-
oping the database and entering data is described at the beginning of the
‘Analysis’ chapter, including an explanation of difficulties encountered for each
of the thirteen character dimensions that formed the catalogue.
The rest of this chapter details the analyses of each of the four subsets
of components, i.e. those relating to the character, their storyworld, their
behaviour within that storyworld and finally the real-world authors of the
texts. For each grouping the components are analysed by media type and time
period.
With the analysis of Doctor Doom complete, a new question arose—can
this tool be used for other characters or has it been designed in such a way
that it only works for its original purpose? To answer this the chapter ‘A Tale of
Two Menaces’ moves from the Master of Menace to the American and British
characters who share the name Dennis The Menace. This chapter looks at a
much smaller corpus of texts and thus less data is analysed, as it is designed as
a test of the tool rather than an in-depth analysis of the two characters, yet it
is still able to offer some interesting results.
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

After this the ‘Discussion’ examines the overall processes used and asks
whether the catalogue itself was an effective tool. Here the findings from the
Doctor Doom analysis are compared to those from the signifier survey, exam-
ining the differences between the two and discussing the benefits of using an
empirical tool such as this as opposed to relying on the qualitative findings of
one or more individuals.
The chapter, and the book as a whole, concludes with suggestions of ways
in which the catalogue could be employed. My great hope is that other
researchers will be able to use this catalogue to analyse other characters and
then, by making the resulting datasets available, compare these character anal-
yses alongside each other, creating an ever-growing dataset which can be used
to examine the question of character coherence in new and more informative
ways.
In order to encourage others to do so I have included a summary of
the tool, including instructions on how to use it, in Appendix A. Similarly,
all of the data generated in this book, including the survey responses, main
Doctor Doom dataset and smaller Dennis The Menace dataset, has been made
available Open Access at https://doi.org/10.25441/arts.c.6140805.

References
1. Wolk, Douglas. 2021. The Master Plan of Doctor Doom! 22 April. Accessed
April 23, 2021. https://voiceoflatveria.com/2021/04/20/9-the-master-plan-of-
doctor-doom-with-patrick-a-reed/.
2. Pearson, Roberta, and William Uricchio. 1991. The Many Lives of the Batman:
Critical Approaches to a Superhero and His Media. London: Routledge.
3. Brooker, Will. 2001. Batman Unmasked: Analyzing a Cultural Icon. London:
Bloomsbury.
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Four, and the Costs of Conformity.” In Comics as History, Comics as Literature.
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 CHAPTER 2

Methodology

This chapter will look at the key methodologies and theories that underpin
the research in this book.
Although Doctor Doom is presented here as a transmedia character the vast
majority of the texts in which he appeared were comics, and so it makes sense
to begin with a brief examination of the field of Comics Studies.

Comics Studies
As the name suggests, Comics Studies is the study of comics, although the
definition of ‘comics’ has been argued over for decades [1]. The different
interpretations have largely been attempts to cope with what Aaron Meskin
calls ‘hard cases’, i.e. ‘cases where there is legitimate controversy about
whether the item in question is actually a comic or not’ [2]. However, as
the main examples used here will be comics texts which were published by
Marvel Comics and produced by professional comics creators working within
the comics industry, they can safely be considered to be ‘easy cases’ of comics.
The specific type of comic found in these examples is superhero comics, a
genre which has its roots in the ‘American Monomyth’ whereby a lone figure
emerges to save a community from the forces of invading evil before disap-
pearing again without requiring thanks [3]. This is neatly encapsulated in the
theme tune to the Spider-Man cartoon series [4], which states that ‘At the
scene of the crime/ Like a streak of light / He arrives just in time’ and that
‘Wealth and fame he’s ignored / Action is his reward’ [5].
The appreciation and study of comics has a long history, but it is only in
the twenty-first century that Comics Studies has begun to establish itself as

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 9

Switzerland AG 2024
M. Hibbett, Data and Doctor Doom, Palgrave Studies in Comics and
Graphic Novels, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45173-7_2
10 M. HIBBETT

an academic field, with dedicated courses, conferences and journals, largely as

a response to the perceived respectability that graphic novels began to enjoy
in the 1980s [6, 7]. Comics scholars tend to come to the topic via other
academic departments, such as English, Film and Media Studies, Sociology,
Art and Design [8]. This means that it has had little time to develop its own
unique tools, but ‘continues to rely on terminologies and theories handed
down from other disciplines’ [9]. Comics Studies can thus be described as
‘interdisciplinary’.

Interdisciplinary Research
‘Interdisciplinary Research’ is an approach which is ‘a synthesis of disci-
plinary knowledge and methods’, an ‘analytically reflective study of the
methodological, theoretical, and institutional implications of implementing
interdisciplinary approaches to teaching and research’ [10, 11]. As comics
themselves are a combination of text and illustration, the field of Comics
Studies has been described as ‘inherently interdisciplinary’ [12].
This term ‘interdisciplinary’ is currently much in favour in many different
forms of research, and some argue that it has become ‘a buzzword of
faculty and administrators which has been appropriated to describe so many
academic pursuits that it is virtually meaningless’ [13, 14]. In the field of
Comics Studies, ‘interdisciplinarity’ tends to be deployed ‘as a descriptive label,
serving merely to acknowledge the variety of disciplines from which the field’s
contributing scholars hail’ [15]. It has been described as a ‘magpie theory of
interdisciplinarity’ which ‘cobbles methods, subjects, and texts from various
disciplines’ and ‘marks off the arrangements as a new unified mode of inquiry’
[16].
For better or for worse, this is the approach that will be taken in this book,
as existing tools from disciplines such as psychology, computing and statistics
are brought together in order to create new tools. Transmedia methodology
will be discussed in the next chapter, and most other methods will be described
as they occur, but some methodologies that were central to the project need
to be explained before going any further, beginning with empirical research.

Empirical Research
The term ‘empirical research’ refers to any kind of research which is drawn
from empirical evidence, i.e. ‘based on direct experience or observation of the
world… rather than, for example, by theorizing, or by reasoning, or by arguing
from first principle’ [17].
Within Comics Studies this means using ‘a set of methods capable of
supporting or falsifying its hypotheses about the medium of comics, often
constructed by theoretically and methodologically fine-grained analyses, with
the help of empirical testing and quantitative corpus studies’ [18]. For our
purposes here it will primarily be used as a combination of ‘applied computer
 2 METHODOLOGY 11

science with humanistic scholarship’, using computing techniques to generate

and analyse a corpus for the close reading of individual texts [18].
The combination of close reading with database-led methods of corpus
analysis is a comparatively recent innovation in Comics Studies, and may even
be an example of the field developing a unique tool of its own, with several
studies now using such methods to generate and analyse large datasets [19].
The most well-known example of this approach is probably the What Were
Comics ? project which seeks to develop ‘a data-driven history of the Amer-
ican comic book’ by moving away from abstract humanistic questions such as
‘what are comics?’ towards the empirically grounded ‘what were comics?’ [20].
What Were Comics ? takes a random sample of 2% of all comics published in
the US between 1934 and 2019, and then uses close reading to record formal
and material elements from both text and paratext that will enable analysis of
the corpus as a whole, thus answering the eponymous question ‘what were
comics?’.
The Visual Language Research Corpus is another data-driven corpus anal-
ysis which contains coded information from 36,000 panels in 290 comics
texts, entered by a group of nine independent coders [21]. The data collected
includes ‘coding of panel framing, semantic relations between panels, external
compositional structure (page layout), multimodality, and a variety of other
structures of visual languages’ [22]. Other examples of studies using databases
to analyse formal aspects of comics texts include the MediaDB project, an
attempt to ‘provide researchers, students and fans with a comprehensive
searchable library of all the French-language magazines of comic art news and
criticism published since the 1960s’, and The Graphic Narrative Corpus , a
dataset of around 250 graphic novels, memoirs, and non-fiction written in
English [23, 24].
These projects concentrate on formal elements of the texts, whereas Julia
Round’s Misty Database combines this approach with an examination of narra-
tive content, with data about the publication history of individual stories
and their creators sitting alongside a system of coding for story types, using
bespoke categorisations such as ‘reader has been misled through medium’,
‘moral/uplifting’ and ‘shock twist/inversion to story’ [25]. The Claremont
Run takes a similar approach to Chris Claremont’s tenure as writer of The
Uncanny X-Men, providing a dataset for the quantitative analysis of ‘struc-
ture, characterization and representation’ in ‘a comics story that was 16 years
in the making’ [26]. As with the Misty Database, its coding is closely tied to its
specific content, such as instances of hugging, expressing reluctance to fight,
or being declared dead.
Like many of these projects, the analysis in this book is mostly arranged
around a specific theme—in this case the presence of Doctor Doom during a
specific period of time. However it differs from other projects in two impor-
tant ways. Firstly, the coding and classification systems developed here are
intended for use with all characters and storyworlds, not just the specific char-
acters and storyworlds of the project within which it originates. For example,
12 M. HIBBETT

data collected by The Claremont Run records whether individual characters

are ‘subject to torture’ or are seen ‘flying with another character’ and other
categories which recur in that corpus, but are unlikely to be useful for other
researchers examining other characters.
Secondly, the system developed will not be restricted to specific types of
text. This book will use the unified catalogue of transmedia character compo-
nents to examine television programmes, radio shows and cartoons, but it
can be used for any type of storytelling. Some components will be used more
often than others in certain media types, but this would be true whatever texts
are examined. For example, it is likely that a radio show would not contain as
much information about a character’s appearance as a graphic narrative such as
a cartoon or comic, but if an aspect of a character’s appearance was important
one might expect this to be conveyed somehow, such as through a description
by another character.
Similarly, a very brief appearance by a character would not contain as much
information overall as a lengthier one, but some information about them
would still be conveyed, and the catalogue could be used to examine which
particular components were deemed important enough to still be featured.
It might be that future advances in technology enable other components to
arise which are not yet included in the unified catalogue of transmedia char-
acter components. The way a character smells is not explicitly dealt with, for
example, because it is very rarely mentioned as a character component, but if
new forms of storytelling emerged which allowed for smells to be reproduced
this might change.

Grounded Theory
Choosing which components to record was initially extremely complicated,
with several attempts to do so quickly confounded by contact with the
actual data. It soon became clear that this was an iterative process requiring
constant re-evaluation, and thus grounded theory became one of the primary
research methods for the entire project, forming the framework within which
everything else would fit.
Grounded theory is a research method designed to assist the development
of new theories [27]. It was originally designed by Barney Glaser and Anselm
Strauss for use in qualitative research and described in their book Discovery
of Grounded Theory as ‘the discovery of theory from data’ [28]. Since then,
however, it has become a widely used research method across a wide range of
disciplines and subject areas, both qualitative and quantitative [29].
The core concept of grounded theory is that of a continuing process of
categorisation, with the developing theory based ‘not in an intangible, abstract
form, but rooted, or grounded, in systematic observation’ [30]. The new
theory thus emerges iteratively from the information gathered rather than
relying on pre-assumed analytical/theoretical constructs, gradually becoming
finessed as new information is received [27].
 2 METHODOLOGY 13

Under grounded theory researchers begin with the data, identifying and
coding categories of information as they work through it. Broad ‘low-level’
categories are identified first but, as the researcher learns more about the data,
more specific ‘high-level’ category labels are devised. For instance, a reading of
character types in superhero literature might begin with simple types such as
‘superhero’ or ‘super-villain’ and then develop into more nuanced categories
such as ‘mutant’, ‘sidekick’, ‘dark avenger’ or ‘anti-hero’.
This was especially relevant for the development of the thirteen-dimensional
model of character coherence. An initial version of this model contained
only eight dimensions, and significant data entry was undertaken based on
the assumption that this was sufficient. However, so many problems arose
as a result of this that both the model and the data entry system had to be
completely re-developed.
This was grounded theory in action—new information arose from interac-
tion with the actual data, forcing iterative revisions to the theoretical concepts
before returning to the data. However, although it was vital to the develop-
ment of ideas and methods, it made initial attempts to describe this process
extremely difficult. Research in Arts and Design is generally considered to be
complex, iterative and ‘messy’, but the constant movement back and forward
between theory and practice, especially the continuing changes to the model,
made describing the process as it happened more complex, iterative and messy
than any reader could be expected to cope with [31].
With that in mind the description of methods has been streamlined so that,
although the construction of the transmedia model and the data entry systems
occurred in tandem, each informing the other, their final shapes are described
separately, with transmedia following here while the data systems are discussed
in the next chapter.

Existing Models of Transmedia Characters

There are many different models for defining a transmedia character, but each
one misses out key aspects identified by others. However, by bringing them
together into a single unified catalogue of transmedia character components a
tool can be developed which can then be used to map a character’s coherence
as they move across time and media.
This tool can then be applied in various ways, both qualitative and quan-
titative. Later chapters will discuss how it was used in this project to define
categorisations for the gathering of quantitative data for statistical analysis,
but before that the unified catalogue of transmedia character components will
be defined through an examination of existing models.

Transmedia Storytelling
Henry Jenkins coined the term ‘transmedia storytelling’ in 2003 to describe a
way to develop content that ‘would play well across media’ [32, 33]. He went
14 M. HIBBETT

on to further define transmedia storytelling in his book Convergence Culture as

‘the art of world making’, whereby storyworlds are created which can contain
many narratives, unfolding ‘across multiple media platforms, with each new
text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole’ [34]. Jenkins’
definition has become a cornerstone of the field of transmedia studies, with
his work cited widely—Convergence Culture, for example, has been cited over
18,000 times [35].
While Jenkins is regarded as ‘perhaps the most pivotal figure in developing
transmedia studies in the humanities to date’ the word ‘transmedia’ had been
used by earlier scholars [36]. For example, in Playing with Power in Movies,
Television and Video Games Martha Kinder talked of children experiencing
‘an ever-expanding supersystem of entertainment, one marked by transmedia
intertextuality’ [37]. Here she discussed the way that the content of different
texts interact with each other, not just in similar texts—such as the revival
of Looney Tunes cartoons referring to aspects of the original series fifty years
earlier—but across media, such as advertisements for Teenage Mutant Ninja
action figures appearing next to the television series. These texts refer to each
other, but do not necessarily exist within the same narrative storyworld, or in
the case of toys contain a narrative at all.
The ‘world making’ referred to by Jenkins requires some form of seri-
ality, building worlds and characters over time in what Matthew Freeman calls
‘expansive intertextuality’ where stories can be added to by offering new infor-
mation, new events or new viewpoints [33]. The shared ‘universe’ of Marvel
comics was an early example of this, creating a storyworld containing many
narratives that interacted with each other, albeit a storyworld that initially
existed in a single medium [38, 39]. The ‘Marvel Universe’ subsequently
grew into a massive fictional storyworld containing many stories, all of which
interact with each other in what Matt Hills has called a ‘hyperdiegesis’: a
‘vast and detailed narrative space, only a fraction of which is ever directly
seen or encountered within the text, but which nonetheless appears to operate
according to principles of internal logic and extension’ [40].
This kind of storyworld can also be described as ‘transtextual’, in that it
operates across different texts which relate and refer to each other, as described
by Gérard Genette in The Architext: An Introduction [41]. Genette splits
transtextuality into five separate categories, as follows:

Intertextuality—one work referencing another.

Paratextuality—text that surrounds the text, such as titles, advertise-
ments and footnotes.
Archetextuality—the conventions which place the text within its genre.
Metatextuality—a critical commentary by the text upon itself.
Hypertextuality—what links the text to other texts [42].
 2 METHODOLOGY 15

The Marvel Universe clearly operates fully transtextually, with its references
to previous stories (intertextual), use of editorial footnotes (paratextual), use
of genre tropes (archetextual), constant use of in-jokes and messages from
the editorial team (metatextual) and links from one story to the next (hyper-
textual). It also operates transfictionally, in that it features ‘the migration of
fictional entities across different texts that do not necessarily share the same
author’ [43].
Examples of storyworlds that comply with Jenkins’ definition of ‘trans-
media’ include some of the most commercially successful entertainment
franchises of the last forty years, such as Star Wars , Planet of the Apes (in both
its original and rebooted series), The Lord of the Rings , Warcraft , Harry Potter
and the ‘Marvel Cinematic Universe’ of the twenty-first century. Narratives in
these storyworlds not only move between different publications, but different
media formats too, such as video games, books, toys, live events and comics,
with fans focusing on the storyworld ‘through’ whatever media format it is
presented in, without being concerned about the transfer from one to another
[44]. As Martin Barker has stated, it is the storyworld, not the format that
matters—‘the medium really doesn’t have to be the message’ [45].
Under Jenkins’ definition of transmedia, these storyworld franchises work
as a unified system for delivering stories which are able to maintain ontological
security—‘a sense of continuity and order in events’—throughout [46]. If, for
example, a character dies in a Harry Potter book, then fans would expect that
this would be respected in a subsequent book, game or stage play.
However, while maintaining a stable continuity may be fairly straightfor-
ward in a series based on books written by a single author, it becomes much
more complicated in a shared universe produced by hundreds of creators in
multiple monthly instalments over more than half a century [47]. Storyworlds
such as these are not generated by the ‘planned, strategic aspects of creation’
which are the focus of studies of modern, digital-based forms of transmedia,
but instead emerge over time and by many hands [48].
Thus, while Jenkins’ definition of transmedia storytelling may be considered
the cornerstone for the field, it is clear that there are many aspects of trans-
media which it does not adequately cover. For instance, many other scholars
have taken different approaches, examining areas such as branding and fran-
chising, fan consumption, pre-digital transmedia ventures, and the nature of
characters within such storyworlds [49–51]. All of these fields of enquiry
provide valuable insight, but as this research is to do with transmedia charac-
ters, and particularly ‘early’ pre-digital characters such as Doctor Doom and,
later, the two versions of Dennis The Menace, the particular approach it will
use is that of transmedia archaeology.

Transmedia Archaeology and Early Transmedia Characters

In order for a storyworld to be considered as transmedia under Jenkins’ defi-
nition it is required to exist in different media but the same storyworld, with
16 M. HIBBETT

a single hyperdiegesis operating across different types of text. This defini-

tion focuses on digital storyworlds of the twenty-first century, largely ignoring
the pre-digital history of transmedia development. As Colin Harvey suggests,
‘transmedia storytelling is more fruitfully understood as a broad category to
describe instances of convergent storytelling, but also varieties of pre-digital,
licensed tie-in production that anticipate convergence’ [52].
The theory of ‘Transmedia Archaeology’ argues that the history of trans-
media storytelling stretches back much further than the digital franchises
which Jenkins initially described and can be seen in earlier forms of story-
telling which focused on individual characters operating across different media,
rather than storyworlds [51]. These early transmedia characters appear in many
different media in unrelated stories where specific parts of their background
or personality might differ, but their core aspects remain true throughout.
For instance, Tarzan is recognisably Tarzan throughout multiple iterations in
books, serials, films and comics [33]. Certain aspects may change—the age
at which he was left in the jungle, his relative ability to speak English, his
supporting cast—but his essential ‘Tarzan-ness’ remains [53]. Jason Scott has
similarly suggested that the ‘character-oriented franchises’ of the silent movie
era are examples of early transmedia, with the same characters appearing again
and again in different environments, retaining the essence of their characters
despite the changes in the world around them [54]. Many of the early stars
of movies also appeared in new adventures in comic strips, notably Charlie
Chaplin who appeared in several strips around the world, some appearing
many decades after his death [55]. Other examples of early transmedia include
the Japanese ‘Media Mix’ strategy of storytelling across different media, often
said to originate in 1963 when the Astro Boy manga was adapted into a
live action TV series and, subsequently, cartoons, films, video games and
merchandising [56].
Long before this, the promotional items and live theatre shows developed
around The Yellow Kid and Ally Sloper at the end of the nineteenth century
also fit into this idea of a transmedia character, while there is a long history
of characters from novels, such as Mary Shelley’s creature from Frankenstein,
being placed on stage, with or without the permission of the author [57–59].
In all of these cases the transmedia franchise was built around the character
rather than the world that they inhabited, and so the characters themselves
carried the burden of ontological security, by retaining a core identity that was
variable but recognisable [60, 61].
The term ‘early transmedia character’ can therefore be understood as refer-
ring to a character who carries their storyworld with them and, as Jenkins
himself has recognised, predates the digital storyworlds of the late twentieth
and twenty-first centuries [60, 62].
 2 METHODOLOGY 17

Characters Carrying the Storyworld

A notable example of this appears in the Superman/Spider-Man team-up
Marvel Treasury Edition #28 [63]. Here both lead characters bring multiple
aspects of their storyworlds with them, including specific locations, previous
events, other characters and ways of behaving. Doctor Doom is also involved
in this story and brings aspects of his own storyworld into the story, notably
the Latverian Embassy.
These ‘crossovers’, where characters who do not usually interact are placed
together, have been ‘central to the economic model of comic book publishers
since at least the mid-1980s’ and in recent years have become a selling point
across other superhero media as well [64]. The ‘Crisis On Infinite Earths’
crossover which took place across the CW’s ‘Arrowverse’ group of TV shows
in 2019 and 2020 made a virtue of this, not just featuring cameos from
previous TV versions of DC characters, but including additional aspects of
their original storyworlds too. This included different versions of the char-
acter The Flash from the TV series The Flash [65], Justice League movie [66]
and the then-current The Flash [67] all appearing in their original costumes,
and having supporting characters such as Lois Lane appearing alongside the
Clark Kent from Smallville [68]. This event was so well received that similar
crossovers have been repeated several times since.
Going even further, the Marvel Comics Spider-Verse crossover purported
to feature all known versions of Spider-Man meeting each other, often using
different artistic styles to denote different storyworlds, notably in Spider-Verse
Team-Up #2 [69] where the comics version of Miles Morales, first seen in
Ultimate Fallout #4 [70], and Peter Parker from the Ultimate Spider-Man
cartoon[71] visit the world of the original Spider-Man cartoon series [4], with
all being drawn in differing art styles to match their original storyworlds.
This stylistic choice was also used in the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-
Verse movie [72], loosely based on the comics series, with characters such as
Spider-Man Noir appearing in black and white and Spider-Ham resembling a
Looney Tunes cartoon. However, for the most part these were characters who
had been invented as additional, previously unseen, alternate versions for the
original comics series, rather than from actual pre-existing transmedia worlds.
This practice of illustrating new characters in styles which pastiche older
comics also has precedents in superhero storytelling, notably in Alan Moore-
scripted series such as 1963, Promethea and especially Supreme. In Supreme
Moore attempted to create a new character with an invented publishing history
similar to that of Superman, with multiple ‘prior’ versions of the character each
denoted by an artistic style similar to the period that was being referenced, all
existing in a post-reboot afterlife called ‘The Supremacy’ [73].
18 M. HIBBETT

Global Transmedia Character Networks

Jan-Noël Thon has described this use of different versions of the same char-
acter as a ‘Global Transmedia Character Network’—an assemblage of character
versions from single or ‘local’ works and ‘global transmedia’ or serial works,
across different media and media types [74, 75]. To take Doctor Doom as
an example, his Global Transmedia Character Network includes the various
cartoon, movie, game, book, newspaper and other versions of the character
which exist alongside, and share characteristics with, the comics version, but
are not generally understood to be the same character with necessarily the
same backstory or character traits [76].
Thon describes how different versions of a character may come together in
the opinion of the ‘recipients’ (i.e. readers, viewers, consumers, etc.), and that
these recipients apply ‘charity’ to the different versions to ‘forgive’ paradoxes
in the network. Asking why Doom’s tunic, for instance, is a different colour
in a cartoon and a comic would be asking one of Kendall Walton’s ‘silly ques-
tions’, which are ‘irrelevant to the appreciation’ of the text in question—in
other words, readers suspend their disbelief [77].
For example, when the Tomb Raider [78] franchise was rebooted with a
new game fans of the franchise ‘forgave’ differences between the backstory of
the original and new versions of Lara Croft, considering both to be part of
the same Global Transmedia ‘Lara Croft’ Network. They were able to do this
because the core ‘Lara Croft-ness’ of the character remained intact [75].
Such fans are happy to hold all of these ‘various, often mutually incom-
patible interpretations’ of their favourite characters in their heads without
confusion, so long as enough of the core signifiers remain [79]. Fans are thus
able to construct their own favoured version of the character which may not
directly correspond to any single ‘official’ iteration, but will still be able to sit
alongside them in the network.
Unlike Mark Wolf’s concept of ‘canonicity’, whereby a person in authority
(such as the intellectual property owner or a noted author) declares what
‘counts’ for the character, a Global Transmedia Network is a bottom-up, rather
than top-down, approach whereby the recipients decide what belongs within
the network [75, 80]. It is instead similar to Tony Bennett and Janet Woolla-
cott’s idea of ‘texts of Bond’, where the prevalent current version of a character
(James Bond in their example) alters over time as older versions interact with
newer, transmedia additions to the network [81].
One criticism of this idea is that some fans will never apply charity, and
will always ask ‘silly questions’. A notorious example of this in Doctor Who
fandom was the issue of the ‘UNIT dating controversy’ [82]. Briefly, stories
concerning the Third Doctor and UNIT were broadcast in the 1970s but
set in the 1980s. However, a later story broadcast in the actual 1980s
confused this by being set in the then-present day but showing UNIT’s leader
The Brigadier to have retired some years earlier, contradicting the original
 2 METHODOLOGY 19

continuity. Rather than charitably ignoring these problems, some fans-turned-

writers of the Doctor Who New Adventures series of novels later in that decade
used their stories as an arena to put forward their own, often contradictory,
views on when these stories should be set [83]. Rather than seeking to solve
the problem once and for all, the television series made a joke of it, with
The Sontaran Stratagem episode having The Doctor recall working for UNIT
‘Back in the ’70s. Or was it the ’80s?’ [84].
Despite this, I believe the general point is true, that as long as the core
aspects of the character remain, most audience members will decide to apply
charity. Paolo Bertetti refers to this decision-making on the part of the audi-
ence as ‘a tension between coherence and incoherence, or between continuity
and discontinuity, depending on whether the features identifying the charac-
ters at the various levels remain unchanged or vary from one text to another’
[85]. Fans use loaded terms like ‘canonicity’ and ‘continuity’ to denote which
stories ‘count’ and which do not, applying value to the former over the latter,
but the idea of characters within a Global Transmedia Character Network
having varying degrees of ‘coherence’ relative to the rest of the network is
free of such connotations, and so is the term that will be used here [86].
All of this discussion raises the question of what it is about a fictional char-
acter that makes them recognisable as a specific entity, whether in Jenkins’ idea
of a coherent storyworld acting across different media or Thon’s network of
related but individual entities. One way to describe this is through the concept
of ‘character signifiers’.

Character Signifiers
The idea that a character could have particular ‘signifiers’ that identify them
across different media predates Henry Jenkins’ theories of transmedia. In their
book The Many Lives of Batman [87] Roberta Pearson and William Uricchio
examine the signifiers of Batman which allow him to retain his ‘Batman-
ness’ in whatever media he appears in, codifying these into five components:
attributes, events, recurrent characters, setting and iconography.
Examples of signifiers for Batman within these components could be as
follows:

Attributes—wealth, physical prowess, deductive skills, obsession with

crime.
Events—the murder of his parents, ongoing quest to fight crime.
Recurrent Characters—Robin, Alfred, the Joker.
Setting—Gotham city.
Iconography—mask with pointed ears, cape, bat insignia on chest.

Will Brooker identifies a similar list of signifiers as ‘a raft to cling to’ when
examining Batman as a character who ‘undergoes so many transformations,
20 M. HIBBETT

and is subject to so many competing, often contradictory interpretations, that

any defining essence sometimes seems eroded’ [88]. As with Pearson and Uric-
chio, he argues that all of these characteristics are required for Batman truly
to be Batman, but recognises that each can be stretched to some degree. For
instance, Batman’s costume has changed in many ways over the years, but
he almost always retains at least the core ingredients such as a mask or cape,
and while supporting characters come and go, and even die, key ones such
as Robin, Alfred and Joker will always return. Alan Moore identifies similar
aspects as part of ‘the character’s mythology’ in his introduction to Frank
Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns [89], listing Alfred, Robin and the Joker as
recurring characters, Gotham as the location, and Batman’s use of gadgets in
his fight against crime [90].
Umberto Eco described this kind of fictional existence as an ‘oneiric
climate’, whereby certain aspects of a character, such as their name, appear-
ance and supporting cast, are always the same at the start and end of the story,
but could vary wildly in between, with little or no relationship to past or future
events [91]. He used the Superman comics of the 1960s as examples, but this
could also apply to many other transmedia characters, with Sherlock Holmes,
for example, carrying similar expectations for readers.
However, there are differences between such literary characters and super-
hero characters like Superman, Spider-Man or indeed Doctor Doom. Firstly,
comics characters have a pictorial basis often missing from literary characters
which make them much easier to recognise, and also to copyright and trade-
mark [92, 93]. Indeed, American case law has established that ‘characters
who were flatter, consistent, memorable, and easily removed from the story
or context in which they were created ultimately received more [copyright]
protection than more complex and fully human characters, and this makes
such characters more attractive for transmedial adaptations’ [94].
Secondly, modern superhero characters tend to operate in extended ‘uni-
verses’—transtextual and sometimes transmedial storyworlds containing many
narratives that interact with each other over time [38, 39]. Characters existing
in such storyworlds require clearly defined ‘signifiers’ so that they can easily be
borrowed by different creators. This is especially true of super-villains such as
Doctor Doom, who act as story generators within the superhero genre, able
to instigate action and plot wherever they are placed [95, 96].
A rough idea of Doctor Doom’s signifiers expressed in terms of Pearson
and Uricchio’s classification of components might be:

Attributes—mastery of magic and science, arrogance, intelligence.

Events—the deaths of his parents, the accident which scarred his face.
Recurrent Characters—The Fantastic Four, Boris, Namor.
Setting—Latveria, New York.
Iconography—steel mask, green hood, cloak and tunic.
 2 METHODOLOGY 21

This is an approximation based only on my own opinions and reading history.

As will be shown later, other readers have very different ideas of what defines
Doom, and both these viewpoints differ again from the eventual results gained
from the unified catalogue of transmedia character components.
Filling in examples for these five types of component is fairly straightforward
as an exercise in its own right, but issues immediately arise when trying to
apply this idea to actual texts. It is easy enough to name events or settings,
but less so when trying to fit all aspects of Doctor Doom’s character into
the schema. For example, where does Doom’s Time Machine fit in? Is it an
attribute, or a setting, or something else which is not included here? Is the
fact that he speaks in the third person an attribute, or, in a text where speech
appears as printed word, is it iconography?
To be fair to Pearson and Uricchio’s codification, it was developed for the
purposes of talking specifically about Batman in a book about Batman, and
not for use as a practical tool for a wider examination of other characters or
their storyworlds, and so it should not be a surprise that it does not function
as such. However, as will be seen, similar problems occur with other schema
which set out to be used more generally.

Storyworld Components
Where Pearson and Uricchio suggest a codification of the components of
a character, Klastrup and Tosca propose something similar for storyworlds,
which they define as ‘an abstract content system from which a repertoire of
fictional stories can be actualised or derived’ [97]. They state that a storyworld
has the following three key features:

Topos—the setting of the world, in terms of time period and geography.

Mythos—the backstory of the world, which provides the knowledge
needed to interpret events within it.
Ethos—the code of ethics, which provides characters with the knowledge
required to know how to behave in the storyworld.

The Marvel Universe can be defined as a storyworld fairly easily using this
scheme:

Topos—‘the world outside your window’ [98]. Although the Marvel

Universe stretches from the beginnings of time to the far future, and
expands across this and other dimensions, the core aspects of the story-
world are set in a version of the modern world, particularly modern
Manhattan.
Mythos—the key difference between this world and ours is that its
physics allows superpowers to exist. Magic and science work side by side,
and extra-terrestrial invasions are considered a part of everyday life.
22 M. HIBBETT

Ethos—those who work, for the most part, for the maintenance of the
status quo are considered superheroes, those who work against it super-
villains.

As before, this definition is based on a personal and partial recollection of the

Marvel Universe over my own lifetime. It has no empirical evidence to back
it up, and other researchers might well provide entirely different definitions
based on their own personal experience.
If we accept the idea that transmedia characters, and particularly ‘early trans-
media characters’, carry their own storyworld with them then Klastrup and
Tosca’s definition of the storyworld must therefore also form a part of the
definition of transmedia characters [60]. For example, the character-specific
signifiers of the Disney character Goofy may vary in many ways across time
and media, but there are certain aspects of his world which always remain the
same, such as the fact that it has a ‘mythos’ in which a non-human character
can act in a human-like way [99].
Including such storyworld components as part of a transmedia charac-
ter’s overall components thus seems logical, although as with Pearson and
Uricchio’s definition there is much here that is missing due to the original
intent of the classification i.e. Klastrup and Tosca’s definition contains little
relating to characters themselves purely because the classification is designed
for describing entire storyworlds.
A more serious criticism of their model relates to the language used.
Giving components unique names which can then be re-used as terminology
is sensible, but for someone who is not a classically trained scholar words
such as ‘Topos’, ‘Mythos’ and ‘Ethos’ are largely meaningless, and arguably
exclusionary. From my own experience, attempting to use such non-intuitive
terminology in active research proved extremely difficult. Even after several
years using these terms I was still often forced to check which was which,
and trying to explain them to other scholars would often leave everybody
confused. As will be shown, these experiences informed the decision to use
clearer labelling for components in the final unified catalogue of transmedia
character components.

Story/Worlds/Media
Another useful definition of storyworld components comes from Marie-Laurie
Ryan’s Story/Worlds/Media: Tuning the Instruments of a Media-Conscious
Narratology [100]. Here Ryan brings together many aspects seen in both
Pearson and Uricchio’s and Klastrup and Tosca’s codifications, as follows:

Existents—the characters and significant objects that exist within the

plot.
Setting—the space within which the existents are located.
 2 METHODOLOGY 23

Physical laws—the ‘laws of nature’ which determine the kind of events

which are practically possible within the story.
Social rules and values—the ‘laws of man’ which frame the characters’
behaviours.
Events—the physical events which occur in the time span framed by the
narrative.
Mental events—the motivations which cause events to happen and the
emotional reactions to them.

Ryan’s ‘setting’ matches with Pearson and Uricchio’s ‘setting’, as well as

to the time period and places contained within Klastrup and Tosca’s ‘topos’.
Her ‘Physical laws’ aligns with their ‘mythos’, while ‘social Rules and values’
matches ‘ethos’ and ‘events’ matches Pearson and Uricchio’s component of
the same name.
The fact that Ryan’s definition fits with a combination of the first two defi-
nitions discussed suggests that this is a reliable way to define storyworlds.
However, there are two components within Ryan’s definition which do not
match up with the others so neatly. The ‘characters’ aspect of her compo-
nent ‘existents’ is captured within ‘recurrent characters’, but what she calls
‘significant objects’ are not.
These are part of what Geraint D’Arcy has referred to as the ‘Mise en scéne’
of comics—the way that the arrangement of characters and objects within a
location or setting contributes to create meaning [101]. It could be argued
that these objects might fit therefore within ‘setting’, but Ryan explicitly sepa-
rates these out in her own definition, and my own experience during data entry
confirms that this is appropriate. There are definitely specific objects which are
part of Doctor Doom’s set of signifiers—‘viewing screens’, for example, appear
regularly in his stories and are an important signifier of his character, but are
not settings, nor are they other characters. Thus they need to be included in
any overarching set of signifiers, and require their own classification of ‘objects’
as a component.
Similarly, while Ryan’s ‘mental events’ could perhaps be placed within
Pearson and Uricchio’s ‘attributes’, engaging with data entry showed that
ideas of ‘motivation’ and ‘emotional reactions’ were too complicated to be
contained in this way. For example, it is generally straightforward to use this
system to codify ‘Existents’, as other characters and objects can be identified
in the texts as they go along, but ‘mental events’ are much more difficult to
code for fictional characters who do not actually have a mentality for events
to happen in. As will be discussed shortly, these required more thought and a
different approach to categorisation.
In common with other classifications, actually trying to use these codi-
fications on a sample of texts showed that they were most likely designed
primarily as discussion points, rather than as practical tools. This is entirely
understandable in an academic paper but is not hugely helpful for data entry,
24 M. HIBBETT

hence the need for further investigation into how ideas like ‘mental events’
can be assessed empirically.

Existential and Fictional Identity

Paolo Bertetti proposes a definition of a transmedia character that is divided
into two different main types of identity: existential and fictional [99]. These
can be roughly defined as who a character is and what they do, respectively,
sub-divided as follows:

Existential identity: This refers to the aspects of the character that exist
apart from a narrative—who they are, rather than what they do. Bertetti
divides this into Proper and Relational identities.
Proper—aspects of the character themselves, such as their appear-
ance, personal qualities, names, visual appearance and societal roles.
Bertetti further divides this identity into ‘figurative’ and ‘thematic’
identities.
Figurative—items which apply to the character themselves,
such as their appearance and name.
Thematic—the roles that the character plays within the text,
such as their job.
Relational—relationships to other characters and to the world
around them in space and time, sub-divided again into:
Actorial—relationships with other characters, such as parent,
enemy, or mentor.
Spatial/temporal—their place in space or time.
Fictional identity: This covers aspects of the character that occur when
they are placed within a narrative and start to ‘do’ things and is again
sub-divided, as follows:
Actantial—the actions that the character undertakes within the
fiction.
Modal—the motivations behind these actions.
Axiological—the deep values that lead to these motivations and
actions.
The earlier criticism of Klastrup and Tosca for using non-intuitive language
applies even more so here. Over the course of my own research I eventually
found Bertetti’s system of definition to be one of the most comprehensive,
but it took a long time to realise this because of the difficulty in getting to
grips with the language he uses. For example, in ‘Fictional identity’ the terms
‘Actantial’, ‘Modal’ and ‘Axiological’ would be much easier to understand if
they were renamed ‘Actions’, ‘Motivations’ and ‘Values’. As with Klastrup and
Tosca’s terminology, the need to provide unique terminology is understand-
able, and it is clear that scholars who have knowledge of the disciplines from
 2 METHODOLOGY 25

which these terms originate would have no such difficulties, but to be truly
useful a tool should not use terminology that requires constant and repeated
reference to a glossary.
As with Ryan’s definition, many aspects of Bertetti’s Proper and Relational
identities can be mapped onto other versions of transmedia components. For
existential identity, proper identity is mostly contained within Pearson and
Uricchio’s attributes and iconography, while much of relational identity falls
within their recurrent characters and setting as well as Klastrup and Tosca’s
topos. In both cases, however, Bertetti identifies components that require
further investigation. For example, although much of his fictional identity
is contained within Klastrup and Tosca’s ethos and mythos, it also suggests
a need to consider the character’s motivations for their actions, in line with
Ryan’s mental events.
Bertetti’s model includes other new items which need to be taken into
account, notably the character’s name. Doctor Doom is not just referred to as
‘Doom’ or ‘Doctor Doom’, but goes by several other names and titles which
are repeated across his texts and are part of the acceptance that he is indeed
Doctor Doom. Sometimes he is never referred to as ‘Doctor Doom’ at all—
the mysteriously bandaged figure in Invaders #32 [102] for example shows
none of the usual signifiers of Doom’s appearance and is only ever called ‘Vic-
tor’, but is clearly meant to be Doctor Doom. Similarly, when he appears in
Not Brand Echh he is almost always referred to as ‘Doctor Bloom’.
Another aspect of the figurative identity which has not been covered by any
of the models discussed so far is the way that a character speaks. An impor-
tant signifier of Doctor Doom is that he generally speaks in the third person
and insults other characters, and this can even be a plot point when he is
in disguise, or somebody else is pretending to be him, pointing the reader
towards a hidden identity.
One way to record this would be to simply type in all of a character’s
dialogue and then analyse it later. This would have some similarities to corpus
linguistics analysis (CLA), a methodology which uses computer systems to
analyse large volumes of textual data by, for example, counting how many
times specific words appear within a text, or how often certain groups of words
are found in proximity to each other [103]. However, CLA treats the words
within a text purely as data to which a quantitative statistical analysis can be
applied, operated across the entire text or corpus as a whole [104]. In this
project the purpose is to examine words as narrative content, with meanings
and relationships to other aspects, and to identify them over time and across
media, rather than as a whole. This is not to say that the statistical analyses
similar to CLA would not be possible within this approach—they would, if
one was prepared to type in every single word in every single text—but that is
not the focus here. Instead, it seems sensible to add both ‘objects’ and ‘speech’
to the growing list of character signifiers.
Issues of codification are more complicated when it comes to Bertetti’s
fictional identity, which is related to Ryan’s mental events via their discussion
26 M. HIBBETT

of values and motivations. Again, engaging in data entry demonstrated that

these factors could not be coded in the same way as others, but in trying to
find an answer to this problem a much wider question was uncovered around
ways to quantify the behaviour of a fictional character.

Behaviour
The way in which a character behaves is part of all character-based transmedia
definitions, and yet finding a way to codify this is extremely difficult. As this
sub-section will show, the eventual answer to this problem is not to treat it
as a single component at all, but rather a separate category of components
covering different aspects of overall behaviour.
Firstly, it is important to note that the methodologies discussed will be
used to analyse fictional characters as fictional characters, in that they serve to
provide a categorisation of the storytelling aspects which identify the different
versions of the character rather than as a psychological evaluation of a ‘real’
person.
Psychological analyses of superheroes are very popular, from mass market
text books like Superheroes: An Unauthorized Exploration [105], Superman
on the Couch [61] and Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight
[106] to comic series such as Watchmen [107] or Powers [108], which self-
consciously set out to discover what make superheroes ‘tick’. However, none
of these characters actually have a personality to analyse—they are all ‘an imag-
ined person with an imagined life’ [109]. They appear to have a personality
due to the work of a succession of creative workers interpreted by readers,
viewers and/or listeners over many years [110]. In the words of Uri Margolin,
each one is a ‘non-actual individual… freely devised or constructed by an
actual human mind’ or, in this case, minds [111].
The practical problems with codifying a fictional character’s personality
became clear during the earliest attempts to enter data about Doom’s
behaviour. The first iteration of data entry involved using open-ended text
fields to enter a description of the character’s general behaviour, which was
entirely unsatisfactory as it was impossible to generate empirical, reproducible
data. For example, in Fantastic Four #198 [112] I could have described
Doom’s behaviour as any of ‘arrogant’, ‘rude’, ‘megalomaniac’, ‘cares for
his son’, ‘hateful’, ‘bitter’, ‘vain’, ‘grudgeful’, ‘intelligent’ or ‘unforgiving’.
However, this would be based entirely on my own view of his behaviour,
and anyone else might have a very different opinion and use entirely different
words to describe them. Also, either of us might code them differently again if
the task was undertaken at a different time in a different emotional state. This
difficulty was demonstrated when I conducted a survey in which I asked super-
hero fans to describe Doctor Doom. The category ‘behaviour’ drew far more
unique responses than any other aspect of the character, with 233 distinct
descriptions, 150 of which were suggested by only one respondent each [113].
 2 METHODOLOGY 27

Happily for me, this problem of describing personalities has long been an
issue in the field of psychology, going back to at least 1936 when Allport &
Odbert identified 18,000 words to describe personalities, and it has continued
up to the present day as researchers attempt to formulate their own dictionaries
of terms [114–116]. So, in order to address this I chose to use three different
approaches to describing personalities, based on the psycholexical approach,
psychological character traits, and the idea of ‘motivation’ taken from creative
writing studies.

The Psycholexical Approach

The psycholexical approach is a methodology based on analysing descriptive
terms used to describe someone in a text, on the assumption that this can ‘pro-
vide sufficient information for individuals to describe themselves and others at
a relatively granular level within a social context’ [117]. In other words, it uses
the way that characters, real or fictional, are described by themselves or others
as a basis for personality analysis.
This is generally done using text-mining, ‘the process of extracting valuable
information and knowledge from unstructured text’ [118]. Here textual data
is extracted from texts such as speeches and novels and analysed in order to
codify the personalities of the people described within [117, 119].
When this methodology has been used to analyse fictional characters before
it has been argued that the resulting analyses are more likely to indicate the
personality of the creator, rather than the character [120]. While this might
be the case when applied to characters who only appear within the works
of a single creator, a transmedia character who exists across different texts
and media, with different creative teams over time, could theoretically have a
personality which is independent of individual creators, and thus discernible
from the way they are described in these texts. For example, stories featuring
characters such as Sherlock Holmes, Batman, Lara Croft, Conan, James Bond
or Doctor Who have all been developed by multiple creators over many
decades, but audiences are still able to recognise the character so long as their
behaviour does not stray too far from what has been established previously
[121].
Using a psycholexical approach to collect together the words used to
describe Doom’s behaviour in a sample should therefore generate an unbi-
ased, replicable dataset. For instance, in Fantastic Four #198 [112] the
following words and phrases are used in the text to describe Doctor Doom:
‘proud’, ‘powerful’, ‘despot’, ‘ingenious’, ‘ruler’, ‘good’, ‘carefree’, ‘haughty’,
‘high and mighty’, ‘hateful’, ‘stoppable’. If a psycholexical methodology was
followed, these same terms would be collected by anybody analysing this text.
However, this methodology does miss important information. In the story
above, Doom clearly behaves throughout like an arrogant megalomaniac who
despises his subjects, but this is not captured via the psycholexical approach,
where he is never described using these words or any like them. This is
28 M. HIBBETT

Fig. 2.1 A gleeful Doctor Doom in Spidey Super Stories #53

even more noticeable in other texts that use far fewer descriptive words. For
example, in Spidey Super Stories #53 [122] there are no words used to describe
Doom’s behaviour at all, so no analysis can be carried out despite the fact that
he demonstrates character traits such as arrogance and megalomania, alongside
less often seen ones such as delight and glee (Fig. 2.1).
This is not a problem unique to this category of signifier, as other categories
of data may be missing for all types of signifier across the corpus, but here
it seems that there is information being put across about behaviour which
cannot be harvested using this methodology. To put this another way, if we
do not see Doctor Doom’s gauntlets in a specific text then they are simply not
being used to signify his character. However, if Doom behaves in a specific way
but it is not described by himself, the narrator or other characters, then that
important data is being missed. Thus, other approaches are needed to collect
this information.

Personality Traits and Characters

One possible answer to this problem would be to assess Doom’s behaviour
in terms of his personality. In the field of psychology personalities are
described using traits—‘relatively enduring characteristics that influence our
behaviour across many situations’ [116]. Traits are the defining features of
who we are (our personality) which determine what we do (our behaviour)—
a differentiation that is reflected in Bertetti’s existential and fictional identities
[85].
The most widely used, and widely agreed upon, current method for
categorising personality traits is the Big Five Inventory [123–125]. This
methodology groups personality traits into factors of openness to experience,
 2 METHODOLOGY 29

conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism—often referred

to with the acronym OCEAN [126–129]. Each factor can include sub-factors,
with words arranged on a scale so that, for example under ‘Extraversion’
someone could be described on a scale from ‘talkative’ to ‘silent’, ‘frank’ to
‘secretive’, ‘adventurous’ to ‘cautious’ and ‘sociable’ to ‘reclusive’ [130].
Difficulties have been noted with the use of the Big Five, especially that it
is language-specific, and thus requires different scales for different languages,
or even additional traits, but there is a general consensus that it is a useful tool
within the English language context [115, 131]. It has also been shown to be
an effective method of assessing the personalities of fictional characters [132].
Many surveys have been developed based on the Big Five, which allow
users to assess their own or other people’s personality traits through a series of
questions about their behaviour [133]. These surveys vary in size from ten
questions up to 300 [134, 135]. Questions are generally posed by asking
respondents to describe themselves or others in relation to how accurate
certain statements are about the person in question.
Thus there is a choice to make about the size of survey to use to capture
this information. Attempting to complete a fifty-question survey about a char-
acter for every text would be time consuming and difficult, partly due to the
number of questions, but also the nature of the questions—for example, ques-
tion 23 asks for a rating of the statement ‘Get chores done right away’, which is
unlikely to be accurately answerable for most superhero texts. Shorter surveys
are available which use broader questions and are quicker to undertake, and
these have been shown to give results comparable with longer versions, espe-
cially when used for text rather than in-person or telephone interviews [136].
The disadvantage of these shorter scales is that they do not allow for sub-
factors, instead giving simple numeric data for each of the five main factors,
but in this case such a simplified system can actually be beneficial, allowing for
straightforward analysis of large datasets.
For these reasons I chose to use the 10 Item Short Version of the BFI for this
research [134]. As the name suggests, this contains just ten items, as shown
in Fig. 2.2.
The version shown above is for self-assessment. When it is being used about
someone else, or a fictional character, the opening question is rephrased as ‘I
see [name] as someone who…’.
Once the questions are answered the results are combined into the Big
Five Personality traits by adding the results of the questions together in pairs
as follows:

Extraversion: Answer to question 1 (reversed) plus answer to question 6.

Agreeableness: 2 + 7 (reversed).
Conscientiousness: 3 (reversed) + 8.
Neuroticism: 4 (reversed) + 9.
Openness to Experience: 5 (reversed) + 10.
30 M. HIBBETT

Fig. 2.2 10 item short version of the BFI

For example, if in a certain text I disagreed strongly that the character ‘is
reserved’ and disagreed a little that they had ‘few artistic interests’ it would be
coded as a score of 7 for ‘Extraversion’, made by adding together the reversed
score for question 1 (5) and the score for question 5 (2).
Thus, by completing this survey a five-part behavioural score can be gener-
ated for each text, which can then be used to analyse how much the character’s
behaviour changes or remains consistent across time and media.
There are, however, two problems with this methodology. First of all, it
relies upon there being sufficient data expressed in a text. When a character
appears very briefly in a text without speaking or doing anything it would be
impossible to answer the above questions based purely on events in the text
itself. Secondly, by its nature the BFI still does not cover important specifics of
certain characters. Doctor Doom may score highly on ‘Conscientiousness’, for
example, but this does not indicate that what he is most conscientious about
is the development of schemes to conquer the world.
Character traits do not, therefore, supply a single answer to the problem of
recording behaviour, and even combining it with the psycholexical approach
would leave gaps. A further approach is therefore necessary.

Motivation
As this is an attempt to codify the behaviour of fictional characters it seemed
sensible to investigate theories derived from creative writing theory to see if
they could be of use in describing their behaviour.
F Scott Fitzgerald’s famous statement ‘Action is character’ is often referred
to in this field, meaning that what matters in a fictional narrative is what the
character actually does [137]. However, for a character to be believable these
actions must have some sort of motivation—a reason for doing what they do
 2 METHODOLOGY 31

[138]. If, in real people, personality can be described as ‘characteristics that

influence our behaviour’ then by this theory the personality of fictional char-
acters could be described prosaically as the ascribed motivations that produce
actions [116].
Attempts to mine data about motivations from sample texts showed that
this was a much more straightforward process than attempting to categorise
nebulous ‘personalities’, especially in comics texts where motivations are often
expressed in thought bubbles or, indeed, are spoken out loud. Different
audiences might have different ideas about why Doctor Doom may wish to
conquer the world, but in most cases it is clear that this is his motivation
(Fig. 2.3).
As with other versions of behaviour, motivations cannot be discerned in
every text. In many texts, for example, Doom is shown as part of a montage
of characters, used to represent all super-villains rather than as an active agent
of the plot, but in these cases it does not matter. The fact that no motivations
are ‘shown’ is a valid piece of data to record—we are not missing any data on
motivation, because there is no motivation to record.
However, other aspects of Doom might well be included. We may not have
access to Doom’s inner motivations, but we might have a description of his
character as a ‘tyrant’. This demonstrates that these two ways of describing
character behaviour are in fact complementary—the way that the character is
described, whether by other characters, the narrator or indeed themselves, is
different information to whatever their inner motivation is. Laurie Hutzler
describes these two different aspects as ‘The Mask’ and ‘The True Self’ [140].
The mask is the way that the character is presented to the outside world—
the equivalent of their described behaviours—while the true self is what really
drives them—their motivations. These interact with each other, along with
other story components including other characters and the world itself, to
drive stories forward.

Fig. 2.3 Doom speaks his motivation out loud in Fantastic Four #59 [139]
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ready to spring I gave a shout, “Look out,” and shot out over the
small figure and into the pool.
When I came up, blowing like a porpoise, the figure was standing
waist deep in water and waving thin excited arms abroad. I saw the
face. It was gaunt, fever-bright, and not like my lad’s as I had seen it
last, but it was Joey who stood there.
I lifted him up and he clasped my neck almost to strangulation,
wrapping his long legs around me, and I raced with him to the house.
Once inside I stripped him, seized a towel and rubbed his cold little
body until it glowed, and he laughed and cried and laughed again,
and clutched my neck and finally stammered:
“I got—got here! I come for my birthday—all the way from the East
alone.”
“Alone!”
“Yep! And I’m going to stay. Going to stay forever—Bell Brandon said
so. They’s a letter in my satchel for you.”
I hugged him to my breast.
“But what were you doing in the swimming hole, Joey?”
He looked at me, smiled his shrewd young smile, and said:
“Washing off the dust and—and tidying myself. Let’s see the cake,
now, Mr. David.”
“The cake?”
He nodded. “Hasn’t Wanza baked it yet?”
“Why, Joey lad, we haven’t any ready to-day! Can’t you
understand?”
His face grew blank, his eyes filled, and he shivered suddenly; he
seemed to shrivel in my arms, and he turned his head away from
me.
“What is it, Joey?”
“I—I—don’t anybody want me?”
“Want you?” I was aghast. “There, and there, and there,” I cried,
giving him a rapid succession of hugs. “Doesn’t this look as though I
wanted you?”
“Is Wanza sick?” There was something hopeful in his tone.
“No,” I said, “Wanza is very well, lad.”
Again that blank look, that delicate shiver.
“We’ll have a fire going in no time, lad, and a cake in the oven, and
the blue dishes on the table. And say the word and I’ll slap the
saddle on Buttons and ride post-haste to Wanza and tell her I have a
wonderful, wonderful surprise for her—that Joey has come back,
after we had given up hoping. I’ll bring her here—shall I, Joey?—to
help bake the cake. Oh, dear, dear lad!—” I cried, and broke down.
Such a shout as he gave. He had me by the neck and was clinging
to me like a wild young savage. “You didn’t get my letter—you didn’t,
you didn’t!”
“Did you write, Joey?”
“Yep, sure I wrote. Course I wrote. Soon as Bell Brandon told me I
belonged to you really and truly I wrote and I let Bell Brandon put a
letter in the envelope with mine. I put your name on the outside. I
printed Mr. David, as careful, and Bell Brandon watched me. She
made me write Dale on it, too. But when she wasn’t looking I rubbed
out the Dale part, and I mailed it myself on the corner. I told you to
spect me on my birthday, and Bell Brandon told you to meet me at
Spokane ’cause I was coming all alone from Chicago.”
Poor lad! Poor disappointed lad! He gave a strange, tired sigh, but
meeting my somber eyes, brightened. “I like traveling alone. Pooh!
I’d liever travel alone than—than anything. But when you didn’t meet
me at Roselake even, I thought—I thought p’r’aps you didn’t want
me! And when I got out of the stage at the meadow and cut across,
and peeked at the cabin and you wasn’t around, I was ’most sure
you didn’t want me. And then I saw how dirty I was, and I thought I’d
tidy up first before you saw me, anyhow.”
I went back to the river bank, sought for and found Joey’s traveling
bag and carried it to the house. Joey brought out of its depths a letter
and handed it to me. But I did not read it at once. I put my lad in a
big chair in the kitchen, and I built a fire in the stove and I set out
flour and sugar and molasses, all the while praying that Wanza
would appear. I laid the table in the front room with the best blue
china, and I got out the pressed glass comport; and I gathered
handfuls of syringa and honeysuckle, and brought them in the big
yellow pitcher to Joey, saying:
“You may arrange these, Joey, for the table.”
But to my surprise he took the flowers listlessly, and when I glanced
around after a few moments I saw that he had set the pitcher down
on the floor and was leaning back in the chair with closed eyes. I
went and stood at his side, but he did not open his eyes.
“Tired, Joey?”
He yawned. “Terrible tired, Mr. David.”
I looked at him irresolutely, then gathered him up in my arms.
“Come along, old fellow, lie down on your bed in the cedar room, and
sleep till supper’s ready,” I suggested.
His hand stroked my cheek with the old caress. He yawned again. I
lifted him and carried him to the cedar room and placed him on the
bed. I took off his shoes and drew the shawl-flower quilt over him. He
spoke then:
“Tell Wanza when she comes, to wake me first thing. I love Bell
Brandon—but I love Wanza best. I guess—I’ll—sleep pretty good—
with this dear old quilt over me—” his voice grew indistinct, he
stretched, blinked once or twice, closed his eyes, and snuggled
luxuriously into his pillows. I tiptoed from the room.
In the front room I sat down by the window, took Haidee’s letter from
my pocket and read it.
“I hope nothing will prevent you from meeting Joey in
Spokane,” I read. “I have heard nothing from you on that
point. But I am almost sure you received my letter telling
 you of my illness and inability to travel, and asking you to
meet Joey on the fifth. I cannot but believe Bill Jobson’s
story—strange as it seems. My own little boy is gone
forever.
“When you receive this Joey will be with you—there in the
old place that he loves so dearly. And you—how you will
rejoice to have your lad again. Bless you both! David Dale,
I shall not visit Hidden Lake this summer,—I have learned
much in these past months. Do you not know your own
heart yet? I have read carefully, searchingly all the letters
you have written me this past winter, and I find Wanza,
Wanza, between the lines. She is the true mate for you—
can you not see this? Do you not feel it? Do you not know
you love her—as she loves you? I knew I should reach a
happy solution of our problem—given the much needed
perspective; and the solution is this—you love Wanza
Lyttle, and I care for you only as a dear, kind friend.
“No, I shall not visit Hidden Lake this year. Perhaps next
summer—but ‘To-morrow is a day too far to trust whate’er
the day be.’ I shall never forget Joey or you, or your
wonderful kindness and friendship. Good-bye, Mr. Fixing
Man,—or not good-bye! au revoir. Oh, all the good wishes
in the world I send to you and Joey—and Wanza.
“Judith Batterly.”
When I finished this letter I sat quietly, watching curiously a white
butterfly—a Pine White—skimming back and forth above a flowering
currant bush that grew close to the window. I found myself strangely
impassive. I said to myself that Haidee was mistaken about my
feeling for Wanza; but I experienced no sense of bereavement
because she had found that her own feeling for me was that of a
friend, merely. I was not even surprised. “I have Joey,” I kept
repeating over and over to myself, hugging this comfort to my breast.
There was a fear back of my exultation in the lad’s possession. A
fear that was strong enough to force the full significance of Haidee’s
communication into the background of my mind. Was my lad ill? Was
he really ill? I asked myself. He was thin, and his cheeks were
feverishly bright, and his voice sounded tired,—but, was he a sick
child?
I went back to the kitchen, looked at the ingredients set forth on the
table and then out of the window anxiously. If only Wanza would
come and a wonderful spice cake could be in the oven when Joey
awakened. If only— But here I broke off in my musings, for I heard a
strange sound from the cedar room.
I went as fast as my feet could carry me to the room where I had left
my boy. I found him lying, face downward on the floor, where he had
evidently fallen when he attempted to walk from his bed to the door. I
lifted him, turned his face to me, and examined it. It was flushed so
deep a red as to be almost purple. His eyes were open, but he did
not seem to see me, his lips were parted, the breath was hot on my
face. I placed him on the bed, and he murmured unintelligibly.
I knew then that my lad was ill, indeed, and when I heard a step
behind me and saw Wanza on the threshold, I ran and caught her
hand. “Thank God, you have come,” I exclaimed.
“They told me in Roselake Joey was back,” she cried, and brushed
past me to the bed.
I turned and went from the room. A few moments later she came to
me.
“What has she done to him? What has she done to him?” she burst
forth.
“She has done nothing, Wanza.”
“Why did you say, ‘Thank God’?” she cried, fiercely. “Do you think I
can save him? Mr. Dale, he is sick—he is very sick—he has pined
and pined—for a sight of you, and Jingles and Buttons. What do you
think he said just now?—raving as he is. ‘Will I go back soon, Bell
Brandon? No, thank you, I can’t eat—I guess I want Mr. David, and
Jingles and Buttons, and my own little cedar room.’ If he dies—David
Dale—if he dies!—”
“Please—please, Wanza—”
She looked into my face, her eyes were black with emotion.
“Saddle Buttons and go at once for a doctor! I’ll put Joey in a cold
pack while you’re gone; he’s burning with fever.”
“Practical, capable, ever ready to serve; lavish of her affection,
staunch in her friendship, ‘steel true,—blade straight,’—that is
Wanza,” I said to myself as I rode away.
The outcome of the doctor’s visit was that I sent for Mrs. Olds.
Wanza and I got through the night somehow, and the next day Mrs.
Olds came. I think this strange being entertained some slight
tenderness for Joey, for when she saw him lying among his pillows
with heavy-lidded eyes and fever-seared cheeks, she stooped and
touched his brow very gently with her lips. Joey recognized her when
she entered the room late at night in her heelless slippers and
flannel dressing-gown, and set her small clock on the shelf above
the bed. “Mrs. Olds,” he ordered distinctly, “take that clock out to the
kitchen.”
Taken by surprise, Mrs. Olds protested: “There, there, Joey, don’t
bother with me—that’s a good boy. Just close your eyes and go to
sleep again.”
“I don’t watch the clock! Mr. David says the Now is the thing. Take it
out! When the birds sing I’ll get up.”
But the birds sang and Joey did not awaken. He slept heavily all that
day. And when he aroused toward midnight he did not know me. The
following day he was worse, and that night I despaired. In his
delirium he said things that well nigh crazed me. His mutterings were
all of me, with an occasional reference to the collie and Buttons. “I
don’t like to leave Mr. David alone, so long,” he kept repeating. “I
’most know he wants me back again—I been his boy so long.”
Presently when he sobbed out shrilly: “I just got to go back to Mr.
David!” I arose precipitately, quitted the room and went out to the
bench in the Dingle.
But some one already was sitting there. I could see her in the light
from the room. A girl in a rose-colored dressing-gown with long
braids down her back, sat there, looking up at the star-filled sky
through the tree branches. I advanced and she made room for me at
her side. I sat down, too stunned, too grief stricken for words. We sat
there in silence. Presently her uneven breathing, her sobbing under-
breaths, disturbed me.
“Please—please, Wanza—don’t,” I begged.
“I’ve been praying,” she stammered.
“That is well, dear girl.”
“Praying that Joey will live.”
“It seems a small thing for God to grant—in his omnipotence. It is
everything in the world to me,” I murmured brokenly. “Why, girl, if my
boy lives I shall be the happiest man on God’s footstool! I shall be
immeasurably content. I shall ask nothing beside—nothing!”
She stirred. “Nothing, Mr. Dale—nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, Mr. Dale, you think so now—but you’ll be wanting her to come
back—you can’t help wanting that!”
“I am very sure I shall never ask for that, Wanza. Joey brought me a
letter. She is not coming back this year.”
“Not coming back?”
“She may never come again to Hidden Lake, Wanza. We may never
see her again.”
“But I don’t understand, David Dale!—oh, I thought some day you
would marry—you and she.”
Her voice was uneven and very low.
“Child,” I said gravely, “it is not to be. She cares for me only as a
friend. And I—”
“You love her—you know you do!”
She spoke passionately.
“Wanza,” I said thoughtfully, “it has been a long winter, hasn’t it?”
“Pretty long,” she answered, surprised.
“You have learned much this winter.”
“Yes, Mr. Dale.”
“And I have learned, too—without knowing it. I have learned very
gradually that I do not love Judith Batterly—so gradually, indeed, that
I did not realize until to-day the extent of my knowledge. She told me
in her letter it was so—then I knew.”
She sat very still, her head thrown back, her eyes on the sky. The
stirring leaves made shadows on her gown, the moonlight flicked
through the vines above her, and her hair glittered like gilt. Her eyes
were big and shining, and something on her cheek was shining, too.
“Praying—still, Wanza?” I whispered, after a time.
She put out her hand.
“Please, Wanza, say a prayer for me.”
“I am praying that what you told me is true.”
“It is true. Pray that I be forgiven for being a stupid, clumsy fellow,
unable to appreciate your true worth—” I stopped. I was being
carried on and I knew not where I desired to pause. I checked
myself, and bit my lip.
“I could not offer such a prayer,” I heard her say. “I am not worth
anything to anybody, Mr. Dale, except to Father. I am going to try,
though, to make myself all over—knowing you want me to improve,
and to show you I take your kindness to heart. I think I am improving
a little, don’t you? I don’t talk so loud, and I dress quieter—more
quietly—and I speak better. Can’t you see an improvement, Mr.
Dale?”
“Someway, Wanza,” I replied, speaking musingly, “I like you as you
are—as you have always been. It is only for your own sake that I
care to have you improve.” And as I said the words I realized that
this thought had been in the back of my mind for some time, and that
Wanza’s piquant utterances and lapses in English had never jarred
on me—that it was strictly true that it was only for Wanza’s own sake
I would have her changed.
“You like me as I am?”
The voice was incredulous.
“As well as I shall when you have finished your education, child.”
“As well?”
“Yes.”
“You won’t like me better then?”
“No, no better, Wanza.”
She rose and stood before me. The light from the open door of the
cedar room was on her face, and I saw hopelessness in her eyes,
and a tremulousness about her lovely child-mouth.
“You will never like me very, very much, then, I guess,” she said in a
low tone.
She did not give me a chance to respond to this, but turned and went
away through the cedars, and I sat still, saying over to myself: “Very,
very much.”
And as I said the words I thrilled; my blood seemed to surge into my
eyes and blind me. Something had me by the throat. It was a strange
moment. In that moment I had a glimpse of the truth—a white light
illumined my seeking, groping senses. Then it was gone. I was in
darkness again. But in that brief lightning space I had stood on the
brink of a revelation. In the weeks and months past, through the
blinding—the fervid—gleam of my feeling for Haidee I had seen
Wanza but obscurely—Wanza—tried day after day by homeliest
duties, and not found wanting; I had seen that she had her own
bookless lore as she had her own indisputable charm; I had known
that at times she swayed me; but I had never come so near to
knowing my heart as in that evanescent, stabbing, revealing,
moment.
As I sat there I felt a sudden sense of rest, almost of emancipation. I
was weary of cob-webbed dreams, sick of straining after the
unattainable. My thoughts reverted to life as it had been in the old
days before the coming of the wonder woman, to the days when
Joey and Wanza and I had managed to go through the tedium of our
hours placidly enough. I longed to take up the old, sane routine. I
was impatient with suffering that chafed and gnawed the heart-
strings.
I said to myself that all that was left of my former feeling for Haidee
was admiration, reverence for her goodness, and a wonder—she
was a dream woman—she would remain a dream woman always—
an elusive, charming personality, something too fine for the common
round of daylight duties. I thought of the poet’s lines:
“I love thee to the level of every day’s most quiet need, by
sun and candle light.”
Had I thought of Haidee so?
When I turned back to the cedar room, Mrs. Olds met me at the door
with a whispered, “Joey is lucid—he is asking for you.” I crossed
swiftly to the bed, knelt down and took my lad’s hand. He smiled at
me in his old way, but his eyes went past me to Mrs. Olds. His voice
was distinct as he ordered, “Go, get Wanza, Mrs. Olds, please.”
I heard Wanza’s step at that moment. She came softly forward and
crouched beside me. “I am here, Joey,” she said in her rich young
voice.
“That’s all right then! Wanza; if I don’t get well you got to marry Mr.
David.”
The troubled face bending down over the gray one on the pillow,
flamed. “Joey—dear!”
“Yes, Wanza,” pleadingly, “cause who’ll take care of him?”
I cleared my throat. “Come, lad, you will be well in a few days—up
and around in the woods, feeding the squirrels.”
“Yes—but if I ain’t!” Tender, wistful, questioning, his loyal brown eyes
sought Wanza’s. “You got to, Wanza. Say yes.”
The girl’s voice whimpered and broke. “I can’t!”
“Why, yes you can! They’s no one can cook like you, Wanza. Mr.
David can’t live here alone when he’s old—he can’t live here alone
no more—say you’ll come and take care of him. Why, you like the
birds and the squirrels—you know you do, Wanza—and you like Mr.
David, too. Will you, Wanza?” The soft wheedling accents wrung my
heart.
At the girl’s head-shake he whispered to me, “You ask her, Mr.
David.”
My hand groped for hers, closed over it, gripped it hard.
“If I ask her now—if she says yes, lad—it will be for your sake—all
for your sake, Joey.”
The big eyes were understanding. “Go on, ask her.”
“Will you, Wanza?”
She was weeping.
“Because Joey asks it—because it will ease his mind,” I heard her
choked voice stammer, “only because of that, Mr. Dale—only for
Joey’s sake as you say—I promise if—if you need me—” she came
to a dead stop.
“To marry me, Wanza.”
“For Joey’s sake, Mr. Dale.”
“There, Joey!” I shook up his pillow and laid him gently back. “It is all
settled, lad. Go to sleep now.”
“Kiss me, once, Mr. David.”
I kissed him.
“Kiss Wanza, now.”
Weariness was heavy in his eyes, his voice was quavering and
weak; and forgetting all else but his gratification, forgetting Mrs.
Olds, propriety, the consequences of so rash an act, I took Wanza in
my arms and kissed her lips, then stumbled blindly from the room.
 CHAPTER XXVII
MY WONDER WOMAN

WHEN I saw Master Joey smiling at me wanly from his pillow the
next morning, his fever gone, his eyes without the abnormal
brightness of the previous two days, and heard his modest request
for cornmeal flapjacks to be stirred up forthwith in the old yellow
pitcher, my heart leaped into my throat for joy. I was so riotously
happy that I went outside to the Dingle, and almost burst my throat
with whistling a welcome to a lazuli-bunting, newly arrived from his
winter sojourn in the south land. He was so azure-blue on his head
and back, so tawny breasted, so clear a white on his underparts that
he seemed like some wondrous jewel dropped from Paradise into
the syringa thicket.
I had answered his “here, here—” until I was sure he understood the
cordiality of my welcome, when I heard a fluttering among the
serviceberry bushes and turned to see a sage thrasher fly out and
soar aloft to a hemlock tree. I whistled. He answered with a beautiful
song, and went on to imitate other birds’ songs, ending by emitting a
sound that was strangely like the wail of a naughty youngster. I
laughed outright, and it seemed to me he was attempting to imitate
my laughter as I walked away. The birds were coming back in
earnest. How glorious the early summer was! Was there ever such a
rose-gold morning? I was overflowing with happiness. But when on
my way to the spring I hailed Wanza, who was dipping water out of
the big barrel by the kitchen door, and received a delicately frigid
“good morning,” something rather strange came over me, my
glowing heart congealed, and I went out to the yew grove, and sat
down soberly on the railing of the small bridge that spanned the
narrow mountain stream.
I had no quarrel with Wanza for her averted face. But I had a feeling
that the blunder-god had unwarrantably interfered again, and a wish
to lift my affairs up off the knees of the gods once and for all and
swing them myself. I felt big enough to swing them, this morning.
Only—I did not exactly understand the state of my own mind, and
this was some slight detriment to clean swinging.
For one thing—after I had touched Wanza’s unwilling lips last night
at Joey’s bidding, I had sat on the edge of my bunk in the darkness
unable to forget the feeling of those warm lips against my own—
feeling myself revitalized—made new. What had happened to me
when I held the girl in my arms for that brief space? What was the
answer?
I sat in deep thought, starting when a water ouzel swooped suddenly
down past my face, and plunged into the water at my very feet. I
watched it emerge, perch on a boulder further down stream, and
spread its slaty wings to dry. The day was languorous, and very
sweet. One of those perfect days that come early in June when the
woods are flower-filled, and the trees full-leaved. The air was tangy
with smells, the honeysuckle and balm o’ Gilead dripped perfume,
the clover was bursting with sweetness, and the wild roses were
faintly odorous; all the “buds and bells” of June were dewy and
clean-scented. The nutty flavor of yarrow was in the air—Achillea
millefolium—the plant which Achilles is said to have used in an
ointment to heal his myrmidons wounded in the siege of Troy. I
marked this last flavor well, separating it from the others. “Poor
yarrow,” I said to myself, “content with spurious corners and waste
portions of the earth, what a splendid lesson of perseverance you
teach.” I thought of myself and of my struggle of the last eight years,
and compared myself with the weed. I had not been content with the
neglected corners of the earth; but I had honestly tried to make the
best of the corners; I had attempted to improve them, and in so
doing improve myself.
From that I came to Joey and the two women who had helped to
make the waste places bloom; and like Byron I had a sigh for Joey
and Wanza who loved me; and I had a tender smile for my dream
woman—Haidee. She had come when, steeped in idealism, I was all
prepared for the advent of the radiant creature who was to work a
metamorphosis in my life. She had come, and I had hailed her
Wonder Woman. It had been a psychological moment, and she had
appeared. And I had loved her—let me not cheat myself into any
contrary belief—surely I had loved her—surely; let me admit that. But
no—I need not admit even that, since it was not the truth—since she
knew it was not the truth. I had loved an ideal; not Judith Batterly,
indeed, but a vague dream woman.
“There is no wonder woman,” I said to myself, thoughtfully.
Restless with my cogitations, I rose, left the bridge, and went through
the yews to the workshop.
When in sight of the bed of clove pinks I pulled myself up smartly;
Wanza knelt there. I was not too far away to see the glitter of tears
on her cheeks; but in spite of the tears, she was smiling; her face
was downbent, rose-flushed, to the new buds, her hands were
clasped on her breast, she seemed lost in ecstatic revery, and on her
head rested delicately a nuthatch.
“What a wonderful way Wanza has with the birds,” I said to myself. I
turned this over in my mind. “I’ve long marked it,” I added. Presently
still watching her, I decided, “She is a rather wonderful child.”
I continued to watch her.
She began to croon a soft little song; she unclasped her hands and
held them out before her. A second nuthatch left the branch of a pine
tree nearby and descended to settle on her left hand. She gave an
indistinct gurgle of joy, and put her right hand over it.
“Why, she’s a wonder,” I said to myself, “a wonder—girl!” I hesitated,
and then exultantly I murmured: “A wonder woman!” and turned and
beat a hasty retreat to the cabin.
Arrived there I sat down rather breathlessly on the steps. I saw light
at last!
It was under the stars that night that I told Wanza of my discovery.
Joey was sleeping peacefully indoors, watched over by Mrs. Olds,
the doctor had just left, after assuring me that my lad would soon be
convalescent, and Wanza and I walked on the river bank.
“Wanza,” I said, “is that a russet-backed thrush singing?”
“I think so, Mr. Dale.”
“His notes are wonderfully liquid and round, aren’t they?” I gave a
sigh of pure happiness. “I feel like a ‘strong bird on pinions free,’
myself to-night. I feel emancipated—as though life were beginning all
over for me. I am in love with life, Wanza. I want to awake to-morrow
and begin life all over.”
“Do you, Mr. Dale?”
“Isn’t the world beautiful washed in this moonlight! The sky seems so
near—like a purple silk curtain strung with jewels. But it is quite dark
here beneath the pines, isn’t it, Wanza? I have to guess at the
flowers under our feet. There is white hawthorn nearby, I swear, and
the yellow violets are in the grass, and the wild forget-me-not, and I
smell the wild roses—”
“How you go on, Mr. Dale!”
“Wanza,” I said, “look up at the stars through the pine branches.”
“I like to watch them in the river.”
“Yes, but look up, Wanza.”
She looked as I bade her.
“The moonlight in your eyes is wonderful, child.”
“Please don’t, Mr. Dale.”
“Keep looking at the stars, Wanza—your face is like an angel’s seen
thus. Your hair is like silver starshine, your lips are flowers—you are
very wonderful—my breath fails me, Wanza. You are very wonderful
—a wonder woman—and I love you. Will you marry me?”
“Joey isn’t going to die, Mr. Dale.”
“I know it.”
She spoke with a sobbing breath: “Then why do you say this?”
“Because I love you with my whole soul.”
“Oh!”
“Turn your eyes to me, dear. Don’t look at the stars any more. Do
you love me?”
“Yes.”
“Then at last I shall be blessed—I shall have a wander-bride—a
wonder woman—some one who understands me, and whom I
understand, to share with me the coming in of day, the mystery of
the night and stars, the saneness of the moon—I shall have—
Wanza! Do you remember, child:
“‘Down the world with Marna!
That’s the life for me!
Wandering with the wandering wind,
Vagabond and unconfined!’
“Do you remember the song I sang to you in the woods one night?
There is another verse—listen!
“‘Marna of the far quest
After the divine!
Striving ever for some goal
Past the blunder-god’s control!
Dreaming of potential years
When no day shall dawn in fears!
That’s the Marna of my soul,
Wander-bride of mine!’”
The beautiful face was on my breast, the cornflower blue eyes were
raised to mine, the maize-colored hair was like a curtain about us,
shutting out the moonlight, the night, the world. I drew her closer,
closer still, silently, breathlessly, until I heard her give a shaken cry:
“It’s in your eyes—I can read it! You do love me, you do, you do!
David Dale! David Dale!”

After an interval, I said:

“I am writing another book, Wanza. I am sure it will sell. We will go
away from here, child—we can live where we choose—we will go
south to my old home. There is some property there that is mine.
You will love the old home, and the river with its red clay banks—my
childhood’s home. We will travel, too. Life seems very full, Wanza.”
“But we’ll always come back to Cedar Dale, won’t we, David Dale?
We’ll come back to Dad—dear Dad—he’ll always be waiting. And the
birds and the flowers—and the squirrels and woodsy things will be
waiting. And Joey will want to come.”
THE END
 TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been
standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
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