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TRANSMEDIA/
GENRE Matthew Freeman
Anthony N. Smith
Rethinking Genre in a Multiplatform Culture
Transmedia/Genre
Matthew Freeman • Anthony N. Smith
Transmedia/Genre
Rethinking Genre in a Multiplatform Culture
Matthew Freeman Anthony N. Smith
Bath Spa University University of Salford
Bath, UK Salford, UK
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Acknowledgements
This book has been a long time in the making. It was originally contracted back
in 2017 and promised to focus on ‘emergent transmedia’, exploring all those
developing and often indie practices of transmedia storytelling that started to
materialise around that time. Genre was a core part of this thinking, as it
became clear that, even as transmediality was evolving into a whole multiplicity
of meanings, practices, applications and understandings, the concept of genre
was central to how stories spread across multiple media. Even if few talked
about it.
Time went on, our lives went in new directions, and new challenges pre-
sented themselves. (If nothing else, Freeman became a father—twice!).
Thankfully, Smith joined the project in 2018, bringing a fresh perspective that
dovetailed perfectly with Freeman’s interest in looking at how the technologi-
cal and participatory affordances of transmedia entertainments relate to con-
temporary workings of genre. And it was Smith who really consolidated the
vision for the project as something even more ambitious: put simply, this book
seeks to understand genre as it works today, theorising a new model for genre
in the age of media convergence. This marks a contribution that we are both
very proud of, and one that we hope was worth the wait.
Of course, we need to thank and appreciate those people who helped us
along the way. As ever, Freeman would like to offer a genuine thanks to Carley,
whose love remains utterly unwavering. He also offers a big thanks to his dad
for his continued support, especially during a difficult period in his own life,
and to Beth Wakefield for her friendship. Smith would like to thank Zoë,
Lucinda and Aimee for their love, support and good humour throughout the
writing of this book. Finally, we both want to thank the editors at Palgrave,
who have been nothing but patient and understanding since the very begin-
ning of this project.
v
Contents
2 T
ransmedia Superhero: Marvel, Genre Divergence and
Captain America 21
3 T
ransmedia Western: Lucasfilm, Genre Linking and
The Mandalorian 47
4 T
ransmedia Horror: Netflix, Genre Empowerment and
Stranger Things 67
5 T
ransmedia Docudrama: ITV Hub, Genre Democratisation
and Quiz 85
6 T
ransmedia Comedy: BBC Three, Genre Distribution and
Pls Like105
7 T
ransmedia Fantasy-JRPG: Kickstarter, Genre Leveraging
and Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes119
vii
viii Contents
8 T
ransmedia War: Virtual Reality, Genre Embodiment
and The Day the World Changed139
9 T
ransmedia Science Fiction: Deepfake Technology, Genre
Fictioning and Reminiscence153
10 C
onclusion: Towards a Conceptual Framework of
Transmedia Genre167
Index175
CHAPTER 1
Imagine you are searching through the interface of Netflix, as we assume you
must have done at some point or another. You are browsing its catalogue of
seemingly unending content. As you do so, it quickly becomes apparent that
Netflix’s entire navigation principle is based on coded sets of tags—otherwise
known as genres. Some basic online research reveals that, as of 2021, Netflix
has over 27,000 genres listed on its platform (Lilly 2021), which does not even
include its so-called hidden genre codes (Spencer 2018). So, two observations
immediately come to mind when browsing Netflix in this way. The first is that
Netflix’s approach to ‘tagging’ content under particular genre categories is not
in any way bound by medium, production context, country of origin, year of
release and so on. Its entire approach to genre is instead something much
wider, broader and more diverse than many studies of film or literary genre
have considered previously. A quick search for ‘thriller’, for example, brings up
everything from Netflix Original Before I Wake (2016) to The Silence of the
Lambs (1991), both mixed in with television series The Alienist (2018). And
the second observation is that by mixing film and television from many eras
and production contexts, Netflix’s genre tags function as the platform’s mar-
keting mechanism, grouping titles together so as to engage certain demo-
graphics. Genre, recalibrated for Netflix, creates personalisation out of chaos.
Netflix’s use of genre tags may be commonplace and even fairly obvious to
describe, but it demonstrates a very important point: that genre, while working
differently when viewed from either industrial, technological or participatory
perspectives, remains the bedrock of today’s transmedia landscape. So says
Alison Norrington, Creative Director at StoryCentral Ltd., a transmedia con-
sultancy firm that works globally with clients including the likes of Walt Disney
Imagineering, SundanceTV, AMC Networks and FOX International: ‘In this
messy, fragmented media landscape, where content is everywhere and so too
are our audiences, genre is perhaps the only remaining constant’ (2020). Which
is all in spite of the fact that genre, at least in academic circles, has largely fallen
away in recent decades, precisely at a time when academics need it the most.
We are all part of a media convergence age where the meaning-making power
of genre is both more important and less stable than it was before, with audi-
ences increasingly fragmented across an ever-diversifying set of platforms and
channels. Yet operating complexly within such fragmentation, today’s genres—
often formed via a set of interconnected, hyperlinked digital platforms that
afford highly individualised perspectives on media—are being shaped and
reshaped almost continuously by these different platforms and channels. Each
of these genres is thus in constant dialogue and re-negotiation with one another
as a result of the extensive transmedia experiences that surround them. And yet
as Norrington declared, with digital platforms characterised by their expansive,
fragmentary nature, genre is indeed crucial to how we navigate and make sense
of today’s media landscape, even if the processes underpinning this are not fully
understood.
Which brings us to this book’s first—and main—overarching objective.
Genres are perhaps the most innately transmedial of media constructs, formed
as they are from all kinds of industrial, cultural, technological, textual and dis-
cursive phenomena. Yet very few have attempted to analyse explicitly how
genre works in a transmedia context. This book aims to do precisely that, to
make a deliberately transmedial contribution to the study of genre in the age of
media convergence. Media industries and their various technologies, practices
and systems of operation have become more aligned and networked in recent
decades, providing a clear model for extending entertainment across multiple
media. As Jenkins writes, media convergence—emerging as a concept around
the start of the Internet era in the early 1990s—describes ‘the flow of content
across multiple media, … the co-operation between multiple media industries,
and the migratory behavior of audiences’ (2006: 2), which makes ‘the flow of
content across media inevitable’ (Jenkins 2003). This book considers the impli-
cations of this inevitability for genre, looking across different kinds of conver-
gences, in turn expanding the critical toolkit via which genre can be analysed
by developing a new conceptual model.
But let’s back up for a moment. Convergence is really only an umbrella term
for making sense of the proliferation of interconnected screens that dominate
our contemporary media culture, and refers most broadly to convergences at
the level of technology, industry and culture. Industrial convergence describes
a ‘synergy amongst media companies and industries’ (Hay and Couldry 2011:
473), and primarily describes corporate convergences within global media con-
glomerates, like Disney. Technological convergence, meanwhile, refers to the
‘hybridity that has folded the uses of separate media into one another’ (2011:
493), principally through digitisation. In turn, both of these forms of conver-
gence have an impact at the level of culture and audiences, most notably by
enhancing the ‘participatory capabilities of [media texts] and allowing the
audience to influence the final result’ (Karlsen 2018: 26). Most famously theo-
rised as ‘participatory culture’ by Henry Jenkins (1992), these participatory
capabilities often play out as ‘experience-centered, technologically augmented
1 INTRODUCTION OR: WHY WE STILL NEED GENRE 3
In responding to this objective, and in setting the stage for the revival of
genre theory in contemporary transmedia scholarship, this book interrogates
the form and function of genre across a range of media convergence sites, span-
ning franchises, streaming platforms, catch-up services, immersive technolo-
gies, AI, social media and beyond. We show how the conceptual possibilities of
genre are reconfigured through their adaptation to emerging technologies and
cultural practices across media. In that sense, we might be seen to be picking
up where Janet Murray left off, whose seminal book Hamlet on the Holodeck
(1999) explored how computer-based interactive narratives might operate in
relation to a range of popular genres. As well as discussing science fiction and
fantasy forms (both of which will be returned to in our book), Murray also
identified more realist forms of drama including soap opera as ripe for enhance-
ment and expansion by then-cutting-edge digital techniques. In many ways the
techniques Murray discussed over 20 years ago can be said to have anticipated
some of the increasingly ubiquitous approaches adopted by today’s contempo-
rary transmedia producers. For example, Murray looked at how in a television
series like ER—a US medical drama that ran from 1994 to 2009—the specific
fictional locations frequently seen in the series could be presented virtually for
participants to explore, and could thus be used to expand existing storylines or
preview forthcoming storylines, or provide more background on characters
(Murray 1999: 255–256).
Building on Murray’s semi-prophetic consideration of production, technol-
ogy and participation, we will also analyse three sites of generic construction
suitable for today’s age of media convergence: first, industry, where transmedia
genres are cultivated and managed; second, technology, through which trans-
media genres are communicated and mediated; and, three, audience, where
transmedia genres are co-created via participatory means. The first site allows
us to consider the contextual influence of industrial convergence, that is, prac-
tices of conglomeration and licencing arrangements, on cross-platform mani-
festations of genre. The second site incorporates not only technological
specificities of, say, Netflix, Twitter, BBC iPlayer, virtual reality and so on but
also cultural codes and conventions of these platforms and technologies. The
final site stresses the role of audiences, individual users, players and watchers on
constructing (or reconstructing) genre themselves, acting out and reacting to
genre cues whenever they, say, post on social media, engage in a deepfake mar-
keting app and so on. Importantly, across all three sites of media convergence,
genre is transformed.
Reflecting themes of connectedness and hybridity that characterise the field
of transmedia studies, this book is therefore about interrogating the generic
mutations (Turner 2015) that must inevitably occur as part of sprawling trans-
media experiences. As Glen Creeber once put it, ‘put crudely, genre simply
allows us to organise a good deal of material into small categories’ (2015: 1).
The problem, however, is that we now live in a transmedia age that is most
commonly understood in terms of its interconnectedness and participatory
processes across multiple platforms and channels, bringing with it heightened
1 INTRODUCTION OR: WHY WE STILL NEED GENRE 5
accessibility, sharing, co-creation and—as per our Netflix example at the begin-
ning of this introduction—personalisation. The idea of returning to ‘catego-
ries’ may feel decidedly at odds with this intrinsically personalised nature of
what media is said to be in the twenty-first century—sprawling, breaking free
of its borders—but that is precisely why we need to return to genre studies. If
genre is essentially ‘a system of organising the world’ (Creeber, 2015: 1), then
this book looks at genre as it works today.
In the post-war period in British cinema, films such as Odd Man Out and Mine
Own Executioner shared a visual rhetoric and view of trauma. The genre was
pretty homogenous as a whole during the period from 1945 to 1950. But right
through the 1950s and into the early 1960s, the thriller genre became bewilder-
ingly diverse: it could be bifurcated between black and mild, between fascinated
and repelled, between liberal and repressive. It is possible to argue that the mul-
tiplicity of the genre is due to the unease in the period about transgression and
taboo. The thriller genre could be seen in this period as responding, in an indirect
manner, to the lack of consensus about the outsider in society. In the 1970s, with
films such as Gumshoe, the thriller genre became a site of irony and dis-
avowal. (2017)
Any performance of a text takes place within a broader ceremonial frame, and
involves all the constituents of the occasion: the audience, the actions of opening
and concluding the performance, talk about the performance, and its demarca-
tion from other performances. (1986: 88)
In the simplest and narrowest sense, transmediality and genre might appear to
be opposites of each other, with the former seemingly about expansion across
borders and the latter about categorisation within borders. But as we have
learnt, genre is both a textual and a paratextual construction—both a system
(or systematic) series of markers, cues, conventions and structures that make up
the textual fabric of texts and a far more discursive, industrially produced, mar-
ket-oriented set of cues around a text that signals its mode of classification to
an audience. And this amalgamation of text and paratext echoes Freeman’s
own definition of transmediality as ‘both an expansive form of intertextuality
and intertextuality that builds textual connections between stories while allow-
ing stories to escape their textual borders and exist in between them as well as
across them, folding paratext into text’ (2016: 190).
Looking forward, it is therefore key to follow in the footsteps of the ‘extra-
textual’ approach to genre analysis argued by Jason Mittell (2004), as well as
the ‘multi-dimensional’ approach suggested by Steve Neale (1999), whereby
1 INTRODUCTION OR: WHY WE STILL NEED GENRE 11
References
Altman, Rick. 1999. Film/Genre. London: BFI Publishing.
Booth, Paul, ed. 2018. A Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies. London:
Wiley-Blackwell.
Chung, Hye Seung, and David Scott Diffrient. 2015. Movie Migrations: Transnational
Genre Flows and South Korean Cinema. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.
Cornea, Christine. 2010. Genre and Performance: Film and Television. Manchester:
Manchester University Press.
Costanzo, William V. 2014. World Cinemas Through Global Genres. London:
Wiley-Blackwell.
Creeber, Glen, ed. 2015. The Television Genre Book. London: BFI.
Dibeltulo, Silvia, and Ciara Barrett, eds. 2018. Rethinking Genre in Contemporary
Global Cinema. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Driscoll, Catherine. 2011. Teen Film: A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Berg Publishers.
Freeman, Matthew. 2016. Historicising Transmedia Storytelling: Early Twentieth-
Century Transmedia Story Worlds. New York: Routledge.
Freeman, Matthew, and Renira Rampazzo Gambarato, eds. 2018. The Routledge
Companion to Transmedia Studies. New York: Routledge.
Freeman, Matthew, and William Proctor, eds. 2018. Global Convergence Cultures:
Transmedia Earth. New York: Routledge.
Friedman, Ann. 1986. Le genre humain (a classification). Australian Journal of French
Studies 23: 809–874.
Genette, Gerard. 2001. Introduction to the Paratext. New Literary History 22
(2): 261–272.
Grant, Barry Keith. 1986. Film Genre Reader. Austin: University of Texas Press.
———, ed. 2003. Film Genre Reader III. Austin: University of Texas Press.
1 INTRODUCTION OR: WHY WE STILL NEED GENRE 17
Gray, Jonathan. 2010. Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts.
New York: New York University Press.
Harper, Sue. 2017. Genre Studies Now. BAFTSS 5th Annual Conference 2017,
University of Bristol, 20–21 April.
Harvey, Colin. 2015. Fantastic Transmedia: Narrative, Play and Memory Across Science
Fiction and Fantasy Storyworlds. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hassler-Forest, Dan. 2018. Transmedia Politics: Star Wars and the Ideological
Battlegrounds of Popular Franchises. In The Routledge Companion to Transmedia
Studies, ed. Matthew Freeman and Renira Rampazzo Gambarato, 297–305.
New York: Routledge.
Hay, James, and Nick Couldry. 2011. Rethinking Convergence/Culture: An
Introduction. Cultural Studies 25 (4): 473–486.
Hills, Matt. 2017. Traversing the “Whoniverse”: Doctor Who’s Hyperdiegesis and
Transmedia Discontinuity/Diachrony. In World Building: Transmedia, Fans,
Industries, ed. Marta Boni, 343–361. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
———. 2018. From Transmedia Storytelling to Transmedia Experience: Star Wars
Celebration as Crossover/Hierarchical Space. In Star Wars and the History of
Transmedia Storytelling, ed. Sean M. Guynes and Dan Hassler-Forest, 213–224.
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Holmes, Su. 2008. The Quiz Show. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Humphreys, Sara. 2021. Manifest Destiny 2.0: Genre Trouble in Game Worlds. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press.
Jameson, Fredric. 1975. Magical Narratives: Romance as Genre. New Literary History
7 (1): 135–163.
Jenkins, Henry. 1992. Textual Poachers : Television Fans and Participatory Culture.
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Accessed February 4, 2021. http://www.technologyreview.com/news/401760/
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New York University Press.
Karlsen, Joakim. 2018. Transmedia Documentary: Experience and Participatory
Approaches to Non-Fiction Transmedia. In The Routledge Companion to Transmedia
Studies, ed. Matthew Freeman and Renira Rampazzo Gambarato, 25–34. New York:
Routledge.
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Mittell, Jason. 2001. A Cultural Approach to Television Genre Theory. Cinema Journal
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———. 2004. Genre and Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture.
New York: Routledge.
———. 2008. Genre Study—Beyond the Text. In The Television Genre Book, ed. Glen
Creeber, 2nd ed., 9–13. London: BFI Publishing.
Murray, Janet. 1999. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace.
Massachusetts: MIT Press.
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49 (2): 12–28.
18 M. FREEMAN AND A. N. SMITH
Media Conglomerates
CHAPTER 2
Introduction
Captain America is a superhero, of course, famously fighting for justice and
liberty in the pages of superhero comics for many decades. Marvel’s patriotic
super soldier is indeed an icon of the superhero genre, which we explore here.
Fittingly, therefore, the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Captain America: The
Winter Soldier (2014) is widely perceived as a superhero movie. Yet a combina-
tion of the film’s textual characteristics and related public discourses addition-
ally position the film as a political thriller. For example, demonstrating the role
of journalistic reviews in this process of genre construction, The Atlantic (Orr
2014) claimed, on the film’s release, that the film ‘harkens to the political
thrillers of the 1970s’. Simultaneous to this genre-forming process, Marvel’s
Captain America comic-book title was being similarly situated, not only as a
superhero title but also within an additional genre context. Dissimilar to The
Winter Soldier, however, the Captain America comic book was constructed,
during the writer Rick Remender’s 2012–2015 run on the title, not as a serious
political thriller but as an eccentric science-fiction fantasy. For example, epito-
mising the positioning of the title at this time, Marvel’s (Comixology) accom-
panying blurb labels Remender’s run as a genre soup of ‘high-adventure,
mind-melting … sci-fi, pulp-fantasy’.
There are two key insights to extrapolate from the case of Captain America’s
genre construction in 2014. Firstly, the superhero genre is a highly elastic one,
stretching to accommodate a range of other genres, as we detail. Secondly,
contemporary transmedia entertainment franchises, such as the Marvel super-
hero franchise, can each contain instances of significant genre divergence, lead-
ing to a kind of genre disunity. This second insight is central to the contribution
this chapter makes to the book’s study of genre and transmediality.
Using the Marvel franchise as a case study, we specifically examine how con-
temporary conglomerate media culture, through the development of
1
What we refer to as Disney-owned ‘Marvel’ throughout this chapter is currently structured as
two distinct subsidiaries situated within the Disney conglomerate structure, namely, Marvel
Studios, which produces Marvel films, and Marvel Entertainment, which includes Marvel Comics.
At the time of writing, Kevin Feige oversees both divisions in his role as chief creative officer
of Marvel.
2 TRANSMEDIA SUPERHERO: MARVEL, GENRE DIVERGENCE AND CAPTAIN AMERICA 23
(License Global 2019), permits (on the basis of financial return) a range of
other businesses to license the Marvel brand and characters so as to create their
own merchandise.
Scholarship has tended to emphasise how a given media corporation coheres
a given franchise’s many fragments so as to present a consistent media-spanning
brand. Scholars, for example, observe how IP-governing companies centrally
coordinate transmedia storytelling within a given franchise, ensuring narrative
consistency between texts produced for different media industries (Jenkins
2006: 95–134; Harvey 2015: 182–202). Disney-owned Lucasfilm’s Story
Group’s tight regulation of Star Wars transmedia storytelling is an example of
this process (Harvey, 146). Scholars similarly observe how media companies
engineer visual consistency between a given franchise’s texts (Johnson 2007;
Freeman 2014; Smith 2018: 18). Freeman (2014), for example, shows how
the noir-influenced visual style of Batman: The Animated Series (1992–1995)
was designed to resonate with the gothic aesthetic of the Tim Burton-directed
Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992) films. This approach therefore
worked to unify the brand identity of the Warner-owned Batman franchise.
In line with such strategies, Marvel consistently aims to cohere the many
pieces of content that it circulates across media. Marvel has, for example,
adopted transmedia storytelling techniques by extending the Marvel Cinematic
Universe storyworld (hereafter, MCU), first established by Marvel Studios-
produced films, across television, streaming platforms and a limited amount of
comics (Harvey 2015; Flanagan et al. 2015). The case of the MCU further-
more reflects the film medium’s economic and cultural primacy within con-
glomerate media empires and the transmedia entertainment franchises they
develop (Smith 2018: 16). Accordingly, franchise-owning corporations often
ensure that stories and styles of franchise content across media are subordi-
nated to film narratives (Johnson 2013: 97–98; Atkinson 2019: 15), as in the
case of Marvel’s MCU content.
Practices at Marvel Comics, which forms part of Disney subsidiary Marvel
Entertainment, have, in the twenty-first century, aligned to this transmedia
model of film dominance to some degree. It is true that most of the publisher’s
output contributes not to MCU narrative continuity but rather to the vast
Marvel Universe comics storyworld (hereafter, MU), which the publisher
began developing in the early 1960s; therefore, bar a limited number of publi-
cations, Marvel comic books are not MCU transmedia extensions. However,
Flanagan et al. (35–36) argue that industrial circumstances have nevertheless
motivated Marvel Comics to adopt, at least in certain instances, a ‘films lead’
policy ensuring that ‘things happening in Marvel comics should not contradict
what is going on in the MCU’ (despite them not sharing the same narrative
continuity). Marvel Comics has frequently used techniques to cohere these
two separate fictional storyworlds by tweaking MU comics’ story elements so
as to make their narratives reverberate with those of the MCU (Flanagan et al.
2015: 36–37; Smith 2018: 157–162). An example of this approach is evident
in the Marvel Comics title Peter Parker: Spectacular Spider-Man (2017–2018),
24 M. FREEMAN AND A. N. SMITH
which was launched to coincide with the release of the Spider-Man: Homecoming
film (2017). By returning Peter to his hometown of New York City, the comic-
book narrative was designed to resonate with Spider-Man: Homecoming’s
NYC-set story (Smith 2018: 158).
Yet, in contrast to such practices, the case of genre divergence concerning
Captain America identified at this chapter’s outset appears to undermine the
standard media conglomerate aim of franchise brand coherence. It is further-
more important to note that this case of genre divergence in relation to Captain
America content is not an isolated occurrence at Marvel. Instead, it is exem-
plary of some wider franchise practices within Disney-owned Marvel. A similar
instance of simultaneous genre divergence occurred between Marvel Comics’
Daredevil title and the Marvel Television-produced Daredevil (2015–2018)
series, which was made for Netflix.2 The latter’s ‘dark and gritty’ (Crow 2016)
take on The Man Without Fear was constructed as a ‘street level noir’, accord-
ing to then-Marvel Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada (Jagernauth 2014). In
contrast, at the moment the Daredevil series first ‘dropped’ on Netflix in 2015,
the Daredevil comic book was providing ‘fun, swashbuckling superhero adven-
tures’ (Hoffer 2017) under the stewardship of the writer Mark Waid, which
spanned 2011–2015. A tale of two very different Hulks provides a further
example of genre divergence within the Marvel franchise. Since his first appear-
ance in The Avengers (2010), Hulk has most typically been used in MCU film
sequences to activate action and comedy genres (Singer 2019), as he typically
battles enemies or provides comic relief. Published simultaneous to the release
of some of these films, however, Marvel Comics’ The Immortal Hulk (2018–
present) has steered the character into a different genre territory. As its writer
Al Ewing (Mclaughlin 2018) acknowledges, the book was designed as a horror
narrative, which its ‘horrible … iteration’ of the title character exemplifies.
How, then, is a media corporation, such as Disney, able to permit such genre
divergence across media when guided by broader brand coherence aims? To
address this question, one must first establish the various means by which the
superhero genre is constructed. To help provide this necessary foundation, the
following section establishes key practices by which media industries activate
the superhero genre. The section focuses, in particular, on industrial practices
within the US comic-book sector. A focus on genre conventions within comics
is appropriate, as this is the sector that initiated the superhero genre as an
industrial category. This industry furthermore continues to serve as a corner-
stone to superhero-centred transmedia entertainment franchises, having intro-
duced a multitude of popular superheroes to media culture.
2
Marvel Television was at this time a division of Marvel Entertainment, though Marvel Studios
has since taken over responsibility for television and streaming series.
2 TRANSMEDIA SUPERHERO: MARVEL, GENRE DIVERGENCE AND CAPTAIN AMERICA 25
conceived for the Fantastic Four #14 (1963) cover, and used consistently until
the early 2000s, the corner box is situated in the top left corner of the front
cover.3 A boldly lettered comic-book title (typically the name of a superhero
character or team) occupies the space spanning the right of the box to the
right-hand side of such covers. The box typically contains date, price, publish-
ing brand and an image of the title character(s), or a logo of the superhero
team (such as the Fantastic Four or The X-Men), contained within a given
issue. The device was born out of industry traditions of signalling a given issue’s
contents in the top left corner of an issue so as to suit the staggered arrange-
ment of comic books on magazine racks.
Via this paratextual practice, therefore, a superhero character or team name,
plus an image (or logo) of the title character (or team), abstracted from any
fictional storyworld context, dominates the top quarter area of a given Marvel
cover. The consequence of this in terms of genre construction is significant, as
this approach to cover design separates the superhero genre from, and priori-
tises it above, other genres. Therefore, while a given superhero comic book’s
narrative might draw upon other genres, this graphic design approach subordi-
nates other evoked genres to the superhero genre.
Marvel Comics ceased continuous use of the corner box device in early
2000s. Yet variations of these paratextual practices persist up to the present day.
Via the use of such techniques from the 1960s onwards, therefore, Marvel
Comics has made the Marvel brand synonymous with the superhero genre.
The company has been able to continually, and innovatively, combine the
superhero genre with other genres, so as to ensure market demands for novelty
are met. Yet Marvel Comics’ paratextual practices have consistently maintained
the pre-eminence of the superhero genre, to which the publisher’s brand iden-
tity is tied, thereby signalling the subsidiary status of other evoked genres. As
we detail further on, this paratextual approach that the comic-book industry
developed has been scaled across media so as to mitigate instances of genre
divergence in the Marvel franchise. Prior to this, however, the following sec-
tion, via a focus on Captain America in particular, further examines simultane-
ous genre divergence at Marvel. It additionally accounts for the cultural
conditions and practices within media industry contexts that give rise to them.
3
While initially conceived for the Fantastic Four #14 cover, Patsy Walker #106 (1963) was the
first of Marvel’s corner-box-carrying covers to reach publication (Cronin 2017).
28 M. FREEMAN AND A. N. SMITH
Studios President and Chief Creative Officer of Marvel Kevin Feige, for exam-
ple, notes that the film was conceived as a ‘70s political thriller masquerading
as a big superhero movie’ (Plumb 2013). He furthermore claims that the pro-
duction team specifically drew inspiration from three particular paranoid politi-
cal thrillers that Hollywood produced in the 1970s under the shadow of the
unfolding Watergate scandal, namely The Parallax View (1974), Three Days of
the Condor (1975) and All the President’s Men (1976) (Smith 2014: 79).
As intended, The Winter Soldier’s narrative themes clearly echo those of
these thrillers, as it shares these films’ preoccupation and disillusionment with
institutional immorality and corruption. Whereas, for example, in Three Days of
the Condor, the protagonist uncovers a dangerous, powerful conspiracy operat-
ing within the CIA, in The Winter Soldier, Captain America faces off against the
morally ambiguous government espionage agency SHIELD following its infil-
tration by the terrorist group Hydra.4 The Winter Soldier’s sombre colour
scheme furthermore recalls the muted aesthetic of the aforementioned thrill-
ers, which indicate these films’ pessimism concerning the corruption of all-
powerful government institutions. Captain America’s costume design in The
Winter Soldier epitomises the film’s drab palette. Intended by Winter Soldier
co-director Joe Russo (McMillan 2014) to ‘represent, thematically’ its film’s
story, the outfit is without the bold red, white and blue of the character’s tradi-
tion, and instead largely consists of navy blue, with punctuations of dull metal
and brown leather. A more obvious evocation of Hollywood’s 1970s political
thriller genre occurs through The Winter Soldier’s inclusion of Robert Redford
within its cast, who plays a corrupt politician. Redford’s presence functions as
an intertext connecting The Winter Soldier to Three Days of the Condor, in
which Redford stars as its protagonist.
Marvel Comics’ practice of combining superheroes with other genres as a
means to ensure its products achieve novelty clearly influenced Marvel Studios’
own approach to genre here. According to Feige, the studio’s objective to
ensure each MCU film ‘feel[s] unique and feel[s] different’ (Smith 2014: 79)
motivated The Winter Soldier’s absorption of textual traits of the political
thriller. As Feige (Plumb 2013) observes, with the first Captain America film,
Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), the studio drew upon the charac-
teristics of 1940s World War II movies. However, the studio aimed to utilise ‘a
completely different genre’ with The Winter Soldier (Plumb 2013). In rational-
ising this variable approach to genre, Feige notes that superhero comics ‘do it
all the time’ (Plumb 2013).
This influence that comic-book creative practices had on The Winter Soldier
is reflective of a cultural flow of ideas that runs through Marvel Comics and
Marvel Studios. It also speaks to Marvel Comics’ uniquely influential role at
Marvel. As comic-book creators and industry observers point out, Marvel
Comics effectively operates as the franchise’s R&D department (Boucher
4
Within the MCU, SHIELD is an acronym for the Strategic Homeland Intervention,
Enforcement and Logistics Division.
2 TRANSMEDIA SUPERHERO: MARVEL, GENRE DIVERGENCE AND CAPTAIN AMERICA 29
2018; Holloway and Donnelly 2019). While, then, Marvel Comics narratives
are, as noted, sometimes subordinated to Marvel Studios output, Marvel
Comics content can be an important influence on Marvel Studios productions.
Of course, Marvel Comics most obviously serves as a source of creative inspira-
tion by virtue of having created a range of perennially popular superhero char-
acters many decades previous. However, as the case of The Winter Soldier
suggests, the wider Marvel franchise additionally takes inspiration from more
recent creative approaches taken by Marvel Comics to these valuable intellec-
tual properties.
Marvel Comics not only inspired Marvel Studios approach with The Winter
Soldier of combining the superhero genre with a further distinctive genre; the
publisher’s content more specifically provided some groundwork for Captain
America’s pivot towards the political thriller in the MCU. The Winter Soldier
story arc published in the pages of the Captain America comic book (vol. 5,
issues #1–9, 11–14, 2005–2006), and written by Ed Brubaker, served as a basis
for some of the Winter Soldier film’s story material (and title). The Captain
America comic’s frequent evoking of the political thriller during Brubaker’s
seven-year run on the title furthermore likely influenced Marvel Studio’s own
gravitation to the genre. According to Brubaker (Spurgeon 2012), he infused
his run with a ‘tone’ of ‘24 meets Tom Clancy’, two fictional worlds that often
each combine espionage with murky political machinations. Brubaker’s
approach resulted in a comics’ narrative containing themes of political pressure
and corruption, with illustrations often fittingly bathed in shadow. His take on
Captain America therefore prefigured and likely informed, to some degree,
Marvel Studios’ approach to The Winter Soldier in relation to genre.
While the source Brubaker narrative clearly held some influence upon The
Winter Soldier’s genre, however, the film’s specific activation of Hollywood’s
1970s genre cycle of political conspiracy thrillers is, within the Marvel context,
distinctive. Nevertheless, at least in a more general sense, The Winter Soldier’s
construction of the political thriller aligns in genre terms with the previously
published Marvel Comics material. Yet this flow of influence between these
sibling conglomerate divisions did not prevent clear genre contrast between
Marvel Comics output and The Winter Soldier at the time of the film’s release.
As The Winter Soldier opened in theatres, situating Captain America within the
political thriller genre, the Captain America comic book simultaneously placed
its hero in a bizarre and fantastical science-fiction adventure. Having estab-
lished the construction of the 1970s political thriller film in The Winter Soldier,
we move on here to detail this contrasting genre activation in the Captain
America comic book, which resulted in simultaneous genre divergence for the
Marvel franchise.
The writer Rick Remender led this drastic genre shift within the pages of
Captain America following his replacement of Brubaker on the title. The
maiden story arc of Remender’s run, Castaway in Dimension Z (vol. 6, issues
#1–15 2013–2014), is indicative of this transformation in genre. The arc con-
cerns Captain America’s perilous adventures in Dimension Z, a strange, hostile
30 M. FREEMAN AND A. N. SMITH
and dystopian wasteland ruled by the hero’s long-time enemy, Arnim Zola. As
IGN (Bailey 2012) observed of the arc’s second issue, the ‘dark espionage’ that
had previously characterised the title had been replaced by outlandish sci-fi ele-
ments including the peculiar technologies and ludicrously odd alien creatures
that characterise Dimension Z.
As AV Club’s (Sava 2013) review of the arc suggests, Castaway in Dimension
Z is ‘sci-fi worldbuilding’ on a ‘grandiose scale’, with this bold approach com-
plemented by penciler John Romita Jr.’s ‘expressive [and] exaggerated art-
work’. However, as is the case with many superhero narratives, the arc draws
on adventure genre tropes via its many exciting and fanciful action sequences.
As a CBR (Richards 2012) preview for the arc observes, the narrative fuses
‘rough and tumble’ adventure into its ‘psychedelic sci-fi’. Due to this combina-
tion of elements, the Castaway in Dimension Z narrative, along with Remender’s
entire run on the Captain America title, can be more specifically classified as a
space opera in the tradition of John Carter, Flash Gordon and the Star Wars
saga; that is, a ‘colourful, dramatic, large-scale science fiction adventure … usu-
ally set in the relatively distant future, and in space or on other worlds’ (Hartwell
and Cramer 2007: 10).
Remender’s activation of the space opera in Captain America therefore
transitioned the comic book away from Brubaker’s genre construction, as well
as from the genre destination that the Captain America film series was headed
towards. Here we account for this divergence, noting in particular how medium
specificity factored into this process. As we show, even within a conglomerate-
owned media franchise such as Marvel’s, a given medium’s specific culture of
content production, circulation and consumption still influences medium-
specific approaches to genre. Indeed, in the case of Captain America, key
industry and broader cultural differences between the two media sectors of film
and comics motivated the identified genre divergence. While, as we have
acknowledged, there is a cultural flow of ideas related to genre that runs
between Marvel Comics and Marvel Studios, medium-specific circumstances
nevertheless give rise to distinct approaches to genre.
A particular focus on Marvel Comics and its authorisation of Remender’s
space opera approach on Captain America demonstrates this. While Marvel
Comics might operate as a quasi R&D department for the wider Marvel fran-
chise, it also maintains a central position within a distinct industrial culture,
namely the US comic-book industry. As Smith (2018: 160) observes of con-
temporary industry approaches to comic-book narrative, wider franchise needs
and concerns can certainly factor into editorial practices at Marvel Comics.
However, as he further points out (2018: 161), medium-specific conditions
nevertheless still motivate many editorial decisions related to narrative. The
culture of the US comic-book industry, including its own distinct practices,
contexts and histories, similarly informs approaches to genre.
This is evident in the way that Marvel Comics’ placement of Captain America
within a space opera context formed part of a creative response to medium-
specific market conditions and editorial objectives. The Captain America
2 TRANSMEDIA SUPERHERO: MARVEL, GENRE DIVERGENCE AND CAPTAIN AMERICA 31
Analysing Hollywood films of the 1970s and 1980s, Noël Carroll (1982:
52) claims that ‘allusion, specifically allusion to film history, has become a
major expressive device’; he uses the term ‘historical pastiche’ to label films that
adhere to this trend. Carroll (62) additionally notes that genre memorialisation
forms part of these practices; that is, ‘historical pastiche’ texts can include the
‘loving evocation through imitation and exaggeration of the way genres were’.
He furthermore cites Raiders of the Lost Ark’s ‘reverie of the glorious old days’
of 1930s’ adventure movie serials as an example of genre memorialisation (62).
Such postmodern practices of subjecting earlier constructions of genre to what
Frederic Jameson (1991: 19) refers to as the ‘aesthetic colonization’ of the past
continue to be pervasive in entertainment media, including in comics’ narra-
tives. As Marc Singer (2018: 62–70) observes, American comics have fre-
quently been attentive to the superhero ‘genre’s history and conventions’ (64)
to the extent that the genre itself has become a ‘primary subject’ (62). As an
example of this practice, he cites ‘reconstructionist’ comics, such as Marvel’s
Marvels (1994) mini-series, which echoes, valorises and elaborates upon super-
hero genre constructions across Marvel Comics’ history.5
As the examples of both Raiders and Marvels suggest, despite the cross-
media spread of the trend, postmodern approaches to genre often draw upon
the cultural history of the specific medium in which they are carried out. This
is the case with the construction of genre in Remender’s Captain America, as
the run memorialises American comics’ own space opera tradition. For exam-
ple, to create Dimension Z’s rugged yet spectacular landscape, he and Romita
applied the aesthetic of Wally Wood, a writer-illustrator lauded for the quirky
sci-fi narratives he produced for EC Comics in the 1950s (Richards
2013; Truitt 2012).
As part of their genre memorialisation approach with Castaway in Dimension
Z, Remender and Romita furthermore drew on a history of space opera con-
structions within superhero comics. In particular, the duo engaged with indus-
try legend Jack Kirby’s mid-1970s run on Captain America. Kirby had
co-created the title and character decades earlier, and his return stint on the
title is famed for its extravagant and visually spectacular sci-fi elements. The
character of Arnim Zola, who Kirby invented during this run, and who
Remender would later employ as Castaway in Dimension Z’s main villain, is
one such element. Zola, a mad scientist who has transferred his consciousness
into a robot body, is an extravagant sci-fi design, with the villain’s face pre-
sented on a screen encased on the host robot’s chest. Remender indeed
intended Castaway in Dimension Z as a homage to Kirby’s 1970s run (Khouri
2013); by drawing narrative inspiration from, and alluding to, this earlier
period of the Captain America title, Remender claimed that he had created a
‘treasure chest of amazing Kirby insanity for readers’ (Richards 2012).
5
Such practices of genre memorialisation in film and comics frequently align with a conceptual
framework in genre theory that claims that a given genre, as part of its evolution, comes to self-
reflexively engage with its own conventions and traditions (Schatz 1981: 37–38; Bailey 2016: 6–7).
2 TRANSMEDIA SUPERHERO: MARVEL, GENRE DIVERGENCE AND CAPTAIN AMERICA 33
dour, grim … crime-noir’ book (Tipton 2012). While these previous noir con-
structions would inform Marvel Television’s Daredevil Netflix series (McMillan
2015), the types of fun ‘swashbuckling’ Daredevil adventures that Waid
enjoyed reading as a child in the 1960s inspired his own take on the title
(Toucan 2012). A vibrant and carnivalesque colour palette, and a swashbuck-
ling adventurer for a title character—who beams a smile in the face of danger—
resulted from this genre shift. For commentators, Waid’s genre construction
here is a clear attempt to connect and pay homage to the character’s narrative
roots (McGloin 2013; Mooney 2014). The consequence of Waid’s genre
memorialisation was a comic-book run that appears diametrically opposed to
the Noir-infused Daredevil streaming series that was released simultaneously
with it.
In the case of the Hulk-related instance of genre divergence, an aim to
memorialise the character’s comic-book origins similarly influenced the activa-
tion of horror in the writer Al Ewing’s aforementioned run on The Immortal
Hulk. Despite the book’s title being introduced in 2018, the book is in fact a
retitled continuation of The Incredible Hulk, which debuted in 1962; as with
Waid’s approach on Daredevil, Ewing, on The Immortal Hulk, draws from the
genre starting point of the particular title on which he is assigned. As Ewing
(Mclaughlin 2018) acknowledges, The Incredible Hulk began as a ‘horror
comic’, in which the title character was a monstrous antagonist. With a narra-
tive rich in grotesque body horror, and which, according to Ewing (Mclaughlin
2018), is designed to make us ‘feel nervous when we see [Hulk] with charac-
ters we like’, the writer aligned the title to its initial genre. Ewing’s narrative
additionally makes direct allusions to this earlier genre construction. For exam-
ple, the title of Ewing’s first issue, ‘Or is He Both?’, is an intertextual reference
to a line included in the cover design of The Incredible Hulk’s debut issue,
namely, ‘IS HE MAN OR MONSTER OR … IS HE BOTH?’. Therefore,
Ewing’s motivation to honour the Hulk’s genre history has underpinned the
comic book’s clear divergence from the action and comedy genre contexts to
which the MCU Hulk is most associated.
These postmodern genre practices also appear to encourage genre diver-
gence due to the fact that genre memorialisation in one medium is not always
scalable across media. For example, Ewing’s horror in The Immortal Hulk,
Remender’s space opera in Captain America and Waid’s swashbuckling adven-
ture in Daredevil each make intertextual connections to the cultural history of
their respective comic-book title. In other words, each of the three writers has
memorialised genre in the same publication in which the memorialised genre
construction initially occurred. As noted, these postmodern genre construc-
tions hold significant intertextual meanings for many comic-book consumers;
however, as film-going audiences have less collective knowledge of, or interest
in, the cultural history of American comics, these intertexts would be of little
value in film culture. There is, therefore, less incentive for Marvel Studios to
activate these respective genres in relation to these respective characters. While,
then, there is always a cultural exchange of genre ideas between media at
2 TRANSMEDIA SUPERHERO: MARVEL, GENRE DIVERGENCE AND CAPTAIN AMERICA 35
cover art image, with the super soldier adopting a battle-ready pose; one hand
clutches his shield, the other is a clenched fist. The cover art backdrop alludes
to the space opera genre on which Remender’s Captain America narratives
consistently draw. The hero stands in front of a landscape that recalls many
1950s illustrated depictions of sci-fi environments; in the hero’s far distance a
peculiar retro-futuristic structure sits at the foot of desert crags, as an oppres-
sive soot-tinged red sky bears down upon the hero and his setting. This back-
drop usefully signals to consumers the comic’s novel space opera sci-fi genre
context. However, the cover design clearly subordinates the depicted space
opera signifiers to the superhero genre, as the features of this setting are distant
and/or largely obscured by the book title’s lettering and Cap’s colossal figure.
Reflecting the transmedia marketing logic of the Marvel franchise, the main
US theatrical poster for The Winter Solider film takes a similar approach to the
evocation of genre. The bottom 20 per cent (approx.) of the poster is devoted
to the film title and credits. The main title ‘CAPTAIN AMERICA’ takes pre-
cedence in this portion of the poster, with the subtitle ‘THE WINTER
SOLDIER’ reduced to around half the size of the main title. Above this por-
tion of the poster, an image of Captain America in uniform dominates the
poster’s centre. Portrayed by Chris Evans, who is sporting a grimly determined
look on his face, the hero is depicted striding towards the viewer with his shield
in hand. An image of Captain America’s ally Nick Fury (portrayed by Samuel
L. Jackson) is positioned to the left of the main hero; to the right of Cap is his
other key ally Natasha Romanoff (portrayed by Scarlett Johansson). Each of
the images of these characters is smaller in size than Captain America (as each
is positioned further into the poster’s background) but is still prominent in
comparison to most of the poster’s other depicted narrative elements. Pushed
even further into the poster’s background are small images of the titular Winter
Soldier (portrayed by Sebastian Stan) and Robert Redford’s character,
Alexander Pierce. Above them a foreboding blue-grey sky is populated with the
various militaristic aircraft that feature in the film.
Elements of the poster can be interpreted as activating the political con-
spiracy thriller that The Winter Soldier film narrative evokes. The poster’s som-
bre blue-grey colour palette aligns with the political conspiracy genre’s themes
of moral greyness and its convention of downcast visual styles. The presence of
Fury, who heads the SHIELD agency, and Romanoff, a SHIELD agent with a
murky past, furthermore indicates the film’s concern with secretive institutions
engaged in clandestine activities. Fury and Romanoff’s presence therefore
aligns The Winter Soldier with political conspiracy films. As his inclusion does
in the film, Redford’s presence on the poster serves as an intertext connecting
The Winter Soldier with Three Days of the Condor specifically. However, while
the political conspiracy genre is activated, the images of Captain America and
his moniker (in the form of the film’s title) are nevertheless the poster’s pri-
mary elements. Similar to the cover design for Captain America #1, the film
poster subordinates an additional genre—in this case the political conspiracy
thriller—to the superhero genre.
2 TRANSMEDIA SUPERHERO: MARVEL, GENRE DIVERGENCE AND CAPTAIN AMERICA 37
The prominence in The Winter Soldier poster given to the image of Captain
America, as well as the film’s title, of course, reflects the conventions of theatri-
cal film posters and film promotion in general. For example, Captain America’s
dominance of the poster, both in terms of his image and moniker reflects an
industrial aim to emphasise to potential moviegoers that the film is both part of
the MCU franchise and the sub-franchise concerning Captain America, which
forms part of the MCU. Yet by placing the main emphasis on the figure and
name of Captain America, the poster conforms to Marvel’s wider transmedia
marketing practices. The poster awards precedence to Marvel’s heroes, and—
by implication—primacy to the superhero genre, thereby signalling that other
genres evident in the film are ancillary to the superhero genre.
Alongside film posters and comic-book covers, Marvel Entertainment’s
Marvel.com platform forms part of this transmedia paratextual strategy of
framing Marvel texts as superhero narratives first and foremost. The website
serves as both an online reading platform for Marvel Comics and a source of
news and information about the Marvel franchise more generally. The concept
of character serves as a chief structuring logic guiding how the site’s content is
organised and linked together. For users, this means that the idea of Marvel
characters becomes a key means by which they are able to navigate the site. A
user may, for example, click the main menu button ‘CHARACTERS’, which
leads to a list of Marvel characters containing 2588 entries, with each entry
linking to information concerning that character. For instance, the Captain
America entry links to a set of pages containing character summaries for both
the MU and MCU Captain Americas. These Captain America pages link to
related character pages within this database, such as Captain America allies (e.g.
Falcon) and enemies (e.g. Baron Zemo). The character pages furthermore
serve as portals to Marvel content in various media forms. For instance, the
Captain America character pages link to further pages whereby: digital versions
of Captain America comics can be viewed via a Marvel Unlimited subscription;
MCU films featuring Captain America can be purchased in digital or physical
form, or viewed via the Disney+ streaming platform; and bite-sized YouTube-
style video content about Captain America, such as the ‘listicle’ video ‘Top 10
Captain America Costumes’, can be viewed. Due to its structural design,
Marvel.com ultimately elevates the Marvel superhero characters as the most
important and noteworthy components of these media texts that they occupy;
by implication, the most significant aspect about a given Marvel film or comic
book is the fact that it serves as a vessel for a given superhero character.
Therefore, users accessing films and comic books via the Marvel.com character
pages are primed to understand Marvel films and comics as superhero narra-
tives specifically.
Similar to the typical design of Marvel comic-book covers and MCU film
posters, the organisational logic of Marvel.com, and the user experience it facil-
itates, prioritises the concept of Marvel characters. Combined, these different
paratextual elements—web platform, film posters and comic-book covers—
indeed signal that the idea of Marvel’s superhero characters, untethered from
38 M. FREEMAN AND A. N. SMITH
any specific media texts, should be the primary paradigm via which the Marvel
franchise is conceptualised and navigated. Through prioritising the concept of
the Marvel superhero character, this paratextual signalling works to relegate
the significance of any one narrative text, such as a film or comic book. This
paratextual approach thereby de-emphasises specific generic elements in any
given text, downplaying the clear genre contrasts that occur between multiple
texts, such as that which exists between The Winter Solider film and Remender’s
Captain America comic-book run. These transmedia paratextual practices, by
situating Marvel superhero characters, extracted from any specific narrative
text, therefore establish the franchise as being of the superhero genre at its
core. By implication, the narrative texts released under the banner of the Marvel
brand are to be considered to be superhero narratives fundamentally.
This paratextual approach ultimately unifies Marvel’s transmedia entertain-
ment franchise brand, thereby meeting conventional conglomerate media aims.
The franchise evokes a range of different genres across its texts, often simulta-
neously. Marvel will, as this study evidences, indeed promote its use of different
genres, via industry discourses and marketing elements, so as to ensure each
individual narrative text is shown to have sufficient novelty. However, paratex-
tual practices nonetheless emphasise that Marvel is a superhero franchise in
essence, and thus a producer of superhero narratives; the diverse range of
genres that the franchise evokes are thereby subordinated to the superhero
genre. For Marvel, this paratextual genre construction therefore works to
strengthen brand coherence across media.
The branding and promotional practices of Marvel are, however, not alone
in enforcing this brand unity for the franchise vis-à-vis genre. A range of wider
public discourses and participatory practices continuously contribute to the
construction of the Marvel franchise and its texts as being of the superhero
genre primarily. This is evident in the 2010s, for example, in the many industry
and journalistic discourses concerning the potential for ‘superhero-movie
fatigue’ (Bramesco 2016). Within these types of discourses, journalists and
industry insiders, in an industrial context in which Marvel films are so remark-
ably successful in commercial terms, consider the extent to which audiences’
desire for superhero movies can endure. Such discourses include columnist
James Moore (2018) counselling Marvel on how they can stop filmgoers ‘suc-
cumbing to superhero fatigue’ and former 20th Century Fox Film CEO Stacy
Snider (Barraclough 2018) warning the film industry against an overreliance
on superhero features. Such discourses help to enforce the idea that MCU
movies, and other films featuring superhero properties, are fundamentally
superhero movies.
A related set of discourses, in which journalists and industry figures bemoan
the popularity and pervasiveness of films featuring superheroes, similarly forti-
fies the uniform understanding of MCU films as superhero films in essence.
Not only do these critical voices label MCU films as superhero films specifically,
they additionally often lament what they regard as these films’ homogeneity.
The critic Matt Zoller Seitz (2014), for example, expresses distaste for the
2 TRANSMEDIA SUPERHERO: MARVEL, GENRE DIVERGENCE AND CAPTAIN AMERICA 39
Ainsi donc, après son acquittement, Paul retourna voir les églises
d’Achaïe, de Macédoine, d’Asie. Il fit une mission en Crète, et
chargea Tite d’y bien asseoir son œuvre.
Quant au voyage en Espagne, si fermement projeté, put-il
l’accomplir, et vers quel temps ? Le témoignage de Clément
Romain [441] , laisse entendre que Paul « atteignit le terme de
l’Occident » ; et ces mots, si vagues qu’ils soient, se rapportent, non
à Rome, mais plutôt à l’Espagne, point extrême où l’Annonciateur
visait, avant de paraître devant son Juge et de lui dire : « Toute la
terre a entendu votre nom. Maintenant, venez, Seigneur. »
Seulement, rien n’indique les circonstances ni l’époque de son
exploration.
[441] Voir p. 10.
L’homme et le saint.