Supersex : : Sexuality, Fantasy, and the Superhero / / ed. by Anna Peppard.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Texas Press Complete eBook-Package 2020
• MitwirkendeR: Brennan, Joseph,; Brown, Jeffrey A.,; Deman, J. Andrew,; Friedlander, Keith,; Harrison, Richard,; Hicks, Olivia,; Johnson, Brian,; Kustritz, Anne,; Langsdale, Samantha,; Panuska, Sarah M.,; Peppard, Anna F.,; Reynolds, Richard,; Yockey, Matt,; Zeichmann, Christopher B.,
• HerausgeberIn: Peppard, Anna,
• Place / Publishing House: Austin : : University of Texas Press, , [2022]; ©2020
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Series: World Comics and Graphic Nonfiction Series
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (384 p.)

2021 Comic Studies Society Prize for Edited Collection From Superman, created in 1938, to the transmedia DC and Marvel universes of today, superheroes have always been sexy. And their sexiness has always been controversial, inspiring censorship and moral panic. Yet though it has inspired jokes and innuendos, accusations of moral depravity, and sporadic academic discourse, the topic of superhero sexuality is like superhero sexuality itself—seemingly obvious yet conspicuously absent. Supersex: Sexuality, Fantasy, and the Superhero is the first scholarly book specifically devoted to unpacking the superhero genre’s complicated relationship with sexuality. Exploring sexual themes and imagery within mainstream comic books, television shows, and films as well as independent and explicitly pornographic productions catering to various orientations and kinks, Supersex offers a fresh—and lascivious—perspective on the superhero genre’s historical and contemporary popularity. Across fourteen essays touching on Superman, Batman, the X-Men, and many others, Anna F. Peppard and her contributors present superhero sexuality as both dangerously exciting and excitingly dangerous, encapsulating the superhero genre’s worst impulses and its most productively rebellious ones. Supersex argues that sex is at the heart of our fascination with superheroes, even—and sometimes especially—when the capes and tights stay on.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- INTRODUCTION. Presence and Absence in Theory and Practice: Locating Supersex -- PART I. COMICS -- 1. Tarpé Mills’s Miss Fury: Costume, Sexuality, and Power -- 2. Superman Family Values: Supersex in the Silver Age -- 3. A Storm of Passion: Sexual Agency and Symbolic Capital in the X-Men’s Storm -- 4. Dazzler, Melodrama, and Shame: Mutant Allegory, Closeted Readers -- 5. “Super-Gay” Gay Comix: Tracing the Underground Origins and Cultural Resonances of LGBTQ Superheroes -- 6. Parents, Counterpublics, and Sexual Identity in Young Avengers -- PART II. FILM, TELEVISION, AND FAN CULTURE -- 7. X-Men Films and the Domestication of Dissent: Sexuality, Race, and Respectability -- 8. Over the Rainbow Bridge: Female/Queer Sexuality in Marvel’s Thor Film Trilogy -- 9. “No One’s Going to Be Looking at Your Face”: The Female Gaze and the New (Super)Man in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman -- 10. The Visible and the Invisible: Superheroes, Pornography, and Phallic Masculinity -- 11. “I Think That’s My Favorite Weapon in the Whole Batcave”: Interrogating the Subversions of Men.com’s Gay Superhero Porn Parodies -- 12. “That’s Pussy Babe!”: Queering Supergirl’s Confessions of Power -- 13. Meet Stephanie Rogers, Captain America: Genderbending the Body Politic in Fan Art, Fiction, and Cosplay -- EPILOGUE: The Matter with Size -- CONTRIBUTORS -- INDEX