Scott Bukatman argues that superhero comics present “a corporeal, rather than a cognitive, mapping of the subject into a cultural system.” In effect, Bukatman proposes that superhero comics are a “body genre,” comparable to horror films, musicals, and melodramas in the ways they make meaning out of bodily spectacle. The underlying similarity of these body genres became especially apparent in 1961, with the publication of Fantastic Four #1. Depicting a superhero “family” that was, to paraphrase, Will Jacobs and Gerard Jones, part real and part monstrous, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four incorporated horror and melodrama into the superhero genre. Compared to the steel-like integrity of their superheroic predecessors, the radioactively mutated bodies of the Fantastic Four, which disappear and liquify, and become rocks and living fire, produce a mix of exhilaration and trauma for both their owners and the public. This paper will read the volatile bodies of the original Fantastic Four—the Human Torch, the Thing, the Invisible Girl, and Mr. Fantastic—as they graphically expose and negotiate Cold War America’s competing sociopolitical narratives of liberation and containment. In particular, I will consider the ways in which: the erratic Torch and anguished Thing both glorify and critique phallic masculinity through their overdetermined visibility; the Invisible Girl both confirms and subverts female objecthood through an empowerment that requires her to disappear; and Mr. Fantastic emerges as an ideal atomic patriarch by eschewing “hardness” in favour of flexibility. In considering the ways intercorporeal relations within this (literally) nuclear family re-imagine (and re-image), for better or worse, the boundaries and contours of teenagers, men, and women in and for the Cold War era, this paper will contribute to our understanding of how the superhero genre and comic book form have reflected and informed America’s political history and evolving cultural imaginary.
About the presenterAnna Peppard
Anna Peppard is a PhD Candidate in English Literature at York University in Toronto, Canada. She earned her BA (Honours) from Carleton University (English with a minor in Film Studies) and her MA from the University of Toronto (English). Broadly speaking, her research interests include issues surrounding identity, gender, and reading practices in 20th century American literature as well as popular forms including film, television, genre fiction, and comics. Among her upcoming publications are articles entitled, “How Tonto Became Mr. T: The A-Team and the Transformation of the Western in Post-Vietnam America,” and “ ‘This Female Fights Back!’: A Feminist History of Marvel Comics.”