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2017 | Book

Introduction: Notes Toward a Super Fiction Read chapter Read first chapter

Revision and the Superhero Genre

Author: Prof. David Hyman

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Book Series : Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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About this book

This book argues that superhero revision offers new perspectives on the theory and practice of revision in broader contexts, in particular composition studies. Key developments in the history of superhero and composition revision reveal that both are deeply embedded in questions of narrative temporality. The book looks at three unorthodox revision strategies: sideshadowing, in which traditional tropes of superhero narratives are told with “new” characters that clearly evoke traditional ones; excavation, the reintegration and reinterpretation of elements and influences from earlier texts that have been de-emphasized or written out of continuity; and homodoxy, the narrative coexistence of inconsistent elements culled from different versions of a character’s textual history. The ensuing cross-disciplinary exploration helps correct a distorted stereotype of revision as a neutral mechanical process, revealing it instead as a potent force operating across a spectrum that ranges from restrictive adherence to orthodoxies, to radical resistance against the primacy of tradition.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. Introduction: Notes Toward a Super Fiction
Abstract
This chapter introduces revision as a paradoxical practice that both alters and preserves prior versions of texts. This paradox becomes the basis for exploring revision in two different but related contexts: as strategy for generating new narrative material featuring the familiar icons and tropes of the superhero genre; and as the process by which teachers guide student writers to amend, cut, rearrange, and reshape their own words as they work towards completion of a text.
David Hyman
Chapter 2. Incoherent Texts: The Chronotope of the Superhero
Abstract
“Discontinuities and Multiplicities,” complicates the exploration of superhero revision by examining the genre in terms of narrative temporality. Eco’s famous description of the genre’s sense of time as oneiric is supplemented by approaches drawn from several narrative theorists as well as more superhero-specific scholarship. This approach elucidates significant shifts in the role that revision has played in the construction of superhero texts in the years following Eco’s observations, particularly in the wake of the generic transition from what Henry Jenkins has identified as a paradigm of continuity to one of multiplicity. While this transition has been accompanied by corporate and narrative restrictions limiting radical content, modes of superhero revision have emerged that challenge generic orthodoxies and resist the imposition of continuity and cohesion as ultimate goals.
David Hyman
Chapter 3. The Practice of Revision in Composition Studies
Abstract
This chapter draws parallels between superhero revision and revision within composition theory. After examining Ezra Pound’s infamous revisions of Eliot’s The Waste Land, several key stages in the conceptualization of revision will be explored, from Aristotelian rhetoric’s lasting and influential notion of revision as error, to Donald Murray and other early Expressivists’ sense of revision as an act of creative discovery and its influence on early process writing, to the post-process critique of process writing’s failure to account for the contingent and constructed nature of revision as a social practice. This critique leads to speculations regarding what the practice of textual revision can look like in the wake of the shift away from revision as part of the writing process towards a view of revision as a stance of resisting or negotiating identity positions relative to cultural and institutional authority.
David Hyman
Chapter 4. Unorthodox Revisions
Abstract
This chapter examines three unorthodox revision practices through readings of three exemplary superhero narratives: sideshadowing, in which traditional tropes of superhero narratives are reimagined through the use of new characters that represent classic superhero archetypes, as inscribed in Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson’s ongoing Astro City series; excavation, the reintegration and reinterpretation of elements and influences from earlier texts that had been either deemphasized or written out of continuity, notably employed in Warren Ellis and John Cassaday’s Planetary; and homodoxy, the narrative coexistence of inconsistent elements culled from different versions of a character’s textual history, a strategy characteristic of Alan Moore’s collaboration with multiple artists on the Image Comics doppleganger of Superman, Supreme. These modes enact the ongoing negotiation between consistency and rupture that is at the core of the revising process, and offer new perspectives on key debates concerning revision.
David Hyman
Chapter 5. Neverending Battles
Abstract
This chapter expresses concerns that superhero revision is in danger of becoming its own form of orthodoxy, and suggests new directions that might prevent the atrophy of its creative force. Fredric Jameson’s framing of the utopian as irreducible multiplicity, which in turn echoes Deleuze’s reading of Nietzschean difference as an alternative to Hegelian dialectics, suggests ways for revision to maintain generative relevance as a composing strategy. Recent uproar concerning certain controversial revisions in comic books remind us that revision has a moral dimension, and that unorthodox strategies can be read as reiterations of the superhero’s potential for expressing and inspiring radical imagination.
David Hyman
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Revision and the Superhero Genre
Author
Prof. David Hyman
Copyright Year
2017
Electronic ISBN
978-3-319-64759-3
Print ISBN
978-3-319-64758-6
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64759-3