Throughout the history of the genre, ongoing and intimate investments in the serial exploits of comic book superheroes have motivated different forms of authorship outside the sphere of professional cultural production. These forms range from fan letters, fanfiction, and fanart to the editing of fanzines, the drawing of amateur comics, and the creation of online commentary. As has been duly noted, the relationship between the nominal producers and consumers of superhero comics has long been characterized by a heightened sense of mutual interdependence, a sense undergirded by much-reported tales of the coveted career path from comics fan to industry professional. Julius Schwartz, Roy Thomas, and Paul Levitz are only three prominent examples of this transformation, and they, like Millar, Miller, and others, continue to play the role of the industry professional who remains a fan at heart. The first objective of this book, therefore, is to account for the fluidity with which the roles of comic book creator and comic book reader have been performed and how this role-taking has shaped the evolution of the genre. A second goal is to trace the ways in which these roles can overlap in the activities of a single individual while simultaneously gravitating across what Matthew Pustz (1999, 18), Jeffrey Brown (2001, 201), and Bart Beaty (2012, 6) respectively call "comic book culture," the "world of comics," or the "comics world" and what I will label, with a Latourian twist, the superhero collective. Recognizing the triple functions of popular serial narration--the self-promotion of individual series, where each installment seeks to motivate readers to return for the next slice of the action; the product differentiation that follows from competing attempts to cultivate loyal audiences; and their tendency to " promote the medium in which they appear " (Hagedorn 1988, 5)--my approach departs from the questions many superhero studies routinely raise. These questions frequently follow the cultural studies-based "x in y" model of studying popular series (Kelleter and Stein 2012, 259).

Such studies may be interested in the depiction of social responsibility in Spider-Man or of racial affiliation in Black Panther , the representation of gender in Wonder Woman or of disability in the X-Men , the negotiation of national myths in Superman or of patriotism in Captain America , or narratives of class or vigilante justice in Batman or Green Lantern or of global politics in The Justice League of America or The Avengers . While I am sympathetic toward such studies, I find it more conducive to examine how popular serial narratives organize such contested terrain by dispersing authorial and readerly functions and how they provide the means to construct, explore, and negotiate multiple identities, including those associated with being a reader, fan, letter writer, critic, expert, hobby historian, fanzine producer, amateur artist, or industry professional, all of which intersect with gendered, sexualized, raced, and classed forms of identification. "Those who try to reduce or deduce the dynamics of serial proliferation to individual agents--be they authors, publishing houses, studios, scenes, readers, or fans--are already lost," Ruth Mayer rightly observes, because "popular seriality generates itself" (2014, 12).