Abstract

This thesis explores the relationship between collective memory, history and popular culture as it pertains to the American superhero comic. It examines some of the reasons behind and ways that American comic book publishers change their superhero character properties over time. This entails looking at the consequences of the ownership of character properties to the industry and the resulting economic impetus to alter their characters to both resonate with contemporary audiences and to keep them accessible to new readers. Despite these changes, those aspects of the superhero comic that are changed by this economic drive rarely disappear. Rather, comic book history continues to play a vital role in comic book fandom. Thus, this thesis examines the development and role of comic book reprints in the industry and comic book fandom. In a similar vein, it explores the role that knowledge of a character's--or a publisher's stable of characters'--diagetic history plays in contemporary superhero narratives and how such knowledge is disseminated. Both of these studies argue that knowledge and appreciation of past comic books play a vital role in contemporary comic book narratives and fandom. Finally, this thesis examines how discarded elements of past comic books come into play as allusions in later superhero narratives. This thesis questions if such allusions have been used as a means to represent the historical moments that the alluded to elements of past comic books are associated with. Ultimately this thesis argues that such allusive comics are one of the many textual resources that some theorists consider vital to understanding contemporary collective memory