School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemCrisis of infinite intertexts!: Continuity as adaptation in the Superman multimedia franchise( 2015)Since first appearing as a comic book character over three quarters of a century ago, Superman was not only the first superhero, spawning an entire genre of imitators, but also quickly became one of the most widely disseminated multi-media entertainment franchises. This achieved a degree of intergenerational cultural dissemination that far surpasses his comic book fandom. Yet despite an unprecedented degree of adaptation into other media from radio, newspaper strips, film serials, animation, feature films, video games and television, Superman’s ongoing comic books have remained in unbroken publication, developing a long and complex history of narrative renewal and reinvention. This thesis investigates the multifaceted intertextuality between the comic book portrayals of Superman and its many adaptations over the years, including how such retellings in other media have a generally stronger cultural impact, which exerts in turn an adaptive influence upon these continuing comics’ internalised narrative continuity. I shall argue that Superman comics, as a case study for the wider phenomenon in the superhero genre, demonstrate via their frequent revisions and relaunches of continuity, a process of deeply palimpsestuous self-adaptation. The Introduction positions my research methodology in relation to intertextual theory, with an emphasis on providing terminological clarity, while Chapter 1 expands into a literature review on pertinent key scholarship on adaptation studies and the comics studies field specifically. Chapter 2 explores the history and application of adaptation to other media in the Superman franchise, and how this has progressively manifested in ‘feedback’ processes in the comics that are the notional source material, an increasingly problematised textual designation. Chapter 3 refocuses on Superman’s comic book diegesis and unpacks the definitions and internal methodology of continuity and its revision, with a particular focus on the pertinent writings of Umberto Eco regarding the “oneiric” nature of Superman comics’ temporal narratology, and I weigh in on debates involving his later critics. Finally, Chapter 4 delves into the history and theoretical implications of comics’ process of perpetual and accelerating cycles of continuity revision, and their increasingly intertextual lines of influence with past and concurrent adaptations to other media within the wider franchise. Using Gerard Genette’s conception of the textual palimpsest, I argue that comic book continuity has become a highly iterative succession of self-adapting rearticulations of their core narratives, utilising much the same intertextual processes as adaptations between different media expressions, in search of a constant generational renewal and creative renegotiation.