Superheroes saturate popular culture and the mass media, but what can their representations tell us about the pleasure audiences experience in reading these stories? In what ways do superhero narratives encourage us to question human identities and attitudes to gender, race, and comics form?

Section 1 - Race 1. The Ku Klux Klan and the birth of the superhero Chris Gavaler 2. The absence of black supervillains in mainstream comics Philip Lamarr Cunningham 3. Islam's Trojan horse: battling perceptions of Muslim women in The 99 Edwin Shirin Section 2 - Narrative and the Development of Superhero Identities 4. The pursuit of identity in the face of paradox: indeterminacy, structure and repetition in Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman Clare Pitkethly 5. The Dark Knight under revision Molly Hatcher Section 3 - Boys and Girls 6. Scott Pilgrim vs. hegemony: nostalgia, remediation, and heteronormativity Ryan Lizardi 7. Good Girl Art - facing images of women in David Mack's Kabuki Frida Beckman 8. Who does she think she is? Female comic-book characters, second-wave feminism, and feminist film theory Mel Gibson 9. Seeing double - the transforming personalities of Alan Moore's Promethea and the Ulster Cycle's Cuchulain Hannah Means Shannon 10. The body unbound: Empowered, heroism, and body image Ruth J. Beerman Section 4 - Supermoms 11. The feminine mystique: feminism, sexuality, motherhood Ross Murray 12. Supermoms? Maternity and the monstrous-feminine in superhero comics Jeffrey A. Brown Section 5 - Queer 13. Hero of the beach: Flex Mentallo at the end of the worlds Will Brooker 14. Queer resistance, gender performance, and 'coming out' of the panel borders in Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams III's Batwoman: Elegy Paul Petrovic Section 6 - Audiences, Reception, Fandom 15. From fan appropriation to industry re-appropriation: the sexual identity of comic superheroes Gareth Schott 16. Captain America in the news: changing mediascapes and the appropriation of a superhero Jason Dittmer 17. Altered egos: gay men reading across gender difference in Wonder Woman Andrew R. Spieldenner 18. 'Nice Cape, Super Faggot!' Male adolescent identity crises in young adult graphic novels Mark Malaby and Melissa Esh