Big Screen Heroes with Paper Voices: A Study of Superhero Media Adaptations

Superheroes may have taken over your phone, tablet, and television screens through the endless adaptations that pelt us from upon high mouse-shaped ears, but their rich history goes back much further than that; they have gripped the public imagination since their creation in comic strips published in newspapers almost one-hundred years ago. This essay demonstrates how the adaptation of superhero characters has embedded comics in mainstream media, while also simultaneously changing comic book characters and their lore through media adaptations. Marvel comic book characters in particular have had unparalleled success through their continued adaptation from comic books into new forms of media over the years. Comic books and comic book films form a sort of symbiosis in today’s never-ending cycle of Hollywood blockbuster. For many in academia, the specific ways in which comic books have begun to shape the new media forms has become a point of great interest, warranting deep-rooted scholarly study of how exactly comic book films differ from source material and vice-versa. The far more interesting prospect is how adaptation has reinvented comic books stories and characters, and how those changes have crossed forms of media for the benefit and mainstream success of updated characters and new stories. Comic book character lore continue to grow and be changed through their adaptation in subsequent media. —- ISBN: 9798878939607