The Genre of the Superhero Narrative: The Marvellous-Uncanny

The following is an essay devoted to defining the superhero narrative as a literary genre. The essay is not without its problems (the least of which are its length and the images - my apologies) but I do believe it adds to the idea of the superhero narrative being a distinct form of narrative that bridges genres. If it at least generates discussion and debate then the time producing it was well spent.

The Genre of the Superhero Narrative: The Marvellous-Uncanny

'A literary genre, by its very nature, reflects the most stable, "eternal" tendencies in literature's development. Always preserved in a genre are undying elements of the archaic. True, these archaic elements are preserved in it only thanks to their constant renewal, which is to say, their contemporisation. A genre is always the same and yet not the same, always old and new simultaneously. Genre is reborn and renewed at every stage in the development of literature and in every individual work of a given genre. This constitutes the life of a genre. Therefore even the archaic elements preserved in a genre are not dead but eternally alive; that is, archaic elements are capable of renewing themselves. A genre lives in the present, but always remembers its past, its beginning'

(Bakhtin 106).

 
The Superhero: The Figure, The Narrative, The Medium

Comics and comic books are almost inseparable from the figure of the superhero. While in years past crime, romance, and horror comics were a staple part of comic book fare, these now represent only a small portion of the comic book trade which is dominated by the garishly costumed superhero. Stemming from "low-brow" pulp origins, comics share their position in popular culture with science-fiction, a genre which Rosi Braidotti writes of as having the 'imagination of disaster and the aesthetics of destruction… the more extensive the scale of the disaster, the better' (186). The DC Comics crossover storyline Final Crisis comes to mind as only one extensive disaster to be portrayed in comics (there is generally one epic crisis every year or so).

First though I wish to distinguish which comics I am talking about here, because the term, comics, is all-encompassing. A comic is not a genre (except by way of paratext), it is a medium, and an "in-between" medium at that – not cinema, not novels, not short stories, not (completely) literary, not simply art, not simply scripts – and yet incorporates aspects of all these. This conglomeration of modes may be why it has been so difficult for comics to find an encompassing term of their own other than the begrudgingly accepted, graphic novel. However, comics as a medium draws from all these conventions while simultaneously influencing them. For my purposes here comics are the medium in which superhero narratives are primarily, but not exclusively, told. More specifically, they contain narratives which invoke the figure of the superhero in its many forms. Similarly, I would also apply to the superhero narrative what Braidotti writes of science-fiction, that it is 'mercifully free of grandiose pretensions… and thus ends up being a more accurate and honest depiction of contemporary culture than other, more self-consciously "representational" genres' (182).

In his book Genre, John Frow writes that genres which tell stories 'set within a recognisable world, the thematic content will be kinds of action, the kinds of actors who perform them, and the significance that accrues to actions and actors' (76). Frow explains that these actions can be world-historical occurrences, sustained adventures, or one-off events while the actors will be recognisably human or non-human. The world formed and containing these actors and actions has a 'particular organisation of space and time and a particular… degree of plausibility' (76). This can be referred to as what Frow terms the thematic content expressed as a 'recurrent iconography' (75). The thematic content of the superhero narrative is that which makes it instantly recognisable to readers. Thus the superheroic figure can be represented in any number of ways while not specifically presenting the reader/viewer with the conventions that we come to associate with the superhero. This can be seen in evidence in television shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Heroes, and Bionic Woman, and M. Night Shyamalan's film Unbreakable (2000). Of course this also calls into question what constitutes a superheroic figure. While Reynolds (1992) points out seven conventions which were established in the first Superman story (in Action Comics 1938) – lost parents, the man-god, justice, the normal and the superpowered, the secret identity, superpowers and politics, and science as magic – these have become less relied upon as the genre has evolved. Reynolds himself notes that these only construct a 'first stage working definition of the superhero genre' (16). I reject the idea of the superhero as a "genre" in its own right. As I am elucidating here, the superhero/superheroic figure is a tool which expresses the thematic content of the superhero narrative.

I have always regarded the superhero narrative as one that is difficult to pigeonhole as a genre, as it incorporates and combines many modes of fiction, such as fantasy, science-fiction, myth, and horror, in a realistic setting. Thus a cyborg vampire appearing in an X-Men comic would not be unusual. Neither is Captain America battling the Nazis (which he did), or Batman fighting Al-Qaeda (which he will if Frank Miller has his way). I wish to position the superhero narrative in two different ways. First, using Mikhail Bakhtin and Geoff Klock, I make an argument for the superhero narrative as a literary genre. Second, again using the work of Bakhtin, as well as Tzvetan Todorov, Christine Brooke-Rose, Rosemary Jackson, and John Frow, and through developing a new model of genre, I position the superhero narrative and Franz Kafka's 'The Metamorphosis' as residing in a "new" genre: the Marvellous-Uncanny.


 
The Characteristics of a Genre

Frow writes that 'the patterns of genre… are at once shaped by a type of situation and in turn shape the rhetorical actions that are performed in response to it' (14). Genre also 'embodies the type of recurring situation that evokes it, and… provides a strategic response to that situation' (Coe et al in Frow 14). Frow continues:

 

texts translate (activate, perform, but also transform) the complex meanings made available by the structure of genre, which in turn translates the information structurally embedded in the situation to which it responds (16).

For me, Frow describes and communicates that the essence of genre is metamorphic in the fact that structure and situation inform each other but also have the power to transform each other in a constant continuation. This is how genres change and re-invent themselves. If we are to follow Bakhtin, then this is how genre must work for innovation and repetition to continually evolve while remaining the same. Of course genres do not re-invent themselves literally, rather it is the responses in the form of choices made by authors in their texts that inform the process. All genres are destabilised by the eternal question which authors ask as the instigator, and inspiration, for all narratives – What if…? 

Frow's model of genre is a reflexive model 'in which texts are thought to use or perform the genres by which they are shaped' (25). Though, he also writes that genre classifications are 'necessarily unstable and unpredictable… because… they are themselves uses of genre, performance of or allusions to the norms and conventions which form them and which they may, in turn, transform' (25).


The Superhero Narrative as a Literary Genre

Returning to Bakhtin's quote which I have used at the start of this paper, the elements he ascribes to the literary genre describe the ever evolving superhero narrative perfectly and in my opinion thus constitute it as a literary genre. To explicate this I refer to the "ages" which constitute the evolving stages of the superhero narrative. The Golden Age dates from the first appearance of Superman in Action Comics #1 (1938) to its near demise between 1945 and 1950 (Sassienie 21). The explosion of superhero comics in this time (dominated by the DC pantheon of characters – Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman), had simple storylines where heroes always triumphed and were never personally conflicted. The Silver Age is generally regarded as beginning with the re-publication and rejuvenation of the hero, The Flash, in DC's Showcase #4 (Oct. 1956). This was in no small part prompted by Dr Frederic Wertham's diatribe against horror comics which led to the adoption of a 'Comics Code' that effectively killed off the prolific horror comic market and led to the toning down of romance and westerns. The Silver Age was dominated by the emergence of the Marvel pantheon of characters created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the 1960s, those being The Fantastic Four (1961), The Incredible Hulk (1962), Spiderman (1962), The Mighty Thor (1963), X-Men (1963), The Avengers (1963), Iron Man (1963), and Daredevil (1964). The stories are characterised by the introduction of heroes with personal and/or "real life" problems. From this point in their history, the comic eras become more difficult to demarcate. Depending on what is regarded as the information underpinning the defining of an era – Paul Sassienie seems to take the popularity of the superhero comic, and thus sales, as his measure, while Klock is more interested in their thematic content – the Silver Age either finished in 1969 (Sassienie 69), the early to mid 1970s, or continued until the mid 1980s with the publication of The Dark Knight Returns (1986) and Watchmen (1986-7) (Klock 3). Richard Reynolds could not decide whether Watchmen was 'either the last key superhero text, or the first in a new maturity of the genre' (117). Klock suggests that they were both. Either way these two texts ushered in the era of the self-reflexive, re-visionary superhero narrative which constituted a maturing of the genre. Responses to these texts via other superhero narratives, and responses to those subsequent texts, have been produced regularly to the present. 

If thematic content is the marker, then the defining lines between eras are not strict. There is debate about when the current age started and finished (if at all). The Bronze Age, spanning the early/mid 1970s to mid/late 1980s, is characterised by stories dealing with social problems such as drugs, poverty, violence, and America's involvement in Vietnam. Probably the most notable development is the introduction of superhero characters of different ethnicities, notably those of African-American heritage – Storm from the X-Men, and the Green Lantern, Jon Stewart, to name only two. We are currently in the Modern Age, late 1980s to present, although comic writer Warren Ellis has another take, referring to the ages as "movements." He situates the third movement as starting somewhere between Frank Miller's run on Daredevil (May 1979 – Feb. 1983) and Alan Moore's Marvelman (Mar. 1982 – Aug. 1984), which came to a close around 1997. He hints at a coming fourth movement (11). Ellis's third movement functionally coincides with the emergence of the direct sales market through dedicated comic shops, and the first comic, Dazzler #1 (Mar. 1981), to be released solely through the direct sales market. It also coincides with the emergence of new formats such as the first mini-series (Jul. – Sep. 1979), the first graphic novel, and first maxi series (both 1982) (Sassienie 106).

While the superhero narrative was always a genre, for me it did not become a literary genre until this last, modern era emerged. As Klock demonstrates, using Ellis's third movement, the re-visionary comic narrative begins with The Dark Knight Returns and finds its logical path through Marvels, Kingdom Come, Astro City, Stormwatch, and The Authority, to Warren Ellis's Planetary, a superhero narrative that comes to terms with its own fictional history:

Planetary shows comic book history as a battle with an earlier version of itself – pulp novel characters struggling with Golden Age superheroes, Silver Age heroes killing off Golden Age icons (154).

Klock suggests that due to the emergence of Silver Age heroes and narratives, the previous era's narrative can never be told again: 'Planetary stages the repression of the old, the "impossibility" of writing the earlier form, when the new form literally kills the old' (159). This may be true for the Golden Age DC Comics heroes, though Alan Moore has attempted, and I think successfully, captured the style and essence of the Golden Age in his Tom Strong title.

The twelve issue series Justice (Krueger and Ross, Oct. 2005 – Aug. 2007) however is an alternative view to that of Ellis's vision of the meaning and influence of the previous era's superheroes. Justice sets the Justice League heroes of the DC Comics universe against the collected efforts of their villainous counterparts. The story begins with a similar premise to Grant Morrison's JLA: New World Order, Alex Ross and Mark Waid's Kingdom Come, and Warren Ellis's The Authority, where the question is asked: If superheroes are so powerful why don't they make the world a better place? This is the question Lex Luthor asks the citizens of Earth when he bands together a number of supervillains who seemingly have turned over a new leaf, and with their own powers and talents are doing what superheroes have failed to do – improving the world for its citizens by making changes on a global scale. This is of course a front for a bolder scheme where the villains intend dividing humanity down the middle. Brainiac will take the "weaker" humans and turn them into machines to populate his home world, while Lex Luthor will rule the remaining "elite" humans, after of course they have dispatched the Justice League and its members. In Justice the heroes and villains appear in their most recognisable, nostalgic costumes with all their sidekicks in tow – Robin (Batman), Aqualad (Aquaman), Speedy (Green Arrow) – indicating that Justice, like Kingdom Come, sits outside normal DC continuity, and not without good reason. After the Justice League triumphs in stopping the enslavement of humanity, a further more moral drive is revealed. The heroes are fighting for a future in which a future form of humanity, a form which those heroes are unable to imagine, can flourish. This suggestion is expounded in the final pages of the final issue where adult versions of DC's Legion of Superheroes look back in time at Superman landing on the roof of the Daily Planet. The message is quite clear. The battles which the heroes of a previous era fought have enabled the subsequent heroes to come into existence and flourish. Far from killing them off, it is implied that contemporary heroes are indebted to those of the previous era, and by way of association, all those which have subsequently come into existence including those invented at Marvel. In Justice Bakhtin's archaic elements remain, and Frow's reflexive model is also in effect. Justice comments on its own origins as a genre, subsequent and future readings of the genre, and the recurring situation of good vs. evil, hero vs. villain, is renewed.



The Superhero Narrative: Which Genre?

To which genre does the superhero narrative belong? Before I explain the superhero narrative as a new genre and as constituting an important element in a new model of genre, I will first endeavour to explain why it does not align with existing genres.
 
The Menippea

The superhero narrative has superficial links to the traditional literary genre of the menippea found in ancient Christian and Byzantine literature, and medieval, renaissance and reformation writings. The menippea:

moved easily in space between this world, an underworld and an upper world. It conflated past, present and future, and allowed dialogues with the dead. States of hallucination, dream, insanity, eccentric behaviour and speech, personal transformation, extraordinary situations, were the norm (Jackson 14).

The superhero narrative shares with the menippea its concern with current and topical issues; the wide use of inserted genres; moral-psychological experimentation; a representation of the moral and psychic states of man; insanity of all sorts – split personality, unusual dreams; passions bordering on madness (Bakhtin in Morris 191-2); and an 'extraordinary freedom of plot and philosophical invention' (Bakhtin in Morris 189). These menippean "norms", as Jackson explains, are 'temporary suspensions of coherence' (16), stemming from its links with the carnivalesque. In contrast the superhero narrative has many of these temporary disunities as continuous themes. The superhero narrative presents itself as a realistic realm. Superheroes are the norm and villains are the disrupting influence. It is the interloper, the villain or strange occurrence that brings something stranger over and above the normal disunities of the superhero world. The overriding principle of the menippea is 'the creation of extraordinary situations for the provoking and testing of a philosophical idea, a truth' (Bakhtin in Morris 189). Again, while some superhero narratives may well embody this idea, it is not something which could be said to define the narrative. 
 
The Fantastic

The modern Fantastic comes into its own in the nineteenth century when a supernatural economy of ideas was giving way to a natural one (Jackson 24). The cosmology of heaven and hell was facing redundancy, and the cosmos was becoming internalised as an area of non-meaning (Jackson 18). The main idea Todorov explores of the pure Fantastic is that it creates a hesitation in the reader. He explains that few texts remain in the genre of the pure Fantastic for the duration of the narrative because stories of the pure Fantastic resist final explanations. Todorov's investigation of Fantastic narratives branches out towards the genres of the Fantastic-Uncanny and Fantastic-Marvellous, which serve as eventual explanations for the hesitation which the Fantastic narrative invokes. However I also see the genres of the Fantastic-Uncanny and Fantastic-Marvellous as an end unto themselves. In this a narrative may start in the Marvellous and move through the Marvellous-Fantastic, finishing in the Fantastic, the hesitation being at the end, leaving us uneasy and unsure of everything we have just read or viewed. The revelation at the end of Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense sends us rushing back through the film to experience "what really happened." The explanation is of a supernatural origin though we cannot dismiss the idea that the child is psychologically disturbed and that the events are in fact only occurring in his mind.

On a broad scale the superhero narrative has elements of the Fantastic. We should not confuse the common usage of fantasy, such as we might call J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings or Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, with the Fantastic of which most notably Todorov has theorised. Ideally these fantasy narratives come under the umbrella of the Marvellous. Jackson, who frustratingly uses the terms fantasy and fantastic interchangeably, writes that:

 

fantasy is not to do with inventing another non–human world: it is not transcendental. It has to do with inverting elements of this world, re-combining its constitutive features in new relations to produce something strange, unfamiliar and apparently "new", absolutely "other" and different (Jackson 8).

Similarly the superhero narrative does not invent a non-human world, though it accedes to allowing elements of the non-human and while the superhero narrative does invert elements of this world to produce the strange and unfamiliar this again does not constitute the totality of its elements. Jackson positions the fantastic as a paraxis – a spectral region, an imaginary world, that is located between the totally "real" and "unreal." Like the superhero narrative, the Fantastic is 'un-real', existing 'in a parasitic or symbiotic relationship to the real,' but 'cannot exist independently of that "real" world which it seems to find so frustratingly finite' (Jackson 20). This parasitic/symbiotic relationship I explicate later in this paper to develop a circular model of genre and which functionally links all genres as having similar relationships to the real.

The superhero narrative incorporates the real into the Fantastic. The superhero narrative definitely resides between the Real and the Unreal, in Jackson's paraxial realm. However Jackson's paraxial Fantastic realm shades and threatens the real while the superhero narrative does not. Therefore I see it as a non-threatening paraxial realm. In the traditional fantasy story the narrative takes place against the backdrop of the "real", creating what George Bataille refers to as 'a tear, or wound, laid open in the side of the real' (in Jackson 22).
The superhero narrative is part of an alterity of merged worlds. To demonstrate my point, the comic world has the invented cities of Metropolis (home of Superman), Gotham (Batman), Keystone (The Flash), Coast City (Green Lantern), Atlantis (Aquaman), yet when they are brought together as a team they are "The Justice League of America." In the Stormwatch title of the late 1990s the Stormwatch team clashed with rebels and villains from the fictional island of Gamorra but at the same time were held accountable to the United Nations. Thus in these narratives our world has been torn open and the Fantastic elements have been inserted. Once this is done, our world merged with the Fantastic becomes polysemic where the impossible is possible. The "real" becomes fantastic in a strange shift into the paraxial space between the "real" and the "un-real." The superhero narrative provides familiarity with the real (events happening in a world like ours) and disassociation from the real (but could not happen in our world), leaving the reader with a level of safety. Moreover, as Jackson emphasises, the Fantastic is a mode which the superhero narrative uses, though not in the same manner as that of nineteenth century literature. The Fantastic in the superhero narrative is not disturbing and does not create a hesitation in the reader. Rather it is used to exhilarate and produce excitement and wonder. The Fantastic narrative relies on the overt violation of accepted possibility (Irwin in Jackson 21), existing 'only against a background to which it offers a direct reversal' (Rabkin in Jackson 21), while also playing upon the 'difficulties of interpreting events/things as objects or as images thus disorientating the reader's categorisation of the "real"' (Jackson 20). This is the major difference between the superhero narrative and the Fantastic narrative. In the superhero narrative the background is not overtly violated by events or people. The reader is not disoriented at all as everything in the superhero narrative is accepted as real.



The Marvellous

The genre of the Marvellous is an immediately definable place of 'rich, colourful fullness' (Jackson 42) produced from a supernatural economy investing 'otherness with supernatural qualities' (Jackson 24). Characterised by a minimal functional narrative, the Marvellous has a narrator who is omniscient and has absolute authority (Jackson 33). In a supernatural economy 'otherness is transcendent, marvellously different from the human' (Jackson 23), while in a secular economy otherness is 'read as a projection of merely human fears and desires transforming the world through subjective perception' (Jackson 23). The creation of the superhero and a city for them to protect merges these supernatural and secular economies. The superhero, created through a desire – out of a lack of order – is marvellously different from the human though not unrecognisably so. The superhero is an overriding influence, a protector of society and morals, doing for the public what they cannot do themselves. However the Marvellous narrative is seen to transport the reader to an entirely different world or secondary universe (Jackson 42). These realms are only linked to the "real" through allegorical or conceptual association (Jackson 43). This is not the realm of the superhero narrative although it does have elements of science fiction, romance, magic, and supernaturalism that characterise the Marvellous.



Superhero Narrative: The Marvellous-Uncanny

In this section I draw distinctions between the superhero narrative and Kafka's short story, 'Metamorphosis', in support of my claim for both to be situated in the genre of the Marvellous-Uncanny. 


Brooke-Rose writes of 'Metamorphosis':

 

We are in the Marvellous, since a supernatural event is introduced at the start, yet is accepted at once and provokes no hesitation. The event is nevertheless shocking, impossible, yet becomes paradoxically possible, so that in a sense we are in the Uncanny (66).

The superhero narrative is much like 'Metamorphosis' inasmuch as a strange event provokes no hesitation in the reader or the characters of the text when trying to offer either supernatural or natural explanations because everything is already 'abnormal and bizarre' (Brooke-Rose 67). Like the Fantastic narrative, the superhero narrative establishes its reality initially as mimetic ("realistic", presenting an "object" world "objectively") but then moves into another mode which would seem to be Marvellous ("unrealistic", representing apparent impossibilities) were it not for its initial grounding in the real (Jackson 20). The superhero narrative positioned initially as mimetic, set against a realistic setting (such as our world), moves towards the Marvellous when a strange event which is impossible (a man being able to fly) causes no hesitation. But paradoxically it is also possible, and thus Uncanny (because the world is not specifically ours – a merged world). Brooke-Rose alludes to this generic anomaly of certain narratives as being unable to be placed in a specific genre in her book Rhetoric of the Unreal where she reinscribes Todorov's linear model (Figure 1.1). Todorov's model travels from Uncanny to Marvellous with the pure Fantastic as a line in the middle (representing its limited narrative possibilities). Brooke-Rose takes Todorov's model and makes it circular by placing Realistic fiction between the Uncanny and the Marvellous, with the Fantastic again only occupying the limit between the Fantastic-Uncanny and the Fantastic-Marvellous (Figure 1.2). 

 

Fantastic

Uncanny

Fantastic-Uncanny

Fantastic-Marvellous

Marvellous

 

Figure 1.1 Todorov's Model of Genre

 

Figure 1.2

Brooke-Rose's Model of Genre

She sees this model as an answer to science fiction's use of realistic narrative forms. If as in Brooke-Rose's diagram Realism fills the gap between the Uncanny and the Marvellous, this pre-supposes (via Todorov) that the Fantastic is somehow directly opposed to realism, which is simply unfounded. That is, even the Fantastic has elements of Realism not withstanding ordinary human activities (a point Brooke-Rose does actually take into account). Further, by turning Todorov's linear model into a pie chart in which she places Realism in-between the Uncanny and the Marvellous to take into account Darko Suvin's argument for science fiction as its own genre, she nevertheless falls into the trap Todorov fell into in making a model to distinguish between literary modes. She finds that her extrapolated Todorov model does not account for Kafka's 'Metamorphosis' which is 'Uncanny + Marvellous' (Brooke-Rose 84), remaining a generic anomaly which Todorov dismissed simply as a genre of its own. But if we rearrange Brooke-Rose's circular diagram, placing Realism in the centre and combining the Marvellous and Uncanny into the new hybrid genre of the Marvellous-Uncanny (Figure 1.3), like the hybrid genres of Fantastic-Uncanny and Fantastic-Marvellous, Kafka's 'Metamorphosis', and the superhero narrative, can finally have a place where it has a parasitic/symbiotic relationship with each of the surrounding genres. The Marvellous-Uncanny explains supernatural events as having them accepted as the norm. The metamorphic characters of superhero narratives and Kafka's metamorphic Gregor thus reside in the same place.

Figure 1.3 Proposed New Model of Genre

The emergence of the superhero narrative constitutes the genre of the Marvellous-Uncanny before being recognised as one. The genre itself has produced characters to exist in these narratives. So to explain the characters, the genre had to exist, the previous narratives had to exist, to enable the characters to be produced, and indeed, allow them to be produced. I would even go so far as to say that, using the same argument as just presented for the superhero narrative, the genre of the Marvellous-Uncanny would be home to the mythic narrative, and Reynolds description of the superhero narrative as a modern mythology resonates further than originally intended. The superhero narrative and the characters which inhabit these narratives can be recognised as part of a lineage of heroic and god-like characters.

What I am also suggesting is that all genres in this model have a parasitic/symbiotic relationship with realism. Thus in this model the further from realism the narrative goes, in any genre, the more "pure" it becomes, eventually passing into the absurd. As an example, a pure science fiction story (Marvellous) would perhaps be a novel written in an alien language that is unable to be interpreted. For display purposes I have given each genre equal space in this model and they are demarcated by straight boundaries. This of course is misleading. A genre such as the pure Fantastic, which Todorov positioned as a line between Fantastic-Marvellous and Fantastic-Uncanny, would actually have less "space" allotted to it in the model as the amount of narratives applying to this genre are limited. Similarly the boundaries are not strict but blurred and fluid capable of expanding and contracting as more narratives inhabit certain genres. Ideally groups of narratives with similar themes would be identified as clusters within "boundaries." This model has the ability to expand to incorporate new stories that fit somewhere "between" other stories already in a genre following Bakhtin's idea that genres 'grow together, inosculate, or knit together' (Morson and Emerson 293). An example would be cyberpunk and its off-shoot steampunk with their relation to science-fiction and therefore the Marvellous. The model simply expands outward, becoming as big as it needs to be. This model also provides for sub-genres within classifications. Thus within the Marvellous-Uncanny could be the sub-genre of Fantastic/Marvellous-Uncanny. Bakhtin again explains: 'Each new genre merely supplements the old ones, merely widens the circle of already existing genres. For every genre has its own predominant sphere of existence' (Morson and Emerson 301). This model can also account for Bakhtin's oxymoronic category of the 'realistic-fantastic' which would lie on a threshold somewhere between pure realism, which I would position as a point, a limit, at the centre of the circle, though one which can never be reached or represented, and the other expanding boundary of Pure Fantastic.

 
Reference 

Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984.

Braidotti, Rosi. Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming. Malden Blackwell Publishers: MA, 2002.

Brook-Rose, Christine. A Rhetoric of the Unreal: Studies in Narrative and Structure, Especially of the Fantastic. Cambridge [Eng.]: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Ellis, Warren. From the Desk of Warren Ellis Vol. 1. Urbarna IL: Avatar, 2000.

Frow, John. Genre. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.

Goldstein, Hilary. 'WonderCon '06: Holy Terror, Batman! Batman kicks Al Qaeda's Ass. Frank Miller's talks about upcoming book.' ign.com, 12 February 2006 http://au.comics.ign.com/articles/688/688140p1.html, (Accessed 13 May 2008).

Jackson, Rosemary. Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion. London New York: Methuen, 1981.

Klock, Geoff. How to Read Superhero Comics and Why. New York, London: Continuum, 2002.

Morris, Pam, ed. The Bakhtin Reader: Selected Writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev, and Voloshinov. London: E. Arnold, 1994.

Morson, Gary Saul, and Caryl Emerson. Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1990.

Reynolds, Richard. Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology. London: B.T. Batsford Ltd., 1992.

Sassienie, Paul. The Comic Book: The One Essential Guide for Comic Book Fans Everywhere. New Jersey: Chartwell Books, 1994.


Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1975.