The World of Marvel Comics

A detailed study of the history and long-lasting influence of Marvel Comics, this book explores the ways Marvel’s truly unique comic book world reflects real world issues and controversies alongside believable, psychologically-motivated characters. The book examines a decades-long dual focus on both tight-knit continuity and real-world fidelity that makes the Marvel Universe a unique entity amongst imaginary worlds. Although there have been many books and articles that analyze each of these aspects of the Marvel Universe, the unique focus of this book is on how those two aspects have interwoven over the course of Marvel’s history, and the ways in which both have been used as storytelling engines that have fueled the entire imaginary world of Marvel Comics. Andrew J. Friedenthal has crafted a groundbreaking, engaging, and thoughtful examination of how this particular story world combines intricate world-building with responsiveness to real world events, which will be of interest to scholars and enthusiasts of not just comics studies, but also the fields of transmedia studies and imaginary worlds.

1. Building a "Real World": Marvel in the 1960s 2. War on the Streets: Marvel, Vietnam, and Street Vigilantes 3. The Marvel Multitude: The Era of Crossovers 4. Terror and Paranoia: Marvel Realism in the Twenty-first Century

Andrew J. Friedenthal is a writer, critic, and independent scholar living in Austin, Texas. His previous publications include Retcon Game: Retroactive Continuity and the Hyperlinking of America and The World of DC Comics (part of the ‘Imaginary Worlds’ series).