Introduction: Presence and Absence in Theory and Practice: Locating Supersex / Anna F. Peppard -- Comics. TarpeĢ Mills's Miss Fury: Costume, Sexuality, and Power / Richard Reynolds -- Superman Family Values: Supersex in the Silver Age / Matt Yockey -- A Storm of Passion: Sexual Agency and Symbolic Capital in the X-Men's Storm / J. Andrew Deman -- Dazzler, Melodrama, and Shame: Mutant Allegory, Closeted Readers / Brian Johnson -- Super-Gay Gay Comix: Tracing the Underground Origins and Cultural Resonances of LGBTQ Superheroes / Sarah Panuska -- Parents, Counterpublics, and Sexual Identity in Young Avengers / Keith Friedlander -- Film, Television, and Fan Culture. X-Men Films and the Domestication of Dissent: Sexuality, Race, and Respectability / Christopher B. Zeichmann -- Over the Rainbow Bridge: Female/Queer Sexuality in Marvel's Thor Film Trilogy / Samantha Langsdale -- No One's Going to Be Looking at Your Face: The Female Gaze and the New (Super)Man in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman / Anna F. Peppard -- The Visible and the Invisible: Superheroes, Pornography, and Phallic Masculinity / Jeffrey A. Brown -- I Think That's My Favorite Weapon in the Whole Batcave: Interrogating the Subversions of Men.com's Gay Superhero Porn Parodies / Joseph Brennan -- That's Pussy Babe!: Queering Supergirl's Confessions of Power / Olivia Hicks -- Meet Stephanie Rogers, Captain America: Genderbending the Body Politic in Fan Art, Fiction, and Cosplay / Anne Kustritz -- Epilogue: The Matter with Size / Richard Harrison.
Summary:
"Despite the frequently form-fitting costumes and prominent secondary sex characteristics, superhero sexuality has rarely been discussed seriously. Besides homoerotic accusations directed at Batman & Robin and Wonder Woman in the '50s and Larry Niven's seminal essay "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" in the '60s, the topic has mainly been just the source for tittering jokes and innuendo. Peppard and her contributors work to correct this by examining how the sexuality of superheroes has been both portrayed and neglected through a variety of media from the comics themselves to film and television to fan fiction and porn parodies. Topics discussed move beyond basic notions of the X-Men as a gay metaphor or Wonder Woman's sexuality coming from an island of Amazons to issues of the female gaze, women's costumes in the 1940s, queer underground comics, and the ramifications of a whole category of fan fiction revolving around a female Captain America"-- Provided by publisher.
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