The Information Society

An International Journal

ISSN: 0197-2243 (Print) 1087-6537 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/utis20

Superhero fan service: Audience strategies in the

contemporary interlinked Hollywood blockbuster

Bart Beaty

To cite this article: Bart Beaty (2016) Superhero fan service: Audience strategies in the
contemporary interlinked Hollywood blockbuster, The Information Society, 32:5, 318-325, DOI:
10.1080/01972243.2016.1212616

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2016.1212616

Published online: 06 Sep 2016.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 1311

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Citing articles: 1 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=utis20
THE INFORMATION SOCIETY
2016, VOL. 32, NO. 5, 318–325
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2016.1212616

Superhero fan service: Audience strategies in the contemporary interlinked

Hollywood blockbuster
Bart Beaty
Department of English, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This article explores the specific textual strategies employed by Marvel Studios to construct insider Received 24 September 2014
and outsider audiences of the interlinked film series comprising the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It Accepted 25 April 2016
argues that Marvel Studios is borrowing storytelling strategies developed by Marvel Comics in the KEYWORDS
1960s as a means of growing audiences for film franchises in a modular fashion. These strategies Serial continuity; superhero
include the use of anticipatory postcredit sequences that serve as advertising teases for future comic books; superhero
releases; “Easter eggs,” or semi-hidden onscreen elements intended to be noticed only by certain movies; superheroes
viewers; crossovers, or the use of characters from one franchise in the film or television program of
other characters; linked repercussions, narrative consequences that play out across multiple media
properties; and modular story development, a development strategy intended to reduce economic
risk. It is noted, ironically, that the strategies that have led to the current fascination with superhero
films are the same ones that caused the collapse of interest in superhero comic books.

The central paradox of superheroes today is not that they
have never been both more popular and less popular;
rather, it is that very thing that has made them so popu-
lar is the thing that has made them so unpopular. To
unpack this conundrum, consider that at a time when
superhero movies have become the dominant economic
driver of the Hollywood film industry—selling hundreds
of millions of tickets and generating billions of dollars in
revenues—the sales of superhero comic books are reach-
ing their historic nadir. Even the top-selling superhero
comic books today struggle to sell 100,000 copies, with
the typical titles selling less than half of that number.
Although, due to their relatively low production costs,
superhero comic books have remained generally profit-
able for their publishers (Marvel Comics, DC Comics,
Image Comics, and a number of smaller rivals), it has
become clear that they are no longer a significant popu-
lar cultural phenomenon in their own right; rather,
superhero comic books have become the source material
for more lucrative media forms ranging from movies
and television, to video games and licensed properties
like toys and t-shirts. At a time when the superhero has
moved to the center of global popular culture, so-called
“geek chic” has become increasingly prominent, estab-
lishing new social relations among audiences for this cul-
tural form even as the central medium of American fan
culture fades quickly into irrelevance.
As Benjamin Woo has noted, the social spaces of
comic book fandom have long been structured by hierar-
chies of taste that are played out at the level of fan knowl-
edge (Woo 2011). In various physical and online fan
communities, cultural capital is accrued through (among
other things) mastery of the arcane backstories that orga-
nize the fictional collaborative worlds inhabited by
superhero characters. The insider/outsider relationship
studied by Woo is frequently played as a distinction
between “hardcore” and “casual” audiences. Often deeply
gendered (particularly given the heightened visibility of
female fans over the past decade), the tension between
these social groups is one of affective intensity—the
hardcore superhero fan base (which is comprised of only
a few hundred thousand members worldwide) is the one
with a deep and abiding interest in superhero comic
books (and, by extension, films), while the casual audi-
ence (which numbers in the tens of millions) is fre-
quently assumed to be solely interested in superhero
films, television, and licensed products. Frustration in
the hardcore superhero fans is often expressed toward
the casual audience (as in criticism of “fake geek girls”)
or toward cultural creators, who structure superhero
films around different continuities and characterizations
than the one that predominate in the source material—
comic books. Generally speaking, this frustration is uni-
directional. Hardcore superhero fans often resent casual

CONTACT Bart Beaty beaty@ucalgary.ca Department of English, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4, Canada.
Published with license by Taylor & Francis. © Bart Beaty

fans for their lack of deep involvement (the casual fan
“hasn’t done the work” of fandom). Casual fans, by way
of contrast, do not resent the hardcore; when they
acknowledge them it is usually to make light of their fan-
nish knowledge and their affective intensity (see, e.g., the
treatment of fandom on the American television pro-
gram The Big Bang Theory).
The insider/outsider dynamic that structures contem-
porary superhero fandom has its origin in the long,
slow decline of interest in superhero comic books and
the explosive rise of interest in superhero films. While
superhero titles regularly sold millions of copies per
month in the 1940s, and many hundreds of thousands
of copies as late as the 1990s, their economic decline
has been precipitous over the course of the past two
decades. Reasons for this are varied, but a prime cause
has been the ever-increasing complexification of super-
hero storytelling that has narrowed the audience to only
the most committed readers. Superman and Batman,
for example, have had their monthly adventures pub-
lished for more than 75 years, amounting to literally
thousands of stories—all of which are, to a greater or
lesser degree, considered to be part of the “canon.”
Moreover, since the mid 1980s, superhero publishers
have frequently resorted to gimmick-driven sales events
in which “universe-wide” stories are told that have
repercussions across the titles of dozens of characters.
In this way, Superman’s adventures include not only
thousands of stories in which he is the featured charac-
ter, but additional thousands in which he is a support-
ing character.
Given the vastness of this narrative, it is perhaps
unsurprising for publishers to discover that the extensive
backstories of their characters are off-putting to new
entrants into the field (casual readers). At the same time,
however, superhero films since about 2000 have increas-
ingly and deliberately adopted this exact same story-
building strategy (interlinked and extensive continuity
between titles) as a way of cross-marketing films (in the
X-Men and Wolverine franchises of Fox Studios, or,
more pointedly, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films
that feature the adventures of Iron Man, Hulk, Thor,
Captain America, Ant-Man, and The Guardians of the
Galaxy in seven distinct but interconnected film franch-
ises), albeit on a smaller scale and at a slower velocity
(seven films in 16 years for the X-Men and 12 films in
8 years for Marvel Studios, as opposed to the hundreds
of monthly titles published by Marvel or DC Comics
over the course of a single year). This storytelling strat-
egy, arguably the most innovative development in Holly-
wood filmmaking of the past quarter century, has been
borrowed directly from comic book publishing strategies
developed originally in the 1960s.
THE INFORMATION SOCIETY 319
Ironically, the very techniques that have conspired to
make Marvel Studios the most successful production
company in contemporary cinema are the exact same
ones that rendered Marvel Comics a marginal publishing
presence in the same era. This article focuses on the spe-
cific developments that have brought this to pass, the
narrative characteristics that it has created, including
postcredit scenes and linked repercussions, and the new
social relations that are likely to be one of the results.
Continuity and the shared universe in superhero
comic books
Continuity is central to all forms of ongoing narrative
development. In television, for instance, the daytime
soap opera format has long utilized a highly complex
form of continuity in which the life stories of a small
number of characters are shared over a period of deca-
des. Because of this, soap operas are closed to new view-
ers. Producers seek to mitigate this problem through
repetition and slower-than-life pacing (Modleski 1983).
On the other end of the spectrum, certain sitcoms have a
tendency toward only a low level of continuity. In the
1950s and 1960s, sitcoms were constructed in such a way
that it was not necessary to watch some, or even most,
episodes to appreciate any specific episode. Frequently,
the necessary plot elements were explicitly recounted in
the show’s theme song (Gilligan’s Island, e.g., has a
theme song that lays out the entire backstory of the pro-
gram, and introduces all of the characters and their rela-
tionships), allowing viewers to begin watching at any
time. Contemporary American television programming
has tended to integrate at least some level of continuity
even into episodic television (Friends has the series-long
through-line of the Ross/Rachel romantic relationship,
but most individual episodes can stand alone).
In American superhero comic books, the notion of
continuity developed over time. From the introduction
of the genre in 1938 through approximately 1960, there
was only a very low level of continuity in the majority of
superhero comic books, and individual stories were
crafted to be self-contained. Although characters like
Batman and Superman regularly interacted across the
so-called DC Universe, their stories were not integrated
in any meaningful way. Each story reset the relations
between characters, and specific knowledge of previous
events was never required to understand a story pub-
lished. One notable exception was the use of the charac-
ter Mister Mind (a tiny alien inchworm) as a villain in
the adventures of Fawcett’s Captain Marvel from 1943 to
1945, wherein an ongoing story unfolded in a manner
akin to the cinematic adventure serials of that period. As
a narrative and industrial strategy, continuity, or the lack
320 B. BEATY
of same, carries significant risks and rewards. Cultural
objects with a low degree of continuity are relatively
open—audiences can join at any time, and the audience
has the potential to grow easily—while at the same time
the low level of investment can allow the works to fade
quickly. Those with a high degree of continuity are rela-
tively closed and often keep potential audiences from
joining unless they are willing to start from beginning of
the narrative. That potentially limits the audience but
also generates a more affectively engaged one (consider,
e.g., how few people casually watch random episodes of
highly continuity-driven shows like Breaking Bad or
Lost).
For the most part, however, American superhero
comic books eschewed continuity during the immediate
post-World War II period, opting rather to feature
stand-alone stories that could reach the broadest possible
audience, which was generally assumed to be both young
and highly transient. One of the major innovations intro-
duced to the superhero comic book by Marvel Comics in
the 1960s was the notion of heightened continuity within
a shared narrative universe. As early as Fantastic Four #4
(May 1962), Marvel ran announcements at the bottom
of its pages revealing that “The Hulk Is Coming!” in
anticipation of the launch of a new title that would debut
the following month, and in Fantastic Four #6 (Septem-
ber 1962), the title introduced footnotes referencing ear-
lier appearances of the issue’s villains, Dr. Doom and the
Submariner. The first issue of The Amazing Spider-Man
(March 1963) had the character interacting with the Fan-
tastic Four, and characters from that title appeared in
issues 5, 17, and 19. Charles Hatfield has argued that the
“tight fictive continuity” in Marvel Comics was devel-
oped ex post facto and not from a deliberate publishing
strategy, citing the lack of spin-off titles for characters
introduced in the pages of other titles (Hatfield 2013).
Nonetheless, from at least the introduction of Spider-
Man in 1963, it was clear that Marvel Comics, and
writer–editor Stan Lee in particular, conceptualized the
Marvel Universe as a shared storytelling space in a much
different manner than had publishers like DC Comics
and Fawcett.
Hatfield correctly notes that the increasingly height-
ened levels of continuity at Marvel (and, later, DC) were
a function of the influence of organized superhero fan-
dom. Hatfield specifically cites the influence of Roy
Thomas (a fan who became a staff writer in 1965, and
later became editor-in-chief), Peter Sanderson (hired as
Marvel’s archivist), and Mark Gruenwald (a fan who
rose to the level of executive editor). While Marvel Com-
ics had always had a strong soap operatic element (in
Fantastic Four, the courtship of Reed Richards and Sue
Storm), it was increasingly heightened in the 1970s, and
complicated by a tendency to feature characters in multi-
ple titles (Spider-Man in both The Amazing Spider-Man
and Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man beginning
in 1976). By the 1980s universe-wide storytelling was
increasingly the norm, with company-wide crossovers
that affected vast numbers of titles (the twinned “maxi-
series” Marvel Super Hero Secret Wars from May 1984 to
April 1985 at Marvel Comics and Crisis on Infinite
Earths from April 1985 to March 1986 at DC Comics
ushered in the model of heightened continuity complex-
ity). By the 1990s, popular characters like the X-Men
and Spider-Man were featured in multiple monthly titles
and featured continuities that were fraught with contra-
diction. Fantastical elements ranging from time travel to
cloning allowed creators to craft increasingly baroque
story lines that ended up limiting audience growth by
frustrating comprehensibility.
While the causes of declining superhero comic book
sales are complex (competition from other forms of
media, multiple economic recessions, significant changes
in distribution, and the shifting priorities of publishers,
to name but a few), it is nonetheless clear that a strong
correlation exists between the intensification of cross-
company continuity in superhero stories and declining
sales of the titles as publishers increasingly catered to a
small, dedicated fandom rather than a broad, casual
readership. During the 1960s, monthly sales of Superman
(one of the few titles that stretches back all the way to the
1930s) regularly topped 800,000 copies. By the early
1980s, that figure had declined to only 200,000 copies
(Comichron 2015), and in a post-Crisis on Infinite Earths
context sales fell even more quickly. Indeed, a chart of
Superman sales from the 1940s to 2010 is an almost ver-
tical line downward that depicts a catastrophic decline in
the fortunes of the title. Christian Hoffer has recently
studied the length of time between major DC Comics
reboots of the franchise (Hoffer 2015). Prior to Crisis on
Infinite Earths, the DC Universe had remained largely
unchanged for 293 months—almost two and a half deca-
des. During this period, sales declined slowly but inexo-
rably over time. Since that time, however, DC has
published Zero Hour (1994), Crisis on Infinite Earths
(2005–2006), 52 (2006–2007), Flashpoint (2011), Conver-
gence (2015), and other, smaller continuity-altering
storylines. As Hoffer notes, over the past three decades
DC has rebooted its universe on average every 6 years,
but in the decade since Crisis on Infinite Earths that has
fallen to every 40 months. During this period, sales of
their comics have plummeted. In a 2001 essay, Matthew
McAllister noted that comic book sales in 1997 (which
were overwhelmingly but not exclusively sales of super-
hero comics) had fallen to $425 million from
$850 million in 1993 (McAllister 2001). In 2013, The

New York Times reported that the comics market had
risen to $870 million in sales (Gustines 2014). Notably,
this figure included revenues from two new sources:
$90 million in digital sales (“Digital Comics”) and
$96 million in sales through traditional booksellers
(Hibbs 2014); both of these additional revenue streams
include significant conversions of publisher’s back cata-
logues rather than the sales of new, in-continuity comic
books. Nonetheless, even accounting for significant new
revenue streams, in inflation-adjusted dollars the comics
industry has shed half a billion dollars worth of annual
sales since 1993 when the continuities of corporate-
owned superheroes entered into their baroque phase. In
the 2000s, it has not been uncommon for certain cross-
company special events to play out in literally hundreds
of issues and dozens of titles, even while monthly sales
fall to historic lows.
The development of the superhero film
Although the heroes of American comic books migrated
to the silver screen in the 1940s with serials featuring the
exploits of Superman, Batman, and Captain Marvel, the
first wave of big-budget Hollywood superhero films did
not begin until Superman (1978), starring Christopher
Reeve as the man from Krypton. The subsequent Super-
man franchise, currently encompassing six films, is
symptomatic of the complex web of approaches to conti-
nuity that can exist within the framework of a single film
franchise. The first Superman movie was a stand-alone
film. The story it tells is complete in itself, and there
need not have been any additions to the story to attain
narrative closure. Had the film failed at the box office
and the franchise been abandoned, the film itself would
have been sufficient. Superman II (1980) is a direct
sequel in close continuity with the first film, and parts of
it were filmed at the same time as the earlier work. While
enough of the action is recapped so as to allow viewers
unfamiliar with the original access to the story, it is a
clear continuation with the same cast and characters.
The third film (1983) bears only a small connection to
the previous two, adopting a different tone and new
threats, and retaining only a fraction of the original cast.
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) returns Gene
Hackman’s Lex Luthor to the storyline and continues the
continuity of the earlier films. While there is a continuity
across the four films, it is loose enough to allow the indi-
vidual films to stand and fall on their own merits, and
the series is not constructed as a tight narrative in multi-
ple parts (as are the Star Wars films, to use a contempo-
raneous example). With the declining fortunes of the
franchise, Superman was put on hiatus for nearly two
decades, resurrected in 2006 with Superman Returns
THE INFORMATION SOCIETY 321
starring Brandon Routh. This film is a clear and strong
example of a “retcon,” or retroactive continuity change.
Retcons are accidental or deliberate shifts common in
superhero, science fiction, and soap opera storytelling in
which previously established narrative facts (or canon)
are altered by subsequent developments. The events of
Superman Returns, notably, take place after those of
Superman II, but proceed as if neither Superman III nor
Superman IV (and, indeed, large parts of Superman and
Superman II) had never occurred. In this way, Superman
Returns sought to deliberately invalidate two of the pre-
vious Superman films, removing them from the canon of
the storyline. When this film did not perform to studio
expectations, the franchise was rebooted a second time
in 2013 with Man of Steel, starring Henry Cavil. Akin to
a remake, the reboot simply serves to begin the series
afresh, proceeding as if none of the previous films exist
in narrative terms.
A similar, but less complex, system defines the multi-
ple series of Batman movie franchises. The series of four
films begun by director Tim Burton in 1989, and initially
starring Michael Keaton, proceeds, like the Superman
series, as loosely connected sequels, but does not tell an
ongoing or complete story. When the franchise was
rebooted by Christopher Nolan in 2005 it was as a three-
part story cycle that largely revolves around Batman’s
relationship with Jim Gordon and Rachel Dawes. The
Nolan series proceeds as if the series created by Burton
does not exist, and both assume that the 1960s television
series has no particular influence on the development of
their story structures. While the Burton-initiated Batman
series has a very loose continuity across its four films, the
Nolan trilogy is far tighter, despite the numerous contra-
dictions that are introduced into his series through poor
plotting. Nonetheless, while the Batman films move
from a situation of low to high continuity, even the
Nolan films eschew the kind of complex play with conti-
nuity that have become the hallmark of the films pro-
duced by Marvel Studios.
Continuity, the shared universe, and fan service
in superhero cinema
The strategy adopted by Marvel Studios in creating what
is now widely known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe
deliberately draws upon many of the innovations intro-
duced into comic book storytelling by Marvel Comics in
the early and mid 1960s. Importantly, while the film
franchises involving Iron Man, Thor, Captain America,
The Hulk, Ant-Man, the Guardians of the Galaxy, and
the television series Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and
Marvel’s Agent Carter are closely interlinked, they can
also be understood as distinct entities. In this way,
322 B. BEATY
Marvel Studios has crafted a modular system in which
parts of the whole can be emphasized and deemphasized
as circumstances warrant. Anticipation is created for
future films to the extent that each film not only is an
event/text in itself, but serves as a promotional tool for
future events/texts. The elements that serve this promo-
tional function variously address hardcore and casual
audiences in different ways, establishing a hierarchy of
knowledge, connection, and intimacy within the con-
sumer base to bring about the conversion of casual view-
ers into deeply committed hardcores. A number of
specific strategies have been used by Marvel Studios
toward this end, including postcredit scenes, Easter eggs,
crossovers, linked repercusions, and modular story
development:
1. Postcredit scenes. While postcredit scenes have
been a relative commonplace in American film-
making for decades, particularly in comedies (e.g.,
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), they have been widely
used in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since Iron
Man (2008). In that film, the postcredit sequence
introduces the central character of S.H.I.E.L.D.
director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), who
approaches Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) to dis-
cuss “the Avengers initiative.” Released only a
month later, The Incredible Hulk (2008) featured
an ending in which Downey, in a cameo as Tony
Stark, is introduced to discuss the Avengers. The
appearance of Downey in the second film firmly
established the continuity between them, in the
same way that early issues of the Fantastic Four
featured the rampaging monster as part of the
same world as the superhero family. Since those
initial films, postcredit sequences have become
increasingly one of the hallmarks of the studio.
The arrival of the first Thor film was foreshadowed
by the discovery of his hammer, Mjolnir, at the
end of Iron Man 2 (2010), while Guardians of the
Galaxy was introduced with a cameo featuring The
Collector (Benicio Del Toro) at the conclusion of
Thor: The Dark World (2013). Some films in the
series have directed attention to presumed sequels
within the specific title: Captain America: The Win-
ter Soldier (2014) hints at the future direction for
the character Bucky Barnes; The Avengers (2012),
which has both a midcredits scene and a postcredit
scene, introduced the character of Thanos, a major
villain in both Guardians of the Galaxy and, pre-
sumably, in future Avengers films. To date, most
postcredit scenes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe
have been forward-looking, promoting future
releases, although Guardians of the Galaxy, with its
appearance of cult character Howard the Duck,
may have been more clearly fan service than a
promise of material to come. Importantly, some
postcredit scenes also serve importantly to segre-
gate the audience into insider/outsider groups.
Thor: The Dark World, for example, introduced a
character who had not appeared in that film, and
who was unlikely to be familiar to anyone who had
not read extensively in the Marvel Comics
universe.
2. Easter eggs. The insider/outsider divide is height-
ened considerably by the tendency of Marvel Stu-
dios to introduce “Easter eggs,” or semi-hidden
visual clues to potential future plot directions. This
tendency began with Iron Man, in which a version
of Captain America’s shield is briefly visible in
scenes set in Tony Stark’s laboratory, and has con-
tinued throughout the development of the uni-
verse. These elements are innocuous to audience
members who do not catch them, but are impor-
tant elements for more knowledgeable members of
the crowd. Thus, in Captain America: The Winter
Soldier when Agent Sitwell informs the hero of
Hydra’s plan to eliminate humans that they per-
ceive to be potential threats, he enumerates Tony
Stark and Bruce Banner of The Avengers, but also
Stephen Strange, the alter ego of Dr. Strange, the
hero of a then long-rumored but unannounced
Marvel Cinematic Universe feature film.1 Guardi-
ans of the Galaxy is especially replete with Easter
eggs; in the scene in The Collector’s museum, hard-
core fans believe that they have spotted both Adam
Warlock’s cocoon and the body of Beta Ray Bill.
The logic of these Easter eggs, whose appearances
are so brief as to be almost subliminal, is to activate
the imagination of the most dedicated readers and
to reward their brand loyalty and story knowledge.
The insider/outsider relationship is formed around
the ability to recognize obscure and often trivial
relationships, many of which may never be devel-
oped in a meaningful away.
3. Crossovers. Marvel Comics made the crossover a
hallmark of its storytelling as early as 1963. The
narrative approach has obvious mercantile attrac-
tions. A fan of the Fantastic Four may have no
interest in the adventures of Spider-Man, but might
be tempted to buy an issue of The Amazing Spider-
Man that features a guest appearance of that fan’s
favorite superhero team. This not only temporarily
increases sales of The Amazing Spider-Man, but
opens the possibility of converting readers of one
title into readers of multiple titles. Not only do the
appearances of characters across titles help estab-
lish the sense of a shared universe, but they also

reinforce the necessity of buying all Marvel comic
books, or seeing all of the Marvel films. To date,
for example, Samuel L. Jackson has appeared in
seven Marvel Cinematic Universe films and in the
television show Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and
his appearances across the franchises (with the
exception of The Incredible Hulk and Guardians of
the Galaxy) are what most clearly connect them as
a series. More recently, Marvel Studios have
focused on the use of cameo appearances by the
characters across the franchises. Loki briefly takes
the form of Chris Evans’s Captain America while
walking with Thor in Thor: The Dark World, and
Mark Ruffalo appears as Bruce Banner in the post-
credit sequence in Iron Man 3 to pay off a joke.
One effect of the use of crossovers in the Marvel
Cinematic Universe has been a tendency for fans
to draw attention to what might be only potential
crossovers. Thus, the actress Laura Haddock has a
2-second appearance in Captain America: The First
Avenger and plays the more significant role of Mer-
edith Quill in Guardians of the Galaxy, leading
some to surmise that the unnamed autograph
seeker from the former will eventually be revealed
as the mother of the lead character in the later
franchise.
4. Linked repercussions. Perhaps the most important
narrative element of the Marvel Cinematic Uni-
verse is the notion of linked repercussions across
the elements. As these films take place in a shared
universe, events in one work have an impact on
characters in the others. Notably, the invasion of
New York in The Avengers is referred to in subse-
quent Thor and Captain America movies, is the
source of much of the drama in Marvel’s Agents of
S.H.I.E.L.D., and has a significant psychological
impact on Iron Man in the third film in that fran-
chise, where he suffers from a form of posttrau-
matic stress disorder as a result of his near death in
the earlier film. It is also the central factor in Tony
Stark’s decision making in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Marvel Studios has used the idea of linked reper-
cussions to especially drive the action of Marvel’s
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. In one first-season episode of
that program, the agents clean up London after the
battle that unfolded there in Thor: The Dark World,
and when the agency is revealed to have been cor-
rupted by Hydra in Captain America: The Winter
Soldier it is shown collapsing in the television
series. Notably, there is an exceptionally close con-
nection between the latter film franchise and the
television show. Airing on Tuesday evenings, the
episode of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. dealing
THE INFORMATION SOCIETY 323
with the Hydra revelation aired only 4 days after
the release of the second Captain America movie,
meaning that fans who had not seen that film dur-
ing the first weekend of its release had the likeli-
hood of having the ending spoiled by viewing the
television show. In this way, Marvel Studios has
made it clear that the television show is not sec-
ondary to the films, but is tightly linked in continu-
ity and an essential piece of the overall picture
being developed.
5. Modular story development. More of an industrial
factor than a narrative one, it should be noted that
a central element of the approach adopted by Mar-
vel Studios has been modular development. As
they are creating a series of linked films with
extraordinarily large budgets—in the hundreds of
millions of dollars for production and marketing—
the level of risk is considerable. While its $300C
million domestic box office returns made it the big-
gest hit of the summer 2014 movie season, Guardi-
ans of the Galaxy was originally perceived to be the
riskiest project that Marvel Studios had taken on
since the original Iron Man film—both because it
was an action comedy, and because it was based on
characters that were never particularly popular
even within organized comics fandom, and none of
the characters were familiar at all to casual audien-
ces. By making Guardians of the Galaxy only tan-
gentially related to the core Marvel Cinematic
Universe titles, Marvel Studios crafted a film that
could potentially be left behind had it not proved
so popular. Notably, The Incredible Hulk (the low-
est grossing film released by Marvel Studios to
date) has been almost retconned out of existence.
Not only was the actor playing the Bruce Banner/
The Hulk changed from Edward Norton to Mark
Ruffalo, but the events of the film have not been
incorporated into later films, except passingly in
The Avengers; planned sequels were dropped in
favor of more lucrative franchises and the character
of Betty Brant has been abandoned. The modular
nature of the series development means that the
studio can route around failure and develop unex-
pected successes. When it widely surpassed studio
expectations, Guardians of the Galaxy was not only
confirmed for a sequel, but will likely be more
forcefully integrated into the main storyline featur-
ing the Avengers moving forward.
All of these elements work to construct a conception
of a shared fictional universe across a large number of
independent texts by developing an active fandom
around a set of texts. Again, this is a technique
completely familiar to readers of Marvel comic books,
324 B. BEATY
which at one time worked to draw sharp distinctions
between Marvel products and those of the main competi-
tor, DC Comics. Indeed, the stereotype of the “Marvel
Zombie” was a commonplace in the 1980s and 1990s,
used disparagingly to refer to superhero comic book fans
who read primarily—or even exclusively—the products
of Marvel comics. These hardcore fans, who are now
among the most knowledgeable fan base for the Marvel
films, provide a model for committed insider audiences
that Marvel Studios seeks to model on the example of
Marvel Comics. To do so, a series of narrative “rewards”
is established in the film in a process known as “fan ser-
vice.” This term, originating in the Western fandom for
Japanese manga, refers to the tendency of cultural crea-
tors to provide fans with story elements that they long to
see—to cater unabashedly to an audience’s expressed
desires. Typical examples of fan service in comics include
highly detailed images of robots and other forms of tech-
nology, or strongly eroticized and sexualized elements
akin to what Laura Mulvey has termed “visual pleasure”
in the domain of cinema studies (Mulvey 1975). In the
Marvel Cinematic Universe this type of fan service is
quite common, particularly when the muscled bodies of
the series stars are displayed. Yet an expanded notion of
fan service is a useful way to denote textual elements that
reward high levels of engagement with the franchise and
with its sources materials. The frisson of excitement that
is generated in a knowledgeable fan when she spots
Cosmo the Spacedog in Guardians of the Galaxy, for
example, is a reward reserved for hardcore fans who can
be flatteringly positioned as connoisseurs or opinion
leaders within organic fan communities. That each Mar-
vel Cinematic Universe film is greeted with dozens of
articles with titles like “Guardians of the Galaxy: All the
Easter Eggs REVEALED!” or “Sixteen Captain America:
The Winter Soldier Easter Eggs” is a way of training
audiences in the “proper” method of engaging with these
texts. As Marvel leaves certain plot points unexplained
within the films themselves (who is Peter Quill’s father?
who is the menacing cosmic character at the end of The
Avengers?), casual fans are encouraged to search for
answers to these questions—either by surfing the Inter-
net or by turning toward more knowledgeable fans
amongst their acquaintance.
Complications and conclusions
The overwhelming economic and critical success of the
Marvel Cinematic Universe has had a profound impact
on the development strategies of Hollywood generally.
Now the most lucrative film franchise of all time (having
surpassed the Harry Potter franchise with the release of
Avengers: Age of Ultron, and notably ahead of James
Bond, the Tolkien universe films, and Star Wars), the
success has been adopted by other Hollywood players.
Notably, the rights to several Marvel Comics characters
are owned by non-Disney studios. Spider-Man, owned
by Sony, is now in its second cycle of storytelling, having
been rebooted in 2012 to mixed reviews. Sony
announced elaborate plans to develop at least four Spi-
der-Man films, plus spin-offs featuring The Sinister Six,
and, potentially, Venom and The Black Cat, but later
reached an agreement with Marvel to fold Spider-Man
into the Marvel Cinematic Universe beginning with Cap-
tain America: Civil War in 2016. The X-Men, whose film
rights are owned by 20th Century Fox, have appeared in
seven films since 2000, five under the X-Men name and
two featuring the solo exploits of Wolverine, which are
tied to the core continuity. In 2011, the franchise was
given a soft reboot with X-Men: First Class (whose action
was set during the Cuban Missile Crisis of the 1960s),
and then integrated with the earlier films in 2014’s
X-Men: Days of Future Past, with the promise of addi-
tional films to come. Fox has also hinted at integrating
The Fantastic Four into the narrative universe occupied
by the X-Men. Finally, Warner Brothers has plans to
directly mimic the success of The Avengers by building
to its own Justice League film, featuring Batman, Super-
man, Wonder Woman, and other heroes from the DC
Universe. This series will build on the foundation of
Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy and Man of Steel,
and the strategy took its first step in 2016 with the poorly
received Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
While the interconnected film cycle is quickly becom-
ing a Hollywood staple, the approach carries a great deal
of risk. Obviously, the financial implications of unpopu-
lar films in a franchise of this nature can be severe—
Sony slowed the rate of Spider-Man universe films when
Amazing Spider-Man 2 was poorly received. From a nar-
rative standpoint, it is clear that franchises built without
a clear narrative pathway can be highly compromised.
Certainly the clearest example of this is the X-Men fran-
chise, whose narrative continuity after seven films is
hopelessly flawed. Fox has created dozens of narrative
holes in its universe, including killing off Professor Xav-
ier in the third X-Men film only to have him resurrected
with no explanation in The Wolverine, and the fact that
the same character is played in different films as an
imposingly large African-American man (Bill Duke) and
by Peter Dinklage, who is notable for his short stature.
Fox has proceeded with a continuity in which characters
have irreconcilabel ages and races because they seem-
ingly perceive these issues to be unimportant to the cen-
tral thrills presented in their films—and they may be
right to do so: A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of
little minds, as we learned from Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Marvel Studios has similarly been challenged by shifting
circumstances, notably replacing one of the lead actors
in the Iron Man franchise (Terrence Howard) with
another (Don Cheadle), and publicly fretting about the
possible departure of Robert Downey Jr. from the fran-
chise. Moreover, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has
been plagued by the kind of illogic that enters into an
ongoing franchise when storylines are allowed to grow
complex. Why, for example, do none of The Avengers
assist Iron Man in saving the life of the American presi-
dent in Iron Man 3? If S.H.I.E.L.D. was controlled by
Hydra for decades, as we learn in 2014’s Captain Amer-
ica: The Winter Soldier, why, in The Avengers, did Hydra
ever bring together a team of super-beings who might be
called upon to defeat them in the future, and why did
they ever promote the impossibly competent and incor-
ruptible Nick Fury to a position of authority? These, of
course, are the questions asked by the hardcore fan, who
hopes to have insider knowledge rewarded with a tightly
controlled narrative machine that is unlikely to be cre-
ated in the real world of Hollywood contracts and expan-
sive creative teams.
At the current time, it is clear that this modular fan
filmmaking service strategy is firmly in place. Marvel’s
Avengers: Age of Ultron broke box office records and set
up Captain America: Civil War as the next essential film
in the franchise series. Sony, hoping to cash in on the
series’ appeal, has lent its right to Spider-Man, who duly
appeared in the trailer. The Warner film Batman v
Superman: Dawn of Justice, references several moments
in the histories of both characters that are more readily
availabel to comic book fans—blink and you will miss
the moments that include references to the comics Super-
man: Red Son and Crisis on Infinite Earths, and Batman’s
appearance replicates the feel of The Return of the Dark
Knight—than being the sort of general nostalgia for the
character that Warner’s has traded on in the past with
winks to catchphrases and the like (Gordon 2003; Nda-
lianis 2009). All of this replicates the manner in which
Marvel promoted its comic books beginning in the
1960s, as a vast intertext, footnoting and cross-referenc-
ing each other, and with which readers could directly
engage through the letters pages. The serious fan engaged
with the totality of this material. Therefore, for the casual
THE INFORMATION SOCIETY 325
fan of these interlinked Hollywood blockbusters the plea-
sure of the superhero film resides in its qualities as a film
exclusively; for the hardcore fan, however, it stems not
only from that pleasure, but from the promise of addi-
tional pleasure in the future, and from the elevated status
that comes from the way that filmmakers seek to flatter
fans who are “in the know.”
Note
1. A Doctor Strange film has now been announced for a
November 4, 2016 release.
References
Comichron. 2015. Superman sales figures. http://www.comi
chron.com/titlespotlights/superman.html (accessed June
23, 2015).
Gordon, I. 2003. Superman on the set: The market, nostalgia
and television audiences. In Quality popular television: Cult
TV, the industry and fans, ed. M. Jancovich and J. Lyons,
148–62. London, UK: British Film Institute and Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Gustines, G. 2014. Comics sales rise, in paper and pixels. New
York Times, July 20. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/21/
business/media/comics-sales-rise-in-paper-and-pixels.html
(accessed June 23, 2015).
Hatfield, C. 2013. Jack Kirby and the marvel aesthetic. In The
superhero reader, ed. C. Hatfield, J. Heer, and K. Worcester,
136–54. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi.
Hibbs, B. 2014. Digging through the 2013 BookScan numbers.
ComicBookResources.com. http://www.comicbookresour
ces.com/?pageDarticle&idD50992 (accessed June 23, 2015).
Hoffer, C. 2015. How long does a DC comics reboot last? Com
icbook.com. http://comicbook.com/2015/06/06/how-long-
does-a-dc-comics-reboot-last- (accessed June 23, 2015).
McAllister, M. 2001. Ownership concentration in the U.S.
comic book industry. In Comics & ideology, ed. M. P.
McAllister, E. H. Sewell, Jr., and I. Gordon, 15–38. New
York, NY: Peter Lang.
Modleski, T. 1983. The rhythms of reception: Daytime televi-
sion and women’s work. In Regarding television: Critical
approaches, ed. E. A. Kaplan, 67–75. New York, NY: Uni-
versity Publications of America.
Ndalianis, A. 2009. Enter the aleph: Superhero worlds and
hypertime realities. In The contemporary comic book super-
hero, ed. A. Nadalianis, 270–90. New York, NY: Routledge.
Woo, B. 2011. The Android’s dungeon: Comic-bookstores, cul-
tural spaces, and the social practices of audiences. Journal of
Graphic Novels and Comics 2:125–36.