This anthology addresses videogames long history of fandom, and fans' important role in game history and preservation. In order to better understand and theorize video games and game playing, it is necessary to study the activities of gamers themselves. Gamers are active creators in generating meaning; they are creators of media texts they share with other fans (mods, walkthroughs, machinima, etc); and they have played a central role in curating and preserving games through activities such as their collective work on: emulation, creating online archives and the forensic archaeology of code. This volume brings together essays that explore game fandom from diverse perspectives that examine the complex processes at work in the phenomenon of game fandom and its practices. Contributors aim to historicize game fandom, recognize fan contributions to game history, and critically assess the role of fans in ensuring that game culture endures through the development of archives.

Over the last several decades, comic book superheroes have multiplied and, in the process, become more complicated. In this cutting edge anthology an international roster of contributors offer original research and writing on the contemporary comic book superhero, with occasional journeys into the film and television variation. As superheroes and their stories have grown with the audiences that consume them, their formulas, conventions, and narrative worlds have altered to follow suit, injecting new, unpredictable and more challenging characterizations that engage ravenous readers who increasingly demand more.

This anthology addresses videogames long history of fandom, and fans' important role in game history and preservation. In order to better understand and theorize video games and game playing, it is necessary to study the activities of gamers themselves. Gamers are active creators in generating meaning; they are creators of media texts they share with other fans (mods, walkthroughs, machinima, etc); and they have played a central role in curating and preserving games through activities such as their collective work on: emulation, creating online archives and the forensic archaeology of code. This volume brings together essays that explore game fandom from diverse perspectives that examine the complex processes at work in the phenomenon of game fandom and its practices. Contributors aim to historicize game fandom, recognize fan contributions to game history, and critically assess the role of fans in ensuring that game culture endures through the development of archives.

Over the last several decades, comic book superheroes have multiplied and, in the process, become more complicated. In this cutting edge anthology an international roster of contributors offer original research and writing on the contemporary comic book superhero, with occasional journeys into the film and television variation. As superheroes and their stories have grown with the audiences that consume them, their formulas, conventions, and narrative worlds have altered to follow suit, injecting new, unpredictable and more challenging characterizations that engage ravenous readers who increasingly demand more.

This collection of essays explores how science fiction films and computer games attempt to come to grips with the changing conceptions of the world around us, and our identity within it. This book focuses on developments that have taken place in science fiction media over the last two decades. The central concern is with technology: special effects technology used to create the special effects in media such as films and computer games; and the way the media examples themselves image and thematize the role of new technology within their narratives. This book is concerned especially with exploring a diverse range of experiences that science fiction can offer its audience. Ranging from film examples such as Matrix Reloaded and Avatar to game examples such as Doom 3, one aim is to explore how similar themes of technological advancement in the hands of corporations and governments are conveyed across the different media technologies - the cinema and computer games. In addition, the book explores how film affects technologies and science fiction themes have begun to slip outside the boundaries of science fiction media and have entered the social realm - through 'special effects' that are rudimentary forms of artificial intelligence, through 'real' robots that are becoming a growing industry, and in the construction of our urban spaces which are deliberately modeled upon utopian images drawn from science fiction. "Ndalianis's book promises to be an accessible, exciting and really innovative text that would be of value not only for students, but also for their instructors." -Felicity J Colman, Program Leader in Film & Media, Manchester Metropolitan University. "Ndalianis's response to the concept of 'science fiction' offers a fresh approach that opens up the idea of the genre to encompass the narrative spaces of the films of Paul Verhoeven, the special effects that create computer games and films, and new cities that are inspired by science fiction themes and aesthetics." -Roberta Pearson, Professor of Film and Television Studies, University of Nottingham. "Ndalianis explores how those things called 'science fiction' get incorporated into our everyday existence: from our architecture to our entertainment, from our science to our belief systems. This collection has great potential for use in courses on film, science fiction, media studies, urban design, and game design." -Louise Krasniewicz, PhD, Department of Anthropology University of Pennsylvania.

Why are audiences so fascinated with heroes? What makes the idea of heroes so necessary in society? The superhero has reached a level of popularity never witnessed before, making a successful and prolific transfer from the comic book and graphic novel into the multi-million dollar blockbuster film. A number of films and their sequels, including Spider Man, Batman, Batman Begins, Sin City, and X-Men represent only a handful of examples that have attained unprecedented box-office success or cult status in recent years. This collection of essays explores contemporary superhero narratives, including comic books and films, in a wider mythic context. This is the first study to evaluate the social function of the super/hero in contemporary, ancient and multiple media contexts, evaluating its continuities, transformations and cultural significance. The exploration of issues and hero types across time, cultures and media will open up the possibilities of hero studies across disciplines. This collection will be, in many respects, a prototype that will reveal the limitless possibilities inherent in truly inter-disciplinary studies in this area. "This collection fills an enormous gap in the study of popular culture and provides exactly what has been missing for too long-a comparative heroism study, driven by close-grain analyses of a wide range of heroes from different national cultures (comic book avengers, professional wrestlers, rock stars, anime heroines, Jesus) all animated by theoretical frameworks that are both rigorous and lucidly articulated. The end result is a collection of fascinating case studies which probe the popular appeal of the super/hero with an unprecedented degree of insight." -Jim Collins, Professor of Film, Television, and Theatre, University of Notre Dame. "Holy smoke These essays offer a varied and engaging consideration of hero and superhero culture in a variety of manifestations-from Greek heroes and truly 'super men', to anime characters, Mexican luchadors and gangsta rappers. Reaching backwards with mythic, biblical and Jungian approaches to the heroic journey of mutation and transformation, and forward into the role that diverse media platforms and generic hybridity play in the evolution of superhero universes, this timely collection challenges what it means to be a Super/hero." -Roberta Pearson, Professor and Director of the Institute of Film and Television Studies at the University of Nottingham, and co-editor of The Many Lives of the Batman.

As a man, I'm flesh and blood, I can be ignored, I can be destroyed; but as a symbol... as a symbol I can be incorruptible, I can be everlasting". In the 2005 reboot of the Batman film franchise, Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne articulates how the figure of the superhero can serve as a transcendent icon. It is hard to imagine a time when superheroes have been more pervasive in our culture. Today, superheroes are intellectual property jealously guarded by media conglomerates, icons co-opted by grassroots groups as a four-color rebuttal to social inequities, masks people wear to more confidently walk convention floors and city streets, and bulletproof banners that embody regional and national identities. From activism to cosplay, this collection unmasks the symbolic function of superheroes. Bringing together superhero scholars from a range of disciplines, alongside key industry figures such as Harley Quinn co-creator Paul Dini, The Superhero Symbol provides fresh perspectives on how characters like Captain America, Iron Man, and Wonder Woman have engaged with media, culture, and politics, to become the 'everlasting' symbols to which a young Bruce Wayne once aspired.

The media star has become a powerful, almost unparalleled, cultural sign, even as the star system has undergone radical transformation since the era of the Hollywood studio system. Today's film industry continues to market and promote its products through actors in ways that seek to capture the often elusive quality that a star can embody. Using contemporary stars such as Robert De Niro, Keanu Reeves, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Dennis Hopper, this anthology of essays applies a variety of theoretical tools in its attempt to understand how we interpret stars, and how we can begin to understand their cultural significance.

Likewise, the study explores how the star system has become an increasingly complex phenomenon within society at large, extending its impact beyond the cinema into music, sports, and fashion. Many of the essays collected here consider this shift and examine how personae including the director (Sam Peckinpah), the royalty (Princess Diana) and even the digital star (Lara Croft) have captured the cultural imagination and have come to attain qualities as star-like as those of the silver screen.

As a man, I'm flesh and blood, I can be ignored, I can be destroyed; but as a symbol... as a symbol I can be incorruptible, I can be everlasting". In the 2005 reboot of the Batman film franchise, Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne articulates how the figure of the superhero can serve as a transcendent icon. It is hard to imagine a time when superheroes have been more pervasive in our culture. Today, superheroes are intellectual property jealously guarded by media conglomerates, icons co-opted by grassroots groups as a four-color rebuttal to social inequities, masks people wear to more confidently walk convention floors and city streets, and bulletproof banners that embody regional and national identities. From activism to cosplay, this collection unmasks the symbolic function of superheroes. Bringing together superhero scholars from a range of disciplines, alongside key industry figures such as Harley Quinn co-creator Paul Dini, The Superhero Symbol provides fresh perspectives on how characters like Captain America, Iron Man, and Wonder Woman have engaged with media, culture, and politics, to become the 'everlasting' symbols to which a young Bruce Wayne once aspired.