Superhero Stories
This basic icon of the comic book informs the reader of the boundaries of a picture.
Frame
These authors were the first write about a uniquely Americanized version of Joseph Campbell's "monomyth" and identified superheroes are the primary figures in American monomythic tradition.
Lawrence & Jewett
"According to the word of God, the meek would someday inherit the earth. Someday..." The protagonist of Waid & Ross' Kingdom Come who sees the world with all to human eyes.
Norman [McCay]
This Age of comics paved the way for [anti]heroes with modern and post-modern sensibilities. O'Neil and Adams dominated storytelling during this period.
Bronze Age
Ancient Aristotle, Batman! This modern mythic scholar pulled on concepts from ancient Greece to argue that even stories can be persuasive... They don't even have to tell you that they're trying to persuade you!
Walter R. Fisher
Tony Stark typically ends conversation with this close companion in Iron-Man (2008) using the phrase, "That will be all, _____"
Ms. [Pepper] Potts
Didn't you learn something here?! Campbell said this function of myth teaches the audience about how to live a good life.
Pedagogical
Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, and Jack Kirby were superstars of this time in comics that primarily emphasized atomic power, mad science, and otherwordly exploration.
The Silver Age
After acclaimed work on Saga of the Swamp Thing and other superhero stories, Alan Moore [with Dave Gibbons] went on to write a graphic novel that would (*gasp*) make Time magazine's List of 100 Best Novels since 1923. This novel is one of the clearest markers of the shift from the Bronze to Modern Age of comics.
Watchmen
Campbell thought myths could show us how to behave within a particular value structure. We can call this function axiological, deontological, or whatever... but Campbell called this function something else. It basically means we can behave ourselves around others (sorry, dad).
Sociological
Did I really kill that guy with an ax?! McCloud's term for the power comics creators hold that can implicate their readers in the action of a story, using only the power of imagination...
Closure
Myths are "second order semiotic systems," or texts with dual meaning, according to this contemporary literary critic.
Roland Barthes
Congressional hearings on whether comics were child appropriate found their justification in a book, The Seduction of the Innocent, written by this prominent psychologist.
Dr. Fredric Wertham
Feeling the blues? Maybe you'll get better after you remember the name for this term from Marx and Brecht that characterizes one of the biggest social problems for Modern [super]humans
Alienation (or, Estrangement)
Some persuasion comes from logical proofs and propositions, and some from emotional proofs - and sometimes we can be persuaded by recognizing a genre, structure, or organization and following along with it. This type of persuasive proof would look pretty cool!
Aesthetic [Proof]
This figure in Moore's The Anatomy Lesson spends an unusual amount of time "thinking about the old man." His human alias is Dr. Woodrue, but he is better known to his employer by this villainous moniker.
The Floronic Man
Predating the now-common Christian traditions, this story about the fall of humankind and the loss of a perfect world serves as the basis of the Western monomyth... at least, according to Lawrence & Jewett
[The Garden of] Eden
Coogan argued that superheroes are just the main characters of a genre in which the protagonist has special versions power, identity, and... What was that other thing?
Mission
We usually call them Cyborgs, but scholars also have a more formal name for the use of technology to extend, extenuate, or other otherwise enhance human beings. Maybe using a computer to play this game was a bad idea...
Transhumanism
I just finished reading a comic, and the creators didn't tell me what to do with my life after reading... but I had a strong reaction to their work and now I want go change the world. What just happened?! Fisher probably had a name for this...
Felt-belief
Diana is an Amazon in Wonder Woman (2017), but didn't someone else think of Amazonians before DC Comics..? This term from Bakhtin describes how stories are always made up of "multiple voices" or references to other texts.
Heteroglossia
O'Neill and Brooker each argue that myths are narratives persisting in spite of records for the myth. Brooker's research in particular pointed to this superhero as an example of a truly American mythological figure.
Batman
This author-turned-editor was a major force in guiding DC - and ultimately all of recent graphic literature - toward a more "realistic" and "gritty" tone in the 1970s and 80s. He famously pushed Batman in a more realistic direction through his collaboration with Neal Adams, Joker's Five Way Revenge.
Dennis O'Neil
Shaun Treat suggests superhero readers should simply, but cynically, enjoy this historical moment following a significant terrorist event in U.S. history. At least superheroes can make us feel better about our safety, right? ... Right?
Post-9/11 Superhero Zeitgeist
Superhero stories often follow Western dramatic storytelling structure that was first described by this important author. Eco's reservation about the cliffhanger endings of comics aside...
Gustav Freytag