Book Review: Analyzing the Marvel Universe. Critical Essays on the Comics and Film Adaptations

 reviewed by Cecilia Garrison, Teaching/Research Assistant, California Institute of Integral Studies

Douglas Brode, ed. Analyzing the Marvel Universe. Critical Essays on the Comics and Film Adaptations. Jefferson, NC:  McFarland, 2024. 245 pp. US $49.95 (Paperback). ISBN:  978-1-4766-9066-7. https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/analyzing-the-marvel-universe/

 

     Douglas Brode’s Analyzing the Marvel Universe instructs us, from the prologue, to “[s]how me a nation’s mythology...and I will tell you all you would ever want to know about its people” (11). Brode’s contribution to the work of popular culture is extensive, and, as with this text, offers insight into the far-reaching impacts of something so simple as a comic, a television show, or a movie. He has collected, in this book of diverse essays, writings from medievalists, scholars of popular culture and English literature, sociologists, artists, novelists, and more. This winding text takes us through an array of the ways Marvel Comics lexicon has become increasingly multi-textual, increasingly a space of American mythos creation, and increasingly an exercise in what stumbling through slow and inconsistent progress towards modernity may look like.

The text combines the works of several authors, including Brode himself, covering topics that range from the astounding failure of the Broadway musical, “Spider-Man:  Turn Off the Dark,” to development of G.I. Joe from an action figure we must never refer to as a doll into a fully-fledged IP with comic books and a TV show, to the clumsy attempts Marvel has made over the years into intersectional and diversified narrative creation. The chapters include detailed histories of various Marvel IPs, critiques of mishandlings of characters and identities, and the importance of growth for the characters, Marvel itself, and the industry at large, in order to keep up with their ever-growing and evolving fan base.

The text’s initial essay is Lauer’s thorough assessment of why “Spider-Man:  Turn Off the Dark” failed so spectacularly, and it is with this opening essay that the reader receives what could almost be a warning, an instruction, a plea from fans both old and new:  “For an adaptation to have a chance at success, adaptors need to care about their source material, understand and work with their own medium specificity, and, ideally, have a new point to make by bringing the original’s concept to a new medium” (21-22). It is, with this understanding of what Marvel fans are looking for, their transmedia adaptations that the text takes off, acknowledging Marvel’s success, while pressing the media giant for more, for better. Anke Marie Bock’s critique of the characterization of Sue Storm as condescending and vilifying of feminine sexuality recognizes that while this stereotypical representation of women may have been what audiences in the 1970s were comfortable with, it none-the-less perpetuates uncomfortable stereotypes of women’s inferiority to men. In an essay on the four-issue anthology, Fearless, Christina M. Knopf argues that “[d]espite Marvel’s assertions that its books are not political, simply telling stories about the ‘world outside your window,’ such works cannot help but carry sociopolitical messages,” (107) and lays claim that the highlighting of female talent and female stories is what makes the anthology as remarkable as it is. Karl E. Martin argues that despite its diversion from the comics and the real critiques of the film adaptation, “Black Panther,” and its messaging, the film “engages African discourse in remarkable ways, exposing millions of viewers worldwide to a decades-old conversation” (217) around Pan-Africanism and the work of W.E.B. DeBois. The editor’s own treatise on the ways in which Black Mamba serves as a mirror to the changing perception of American female activists by broader society, ponders the origins of a villainess who is sometimes heroic and takes the identity of “a complex, ambiguous female deity that threatened the patriarchy of Western civilization” (74). These essays speak to the growing number of vocal comic and comic-adjacent property consumers who seek a more thorough and nuanced representation of the full array of spectrum-spanning identities in their superhero content.

Several of the essays within the text contend with the relationship between representation, responsibility, and engaging storytelling. Hafsa Alkhudairi, in her essay on Kamala Kahn, a.k.a. Ms. Marvel, explains that the responsibility for an entire identity’s representation, at this time in the Marvel lexicon, often falls onto the shoulders of one or maybe a few characters of that identity group, and protests this. She claims, at the close, that both Marvel and the audience “need more stories of people from different genders, races, and religions, all thoroughly nuanced to relieve the pressure on those who do exist” (98). This essay, and others like it, including Jaclyn Kliman’s critique of the Black Widow’s film presence as indicative of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s problem of being “stuck in the supposed obstacle of writing a complex, leading superheroine,” (79), laud Marvel and the MCU for their progress towards a more inclusive and diverse character array. However, they are also pointing out what many fans may see as obvious. Marvel’s attempts are often clumsy, falling short of, or missing the mark entirely. From the call to acknowledge where current and past X-Men comics (and films) have been lacking in terms of a genuine critique of structural oppression and systemic racism, by Quincy Thomas, to the analysis of the ways in which even our ideas of what a villain or a bad guy looks like to modern audiences according to J.S. Starkweather, to Susan Aronstein and Tammy L. Mielke’s assessment of the value of high-quality, consistent character development and the importance of modernizing male characters such as Tony Stark--Analyzing the Marvel Universe, argues that Marvel fans and scholars are looking for better from their comics and film studios.

Historicity plays a significant role across the essays in the text. Cyrus R. K. Patell urges comics readers and scholars to approach comics reading with a cosmopolitan reading practice, using comics as a way to explore the “interplay of sameness and difference, of comfort and discomfort in texts we encounter” (181). In this cosmopolitan reading practice, the non-realistic fiction of comics of yore provide a unique perspective into what those at the time of writing may have understood about the world, with what authors believed would resonate with their readers. In Edward Salo’s exploration of G.I. Joe, from toys to comics to television and beyond, he seems to unknowingly put Patell’s urging to work, providing a unique analysis of the impact of historical context on the changing scope of a character aimed at depicting the ideal American soldier and role model for young boys. Scott Manning’s unique take on Marvel’s recurring visual trope depicting Wolverine punctured with arrows situates Wolverine as both indestructible in the Marvel cosmos, but also as in reference to a distinctly medieval mythos, drawing connection from history’s storytelling and our own. When seeking an ideal example of the changing landscape of comics into transmedia universes, Mark Hibbett holds Doctor Doom up as the shining beacon for others to follow, pointing to his remarkable consistency through his appearances in comics, movies, video games, and television shows, even when his components become stretched or altered. Perhaps among the most notable for our current time is Ora C. McWilliams and Joshua Richardson’s essay on Secret Empire and the conversation it forced readers and Marvel writers and executives alike to have about the histories of comics characters and the comics industry broadly, about bigotry both in the industry and the fan base, about fascism, about cultural divides, and about fan response to the way characters are used and for what messages. To move forward into each new era, Marvel and their fans must acknowledge the history of both their comics and characters, and of what context has brought them into creation.

With certain essayists, a close reading allows for Marvel’s limited expression of difference to shine in new light. Dennin Ellis and Melissa Guadrón urge readers to look past the Thing as a stand-in for disabled people everywhere, and acknowledge that he has qualities that characters, such as Man-Thing, the Zombie, and Omega the Unknown, inherently lack:  “a healthy support system in his family and friends, and the ability to determine his own destiny” (151); they urge readers, and Marvel more broadly, to consider how some powers may come at a cost of explicit disability and what loving those characters could look like for fans. In Jerold Abrams and Katherine Reed’s essay on “Guardians of the Galaxy,” they argue these wisecracking, explosion-laden films provide viewers with the opportunity to investigate the relationship between subjectivity and intersubjectivity through the characters of Rocket Racoon and Groot, exploring the nature of language and of self-consciousness. Jeffrey McCambridge posits the Nameless as a means of looking to the unique language of trauma, memory, and pain. He describes their haunted, apathetic existence as indicative of the nihilism inherent in Marvel’s cosmos and their lexicon, forever doomed to repeat itself in an effort to balance the cosmic scales of justice and tell their stories again and again.

Brode’s text closes with an essay which brings each of the other essays together in a seamless, comprehensive conclusion. Without Garret L. Castleberry’s essay on “The Spreadable Media Model of Mass Communication,” there is a real chance this text could have come across as unfinished and even disparate. However, Castleberry takes the reader through Marvel’s growth from a mom-and-pop comic shop with extraordinary name value somehow still teetering on the edge of total bankruptcy, to an incredibly and increasingly powerful arm in what may well be the strongest mass media conglomerate in the world, providing Disney with necessary broad appeal and cultural investment even among the most vehemently critical. He details the conflict between what he labels “fantagonists”--the aggravated, “mostly male, mostly anonymous” (226) fans whose demographics make-up is that of historic majority of comics readers who set out to derail stories, such as Black Panther or Captain Marvel, because these stories did not represent them; and incredible value-add that “inclusive storytelling and character diversification” (227) had, not only to movie-goer’s experiences and superhero movies’ showings at high-culture awards shows, but also Marvel executives’ bankroll. At the close of the text, Castleberry’s succinct contextualization and analysis of the way that Marvel, their cinematic universe, and their acquisition by Disney informed, and was informed by, a changing landscape of fan interaction styles, media consumption modalities, and the power of intergenerational and cross-cultural consumer branding.

Analyzing the Marvel Universe leaves the reader hopeful for a time where Marvel, and their media parent, Disney, are able to acknowledge the gaps they have left in their history, and, in fact, the places where they have done harm, and move towards a new superheroic future. The research is clear, based on this text, that comics and superhero fans are not going anywhere, but, in fact, the number of people invested in the content is ever-growing, and the faces of those fans are ever-changing. The writers here are clear in their messaging:  fans are intrigued by the history, wanting to understand where their beloved characters are coming from both in the Marvel canon and within historical context, but fans also want to see characters that move forward into a world of increasing diversity, acceptance, and affection, for that which is different. Brode attests that Stan Lee, the proverbial father of Marvel Comics, insisted his characters be as three-dimensional as possible and dared to dream of a superhero team in Fantastic Four that included not just men, but even a woman with powers and a position of her own, stereotyped and strained though it may have been. This, according to the essayists included in this text, is all the modern Marvel fan wants:  to expand the full realm of individuals “of valor who, despite their strength and courage, revealed deep psychological problems when alone and lonely” (10). At the end of the day, Marvel is growing, media are changing, and the fans are responding in kind.

 

• Table of Contents

Introduction: Prelude to a ­Pop-Culture Phenomenon
Douglas Brode 1

With Great Power Ballads, There Must Also Come—Great Responsibility! A ­Re-Assessment of the ­Spider-Man Legacy
Emily Lauer 15

“I am…”: Tony Stark’s Evolving Masculinity from Comic to Endgame
Susan Aronstein and Tammy L. Mielke 24

Armored Warriors Full of Arrows: From Obscure Crusader and Arabic Texts to Marvel’s Wolverine
Scott Manning 38

Not a Giant, But a “Real” American Hero: Reinventing the American Military Man in G.I. Joe, a Real American Hero Comic Book (1982–1994)
Edward Salo 50

Doctor Doom: Marvel’s Transmedia Supervillain
Mark Hibbett 59

Beyond Good and Evil: DC’s Catwoman, Marvel’s Black Mamba, and the Tradition of the Dark, Dangerous Woman
Douglas Brode 69

“You are ­mind-blowingly duplicitous”: Black Widow and the Male Gaze
Jaclyn Kliman 79

Finally, a Muslim Teenage Female Superhero: The Intersectionality of Feminism and Islam in Ms. Marvel

Hafsa Alkhudairi 90

The True Meaning of Fearless: Feminism in Fearless and the Marvel Universe
Christina M. Knopf 100

Sexuality as the Devil’s Tool: Namor and His ­Never-Ending Love for Invisible Girl
Anke Marie Bock 109

“We are Groot”: Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity in Guardians of the Galaxy
Jerold Abrams and Katherine Reed 119

“I remember a shadow, living in the shade of your greatness”: Tracking Thor and Loki’s Codependency Across the Nine Realms and Beyond
J.S. Starkweather 130

“Foul of form and barren of mind”: Disability in the Comics of Steve Gerber
Dennin Ellis and Melissa Guadrón 150

A Kree by Any Other Name: The Nameless and the Problems of History, Forgetting, and the Pain of Memory
Jeffrey Mccambridge 160

A Secret Empire Among Us: Or, “When Is There a Good Time to Discuss Fascism?”
Ora C. McWilliams and Joshua Richardson 168

“They do things differently there”: Not Brand Echh, 1967–1969
Cyrus R.K. Patell 179

Children of a Lesser Atom: The Dearth of Difference in Marvel’s ­X-Men
Quincy Thomas 191

Black Panther: From W.E.B. Du Bois to Wakanda
Karl E. Martin 210

The Spreadable Media Model of Mass Communication: Tracing the Corporate Continuity of ­Disney-Marvel and the MCU
Garret L. Castleberry 219

About the Contributors 239

Index 243

 

Book Review: Black Panther: A Cultural Exploration by Ytasha L. Womack

 

reviewed by Charles W. Henebry, Boston University

Black Panther: A Cultural Exploration by Ytasha L. Womack. New York: Epic Ink, 2023. 176pp. https://www.quarto.com/books/9780760375617/black-panther

Judging by its cover, lavish illustrations, and meager page count, you wouldn’t think Black Panther: A Cultural Exploration lived up to the scholarly ambitions of its title. Yet Womack manages to pack a surprising wealth of cultural references and oral history into this slender volume. Having myself analyzed the Panther by reference to the aims of his creators, I was fascinated by Womack’s reader-centered approach to the character. Prior scholarship has problematized the Panther’s status as the “World’s First Black Superhero,” given Marvel’s all-white creative staff back in the sixties. Womack implicitly responds to this criticism with a moving account of the lived experience of the superhero’s African-American fans who, in that same era, encountered the new character at the newsstand and argued with their friends about how he was connected to the Black Panther Party. And she ties this oral history to developments in contemporary history and culture, from Kwame Nkrumah, the first Prime Minister of Ghana, to the cosmic jazz of Sun-Ra. In so doing, she encourages us to think of the Black Panther not as corporate IP, but as one of the shared myths of our culture: “I’d reason that the Black Panther myth is bigger than its creators, an idea held by fans, writers, pencilers, and the awed alike—a myth that channels love and liberation.” Having previously published a book on Afrofuturism, Womack is well situated to deliver in this effort to claim the Black Panther as a genuine expression of the African-American experience.

While the first chapter contextualizes the creation of the Black Panther in the ferment of the late 1960s, the book is organized not by timeline but by topic: “The Panther Mystique,” “The Wakandan Protopia,” “The Modern Goddess and Futuristic Warrior Queens,” etc. Throughout, Womack works suggestively rather than analytically: in the chapter on political power, for instance, she juxtaposes the Panther with real-world political figures ranging from MLK to Mandela, but does not explicitly argue any particular parallel or connection. Some may see this as a virtue, in that it invites the reader to take an active role in making sense of the Panther’s cultural resonance. But I would have liked a more detailed account, especially in regard to lesser-known figures like Kwame Nkrumah. Without such detail, the reader is hardly in a position to weigh the real significance of Womack’s musings.

The book’s greatest strength is its oral history of fans. Besides childhood memories, the interviews offer up a variety of insights as to the Panther’s political and cultural significance. A few of those interviewed are famous; many others are identified by Womack as authors or artists. In a few cases, we are provided with no more than a name, which left me wondering what principle Womack used in choosing whom to interview.

Another strength is the book’s format: lavish full-color images predominate throughout, ranging from comics panels to news photographs. Comics are a visual medium, and it’s wonderful to see scholarship illustrated in this way. Too often, due to the cost of permissions, comics scholars see their work go to print with no illustrations whatsoever. In Black Panther as well as in an earlier book on Spider-Man, Epic Ink neatly solved the permissions problem by partnering with Marvel Comics.

But I can’t help but worry that this cure is worse than the disease. Rights holders like Marvel are unlikely to partner with scholars who train a critical eye on their history, so in the marketplace of ideas, such scholarship will be text-only and hence at a disadvantage relative to visually attractive puff-pieces. Womack’s wholeheartedly celebratory account—which interrogates neither the politics of the character’s early decades nor the politics of Marvel’s creative team—does little to allay such concerns. Interested readers will have to seek out that richly problematic history elsewhere.

Book Review - Black Panther: Interrogating a Cultural Phenomenon by Terence McSweeney

Reviewed by Jason D. DeHart, PhD

Terence McSweeney. Black Panther: Interrogating a Cultural Phenomenon, University Press of Mississippi. 978-1496836090. $20. https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/B/Black-Panther

I am not sure of the point at which I became acquainted with T’Challa, the Black Panther superhero and hereditary King of Wakanda. The character was introduced in a 1966 issue of Fantastic Four, as a support player whose unsteady allegiance was reflected in other characters such as Namor, but who was Marvel’s first black superhero. As originally created by Kirby & Lee, Black Panther’s interests have always been mostly closely aligned with Wakanda, his fictional futurist African nation; it is only when the concerns of this nation and the wider world intersect that he springs into action. He first battled the Fantastic Four, and then became a regular member of the Avengers. This was all established well before I was acquainted with the character, whose first introduction to me was likely through a collectible Marvel trading card or action figure.

            These days though everybody knows the Panther, largely due to the success of the 2018 film starring the late Chadwick Boseman which is the focus of this book. That is not a surprise as the film is amazingly well done, and addresses social and cultural issues whose resonance was only just beginning to spread in wider circles of white privileged culture. The original movie storyline, when pitched in the early 2000s, was going to be along the lines of an Indiana Jones adventure featuring a lost relic. In the film that was made, that lost relic McGuffin transformed into the interaction of Wakanda and the wider world as T’Challa sought to reconcile an unsteady and misrepresented past with the hope of being a good king.

            In spite of the title, much of the book’s focus is on the film, rather than the comic book origins of the character, reflecting the author’s interest and research. McSweeney knows the film world well, but this reviewer wonders to what degree can he speak to the vicissitudes of Black experience? In the first chapters, the reader is offered a brief history of the character with nods to the comics, as well as the story of the film’s opening. All of this sets the stage and provides the background knowledge that the reader needs, although more information from the comics would have been helpful for knowing more about the 50-year-old character, in terms of his origins, motivations, and changing interpretations over time.

            McSweeney also analyzes moments in the film featuring the supporting characters and villains, almost in summary form. Both the relatability and unappealing aspects of the characters, particularly in the Panther's rival and political antithesis, N’Jadaka, aka Eric Killmonger, are mentioned, but only briefly explored. McSweeny’s focusing on the film in itself reveals too much to uncover both in terms of historical context and character analysis – it seems each moment in the story deserves a full volume’s worth of summary and exploration, especially relating back to the foundational comic books.

            A reader will encounter the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s view of Wakanda’s world, leading to what will hopefully become a fuller view upon reading the comics and engaging with what will certainly be an entire film series (at the time of this review, production on the second film is well underway). In sum, what McSweeney offers is more than a primer or appetizer, but still not a full course on one particular aspect or dimension of this transmedia character. This is understandable given the depths of how much information would have to be consumed, summed up, and explained to produce a more complete treatment of the Black Panther. I recommend reading this book alongside a stack of Black Panther comics, including the work that has been done by writers Ta-Nehisi Coates, Christopher Priest, and Don McGregor who created much of the underlying sources of the stories that the film redevelops.

A version of this review will appear in print in IJOCA.

Book review - The Wakanda Files. A Technological Exploration of the Avengers and Beyond.

 

Benjamin, Troy. The Wakanda Files. A Technological Exploration of the Avengers and Beyond. Epic Ink, 2020. 160 pages. ISBN: 978-0-7603-6544-1. $60.00.

 reviewed by Aaron Ricker

Troy Benjamin is the author of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Declassified book series, and a contributor to the Official Guidebook to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. His new book The Wakanda Files is, like these other titles, an illustrated look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) aimed at fans in a hardcover book with plastic slipcase.* The book’s creative conceit presents The Wakanda Files as a collection of top-secret intelligence assembled by the royal scientists of Wakanda (a fictional African kingdom featured in the MCU, led by the Black Panther). The high-tech information thus collected by Wakandan spies and scientists is arranged into five sections: “Human Enhancement” (pages 4-69), “Weapons” (70-105), “Vehicles” (106-129), “AI and Mind Control” (130-143), and “Energies and Elements” (144-162). Chapter 1 therefore presents data on how Steve Rogers was transformed into Captain America, for example, and Chapter 2 talks about the development of his shield. Chapter 3 includes a discussion of the ups and downs of Howard Stark’s flying cars, and Chapter 4 highlights the AI breakthroughs (lucky and otherwise) achieved by Tony Stark. Chapter 6 presents some of the most fantastical science of all, including wonders like the fictionalized powers of palladium and the “Infinity Stones” whose blatantly magical character does not even get a perfunctory scientific fig leaf.

 

As this list of representative items suggests, the focus of The Wakanda Files is squarely on the MCU and the Avengers. The book’s subtitle touts it as “a technological exploration of the Avengers and beyond,” but the scope of its attention never extends far beyond the marvels of the Avengers-related movies. Even the illustrations are often just screenshots from the films, run through various Photoshop filters. If Wakanda has been patiently collecting data on exotic science related to human enhancement for years, one might ask, why do these files include no mention of achievements like Dr. Doom’s ultra-high-tech armour? The answer seems to be that the narrative focus of The Wakanda Files is restricted by the marketing needs of the real world outside the MCU: the Fantastic Four movies were (by MCU standards) commercial flops, and done by a rival studio which controlled the intellectual property. Hot Marvel properties that are fresh in people’s minds from the Avengers blockbusters are more likely to sell books.

 

The presentation of The Wakanda Files is not only limited by the MCU’s Avengers high-tech context in terms of the fictional technologies deemed worthy of attention. As intimated above with reference to the Infinity Stones, the book is also noticeably shaped by the way the Avengers movies tend to casually “retcon” the magic found in their source material as exotic science. On the very first page, chief scientist Shuri-Kimoyo specifies that the goal of the project is to “bring our planet the forefront of technology and innovation” (Wakanda Files, p. 3). The first file presented, though, is about the magic herb that allows the Black Panther to “access the ancestral plane” (Wakanda Files, pp. 6-7).

 

As a result of this artistic, or commercial, decision to accept the MCU’s preference for non-explanations, The Wakanda Files squanders some of its potential. A book about science (and) fiction can help scratch the hobbyist’s itch for collection and escapism. Such a book can also serve at times, though, to inform and inspire. It can give readers a pleasant chance to marvel at how elegantly the fantasy has been made to dance with the hard science. The lazy approach that The Wakanda Files picks up from the MCU shrugs off this opportunity. In Chapter 3, for example, Howard Stark explains that Captain America’s shield is bulletproof because it’s “[c]ompletely vibration absorbent” (p. 72). What do readers interested in scientific information gain from the suggestion that bullets are dangerous due to vibrations as opposed to their weight and speed?

 

At times, the loss in terms of potential infotainment value is exacerbated by losses in narrative coherence. According to The Wakanda Files, for example, the Bifrost bridge from Asgard to Earth controlled by the thunder god Thor is an Einstein-Rosen wormhole – an idea floated as theory in the movies and repeated here as fact. As such, the Bifrost is said to permit travel through space and time (pp. 80, 149). In narrative terms, though, this picture just doesn’t work. If Thor had the ability to open portals for time travel, the Avengers wouldn’t have needed to spend so much time and energy building a time machine (the very device discussed on pages 59-61 of The Wakanda Files). Now and then, this unfortunate streak of intellectual laziness drags the book down to the level of absurdity. In Chapter 3, for example, the reader is presented with Dr. Hank Pym’s plans to become smaller than an atom, which for some reason include worrying about how breathable the air might be. “Oxygen levels within the Quantum Realm are undetermined,” Pym notes (p. 129). This is a truly bizarre concern to attribute to a brilliant scientist. How many oxygen molecules per billion is he hoping to inhale, once he’s smaller than an oxygen molecule? The services of a good scientific advisor/editor would have come in handy at such points.

 

On a less serious, but nevertheless distracting and disappointing note, The Wakanda Files also suffers from a lack of basic editing. In Chapter 1, the head of the German super-soldier program is found writing, “I need resources. I need men” (p. 12). Two pages later, the head of the American super-soldier program writes, “We need resources. We need men” (p. 14). In Chapter 2, SHIELD agent Phil Coulson recommends copying Asgardian tech because “we’ll want to fight fire with fire” (p. 95). Two pages later, he also recommends copying Asgardian tech because “we’ll want to fight fire with fire” (p. 97). Proofreading mistakes appear in every section. Benjamin writes “burying the lead” as opposed to “the lede” (p. 142), for instance, and invents the new English expression “of which I’m familiar” (pp. 123, 146). In short, the timing of The Wakanda Files seems wise from a sales point of view - hot on the heels of the movies and ready for holiday sales - but a less derivative and more precise approach could have provided fans and students of comics culture with a more enjoyable read while enriching the backstory of the MCU.

 

*editor’s note – Ricker’s review was written from an advance copy pdf. His comments with page citations have been checked and confirmed against the final text. The finished book also comes with a small ultraviolet light designed as Wakandan technology with which the reader can find concealed messages. The plastic slipcase is necessary to hold the light together with the book. A version of this review will appear in print in IJOCA 22:2.