Audience Specificity in Narrative Design: Comic-Book Storytelling in the Inclusivity Era

Abstract

This chapter considers the dimension of audience specificity within the context of the twenty-first century US comic-book industry, examining the degree to which narrative production processes are linked to the specificities of the particular audience groups for which a given narrative is conceived. It shows how transitions in the industry’s audience-targeting priorities in the early 2000s, whereby publishers increasingly widened their attention from a narrow yet highly dedicated consumer base of male adults to a broader mix of readers have since impacted upon narrative techniques implemented in the creation of superhero comic books. The chapter, which concentrates on the industry’s two dominant publishers—DC and Marvel, first outlines how key shifts in industrial practices have enabled this change in audience focus; such shifts have included publishers’ increased reliance on graphic novel and digital formats. It then goes on to detail how these shifted contexts have influenced changed approaches to the plot, style and storyworlds of superhero narratives.