Superheroes in transit Disney-Marvel's Series

Abstract

Today, superheroes inhabit our cultural artifacts through narrative objects that we could consider transmedia: comics, movies, literary narratives, or video games. They have transcended what we have called superhero narrative: the main popular genres have thus ended up encountering the superheroic. Despite the various mutations that the concept “individual” has undergone over the centuries, the truth is that heroes have never left our fantasies. But the superhero has eliminated the traditional mythical space and magical time to circumscribe his adventure to today's society. The eight series of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, premiering on Disney Plus (2021-2022), offer, molding to the patterns of different genres and subgenres, a new contraction of those time and space. Not only the junguian distance between the shadow and the mask has often been suppressed, but they have also turned the definition of his identity into a narrative. Both this aspect and the industrial conditioning factors —the fact of being at the service of a transmedia narrative— limit the meaning and scope of products that end up working as trailers for future Walt Disney Pictures releases.