Avengers Assemble!: Critical Perspectives on the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Paperback)

Acknowledgements
Prologue: The Heroes We Need Right Now?: Explaining ‘The Age of the Superhero’
Introduction: Superheroes in the New Millennium and ‘The Example of America’
PHASE ONE
1. ‘That’s how Dad did it, that’s how America does it … and it’s worked out pretty well so far’: The Stark Doctrine in Iron Man and Iron Man 2
2. Allegorical Narratives of Gods and Monsters: Thor and The Incredible Hulk
3. State Fantasy and the Superhero: (Mis)Remembering World War II in Captain America: The First Avenger
4. ‘Seeing … still working on believing!’: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Destruction in The Avengers
PHASE TWO
5. ‘Nothing’s been the same since New York’: Ideological Continuity and Change in Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World
6. ‘The world has changed and none of us can go back’: The Illusory Moral Ambiguities of the Post-9/11 Superhero in Captain America: The Winter Soldier
7. Blurring the Boundaries of Genre and Gender in Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man
8. ‘Isn’t that why we fight? So we can end the fight and go home?’: The Enduring American Monomyth in Avengers: Age of Ultron
THE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE ON TELEVISION
9. ‘What does S.H.I.E.L.D. stand for?’: The MCU on the Small Screen in Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Marvel’s Agent Carter
10. The Necessary Vigilantism of the Defenders: Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist
Conclusion: ‘Whose side are you on?’: Superheroes Through the Prism of the ‘War on Terror’ in Captain America: Civil War
Epilogue: The Superhero as Transnational Icon
Filmography
Bibliography
Index