This session explores how comics construct meaning through serial storytelling, reinterpretation, race, and political memory. Paul Young (Dartmouth College) shows how early Hulk comics helped shape Marvel's serialized universe-building through cyclical transformation narratives and crossovers. Francisco Sáez de Adana (University of Alcalá) reinterprets Vitaliti's contemporary artistic reworking of El Eternauta, focusing on how a classic comic work can be reinterpreted to extract meanings that underlie the original as well as to build new ones. Johnathan Flowers (California State University, Northridge) investigates the act of racebending as a form of counter-narrative that exposes systemic racism and white supremacy embedded in superhero culture and fandom. Daniel Ambord considers how comics confront misinformation and "toxic nostalgia," proposing an anti-fascist interpretive framework for engaging classic characters and stories.
