ABSTRACT
Fairy tales have a history of oral traditions, and comic conventions mimic customs of storytellers and audiences engaging with each other. Conventions cater to popular culture fans, distributing new media fairy tales through retellings, fan communities, and intertextual engagements that help perpetuate performative aspects of the tales. Comic conventions help circulate retellings, creating an environment in which fans and creators interact face-to-face to retell familiar stories and create new narratives—much like storyteller and listener of fairy tales past—to reshape fairy tales for new audiences and invent new outcomes for recognizable tropes. Comic conventions play a role in shaping a new cultural identity for the tales that have been shaped so many times before, in every corner of the world.
