ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses superheroes' public coding as male, as well as the female fans' interactions with the genre. It examines how female readership, while not a monolith, presents today as resistant simply by virtue of being willfully ignored by the comic industry for so long. In the age of digital discourse, freed of Gabillet's male-coded comic shop, female fans have increasingly and publicly engaged with superheroes. Female readers who cannot synch with the male paragons are robbed of what Scott Bukatman describes as a sense of encouraged roleplay inherent to superheroes—a drive to, "tie a towel around the neck to serve as an ersatz cape". The fandom that sprung up around Loki highlighted how female fans secured a visible space within the male-coded fandom despite that fandom's protestations. The freeing of superhero discourse from its traditional venues has allowed female fans more freedom to engage, not only with superheroes, but the broader superhero fanbase and industry.
