ABSTRACT
Despite a large body of discourse on superheroes, there is very little discussion of inter-hero violence or violence committed by one hero against another. This void leaves both the possible purpose and consequences of inter-hero violence largely unexplored. This conversation is particularly relevant to television cartoons since, besides being the medium most widely available to the youngest audience, cartoons trade the static images of books, where much of the violence happens in the gutter between panels, for animated fight scenes often lasting two to three minutes of a twenty-minute episode. Understood in the contexts of family, inter-hero violence represents masculine bonding as necessarily violent and violence as a legitimate means of dispute resolution. This chapter considers how current superhero cartoons adapt their comics source material to construct masculinity through ritualized violence, how superhero cartoons fit into a larger cultural history of gender construction, and how reimagined superheroes might be used to represent alternative models of heroism and masculinity.
