ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the first two "audiences" described above: fans of comic books who have a history of commitment to the form and the characters created within it, but whose understanding of the specific characters of the Batman corpus may vary. In the University City area of West Philadelphia, located between the ivy league University of Pennsylvania and low income inner city housing, scalpers sold tickets outside the theater for the preview showing of Batman at the AMC Walnut III on Walnut Street. Ethnography is a data-intensive method in which the researcher studies the culture of informants where they gather in their own native habitats—difficult to do with a heterogeneous mass audience. Comic book fans, however, have established gathering places where the researcher can interact with the informants on their own ground. The ethnographic method used in this paper relies heavily upon the work of Dell and Virginia Hymes, and on the work of Clifford Geertz.
