ABSTRACT
Until the 1980s, neither the writers nor the audience for superhero comics cared much about making the stories realistic from an economic perspective. Then a young British writer named Alan Moore brought a new sense of verisimilitude and relevance to the genre, creating narrative worlds that operated with a sense of internal logic and consistency. The techniques Moore used to think through the economic implications of superheroes on their environments mirrored methods being developed in business and economics at the same time to create narrative models for alternative futures. Today, these storytelling innovations underpin the world-building practices fundamental to transmedia franchises, including the sprawling superhero movie and TV universes of Marvel and DC.
