Popular Culture Review Vol. 11, No. 1, February 2000 | Page 140

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obvious in the comic book industry, which is finally driven by market forces. But
I still think it is possible to argue that to persuade any audience to change its values
you must include some appeal to its values. As Thomas Vaughn has argued:
One of the central ways we strive to assert mass identity is through the
creation and reproduction of a cultural mythos. By contesting or
deconstructing this mythos, a form of critical dialogue is enacted
through the discursive formations of production. Values are thus either
placed on trial or standardized in rituals of consumption. (423)
Vaughn is examining a different cultural product, but his point seems similar to
mine in that the values that constitute mass identity or culture can be either replicated
or challenged. The contradictory nature of the values contained in the X-Men’s
Storm would seem to engender a “critical dialogue” about our normative cultural
values. Furthermore, the critical and economic success of the X-Men indicates that
polysemous readings are popular. Changes in the superhero comic book industry,
especially the older readership, seem to dictate changes in the genre’s content which
in turn might create a yet different readership. The intersection of a traditional
literary genre, a new cultural diversity, and new economic considerations have
produced Storm. She is a shifting signifier that both challenges and reinscribes
cultural norms. This process foregrounds the complex issue of cultural values.
Louisiana State University

David J. Lambkin

Works Cited
Classic X-Men, No. 4 Dec. 1986. (Reprint of 1975).
Daniels, Les. Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Com/cs. New York:
Abrams Inc., 1991. .
McAllister, Matthew Paul. “Cultural Argument and Organizational Constraint in the Comic
Book Industry” in Journal o f Communication. V. 40 (1), Winter 55-71.
Meyers, Kathy. “Towards a Feminist Erotica” in Gender, Race, and Class in Media, eds.
Gail Dines & Jean Humez. California: Sage Publications, 1995.
Parsons, Patrick. “Batman and His Audience: The Dialectic of Culture” in The Many Lives
o f the Batman, eds. Roberta Pearson & William Uricchio. New York: Routledge, 199
Reynolds, Richard. Superheroes: A Modern Mythology. London: B.T. Batsford Ltd., 1992.
Schmitt, Ronald. “Deconstructive Comics” in Journal o f Popular Culture. 1992: 153-161.
Uncanny X-Men, No. 201 Jan. 1986
Vaughn, Thomas. “Voices of Sexual Distortion: Rape, Birth, and Self-Annihilation Metaphors
in the Alien Trilogy”, in T