|Home||Introduction||Indexing Language||Alphabetical||Hierarchical||TopTerm||

---

Addicted to Heroines:
A Thesuarus of Powers Exhibited by the Female Superheroes of Marvel Comics

Sources

Bilal, Omar. The Museum of Black Superheroes. 2002. <http://www.blacksuperheroes.com> (8 February 2002).

This website was a useful source of information about the powers of female superheroes. As the site is dedicated to a minority group already, it was sensitive to the description of a further minority group of superheroes, black female superheroes. The site is well laid out, with the descriptions of characters accessible from more than one angle, including by publisher. Also important is the inclusion of older less well-known characters, which may not have been portrayed respectfully but are nonetheless an important part of superhero history. This site will be an important resource for future modules of the thesaurus.
 

DC Comics.com. 2002. <http://www.dccomics.com> (13 February 2002)

Early in our term-gathering stage we were able to use this site, but once our scope narrowed to Marvel Comics only, we were forced to abandon any terms from it.  It would be useful in the future if the powers thesaurus was expanded to include DC.  Unfortunately, the detailed biographies of characters only seem to be available for selected features, and there is not a catalogue of character bios.  However, like the Marvel Comics web site this will prove to be valuable in monitoring trends and the popularity of, in particular, female superheroes.
 

Daniels, Les. Marvel: Five fabulous decades of the world’s greatest comics. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York: 1991.

Although this book is an encyclopaedic array of exclusively Marvel characters, little attention is paid to Marvel’s female superheroes.  Despite the 1991 publication date, even female superheroes created decades before are not featured prominently, if at all.  There is an entry in the index for ‘women characters’ indicating only seven instances in the book where they are discussed, and those instances only address the characters in a general way.  The index was somewhat useful as we adapted terminology used for some of the male superheroes.   However, because this is a comprehensive Marvel publication it may have some value in future modules indexing superhero characteristics such as costumes, weapons, devices, etc.
 

The Gallery: Grrrls in Comix [no date or author supplied] <http://www.gnofn.org/~jbourg/grrls/comix/gallery.htm> (12 February 2002).

This gallery, from the “Grrrls in Comix” web site, was not too useful to this part of the thesaurus.  The female superheroes featured were from a number of companies, not just Marvel, and not much detail was provided about each character.  The site contained links to some commentary on the objectification of women portrayed as superheroes in action comic books (e.g. how their image has been informed by the male gaze), which could be included in a later module of the thesaurus.
 

Goulart, Ron, Ed. The Encyclopedia of American Comics: From 1897 to the Present. Facts on File, New York: 1990.

We hoped this encyclopedia would be of great assistance to us, at least in the hierarchies in the back-of-the-book index, but it turned out to be of little use.  The back-of-the-book index contains 99% proper names (either of characters, creators, contributors or comic strips), a facet not part of our thesaurus.  We were able to cross-reference information gathered on some female superheroes but tended to take our terms from elsewhere.  It could be useful for other Modules in this project.
 

Horn, Maurice. Women in the Comics. New York: Chelsea House, 1977.

Another interesting item, and while it was useful for an introduction to the topic and helped to provide some historical context, it was again, too broad for our purposes. The focus was on women characters in comic strips and comic books, not just female superheroes. The index did not prove to useful, as it was again limited to names. Also the item is a bit too old, and misses the rapid expansion of female superheroes in the 1980s and 1990s.
 

Martin, David Edward. The Ultimate Addenda. [reproduced from an article in Dragon Magazine #122, June 1987] <http://rivendell.fortunecity.com/battlespire/85/addendum.htm> (12 February 2002).

This site included some useful terms that were not included in the Advance Marvel Super Heroes Game Ultimate Powers Book.  It is an example of how a thesaurus or other list is probably never complete or exhaustive.  This site differed from the List of Powers in that is gave more extensive descriptions and insight into the creators’ rationale for selecting and organizing powers the way they did.  We were able to incorporate a few more of these necessary terms into our thesaurus as well as adapt and reorganize some of our existing terms.
 

Marvel Comics. 2002. <http://www.marvel.com> (13 February 2002).

Because we needed to narrow our topic down to a somewhat consistent and contained source, we chose to work only with the female superheroes of Marvel Comics.  Therefore, it was necessary to peruse the official web site for the feel of the language used and the target audience.  The bulk of the site’s content is on male superheroes but from the various commentaries, profiles, features, and plot summaries we were able to gather many terms for possible use in our thesaurus.  It is and will be a good barometer by which to measure interest in action comic books as well as for predicting trends.
 

Reynolds, Richard. Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology. Batsford Cultural Studies, ed. John Izod. London: B.T. Batsford, 1992.

This item did not end up being useful to the thesaurus. As a cultural study of superheroes it seemed like it may be a good source of interesting descriptors for superheroes. Sadly, this item’s domain was too broad for our purposes. It discusses all superheroes; so female superheroes (a definite minority) are not addressed in any depth. The back of the book index is, as is common to monographs about superheroes, limited to names: names of characters, of titles, of writers, of authors, and of publishers. However the book does have one encouraging factor. Its publication indicates that comics, for the most part ignored by academia, are now considered worthy of study. Good news for future thesaurus creators.
 

Robbins, Trina. The Great Women Superheroes. Northampton, Mass.: Kitchen Sink Press, 1996.

This item was useful in two ways:
1. It was a good introduction into the language and culture of comic books and superheroes,
2. the text was an excellent source of natural language terms
The book covers female superheroes from the very first one in 1940 to the many female superheroes currently being published. While our domain is only female superheroes published by Marvel, this text covers all comic book publishers including independents. Written by a woman who is well known in the comic book world as an artist, the text provides a comprehensive study of female superheroes. The back of the book index was somewhat useful as it contained some terms other than names (of characters, authors, titles, or publishers). Many of these terms would be useful for a later, larger version of this thesaurus. The text itself provided many descriptive terms and concepts that were used in the thesaurus. This item was invaluable as it was the only monograph we found that focused solely on female superheroes.
 

Vlemmings, Wouter. “Power List” in Marvels Superheroes RPG and More Power List. [June 10 1999] <http://www.strw.leidenuniv.nl/~vlemming/powers.txt> (12 February 2002).

This site is a list of powers and some short descriptions from the Ultimate Powers Book of the Marvel Super Heroes Roleplaying Game.  It proved to be a very valuable source, which we came across late in our term-gathering, and gave a lot of uniformity to our thesaurus.  The powers listed were often more explicit (i.e. had many more narrower terms) than we were able to include, but also guided us in the formation of our hierarchies.  Also, the site was created to cover powers for all superheroes, not just females, so it was quite a bit broader than we needed.  It will be an excellent source for the expansion of this module and useful for other modules.
 

The Women of Marvel Comics. 2002. <http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/2855/index.html> (13 February 2002).

This site was extremely useful in the early stages of gathering possible traits (powers, devices, attributes) for inclusion in the thesaurus.  Over 80 female characters of all kinds (superheroes, mortals, non-powered, deities, etc.) are profiled.  Although many individuals created the profiles, there is consistently a section within each profile outlining the character’s powers (types, extent, origin, changes in, etc.).  These profiles show in detail the complex and varied powers exhibited by female superheroes, sometimes too explicitly for our purposes, but would be a good source for expanding the thesaurus in the future.
 

K. Guest, T. Grundig, L. Little-Wolfe
LIBR 512
School of Library, Archival and Information Studies
The University of British Columbia