Gender and Contemporary Horror in Comics, Games and Transmedia

Robert Shail is Professor of Film and Director of Research in the School of Film, Music and Performing Arts at Leeds Beckett University, UK. He is widely published on postwar British cinema, masculinity, and stardom. Samantha Holland is Senior Research Fellow at Leeds Beckett University, UK. Her research interests are broadly gender, leisure, subcultures and popular culture, utilising feminist, ethnographic qualitative methods, and including fashion history, vintage and second-hand, home and daily routines, and embodiment and body practices.  Steven Gerrard is Reader in Film at the School of Film, Music and Performing Arts, Leeds Beckett University, UK. A firm fan of all things low culture, Steven has written two monographs entitled The Carry On Films and The Modern British Horror Film.

• Introduction Section One: Comics and Graphic Novels 1. Blood and Fire: Monstrous Women in Carrie and the 'Dark Phoenix Saga'; Matt Linton 2. Anxiety and Mutation in Charles Burns' Black Hole and Junji Ito’s Uzumaki; Robert Shail Section Two: Video Games 3. 'Endure and Survive': Evolving Female Protagonists in Tomb Rider and The Last of Us; Rebecca Jones 4. Horrific Things: Alien Isolation and the Queer Materiality of Gender, Desire and Being; Merlin Seller 5. Shattered Identities: The Weakness of the Male Hero in the Silent Hill Game Franchise; Tiago José Lemos Monteiro 6. Dad Rising? Playing the Father in Post-Apocalyptic Survival Horror Games; Michael Fuchs and Klaus Rieser Section Three: Transmedia and Adaptation 7. 'It was an indescribable terror. So terrifying, I cannot begin to describe it. But it had tentacles': H.P. Lovecraft and His Impact on (Cult) Media; Steven Gerrard 8. 'They have given life to a creation… a jigsaw of all our worst fears': Exploring Thematic Dichotomies in the Filmic Representation of Mary Shelley; L.M.K. Sheppard and Richard Sheppard 9. Illusion, Reality, and Fearsome Femininity in Takashi Miike's Audition; Kathryn Hemmann 10. Masculinity, Human Hierarchy, and American Exceptionalism in World War Z; Kelly Doyle Section Four: Audiences, Fandom and Reception 11. Fans of the Alien Film Franchise: Creating a Fan-Specific Checklist; Janelle Vermaak 12. 'It all comes down to your voice': Female Participation and Gender Identities at the San Sebastian Horror and Film Festival; Rosanna Vivar 13. Will Slash Hannibal: Negotiating the Borders of Female Fandom in Hannibal; Charlotte Baker Section Five: Audio and Podcasts 14. 'Mostly Void; Partially Stars': Queer Masculinities in the Welcome to Night Vale Podcast; Alison Bainbridge 15. Sightless Realms of Terror: Disembodied Voices and Sonic Immersion in Contemporary Horror Audio; Richard J. Hand Conclusion

This book brings together 15 essays on gender and horror in comics, games, and transmedia. Film, English, and other researchers from Europe, North America, Brazil, and South Africa explore horror in comics and graphic novels, particularly female stereotypes in Carrie and the "Dark Phoenix Saga" franchise and anxieties about gendered bodies and nuclear war or environmental damage in Black Hole and Uzumaki; horror in video games, including female protagonists in Tomb Raider and The Last of Us, Alien Isolation and moving beyond binaries of gender identification in gaming, masculinity in the Silent Hill franchise, and male stereotypes in survival horror games; transmedia examples of gender and horror, including gender in adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft, representations of the author Mary Shelley, Audition in the context of femininity and Japanese culture, and masculinity, hierarchy, and American exceptionalism in the narrative worlds of the World War Z franchise; audiences, fandom, and reception in terms of the Alien film franchise, female participation and gender identities at the San Sebastian Horror and Film Festival, and female fan-made slash fiction and art created in response to the Hannibal franchise; and audio examples, particularly queer masculinities in the Welcome to Night Vale podcasts and disembodied voices and sonic immersion in contemporary horror audio.