AVENGERS EXPLORED: IRON MAN AND CAPTAIN AMERICA: A STUDY IN TRANSMEDIA, ADDITIVE COMPREHENSION AND ADDITIVE MYSTERY

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2020

Avengers Explored

IRON MAN AND CAPTAIN AMERICA: A STUDY IN TRANSMEDIA,

ADDITIVE COMPREHENSION AND ADDITIVE MYSTERY

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Introduction

“I love you 3000”. This phrase exploded onto the pop culture scene after the release of Avengers:

Endgame and by simply uttering it some people would struggle to hold back their tears, myself

included. It felt like a double whammy after the trauma that Avengers: Infinity War had already left, first seeing some of our favorite new Avengers get snapped out of existence and now losing three out of the original five for good. It marked the end of the Infinity Saga, a collection of films, tv series and comic books spanning more than a decade, with Endgame alone beating the all-time box-office record of $2.7 billion. Although it does not mean the end of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, quite the opposite in fact (Eisenberg, 2020), it does mark the end of some of the most beloved and important characters in the MCU, none more important than the two that started it all and led the way throughout: Iron Man and Captain America. These two characters and specifically the relationship between them have been a heavy influence on the unfolding of the story at large, a story not just told in a single film, but a large and varied catalog of media.

As the reign of these two characters at the top of popular culture comes to an end, it is worth the time to look back and discover how exactly they achieved such success that millions of people across the globe collectively ball their eyes out after finding out about their death/retirement. The fact that their story has unfolded over several different media comes into play here. As they are two of the most important characters in the MCU, they have had quite a lot of stories devoted to them, not just in film, but also in comics, video games and, to an extent, tv-series. Marvel have used all these resources to construct and develop their two characters with interesting results. To give every entry legitimacy, they apply the principle of additive comprehension, a term coined by

game-designer Neil Young when talking about the Lord of the Rings game he was making and popularized in transmedia research by professor Henry Jenkins. This term describes the idea that every new entry into a transmedia narrative must have something that adds to the storyworld or revises your

understanding of said world, like, as Young stated, the origami unicorn in the director’s cut of Blade

Runner, in which they added a scene where Deckard finds an origami unicorn, making the audience

question if he is a replicant (Jenkins, 2006: 123). I would argue, however, that this term, additive comprehension, has not been explored as much as it could be. Many scholars seem to have a tendency to focus on transmedia as a whole, but there appears to be more nuance to this principle than many of the researchers give it credit for. I would argue that to build a successful transmedia narrative and give room for future development, it is not enough to just have additive

comprehension in your new entry, it is also beneficial to have additive mystery, a way to entice the audience into exploring more of the universe. Marvel has used some very explicit forms of this with the way they have popularized the so-called mid-/post-credit scenes, where they tease the next

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entry in the film series. There are however more and subtler ways to do this, and especially with regards to characters, such as Captain America and Iron Man. I have chosen to focus on these two particular characters because 1) their relationship is a large driving force for many of the events and specifically conflicts that arise in the MCU, particularly the cross-over events, such as The Avengers and Captain America: Civil War and 2) they are two of the only three characters, along with Thor, to have a complete trilogy of stand-alone films, i.e. Iron Man 1, 2 and 3 and Captain America: The First

Avenger, The Winter Soldier and Civil War, plus a major role in the cross-over films, along with a

plethora of canon and non-canon comics, such as Iron Man 2: Public Identity and Captain America:

First Vengeance, and other media, such as the tv-show Agent Carter and the Marvel One-Shot All Hail the King, to further develop their character, their relationship and their world, which gives Marvel

many opportunities to use additive comprehension and mystery to give them a complete and satisfying story arc. Basically, there is a lot to work with. All those entries into the MCU use additive comprehension and mystery to both develop the characters and to entice the audience into finding out more about them, what they’re doing and what they’re thinking. Imagine a page in a coloring book with the outline of Iron Man. It is the job of creators to fill in that drawing, and with every entry they fill in an arm, a leg or a piece of his torso, until it is fully colored in and we have a complete image of Iron Man. Every portion they fill in is with additive comprehension and every part that remains blank is additive mystery.1

This research will take the characters of Iron Man and Captain America and see how they and the relationship between them are built with additive comprehension and mystery in mind. To fully understand how a character is built through multiple media, however, the study of transmedia on its own appears to fall short. It would be beneficial for studies such as this to not only incorporate transmedia literature in this analysis, but also theories of narratology, which would provide a theoretical backbone to understanding how a character is built in just one story, to see how the transmedia producers have built it through not just multiple stories, but multiple media.

Incorporating narratology into a study about a transmedia narrative gives structure and tells us what aspects go into building a character and a relationship between characters, to see if and how these aspects are applied in building the story of Iron Man and Captain America, which aspects are perhaps easier to highlight in a specific medium and how additive comprehension and additive mystery are applied to help the consumer understand and invest in this relationship. Three fundamental aspects of narratology will be discussed: space, time and character. The latter is quite obvious, but the other

1_{A similar idea is also applied in open-world video games such as GTA V or Assassin’s Creed, where the goal is}

exploring every corner of the map, but large parts of the map start out unclear, foggy or unavailable. Players can choose to focus on the main storyline, or, in case of the MCU, only watch the films, or explore every corner of the map, or watch and/or read every other piece of media released in relation to the MCU.

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two are relevant as well because they have strong influence on both the characters and additive comprehension/mystery and they help to not only build the character but build the world around them, which in turn helps us create a more complete image of our two main heroes. With that in mind, this thesis will examine how additive comprehension and additive mystery are employed to build the relationship between the narratological characters Iron Man and Captain America in time and space in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Two theoretical fields are important to this research: narratology and transmedia

storytelling. An important note is that this research intends to add to the conversation surrounding transmedia, not narratology. The latter has been chosen as a backbone for exploring the terms additive comprehension and additive mystery and incorporate a theoretical field that has historically not been incorporated as much in transmedia research, at least not in the manner it will be here. The pioneering scholar connected to the study of transmedia is Henry Jenkins, the Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism, Cinematic Arts and Education at the University of Southern California. Although transmedia as a phenomenon has existed for centuries, Jenkins was one of the first to recognize and study it in his book Convergence Culture (2006). It is therefore a relatively new

discipline within media studies but has already had numerous scholars chiming in (Dena, 2009; Ryan, 2013, 2016; Pearson, 2017). The study’s relative youth leaves a lot of room for further exploration and discussion, however, and this research will attempt to add to that discussion.

The second aspect of this research is that of narratology and for this I will refer mostly to Mieke Bal and her book Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative (2009), alongside Peter Verstraten’s book called Film Narratology (2008). These two scholars and books provide a strong baseline on what makes a character and a story and are among the most prominent researchers in this particular field of study in the Netherlands.

In the next chapter I will discuss what the concepts of “transmedia” and specifically transmedia storytelling entail. Moreover, I will investigate the notion of additive comprehension, elaborate on the term additive mystery, after which I will explain what time, space and character mean in the narratological sense, as well as briefly discuss the methods of analysis. Chapter 2 will, after a short summary of the case study, contain said analysis, first discussing the individual characters and how they are built through transmedia separate from each other, and finally

discussing the relationship between them and how this has been and could further be built through transmedia. In chapter 3 I will conclude my findings before briefly discussing possible avenues for future research. To keep the analysis as concise as possible I will include an appendix containing summaries of all the stories from the MCU I will be referencing to, that contain the two subjects of the study.

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1. Theory: Transmedia and Narratology… Assemble!

1.1 Transmedia

Transmedia on its own literally means ‘across media’ and there are many aspects and nuances to this phenomenon, which I will discuss here.

1.1a Distinctions

There are many aspects to the transmedia field of study, which is why step one for most of the writings on transmedia storytelling is to make distinctions between the exact aspects of transmedia or transfiction that will be discussed. The first distinction I have to make is between transfiction and transmedia. They are related but not the same. Transfiction occurs when “two (or more) texts … share elements such as characters, imaginary locations or fictional worlds” (Saint-Gelais, 2005, as quoted in Ryan, 2013: 343). Transmedia, or, more appropriate, transmedia storytelling, is defined by Jenkins (2006) as “the flow of content through multiple media platforms”, the big difference being that transfiction does not necessarily cross different media. For example, a sequel to a film could be considered transfiction, but not transmedia, as both pieces of media are film. Ryan (2013: 366) expands on this by regarding transmedia storytelling as a special case of transfictionality, that it is a transfictionality that operates across many different media. Ryan (2013) argues that something becomes a transmedia narrative when it applies the different aspects of transfictionality, particularly expansion, to a text that involves a storyworld from not only a different text, but a different medium.

The second distinction that should be made is between the different aspects of transmedia theory. This paper will talk about transmedia storytelling, whereas there are also phenomena such as transmedia branding, performance, activism etc. (Jenkins, 2011). Though it is very possible a text or a universe might incorporate more than one of these forms of transmedia, for the purpose of this research we will focus solely on transmedia storytelling.

1.1b Transmedia storytelling

Transmedia storytelling is a form of storytelling in which a comprehensive narrative is told across different media, ideally with each entry adding new parts to that story. Where an author might begin their text in a novel, the story of the novel, or the world the novel describes, might be continued or expanded upon in a film, a video game or a comic. This expansion can happen in two ways: it can be conceived from the very beginning as a multimedia storyworld by its creators, or it results from a so-called snowball effect. In the latter case, a story becomes so popular it naturally generates

expansions in other media (Ryan, 2013). The MCU fits into the first category: it was planned from the beginning to become a shared fictional universe that would eventually cross media borders as well (Forbes, 2018). Examples of the ‘snowball effect’ are the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings

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franchises, as they were originally just meant to be books, but due to their immense popularity they were adapted and expanded upon in different media, including, but not limited to, films and video games.

Christy Dena (2009) further defines the different approaches to creating a transmedia universe by proposing the following terms: intercompositional, that involves separate processes of composition, and intracompositional, that involves only one process of composition. She defines a composition as any single work. That could be a film, tv show or book, but could also be a transmedia work, such as an Alternate Reality Game, or ARG, that might not use film or TV at all. The

intercompositional transmedia phenomenon is defined as several separate compositions, or stories, told within the same world, while an intracompositional transmedia phenomenon refers to one and the same composition told through different media. They aren’t mutually exclusive, as an

intracompositional transmedia narrative can also relate to another composition in the same world, making it intercompositional. In other words, if one considers an intracompositional transmedia composition as a single narrative told with different media, but this narrative takes place in the same storyworld as other, single medium compositions, like a book or a film, it can also be considered an example of an intercompositional transmedia phenomenon. The example Dena (2009: 106) provides is I Love Bees, which is an Alternative Reality Game, i.e. a transmedia fiction that is told through, among other things, web articles, videos and payphones, set in the world of the Halo franchise and released in anticipation of the video game Halo 2. The composition itself is intracompositional, but it also relates to other media in the Halo universe. Dena (2009: 106) goes on to say that scholars can study the transmedia fiction I love Bees on its own or how it relates to the rest of the Halo franchise.

What both inter- and intracompositional transmedia phenomena have in common, is that they exist because multiple compositions share the same storyworld. The storyworld is what allows transmedia storytelling to become real, as both writers and readers have a strong desire to explore every inch of that world (Jenkins, 2007). While the definition of storyworld is difficult to put in a single sentence, Ryan (2013: 364-365) defines it with a list of static components and dynamic components:

Static

1. An inventory of existents comprising (a) the kinds of species, objects, and social institutions that populate the storyworld and (b) the cast of individual characters who act as protagonists 2. A folklore relating to the existents, such as backstories, legends and rumours

3. A space with certain topographic features 4. A set of natural laws

5. A set of social rules and values Dynamic

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6. Physical events that bring changes to existents

7. Mental events that give significance to the physical events (i.e., the motivations of the agents and the emotional reactions of both agents and patients), affect the relations between characters, and occasionally alter the social order.

(Ryan, 2013: 364) Ryan (2013: 365) distinguishes three relations between world and text: 1) one text/one world, where there is only one text that gives access to the world, i.e. a self-contained story, something that is becoming increasingly rare in the current age of the internet and fanfiction, 2) one text/many worlds, where a single text can inspire a plethora of different outcomes that would situate it and create parallel worlds. For example, when two people look at The Scream by Edvard Munch without knowing the backstory, they might think of completely different reasons for why the man screams and/or covers his ears, thus creating two completely different worlds from the same text/painting. And finally, 3) one world/many texts, which is where we find most transmedia narratives. I say most, because, as Ryan (2013: 367-370) points out, there is nuance between two texts that share the same world and two texts that share similar worlds. She concludes that a text that expands the world and is written by the same author as the original text can be considered the same world, where other forms of expansion, such as sequels from a different author, plus modification and transposition, can consider to use similar worlds to the original. She adds to this by providing the example of

transmedia adaptation, that inherently falls under a similar world, as different media have different affordances. Besides this inherent difference, adaptations can also change the world with the above mentioned transfictional operations.

One of the main reasons transmedia storytelling is becoming more and more prominent in the current media climate is the synergy of modern media. Modern media conglomerates hold an interest in multiple forms of what once were separate industries, giving an incentive to these companies to take advantage of as many of the media markets as possible (Jenkins, 2007), plus it might make customers that are generally fixed to one form of media dip their toes in other markets, further expanding revenue for the main corporation (Jenkins, 2007). According to Jenkins (2007), an ideal transmedia story would have each episode offer some additive comprehension (more on this later) and would have either one person or artist independently write the story over the different forms of media or have strong collaboration between creators of different media, an idea which is similar to Ryan’s one world/many texts theory. In the case of the MCU, Kevin Feige and his team of producers are almost always credited as executive producers on every MCU chapter to ensure as much continuity as possible and can therefore be considered as the authors of the MCU storyworld.

Some final important aspects of transmedia storytelling cover what has been called

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similar interests, opinions and knowledge working together to create new ‘knowledge communities’ (Jenkins, 2007). Information is also dispersed in such a way that no one person can know everything about the world, meaning they have to work together to have a complete image of a world, see for example the now hundreds of species present in the world of Pokémon. Jenkins (2007) describes it as such: “consumers become hunters and gatherers moving back across the various narratives trying to stitch together a coherent picture from the dispersed information.” Besides dispersing information, a text also creates a set of roles and goals that consumers can pursue in their own lives or create gaps in the story that consumers can fill in by themselves or that could be filled in on a later date. The latter we will discuss in the next part.

Some of the important terms and debates from collective intelligence within transmedia are those of interactivity versus participation, and continuity versus multiplicity. The first pair is

described by Jenkins (2011) as a difference in properties, interactivity having more to do with the technology and participation more with culture. Interactivity is preprogramed entertainment, allowing the consumer to have a strong but controlled and predetermined influence on the story they are consuming, while participation is more related to fans indulging in the story and its world in their own way, without intervention of the producers (Jenkins, 2011).

Continuity versus multiplicity is also a distinction between the creators and the fans.

Continuity has become almost sacred to both transmedia producers and fans and if a new addition to the transmedia narrative breaks continuity of earlier instalments in any way, creators will

immediately be called out for it. At the same time, it can be one of the most difficult aspects to maintain once your universe starts expanding. Input from fans is therefore heavily monitored and if a producer applies “user-generated content” to their world, they do so only if it protects the ‘integrity’ of the continuity (Jenkins, 2011). Some recent examples of continuity issues are the 8 year jump in

Spiderman: Homecoming, which directly contradicts the rest of the MCU timeline, and the final

season of The Clone Wars in the Star Wars Universe, where Ahsoka Tano and Captain Rex were previously believed to be on Mandalore during Order 66, but this ended up happening on a

battlecruiser in hyperspace (Screenrant, 2020). Multiplicity, on the other hand, celebrates fan culture by allowing them to create stories told from radically different perspectives than what is considered canon and could make the producers consider including some of those stories in the canon (Jenkins, 2011).

1.1c Additive comprehension and mystery

Additive comprehension is for Henry Jenkins an integral part of a transmedia narrative, as it justifies the existence of every new piece of media added to the storyworld. This is somewhat of a

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could do it, which would make it difficult to keep an overview of what is and isn’t part of the actual story.

The term, coined by game designer Neil Young, describes how a new text adds “a new piece of information that forces us to revise our understanding of the fiction as a whole” (Jenkins, 2007). Creators can write texts that follow some basic narrative functions to add to the story as a whole. Jenkins (2011) offers the following functions: offering back story, mapping the world, giving another character’s perspective on what has already happened and/or deepens audience engagement. A good example of this in the MCU is the comic Avengers Prelude: Fury’s big week, in which we see the perspective of Nick Fury and his Agents of SHIELD on everything that happened in phase 1, or at least everything that happened in present day, i.e. events of Iron Man 2, The Incredible Hulk, Thor and leading up to the final scene of Captain America: The First Avenger. Here we not only get a different perspective on the action, but also the understanding that all these events happened within roughly the same week and explains SHIELD’s (lack of) involvement in these events. Scolari (2009, as quoted in Ryan, 2013: 369) proposes different terms for similar concepts: interstitial stories are stories that take place between instalments, which can offer back story and map the world, parallel stories are stories told from a different perspective than the original text, e.g. Fury’s Big Week, and peripheral

stories are, according to Ryan (2013: 369), the myths and legends relating to objects within the

storyworld, for example the stories of the Wakandan culture and the origins of Vibranium in the MCU.2

These types of expansion are the main focus of this paper because there are two sides to it, one of which is not covered much in the existing literature. Additive comprehension adds to the story in a significant way, but to make room for answers first questions must be asked. To allow for

additive comprehension, first there must be some mystery created in other texts.

1.1d Additive mystery

Before I discuss the ways in which this research will be conducted, I would first like to dedicate some time to additive mystery and where it comes from. Jenkins (2007) defines additive comprehension as “the ways that each new text adds a new piece of information which forces us to revise our understanding of the fiction as a whole” and gives the example of Neil Young talking about the origami unicorn in the Blade Runner director’s cut that causes the audience to wonder if Deckard is a replicant. An example for our case study could be Captain America: First

Vengeance, which shows Bucky Barnes being inspired by Steve standing up to bullies even

though he was clearly outnumbered and outmatched. This gives the audience a better

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understanding of how the two became such close friends and it reinforces Abraham Erskine’s idea of Steve first and foremost being “a good man”. However, if you consume everything the MCU has to offer, you start to notice that they have a tendency to throw out certain lines or terms that haven’t featured before, at least not in a major theatrical release. Some of this can be contributed to writers ‘pandering’ to comic book fans who have a deeper knowledge of the Marvel Comic universe the MCU is based on, but move forward a little in the timeline and you start to notice those little lines being expanded upon. A good example is the mention of Wakanda in Avengers: Age of Ultron. It’s a small and quick reference to the origins of

Vibranium, but it ended up being the main location for the movie Black Panther, released a few years later. Moreover, Black Panther made over a billion dollars and was nominated for, among other nominations, the Academy Award for Best Picture that year (IMDb, 2018), showing that that initial reference paid off. There are more examples of this, some more obscure and some more explicit, but it happens quite often. I believe this shows that additional information in a new text could function as more than just revising the understanding of the original text, a perspective that isn’t talked about as much in the existing theories. Something like the origami unicorn starts to make the audience wonder about the original text, but additive my stery like the mention of Wakanda could start to make the audience wonder about the rest of the universe that they do not know yet or does not exist yet, a seemingly quite useful aspect for someone building a transmedia universe and hopes to expand the audience’s interest.

1.2 Narratology

In order to study how Marvel builds their characters in time and space through transmedia and additive comprehension/mystery, it is necessary to first understand how to build a character in time and space in the first place. The study of narratology can be used as a base for understanding how a story is constructed and how a character is built within a narrative. Narratology will be used in this thesis as a way to anchor some of the close reading of the case study and use its principles to discover how additive comprehension and mystery are employed to add to these principles.

1.2a Time

The notion of time in narratology is of a multi-faceted nature. Mieke Bal (2009: 77-112) divides it into three distinct expressions: sequential ordering, rhythm and frequency. Though the following chapter will devote time to all three, the main focus will be sequential ordering.

Sequential ordering in a story can occur on two different levels, that of the fabula and that of the suzjet, or story. The former describes the sequence of events that occur within the story and the

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latter describes the way this sequence of events is told (Bal, 2009: 5). Take for example Memento (Nolan, 2000). For the audience the story partially unfolds backwards, interspersed with black and white scenes that are told linearly. This is the suzhet. But the fabula is still completely linear, the opening scene is the final action of the main character and the final scene is the one that sets the rest of the story in motion. When there is a disparity between the story and the fabula it is called anachrony. As Bal (2009: 82) explains, all literature contains anachrony. A film doesn’t necessarily follow this, films can be exclusively chronological, but this is still often not the case, as most films jump around in time a lot, mostly to progress the story or tell it on a grander scale than just the 2 hours.

Bal (2009: 85-96) describes different aspects of anachrony. The first is direction. A deviation from the primary fabula can happen in two different directions, to the past or to the future. If the story goes to the past, it is called a retroversion, if it goes to the future it is called an anticipation. Bal prefers to use retroversion and anticipation instead of the more commonly known terms flash-back and flash-forward because of the psychological connotations connected to these terms.

The second aspect is distance. Verstraten (2008: 39) builds on the idea of differentiating between objective and subjective retroversions, i.e. the difference between a retroversion and a flash-back, by emphasising that the distance between the time an event happens and the time a character is talking about it plays an important part in the reliability of the retroversion. If a middle-aged character is remembering an event that happened during their childhood, it can be extremely unreliable. The large distance between the event and when it is being told can influence the way it is represented in the story (Verstraten, 2008: 39).

Bal (2009: 88-89) divides the idea of distance in sequential ordering into the three following terms: external retroversion/anticipation, where an event is shown that starts and ends before the primary fabula, internal retroversion/anticipation, where an event is shown that starts and ends within the primary fabula, and mixed retroversion/anticipation, that started before the primary fabula but ended within, or started within and ended outside (Bal, 2009: 88-89). Verstraten (2008: 40) also describes ‘false’ anachronies, where an anachrony might harken back to the past, but it is still ongoing, like a bunch of letters that were written in the past but are still lying on the bedside table in his case study of The Comfort of Strangers.

Retroversions can serve different functions than anticipations. External retroversions, specifically subjective retroversions, are usually applied when an explanation is required generally regarding the motivations of one or more actors. Flashes of a troubled youth could explain an antagonist’s bitterness, a scene of a previous relationship could explain tensions between two characters etc. For internal retroversions, Bal (2009: 89-91) singles out three different functions: filling in an ellipsis, where there was a gap in information, for example when a particular night is

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skipped but is shown in the story when the fabula is already at the next day, filling in a paralipsis, a gap of information in a side-track, like a side character explaining their absence during a particular scene, or repeating a scene already shown to shed a new light on it or to emphasise its importance, for example in Rian Johnson’s Knives out, where a previous scene of the dogs barking at Ransom is shown, revealing him to be the main perpetrator.

Mieke Bal also distinguishes between distance and span. Distance is how far away in time the event is from the main fabula, span is the duration of the event. For example, if a line says: I didn’t

leave my room for a week last month, the distance is a month, the span is a week. If the span is short

or does not line up with the present, i.e. when the main fabula began, it is incomplete. They can become complete if there are enough incomplete retroversions to fill in the entire gap between the first retroversion and the beginning of the fabula, this happens a lot in detectives for example (Bal, 2009: 91). She also describes the distinction between punctual and durative span. These terms originate from linguistics, specifically grammar. Punctual is similar to the preterite and durative to the progressive form in English grammar. A punctual retroversion is a short but significant event, a durative retroversion often covers a longer time span, which can result from a punctual retroversion. Though the distinction of punctual versus durative can be likened to that of incomplete versus complete, durative retroversions are not always complete (Bal, 2009: 92). Mieke Bal gives the example of the novel Of Old People by Louis Couperus, where the memory of a murder is a punctual retroversion, but the period of guilt and blackmail that follows it is a durative but incomplete retroversion. Favouring one over the other can give insight into the style of the author. If punctual is dominant it can create a ‘businesslike’ style, a mix of the two can illustrate a clear causative structure in the story and a dominant durative style can leave the impression that the story is just a series of inevitable events (Bal, 2009: 92-93).

Although most of the examples above concern retroversion, the terms also apply to

anticipation. Anticipations are much less common, however. Allusions to a future are traditionally of a fatalistic nature, such as in the summary. Although they may answer the question of ‘what

happens?’, they prompt new questions such as ‘how did it happen?’, creating a new type of tension where the one stemming from the question of ‘what’ is immediately relieved (Bal, 2009: 93-94). An anticipation might benefit from a degree of uncertainty, to retain some of the tension that a summary might fully relieve. For example, an iterative anticipation describes an event that is

presented as the first in a series. However, the more detail this event is given, the more it takes away from the anticipatory aspect, as our belief that all that detail would happen in exactly the same way over and over decreases (Bal, 2009: 95). If an anticipation is explicit, it is an announcement, if it is implicit, it is a hint. If something is an announcement, the audience is aware of it and know that it will

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be realized at a later point. A hint will only be recognized as an anticipation once the event has already occurred, a common aspect in a detective narrative (Bal, 2009: 95).

Besides sequential ordering, there are two other aspects of time within narratology: rhythm and frequency. Rhythm describes the relationship between the time of the fabula and the time of the story (Verstraten, 2008: 41). There are three different ways in which fabula and story can differ with regards to rhythm. First, it can speed up, telling the events of a week within a single page of a book. A cinematic equivalent of this is the montage, where a minute of the film can tell a process that happens over weeks, maybe months. Second, if certain stretches of time in the fabula are completely left out in the story we speak of an ellipsis. In films this happens a lot, for example in

Spider-Man: Homecoming, after the first scene ends the screen says “8 years later”.3_{The final way} rhythm can be affected is by slowing down. In literature it is for example when multiple pages are spent on describing the scenery or the looks of a newly introduced character, but in film slowing down is a little more difficult, as it could be challenging to show a five minute scene that would only cover one minute of the fabula (Verstraten, 2008: 41).

Frequency basically describes the difference between how much an event is repeated in the fabula and how much it is repeated in the story. If a story describes an event with “each

afternoon…”, but only describes it once, there is an implication that it happens every day but is only worth mentioning once. Verstraten (2008: 41) explains that this could also be used to convey

meaning by explaining that this is used to show how the main couple from The Comfort of Strangers has gotten stuck in their relationship, as it hinges on a certain structure, i.e. each afternoon they are woken up by the same noise.

1.2b Space

Definitions of space in narratology boil down to the dichotomy between place and space. If someone speaks of a place, it is meant as a ‘category of fabula elements’ (Bal, 2009: 134). A place can be a house, a city, a country or a planet, and it is nothing more than just that. A space, on the other hand, is generally considered symbolic. It is inextricably linked to characters and is defined by how they perceive the space. A large city can be overwhelming, a desert can evoke despair and a house in the woods can be peaceful or scary based on the way the woods and the house are perceived. A space in which a character is or is specifically not situated is called a frame. A frame can have meaning on its own, usually culturally defined, or it can be given meaning by its opposition to another frame or by the way it is filled (Bal, 2009: 136-137).

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A space can also function differently. Bal (2009: 139) first distinguishes between frame-space and thematized space. Frame-space is a place of action. In this case it can be entirely in the

background and have no real impact on the fabula. A thematized place, however, is an acting place and can have a strong influence on the fabula, to the point where the fabula becomes subordinate to the presentation of space. Mieke Bal (2009: p 139) puts it as such: “The fact that ‘this is happening here’ is just as important as ‘the way it is here’, which allows these events to happen.” Another function of space is whether it acts steadily or dynamically. A steady space is fixed, it does not matter if it is or isn’t thematized, it is simply a frame in which events take place. A dynamic space allows for movement. If a character needs to get from A to B, they need a space to get there, like a road. If it is a long way, then the space needs to accommodate for that by being a canyon or even a country. In summary, the defining aspect of space is the way it is experienced by the character to whom it is presented, i.e. what it means to them rather than what it could generally mean to an audience. Verstraten (2008: 41-42) illustrates this link between space and perception by talking about how the characters from The Comfort of Strangers experience the unnamed city they are vacationing in. As their relationship has gotten stuck, the city is represented as annoying and suffocating, because the narrow streets force them to rely on each other. Those narrow streets are also used to represent how the main antagonist of the book captures them in his ‘web’ and how he influenced the outcome by presenting himself as the one that would lead them out of the labyrinth, when in actuality he was leading them to the centre, as it were.

1.2c Character

“Character is intuitively the most crucial category of narrative, and also most subject to projection and fallacies.” (Bal, 2009: 113). Audiences respond to characters and (the success of) a narrative is dependent on that response. A character, as defined by Bal (2009: 112), is an anthropomorphic figure that is provided with specifying features the narrator tells us about. An important distinction Bal makes is that between character and actor. Character usually portrays mainly human features, where an actor doesn’t have to. The character is ‘the effect that occurs when a figure is presented with distinctive, mostly human characteristics.’ With this in mind, an actor has more of a structural position within the fabula, whereas a character is a complex semantic unit. The audience connects with characters in various ways, actors only serve the fabula.

The first aspect of character Bal (2009: 113) describes is their resistance to the reader. Characters are a representation of a human being. They cannot think and act by themselves, yet they appear to. An author’s goal is to create character-effects, where the audience does forgets they are reading/watching someone that does not exist and begin to identify and empathise with them, though Bal warns that too much character-effect might distract from what the author is attempting

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with their art and causes the viewer to ask irrelevant questions and the critic to judge unfairly (Bal, 2009: 113-114). Due to what she calls ‘flattening tendencies’, she adopts a more descriptive rather than prescriptive method, focusing only on what the texts provide, as she believes characters are at their best when they go against expectations instead of conforming to them.4_{These expectations} cause us to see characters only as how they are presented, while not recognizing that they are being presented to us, or as binary, meaning either round, i.e. complex, or flat, i.e. one-dimensional, characters. Bal (2009: 114-115) argues that for example Proust’s Albertine is consciously presented as flat and that this is precisely what makes her complex and interesting. By keeping her as nothing more than an image, a paper person, the reader understands exactly what perspective the novel adopts, i.e. that of Marcel, and how he perceives her and the group of girls she is with when he first sees her.5

Bal (2009: 119) states that the character is an effect that makes us believe in the humanity of something that always resists that humanity, in favour of other important insights it has to offer. She attempts to create a framework for characterization of specific narrative characters, to explain character-effect, by summarizing the information readers are given and the information they actually use to form an image of a character. This does create problems on multiple levels, she admits, as this could vary from person to person based on their background. The anthropomorphism of characters creates an environment where they are being viewed as closer to reality than they are, which causes problems for example for characters that are based on real people, as the image a reader/viewer has of that person can greatly influence how they view the characterization of the person in the

book/film, no matter how far away from reality that characterization might be. In addition to general audience, critics tend to be unaware of their own biases and attack or defend characters as if they are real people that they like or dislike, sometimes even equating author and character as the same person. These problems should not be ignored, however, but brought to the forefront and discussed alongside everything else (Bal, 2009: 119-120).

The second aspect with regards to character concerns predictability. Based on the info provided a character becomes more or less predictable, and this info, though determinative for the character, is usually processed subconsciously by the audience. If a consumer realizes there is a gap in information in the text, they fail to make a connection by lack of information. The section of ‘reality’ to which the information about the person refers she calls frame of reference. By this she

4_{In linguistics, a prescriptive approach assigns rules to a language, think of books that tell you how to spell a}

word. A descriptive approach simply describes what a language does and tends to see difference only as a change, rather than it being right or wrong.

5_{Bal here goes a lot more in depth into Albertine and Marcel, but to keep this part relevant and concise I will}

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means what some refer to as ‘common knowledge’, ergo not knowledge that is specific from person to person but can generally be assumed to be part of everyone’s catalog, such as who is the current president of the US, but also thematic links such as north equating to colder weather and south to warmer weather. This is not only relevant to historical characters, but also legendary and

mythological ones, such as Thor and Hercules. These might even have a stronger frame of reference as they exhibit stereotypical behaviour and are generally assigned specific attributes from

conception, rather than building a reputation over time. This results into a situation where, if an author were to deviate from those attributes, the character might not be recognized anymore. This could also benefit a story, however, as they would be subverting expectations, e.g. depicting Hercules, the manliest of men, knitting a pink scarf for comedic effect (Bal, 2009: 120-121). These types of subversions can in turn become a certain stereotype because it is copied over and over, for instance depicting large, muscular men as kind souls with a heart of gold has become almost as expected as their original menacing image. Historical characters generally possess a slightly wider range of possibilities with regards to deviating from the public perception. Showing a different side to a historical figure does not necessarily destroy our image of that figure, although there are always limits to this due to the frame of reference. There can however always be a disparity between the assumptions of an author and the reality of a reader, especially regarding mythical characters, because some people might be generally aware of a character, but they might not know certain details that an author might consider common knowledge. Depicting Hercules with a sword instead of a club might mean nothing to someone who is not aware he is associated with a club but could be problematic for someone who is. Choosing such a referential character means choosing the

confrontation between what we know and the expectations this knowledge produces and the realization of the character in the text (Bal, 2009: 121-122).

There is another side to this, however, where what we think we know about a character might have been distorted by other media that use the name. Bal (2009: 123-124) gives the examples of Oedipus and Narcissus, both of which have a psychoanalytic concept named after them, while not actually exhibiting symptoms of that concept. Oedipus didn’t know it was his father that he killed and his mother that he seduced, even though the complex states this is the one thing that every boy is aware of. Narcissus at first didn’t recognize himself in the image he fell in love with, nor did he realize it was a mirror he was staring into, and he was not wrong in doing so because ‘he admires everything that makes him admirable’ (from Ovidius’ Metamorphoses in Bal, 2009: 124). Once he does realize it is his reflection he’s enamoured with, it destroys and ultimately kills him, which is the opposite of the general idea of narcissism, where one over-indulges in self-love and admiration. Bal does clarify she used this example not as a judgment but proposes it as an allegory of readers who conflate character and person. Every character has some degree of predictability simply due to the nature of their

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existence. Every mention of a character’s identity has information that narrows down possibilities, e.g. personal pronouns limiting gender and all the implications that brings. For example, a she is unlikely to have a beard and a he can’t be unintentionally pregnant, though these limitations are, if traditionally determined, subject to change (Bal, 2009: 124). Classic Hollywood shows specific instances of this: male characters are generally introduced as objects of admiration, someone the audience would want to be, whereas female characters are generally introduced as objects of desire, that the audience would want to possess (Cinefix, 2016). Every aspect of a character creates

expectations: their names, their age, their profession, even the genre in which they appear, and it is up to the author to either fuel or frustrate these expectations. Predictability is one of many ways we can use to create an image of a character. It doesn’t necessarily have to be at odds with suspense, it can also create it. If something is set up early on to be relevant to an antagonist, it can create suspense later in the story. For example, in Avengers: Infinity War, every time Thanos acquires an infinity stone, the audience expects him to use it at some point, creating tension in later scenes of conflict.6

There are four ways a text can construct a character. The first is repetition. Repeating relevant characteristics can clarify those characteristics and help emphasise them for the audience. The second is piling up of data. If certain characteristics that may seem odd on their own

complement each other, they can create a more complete image. The third way authors can

construct a character is relations with others and itself in an earlier stage. These relations tend to be processed into similarities and contrasts, such as with semantic axes. The final way is change. Once a character’s most important attributes are selected, they help in tracing the transformations a character has gone through (Bal, 2009: 126-127). However, the effect of these four ways can only be described when there is at least a rough outline of a character.

These four ways also show the importance of time and space when analysing character. Time is a way of incorporating the first two ways Bal singles out, by combining frequency with repetition and rhythm and sequential ordering with piling up of data. For example, with repetition you can say or show something like “each morning he wakes up dreading the day.” You can just say this once, which shows how the frequency of the story differs from the fabula, but it does also show a characteristic, by showing how he likely suffers from some sort of depression or anxiety and by incorporating it into a time aspect you help form an image of the character. Piling up of data can be done in a number of ways that include involving the aspect of time. Speeding up with a montage, multiple retroversions and a disparity in frequency all can help with showing the different aspects of a character that eventually create a whole image. Although space might not be as relevant for the

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first two ways to construct a character, it does come into play with the latter two, specifically change, as the spaces a character occupies can not only signify, but also bring about change. A cluttered house generally represents a cluttered mind, and if that house is clean at the end of the film or becomes progressively cleaner throughout it, this can also signify change in the occupant’s mind, showing how they start to (re)gain clarity in their life. I will talk about it a bit more in the analysis, but the changes in the places Tony Stark calls home throughout the MCU are indicative of the changes he goes through as a character. It is interesting to me that Bal doesn’t seem to link the aspects she analyses together, at least not in the chapter regarding story and its aspects, on which I base most of this chapter.

The third way, how an author can construct a character by relating them to others, is what Verstraten (2008: 42-45) focuses on. In his analysis of The Comfort of Strangers he shows how McEwan, the author, positions his two main protagonists, Colin and Mary, both towards each other and in contrast to the two antagonists, Robert and Caroline. Colin and Mary have become too similar, both in the way they act (at some point their steps are completely in synch) and the way they are perceived by others (Caroline even calls them twins). This equality is also related to gender relations, with Colin and Mary being on the same level and Robert and Caroline depicted as a more traditional and patriarchal relationship.

Deciding which are relevant characteristics can be done with semantic axes. These are pairs of contrary meanings, such as large-small, young-old, selfish-selfless etc. Selecting the relevant axes is determined by focusing on those that determine the image of the largest possible number of characters, positively or negatively (Bal, 2009: 127-128). If certain axes are only relevant for one or a few characters, only the ones that are striking or are related to an important event should be analysed. This selection, however, is strongly dependent on the ideological position of the analyst and can very easily be criticised. Once the relevant axes have been selected, they can help with mapping out similarities and differences between characters. Though this isn’t a perfect system, this information can help determine the qualifications of a character (Bal, 2009: 128).

In her chapter, Mieke Bal gives the example of a family dynamic with a farmer father, which would often be qualified as strong and strict, and would probably be accompanied with a lenient wife and a supposedly lazy and weak son. This type of binary opposition is problematic and highly

ideological. It boils a complex field down to two terms as polar opposites and unequal, i.e. positive and negative. One could try and build on it by applying a scale and comparing characters based on how strongly they are marked with a certain qualification. Though this model is based in ideology, recognizing this can help notice the ideological positions the text possesses. This also comes back to Verstraten’s chapter (2008: 42-45), where he puts two couples also as ideological opposites,

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it is used in the novel to give motivation to its characters. It does not matter if they are opposites, what matters is that they perceive each other as such, which is part of the reason why Robert chooses Colin as his victim.

How we come by the information needed to qualify a character has different levels. It can be done explicitly or implicitly. If provided explicitly, it can be said by a character to itself, by itself to others, by others to either itself or others, all of these are mostly unreliable, or by a third party, i.e. the narrator outside the fabula, this can be reliable or unreliable. When provided implicitly we deduce the qualifications from their actions, Bal (2009: 131) calls this qualification by function. The reader’s frame of reference is crucial to these qualifications, a classic example of this is the difference between terrorist and freedom fighter. Characters can also act in a way that qualifies other

characters, this can either be done explicitly or implicitly, depending on the action.

1.3 Method

For the analysis itself, I will close read certain scenes, such as the argument scene in Civil War or the first time they meet in The Avengers and analyze specific aspects from the films and comics, such as their places of residence or the people they surround themselves with, that contain/discuss our two main characters with the theories of narratology in mind and look at how the stories setup and build upon the aspects of time, space and character in relation to both Iron Man and Captain America. Through this I can also construct an idea of how the creators employed transmedia and additive comprehension and mystery to further build and add to the time, space and character aspects of both heroes. I will first discuss Captain America as an individual, then Iron Man as an individual and finally their relationship. I have split them up to create a complete image of both characters so that it becomes easier to also get a complete image of their relationship, since their personal development is also relevant to the development of their friendship. The analyses of the individuals will be split up in the subchapters time, space and character, to give a clear structure to the way the creators fill in the characters. During each subchapter, references will be made to the way transmedia and

specifically additive comprehension and mystery are employed to enhance and explore the relevant narratological aspect. The analysis of the relationship will be slightly different. This will be split up into two parts. The first will focus more on the narratological side of their relationship and how it is built. This will look similar to the individual’s chapters. The second part, however, will focus more on the transmedia side of the discussion and go deeper into what is used and what can be used to fill in the story of the relationship. This chapter will be split up because this allows for a better overlook of the analysis as a whole and gives a clearer distinction of the two parts of the research question.

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2. Analysis: Captain America and Iron Man: A tale of two superheroes

Before we begin the analysis, a quick rundown of the actual media that will be used. The case study will consist of any release by Marvel Studios from 2008 to 2019 that feature the characters of Iron Man and/or Captain America, plus some additional media that do not feature them specifically, but contain characters that are important to their story and have a large influence on their development. The main case study involves all official Marvel releases, both canon and non-canon (the latter will be addressed in the analysis). This is made up out of the following films, in order of release: Iron Man (2008), Iron Man 2 (2010), Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), The Avengers (2012), Iron Man

3 (2013), Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Captain America: Civil War (2016), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019). Besides the films, the following media are also part of the analysis: the

TV series Agent Carter (2015), the comics Iron Man: Fast Friends (2008), Iron Man 2: Public Identity (2010), Captain America: First Vengeance (2011), Marvel’s The Avengers Prelude: Fury’s Big Week (2012), Iron Man 3 Prelude (2013), Iron Man: The Coming of the Melter (2013), Captain America: The

Winter Soldier Infinite Comic (2014), Captain America: Homecoming (2014), Avengers: Operation Hydra (2015), Captain America: Civil War Prelude Infinite Comic (2016), Captain America: Road to War (2016), Spider-Man: Homecoming Prelude (2017), Avengers: Infinity War Prelude (2018) and Captain Marvel Prelude (2019) and the Marvel One-shots Item 47 (2011), Agent Carter (2013), All Hail the King (2014).7_{Throughout the analysis some references may be made to other media that are} not included in this list, but their relevance will be explained and will only be included to further explain a reference made from a piece of content in the list or as a footnote. For a summary of what happens in each story, see the appendix attached.

2.1 Captain America: Fragile body, Strong mind

Steven Grant Rogers was born July 4, 1918 in Brooklyn. He grew up weak and sickly but after trying to enlist in the US army numerous times, he was selected for Project Rebirth, where he was injected with a serum that enhanced his physical abilities to superhuman levels. He is strong enough to bend metal, he can run faster than most cars and he can jump from helicopters down to the ground without a parachute. With these new powers he possesses, and a shield made from vibranium, the strongest metal on earth, given to him by the inventor Howard Stark, he starts fighting the Nazi R&D division Hydra, who killed his mentor and the man behind Project Rebirth, Abraham Erskine. After losing his best friend Bucky Barnes to a fall into a deep and icy ravine, he tracks Hydra down to a

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mountainside compound, but while trying to save New York from a devastating bomb, he crashes the bomber and himself in the ice of Greenland, leaving behind his first and only love, Agent Peggy Carter. 70 years later, operatives of SHIELD found him still alive in the ice, and he wakes up in present day New York. In this new time, he first struggles to adapt but quickly takes on a leading role in the team of the Avengers. After saving New York again, this time from an alien invasion, he finds out Bucky is still alive and goes after him in hopes of saving him from Hydra’s grasp. Eventually he succeeds, but in doing so, loses the already quite fragile friendship he had with Tony Stark. Due to this separation, the Titan Thanos is able to defeat the Avengers and snap half the universe out of existence, including Bucky and Steve’s present day best friend Sam Wilson. After recovering all the infinity stones from a past time, he leads all the Avengers in a final fight against Thanos and his army, wielding the magical hammer Mjolnir in one hand and his shield in the other. When Thanos is

defeated, he goes back in time to first put the stones back, and finally settling down with Peggy in her time and have a ‘normal’ life, before briefly returning to present day to hand the shield over to Sam. In this chapter I will explore how Steve’s character and the times and spaces he occupied are built through transmedia with the help of additive comprehension and mystery.

2.1a Space

I will first list off some places that are relevant to the story of Captain America. The most important one is New York City, specifically Brooklyn. He was born here both as Steve Rogers and as Captain America, as the SSR compound where he was given the serum was placed in Brooklyn. Besides Brooklyn, there is one other place that is vital to his story: Camp Lehigh. This is where he was trained, where Peggy founded SHIELD and where SHIELD was found out to be infiltrated by Hydra. This is also likely to be the place where he decided to return to Peggy after defeating Thanos. Other than these two, some of the places relevant, but less important to his story are the Italian Alps, Washington DC, Sokovia, the Avengers facility in upstate New York, Berlin, the Siberian Hydra compound and

Wakanda. These places are mostly from the films but overlap with the comics as well. Some comic-exclusive places include the Danish Straits and Syria.

These are simply the places Rogers visits and that hold some sort of significance to him. However, there is some overlap with the spaces that are integral to story, starting with New York City. A lot of events that happen within this space are a direct cause of Steve becoming the leader of the Avengers. He was born in Brooklyn, both as Steve and as Captain America, met Bucky in Hell’s Kitchen, heard the news of the US joining the war, woke up 70 years later and first led the Avengers in Manhattan. NYC has always been a thematized space for him because that is where he learned his values, values that make him the good man Erskine believed he was. His connection to New York is very prominent in the early days of his story and features in every piece of media from Phase 1 (and

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some from phase 2) that he appears in: the films Captain America: The First Avenger and The

Avengers, the comic Captain America: First Vengeance and the TV show Agent Carter. Although the

first film does set up Steve as a character, it serves mostly as an origin for Captain America, i.e. the superhero he will be going forward, but the comic First Vengeance explores the origins of Steve Rogers, the man, and how much New York City has an influence on him as a man. In this comic, interspersed with scenes of the Captain leading the Howling Commando’s on a mission in the Danish Straits, we see him and his mother on her deathbed talking about his dad, he meets Bucky after a fight in Hell’s Kitchen, he learns about the US joining the war at art school in Manhattan and first tries to enlist at the New York Harbor. A lot of the grassroots values that remain consistent in Steve’s arc stem from his upbringing in the burrows of NYC, an aspect also explored in comics that are not considered canon, but are inspired by the MCU, like Captain America Homecoming, where Steve returns to Brooklyn with Natasha Romanoff to stop a group of mercenaries from kidnapping an important professor.

After New York, the most important thematized space is Camp Lehigh. Situated in Wheaton, New Jersey, this is where “the idea of [Captain America] was born”, so Steve says in Avengers:

Endgame. He was trained there, met Peggy Carter there and S.H.I.E.L.D. was born there. It was also

the place where Hydra had started to grow as a parasite within SHIELD. Arnim Zola, the Red Skull’s second in command, was recruited for SHIELD and uploaded his brain onto a computer in one of the camp’s bunkers to ensure the survival of not only him but Hydra as well. The camp was destroyed when the Captain and Black Widow found Zola in The Winter Soldier, but was later in the timeline revisited by Tony and Steve, while performing the Time Heist in Endgame. Tony and Steve travel to the camp in 1970 to secure the Tesseract/space stone and additional Pym Particles to fuel their way home. During this mission Steve finds himself hiding in Peggy Carter’s office and is almost caught by her as she walks into the next room with a colleague. It is possible that, while staring at her from the other side of the window, he makes the decision to return to her after they have defeated Thanos once and for all. Where NYC is the root of everything regarding Steve as a person, Camp Lehigh is the root of him as a soldier. It was here where he not only learned the ways of the military, but also where he first showed to his superiors and dr. Erskine that he is the one for the serum, as he relies on his wits to overcome in battle, shown by him obtaining a flag at the end of a tall pole by taking out the pole’s bottom bolt and letting it fall down, where his fellow trainees failed to climb the pole, and his willingness to sacrifice himself for others by throwing himself on a dummy grenade.

Where NYC and Camp Lehigh could be considered thematized spaces, i.e. spaces that actively shape the character of Captain America, the rest of the places he visits are more frame-spaces, i.e. places of action, where the significance of the space is defined by the actions that are taken within the space rather than the space actively influencing the story. Some important examples include the

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Triskelion in Washington DC, where he completely loses faith in government agencies as he sees the one he trusted the most, SHIELD, being corrupt from top to bottom, the Barton family farm, where cracks start to show in his friendship with Tony, Berlin and Siberia, where said friendship fully breaks, and Wakanda, where he makes his last stand to Thanos, alongside the Avengers and the Wakandans.

Perhaps an important thematized space that isn’t necessarily tied to a specific location is in the presence of his team. As Mieke Bal (2009: 139) points out, if characters need to travel, they need a path, so if a character (needs to prove he/she) is a leader, they need a team to lead. The definition of what his team is varies from text to text and each version holds a different level of significance to his development as a character, but all of them do hold at least some form of significance. One use of space that is present in the whole MCU and that signifies his relation to a team is the image of the Captain leading from the front. The two most iconic images of this occur in the pan around the team in The Avengers and the shot of him and king T’Challa literally leading from the front as they charge towards Thanos’ army in Avengers: Infinity War. This is a good example of Marvel using the medium to their advantage and showing a character trait by utilizing their space.

2.1b Time

At face value, the introduction of the time stone in Dr. Strange and time travel through the quantum realm in Avengers: Endgame would make the concept of time in the MCU a complex matter, but when looking at the narratological definition in combination with the explanation given to the audience by the in-universe characters, it becomes clear it isn’t as complex as it might seem. Even though Captain America travels to multiple points in time throughout Endgame, his fabula is completely linear, because he experiences everything as linear. As Bruce Banner explains it, if they travel from 2020 to 2014, what they see as their ‘present’, i.e. 2020, is now their past, and 2014 is now their present. In other words, it doesn’t matter what point in time you go to, you still perceive it as linear. So, for Steve, he is born in 1918, becomes Captain America in the 1940s, wakes up in 2011, lives his life and eventually settles down with Peggy. In Endgame, he travels from 2023 to 2012, then to 1970, back to 2023 with the stones he and Tony were sent to collect, then back to 2012, 2014 and 1970 to put all the stones back where/when they came from, to finally go to 1949 to reunite with Peggy and live a normal, domestic life together, before briefly returning to 2023 to give his shield to Sam Wilson. To him, this is all completely linear. His return to Peggy does create an alternate timeline, however, but since, for Steve, this timeline is now his present, the sequence of events, i.e. the fabula, is still linear. His story, on the other hand, is not told completely linear. The most obvious example of retroversions in his story is Captain America: First Vengeance, where Steve and his Commandos fighting their way to a Hydra base is interspersed with flashbacks to before his time as Captain America, showing how he got to where he was at the start of Captain America: the First

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Avenger. The rest of his story, both in films and comics, only contains a few retroversions, usually

regarding Bucky. Anticipations are rare in Steve’s story, with no explicit anticipations and a few implicit ones. Implicit anticipations, or hints, are sprinkled throughout, e.g. a setup of SHIELD keeping secrets in Captain America: The Winter Soldier Infinite Comic, where Cap finds out SHIELD labeled the Zodiac virus as destroyed when they knew it wasn’t, and he is not happy about this. This unhappiness with SHIELD’s ‘need to know’-policy is continued in CA: The Winter Soldier, where it turns out his suspicions were justified as Hydra has been thriving inside SHIELD for years. Most of the other hints within his story are in relation to his friendship with Tony, more on this in chapter 2.3.

The main strategy creators employ in the MCU with regards to adding mystery to a Captain America text is adding ellipses in the story. Big jumps in time create gaps in both the story level and the fabula level, which can then be filled in by a different type of media. The films of the MCU are the main backbone of the entire story and get in front of the most eyes, but to allow for a transmedia universe, these films are told with large jumps in time between them, where, usually, comics, particularly the preludes, can fit and fill in any gaps of knowledge in the story and the fabula. For Captain America, most comics, both canon and non-canon, bridge the time gaps between films that he appears in.8_{First Vengeance acts here as the exception, because the main thread of this comic} takes place during the events of CA: The First Avenger, with flashbacks added to further dive into the background of Steve, Bucky and the other main players of the film. Similar to the gaps they fill in the story, the release of the comics usually fall in the months between release of the films, to build anticipation for them. Winter Soldier Infinite comic was released in January 2014, 3 months before the film, and tells the story of a mission that takes place between The Avengers and Captain America:

The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War prelude Infinite Comic was released in February 2016,

again 3 months before the film, and recounts the events that occurred between The Winter Soldier and Civil War, particularly regarding Steve and the Avengers just before Civil War, and Bucky and Rumlow in the full time between the two films, and the first issue of Avengers: Infinity War Prelude explains what happened with Steve and the rest after Civil War and leading up to Infinity War.

If there are gaps of knowledge that the producers decide not to show in a different piece of media, they leave it up to the writers and directors of a specific film to answer any questions the fans might have that will not be answered anywhere else, which can create some confusion. For example, when asked about the technicalities of Steve returning to Peggy in Endgame, the directors of the film said he created an alternate timeline and returned to the current one after living out his life, but when asked the same question, the writers of the film, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely,

8_{With non-canon comics I mean the comics that do take place in the MCU but are inspired by it rather than}

AVENGERS EXPLORED: IRON MAN AND CAPTAIN AMERICA: A STUDY IN TRANSMEDIA, ADDITIVE COMPREHENSION AND ADDITIVE MYSTERY

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