The Marvel Cinematic Universe and comics: open serial forms in integrated storyworlds

Abstract

Its main objective is presenting in general terms how a narrative model guided by open serial forms in integrated storyworlds was adapted from comics for film and television by Marvel Studios as a strategy of commercial exploitation in its media franchise. Such a narrative model appears in a coordinated and integrated way in the publications of Marvel Comics in the early 1960s and, despite the complexity involved in managing this structure over the decades, persists today. Such a model, when lent to Marvel Studios' audiovisual franchises, presents an extremely satisfactory initial result in terms of critical reception and commercial performance, but soon begins to face similar problems to those faced in comics, in addition to others specific to audiovisual media. The central problem lies in what will be called here open serial narrative, or infinite continuity, in which the absence of a definitive outcome or denouement for the arcs of the characters and the storyworlds leads to a series of problems of cohesion and coherence that undermine the enjoyment of the texts in a broad sense.