British Educational Res J - 2023 - Wallner - Muscular Superheroes and Girly Ducks Gender Talk Using Comics in The

Received: 24 March 2022 Accepted: 27 February 2023
DOI: 10.1002/berj.3866
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Muscular superheroes and girly ducks: Gender

talk using comics in the classroom
Lars Wallner1 | Robert Aman2
1
Division of Learning, Aesthetics, Natural
Science (LEN), Department of Behavioural Abstract
Sciences and Learning, Linköping University, This paper explores how participants in a Swedish
Norrköping, Sweden
secondary school do gender talk with comics. Swed-
2
Division of Education and Adult Learning
(PVL), Department of Behavioural Sciences ish schools are tasked with working with gender, but
and Learning, Linköping University, this can be a challenge for many teachers, and finding
Linköping, Sweden materials to work with gender aspects can be difficult.
Meanwhile, literary research on comics has shown
Correspondence
them to be a potential tool for problematising gender,
Lars Wallner, Division of Learning, Aesthetics,
Natural Science (LEN), Department of but little educational research has investigated the
Behavioural Sciences and Learning, gender discussions that comics can promote. There-
Linköping University, Campus Norrköping, fore, using conversation-analytical methodology, we
Bredgatan 34, Täppan, Room 6173, SE-602
21, Norrköping, Sweden. have documented situated classroom talk through
Email: lars.wallner@liu.se video observations, focusing on the social construction
of gender. Five excerpts are shown, where different
aspects of gender talk are displayed and discussed.
Results indicate that although students deconstruct
and criticise gendered binaries in characteristics
and behaviour from comics' imagery, this critique
remains superficial, revolving around the hypersex-
ualised body imagery of the muscular superhero the
Phantom or the outdated femininity of the girly Daisy
Duck. Although comics present an opportunity for
discussions of norm critique in the classroom, we
suggest that more social-realistic comics, wherein
gender roles are more subtle and nuanced, be used
for furthering the research on this topic and allowing
students more width when it comes to deconstructing
gender binaries.
KEYWORDS
education, gender binary, norm critique, social interaction
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2 WALLNER and AMAN
Key insights
What is the main issue that the paper addresses?

This paper addresses the lack of research on using comics in education and studies
of classroom discussions on gender. Swedish feminist scholars have sought methods
for discussing this in schools, and as comics are useful for discussing gender, this
study explores how this can be done in the classroom.
What are the main insights that the paper provides?

Results indicate that student critique of comics remains superficial, revolving around
overtly sexualised body imagery or outdated views of femininity. Although comics
present an opportunity for discussing norms, we suggest that more social-realistic
comics be used for allowing students more width when it comes to deconstructing
gender binaries.
INTRODUCTION
Equity is a staple of Swedish education (SNAE, 2011), and the quest for gender equity is ongo-
ing, not only within education but also within politics and social life (Lyon, 2001). The Swed-
ish curriculum for compulsory school states that schools ‘should actively and consciously
promote the equal rights and opportunities of pupils, regardless of gender’ and ‘combat
gender patterns that limit the pupils' learning, choices and development’ (SNAE, 2011, p. 6).
Despite this, educational scholars continue to point out that schools need to further problem-
atise students' views on gender (Eriksson, 2019; Pomerantz & Raby, 2011; Ringrose, 2013).
Through a lens of norm-critical pedagogy, the aim of the paper is to explore how teach-
ers and students work with comic imagery, books and strips (henceforth collectively called
‘comics’) to ‘open the road to different ways of thinking and illustrating the world and ourselves
differently’ (Langmann, 2019, p. 164, emphasis in original). As Kumashiro (2001, p. 8)
argues, ‘education involves … learning something that disrupts one's commonsense view
of the world’. On this note, Åkesson (2016, p. 10) contends that one way to work with
norm-critical perspectives in education could be to ‘offer all students entrance to a cultural
range that strengthens them and gives them insight and joy regardless of background, func-
tionality, sexuality, class, skin colour, gender and experience’. One suggested way to provide
this cultural range for students is to offer them the ‘possibility to read … fiction and other
types of texts … [and] to create and express themselves through different aesthetic forms’
(SNAE, 2011, p. 19). Fiction reading is, thus, considered one way of giving students vicari-
ous access to experiences, questions and emotions that they otherwise might not encounter
(cf. Nussbaum, 1997).
Therefore, in this paper, we turn our attention to how comics enable teachers to offer their
students a wide range of fictional and non-fictional image–text narratives, while also disrupt-
ing students' commonsense view of the world, that Kumashiro speaks of, since comics are
neither explicitly mentioned in the curriculum nor a common occurrence in Swedish schools
(Wallner, 2017). Thus, the very appearance of comics in the classroom signifies a disruption
of normal practices, while still adhering to the curriculum, since both image and text are
highlighted as pivotal features in the promotion of gender equality. For example, in the arts
(Grades 7–9), this involves image analysis ‘which deal[s] with questions of identity, sexu-
ality, ethnicity and power relations’ (SNAE, 2011, p. 29), while Swedish language studies
promotes
MUSCULAR SUPERHEROES AND GIRLY DUCKS 3
… reading strategies to understand, interpret and analyse texts from different

media, [i]dentifying messages in texts, themes and motives, as well as their
purpose, sender and context [as well as] strategies for writing different types
of texts … [and] creating texts where words, pictures and sound interact.
(SNAE, 2011, p. 266)
Furthermore, using fiction can be a positive way of approaching a difficult topic (see, e.g.,
Jarvis, 2006), and the popularity of comics amongst youth makes them an especially valu-
able teaching material for schools (Hammond, 2009; Helsby, 1999; Pantaleo, 2013; Wall-
ner, 2017). In spite of these affordances of comics when it comes to working with gender
aspects, it seems as if the literary scholarship of gender perspectives in comics and the
educational scholarship around use of comics rarely meet. Thus, there is a lack of knowl-
edge of how comics can be used in education to address gender issues.
Aims and purpose
In this paper we seek to bridge two bodies of research, the literary gender analyses of
comics and the educational scholarship of comics use, by focusing on the use of comics in
classrooms to engage secondary students in discussions of gender norms. The study seeks
to answer the following questions:
1. In what ways can comic images be used for gender discussions in the classroom?
2. In what ways do students challenge vis-à-vis reinforced gender norms in interaction with
teachers and peers around comics imagery?
Gender and norms
Norm-critical pedagogy is an umbrella term for various possible critical positions to uncover
dominant normative ideas within educational contexts where a major influence is feminist
theory (Kalonaityté, 2014). For feminist theorists, gender is not a fixed role or static identity
but part of a person's actions, which may either reinforce or contest essentialist views of the
nature of being male or female (e.g., Connell, 1995; Morash & Haarr, 2012). In line with such
conceptualisations of gender as a verb, as something that is done, Butler (1999, p. 45) adds
that all bodies are gendered from the beginning of their social existence and part of ‘repeated
acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame’, suggesting that a subject has a limited number of
ways of being to choose from as part of what gender to enact. In addition, then, to the limited
possibility of action beyond ‘meanings already socially established’, Butler (1999, p. 191)
also underlines that gender is always related to a heteronormative framework—a ‘heterosex-
ual matrix’ in her vocabulary—in which only certain bodies and performances are regarded
as intelligible.
To expose the social hierarchy of the ‘heterosexual matrix’, other feminist scholars
have introduced the concept of ‘hegemonic masculinity’, which denotes acceptance of
the dominant position of heterosexual men and the simultaneous subordination of women
(Connell, 1995). Connell (1995) cautions that this does not suggest that hegemonic mascu-
linity is a normality—after all, only a minority of men might enact it—but it is at the same
time normative in the sense that it embodies an honoured way of being a man and demands
other men to position themselves in relation to it. Hegemonic masculinity is consistent with
the traditional superhero, whose body passes as either the epitomy of masculinity and domi-
nance, in the case of men, or the subject of male gaze and male sexuality, in the case of
4 WALLNER and AMAN
women (cf. Aman, 2020). The concept has also found its way into educational studies as a
way to uncover the dynamics of classroom life in combination with exploring the difficulties in
gender-neutral pedagogy (see, e.g., Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005; Martino, 1995).
Complementary to hegemonic masculinity is the notion of ‘emphasised femininity’—the
two having emerged in tandem—as a way to capture the asymmetrical position of femi-
ninities and masculinities in a patriarchal gender order (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005).
Consequently, emphasised femininity embodies characteristics traditionally associated with
reductionist stereotypes of femininity, such as passivity, dependence and fragility (Morash &
Haarr, 2012). In part, emphasised femininity is a result of the expectations that others have
on women, holding women accountable for acting in ways associated with being female
(Morash & Haarr, 2012). More than revealing gender hierarchies, the concept focuses on
compliance to patriarchy (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). In this paper, the notions of
hegemonic masculinity and emphasised femininity serve as analytical tools in our readings
of various gender positions constructed in students' talk.
Studies on gender and comics in education
Eriksson Barajas (2008, 2010) and Allington and Benwell (2012) demonstrate the strengths
of using an ethnomethodological perspective to explore readers' experiences around fiction
reading in groups. Eriksson Barajas (2008, 2010) more specifically explored gender aspects
of school book and film talk, showing that ‘[b]oth pupils and teachers contest gender stere-
otypes and expectations in particular ways’ (Eriksson Barajas, 2008, p. 141) when talking
about traditional novels.
When it comes to the use of comics in education, there are few studies to relate to, but
critique of gender roles has been a topic of concern. In a focus-group study, Moeller (2011)
explores high school students' discussions on gender in different graphic novels. Moeller's
results show that students of both genders are mindful of gender stereotypes regarding
the reading of graphic novels. This can also be done with younger students. For example,
da Silva (2017) discusses the production of children's cultures based on the experiences
of 3- to 5-year-old children with the language of comics, focusing on gender relations. da
Silva (2017) argues that comics
… unveil symbolic aspects of children's cultures that boys and girls share with
each other, with their families and with teachers, in such a way that they observe
patterns and identity values being negotiated in comic books that don't just repro-
duce stereotypes of heteronormative culture, but also go beyond the boundaries
of gender. (p. 536)
Thus, the children in da Silva's study both reproduce heteronormativity as well as resist it. By
the same token, Dallacqua and Low (2021), working with seventh-grade students, also find
that ‘students [use] superhero texts to question and reassess a number of their long held,
socially normed understandings of gender’ (p. 14). Dallacqua and Low (2021) demonstrate
that ‘young people have the capacity to engage in complicated conversations about gender
identity, expression, and (re)presentation in and beyond superhero texts’ (p. 15).
In the current paper, students are not only engaged with superhero texts, but rather a
multiplicity of materials, which could, ideally, afford them opportunities to engage with gender
issues in different ways, or construct gender differently. Using a social interaction perspec-
tive of comics literacy allows us to explore how participants utilise the comics imagery and
its content in situ, and how they connect this in different ways to previous readings (either
of comics or other materials) (cf. Schieble, 2014; Wallner, 2017). Comics, as a combination
of image and text, allow students to engage with verbal and visual representations of ideas,
the visuals both assisting in the understanding of the text (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006) and
connecting the subject matter to other popular cultural contexts and experiences students
might have (see, e.g., Wallner, 2017), while also contributing other aspects to the meaning
inferred. The students, in turn, are themselves utilising a critical visual literacy perspective
(Schieble, 2014)—albeit a simplified version—in order to engage with the comics' imagery
and text and criticise this from a gender perspective, using their previous experiences and
knowledge to do so. What we will see is that the students' readings of the material demon-
strate both reproduction and challenges of the conceptions of hegemonic masculinity and
emphasised femininity. As such, this study adds to the results of Dallacqua and Low (2021),
broadening the perspective to include classroom activities, and what a variety of comics
afford for teaching around gender and equity.
METHODOLOGY AND PARTICIPANTS
The participants in this paper were 1 teacher and 23 students (14–15 years old, 7 boys
and 16 girls) in a Swedish secondary school consisting of about 300 students. This class
was studied over the course of five social science lessons of 45 to 75 minutes, as part of
the first author's study of comics in education (Wallner, 2017). All participants in the study,
and their legal guardians, gave written consent for the students' participation in the study
in accordance with the code of ethics prescribed by the Swedish Research Council (2017).
Participation in the study was voluntary, and five students from the class opted to not take
part (bringing the number of participants to 23). These five formed a separate group and took
part in the lessons in much the same way as the other participants, albeit in a separate room.
The names of all participants have been omitted for reasons of confidentiality.
The teacher planned and carried out lessons independently of the research project, and
Wallner was given permission to join the class and film the activities that took place there.
Students worked with comics chosen by the teacher, mostly comic strips from daily news-
papers, or comic books (e.g., Nemi, The Phantom, Modesty Blaise, Calvin & Hobbes) but
also isolated images of characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, and more. The
comics and characters were the teacher's own favourites, as well as those she presumed
that most students would be familiar with. She brought some comics from home, and some
were reportedly purchased in a convenience store on the way to the school. Comics read by
the students were in Swedish, whereas some examples of comics (as seen below, Excerpt
1), taken from the internet, were in English. The lessons usually consisted of a whole-class
introduction, group work and group presentations or whole-class discussions. During the
introduction to the lesson series, the teacher stated that the goal was for the students to
discuss society and societal roles in both a historical and present-day perspective, related
to the students' place in society today, as well as to analyse, discuss, compare and draw
conclusions about how individuals and groups are portrayed in the media (goals set by the
curriculum, see SNAE, 2011). Topics included gender issues, stereotypes, mood, narration
and aspects of students' own experiences of the world and comics.
In order to capture sound and video, four cameras and microphones were used (one for
each student group). During the first lesson, Wallner was present in the classroom in order
to get an idea about participant movement, in what parts of the classroom to place recording
devices and to make sure these devices were functioning as expected. From the second
lesson onwards, recording devices were turned on and the researcher left the classroom, to
minimise disturbance to the classroom activity.
6 WALLNER and AMAN
Research materials
The materials used for this paper consist of five video- and audio-recorded lessons of four
groups of students who worked with comics in different ways, discussing stereotypes, gender
aspects, age groups, societal norms, emotions and more. The full dataset totalled approxi-
mately 900 minutes. Videos were viewed, and rough transcriptions of talk were initially made
in order to support analysis. This was then followed by a more fine-tuned transcription of
chosen excerpts (see below), based on Jefferson's (2004) principles for transcription (see
Appendix A). Transcriptions were translated from Swedish to English by Wallner, who is a
licensed English teacher.
Analysing ongoing classroom practice
To investigate interactional aspects such as intonation, repetition of phrases and words,

upgrades and participants' use of panels and image content, the excerpts shown in the anal-
ysis below have been analysed systematically and repeatedly, using a participant-oriented
perspective, asking how a certain action is performed (Wiggins, 2017). After viewing the full
dataset, a collection of 13 video sequences, between 45 seconds and 11 minutes long, were
chosen for closer analysis, wherein social construction of gender (i.e., ‘gender talk’) was
made interactionally relevant by the participants (cf. Stokoe, 2000; Wiggins, 2017). From
these sequences, we constructed two aspects of talk that we focus on in this paper: talk that
establishes a gender binary and talk that constructs gendered activity. Five excerpts were
included to best represent this. Although the interaction is captured on video, the analysis
revealed few visual aspects of interest for talk, and thus we have mostly omitted visual
representations of talk in the transcriptions. A few relevant images have been included (one
of the comic's images and one image of the teacher); more would be redundant and take up
unnecessary space in the paper.
The data provided in the paper are naturalistic, by which we mean ‘records of what people
actually do’ (Wiggins & Potter, 2007, p. 78). This provides a unique perspective within the
field of comics in education (for a research review, see Wallner & Eriksson Barajas, 2020),
as these data allow for a study of situated classroom work, while avoiding the researcher
having ‘set the stage’ for the interaction through the introduction of materials, or by telling
the teacher what to do. Thus, participants are held socially accountable for their talk, while
researchers' assumptions do not influence the data. For example, with this methodology,
our assumptions about students' attitudes to gender norms are less at risk of influencing
the data (see, e.g., Taber et al., 2013). In this way, we can ideally avoid reproducing gender
differences based on assumptions of students' gender (Speer & Stokoe, 2011), for exam-
ple whether or not girls and boys like different comics. Instead, we are interested in how
students utilise images from comics as texts that provide openings to use the visible features
of characters' gender performances in order to talk and discuss issues around identity (cf.
Dallacqua & Low, 2021; Kedley & Spiering, 2017).
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
In this section, we discuss our analysis of the gender talk displayed through five excerpts,
which show different aspects of gender talk constructed in the interaction around comics'
imagery: how a gender binary is established in the talk and how gendered aspects of body
and sexuality are constructed.
Acting the part—Establishing a gender binary
In the introduction to the lesson series, the teacher presents the theme of working with
comics and shows examples of different comics on a Smartboard. She asks the students
if they recognise the comic book characters and which comics the students can relate to.
Figure 1 shows the view of the camera, with the teacher (Te) standing by the Smartboard
(SB) in the middle of the image and the students (A–M) seated at tables in groups in front of
the Smartboard (other students are outside the camera's point of view). For a transcription
key, see Appendix A. Figure 2 is displayed on the Smartboard as the excerpt begins.
Excerpt 1. Normative gender communication. Whole class
F I G U R E 1 Participants during whole-class introduction.

8 WALLNER and AMAN
F I G U R E 2 Gender normative behaviour in Zits. Panel 1 on the left, panel 2 on the right (numbered for
reference here, but not while used in the classroom). Scott and Borgman (2008) © King Features Syndicate.
English-version comic strip used in the classroom.
The Zits comic strip displays a humorous depiction of a stereotypical heteronormative

gender binary (cf. Butler, 1999). On the one hand, the approach relates to feminist pedagogy
in the sense that the teacher seeks to draw attention to, and name, different ways in which
gender stereotypes operate (McGuinness, 2009), in this case recognising the ways in which
emphasised femininity and hegemonic masculinity operate (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005).
On the other hand, this is also a polarising display of gender roles and with the text ‘Hand
up if you recognise yourself’ displayed together with it, students are encouraged to identify
with either gender role, limiting their options to the binary categories of male and female.
Similar to Menzies and Santoro's (2018) study, the teacher is ‘seen to reinforce stereotypical
constructions of masculinities and femininities which presume heterosexual norms’ (p. 438).
In an ideal situation, students could of course choose to identify with the communicative role
(e.g., ‘I am the type of person who keeps communication short’) rather than the gender, but
since these communicative roles in the comic are both visually and textually tied to specific
genders, and as they are displayed one next to the other this way, it would be difficult to take
one position without also agreeing with the gender marker associated with it.
When addressing the title of the comic panels, ‘unspoken communication’ (10), the teacher
multimodally acts out the gender norms displayed in the strip by mimicking the character
Jeremy's slumped posture (left side of panel 2), adapting a lower tone of voice and sounding
more traditionally masculine, thus utilising both the visual and auditive of her performance
to convey the idea of masculinity. Although the teenage, male posture does not match the
macho ideals of hegemonic masculinity, the tone of voice and the slower pronunciation are
characteristically male. The teacher then switches to a ‘female’ stance by pretending to scan
up and down robotically while using a higher tone of voice, hinting at a form of emphasised
femininity, following the illustration in panel 1. Both re-enactments provoke some laugh-
ter from the students while revealing that gender constructions are always relational where
‘patterns of masculinity are socially defined in contradistinction from some model (whether
real or imaginary) of femininity’ (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005, p. 848). After taking on
these two roles, the teacher asks the students ‘IS THIS TRUE do you think or is this a prej-
udiced notion’ (14). The verbal emphasis on ‘true’, and the add-on ‘or is this a prejudiced
notion’, creates another binary, this time between truth (fact) and opinion—and the students
are expected to make the distinction. A few students quietly answer ‘prejudiced’ (16–17). The
teacher's next line, ‘I think that I know this’ (20), can be read as a further clarification of what
she means by ‘prejudiced’, but she gives no clear evaluation of the students' responses,
even though the act of formulating a clarification could indicate that the students' mumbling
answers are seen as a lack of response (cf. Lerner, 1995). Presumably, if the responses
were deemed incorrect, the teacher's evaluation would be different, and another sequence
of events might take place. As it is, the lack of response from the students could be an indica-
tion that the imagery and gender binary displayed forces students into a position of accepting
or rejecting this, instead of a possibility of critically examining it. However, since this is also
merely a brief introduction to the topic, it is unsurprising that this does not receive a more
in-depth examination from the group.
In a later lesson, a group of five girls is discussing gender aspects in Disney comic
images they have been given, showing Daisy Duck, April, May and June Duck, Minnie
Mouse, Donald Duck and the nephews. Below, they touch upon the (imagined) behaviour of
the different characters.
Excerpt 2. Being a male provider. Group discussion
10 WALLNER and AMAN
In the student group discussions, the participants are allowed more time to discuss the
gender of characters, without the social pressure of the whole class or the teacher's prying eyes.
In this excerpt, A explains how female characters in comics are always the ones staying ‘at home
… going to the movies and shopping’, while male characters ‘go off [and] … dig for gold’ (01–03).
This draws on the stereotype of girls as domesticated consumers and boys as active adven-
turers, and criticises the asymmetrical gender norm conceptualised as emphasised femininity
and hegemonic masculinity (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). B adds to this male reading of
Donald, that the character is also displaying masculinity by being lazily at home, ‘always sitting in
front of the TV … you haven't like seen Donald Duck make dinner very often’ (08–13), using the
images in front of them as evidence of this. Donald is never explicitly identified by the students as
a ‘male’ character—presumably he is conceptually male (Ackerman, 2019)—he is well-known
enough; he has a grammatically male name (in Swedish, ‘Kalle’, see Bjorkman, 2017), but,
moreover, his appearance is also marked by a ‘lack of certain traits’ (Birthisel, 2014, p. 342,
emphasis in original). For example, where the female Disney characters have colourful bows
and dresses to visually establish them as female, the male characters lack these visual attrib-
utes, and are generally neutral when it comes to colour and clothing style.
Donald is instead identified as male by way of his participation in adventures with Scrooge
and the nephews, his lack of cooking skills and his time spent sitting lazily in front of the TV.
In this sense, in combination with his aggressiveness, he performs a certain form of mascu-
linity (cf. Connell, 2000). In lines 18–30, C, D and E, in a display of knowledge of the origins
of the comics, together suggest that the comics adhere to traditional American family values,
where the man is the one working and the woman is at home. However, D and A then argue
that, in these comics, Donald Duck does not work (31–34), so he does not fulfil the traditional
male role as breadwinner. The students say nothing of the fact that Donald is the caretaker
of his three nephews (who are present in some of the imagery), another thing that defies
the stereotypically male role (see Lindgren, 2000). Thus, the students argue that the comics
adhere to traditional stereotypes, but they also find reasons why Donald does not fit into this
mould. In short, they find some ways in which the character disrupts normative ideas around
masculinity (cf. Kumashiro, 2001), but they seem to have difficulty further gendering the
Disney comic characters, outside of the feminine clothing of bows and dresses. What will be
seen below is that embodying a more stereotypical hegemonic masculinity is reserved for
other types of male characters.
Superheroes vs superheroines—Active agents and sexualised objects
During the introduction to the subject of comics, the teacher projects a panel of female action
spy Modesty Blaise on the board.
Excerpt 3. Hero and night-time fantasy. Whole class
The teacher constructs the character of Modesty Blaise by describing her as ‘many
people's idol and many people's night-time fantasy, I think’ (11). Although being introduced
as an ‘idol’ might give the idea that Modesty Blaise is someone that many look up to, refer-
ring to her as a ‘night-time fantasy’ rather tarnishes this image. Modesty Blaise is construed
as a strong female character (cf. Cocca, 2016; Savage Jr., 1990; York & York, 2012), in
stark contrast to the otherwise passive image traditional to emphasised femininity (Connell
& Messerschmidt, 2005), and the character's subversity is a form of disruption from the
norm (Kumashiro, 2001). On the other hand, the character is then construed as a sexualised
object of fantasy, which places her in a discourse of passivity, more in line with emphasised
femininity. She is a prime example of a hypersexualised popular cultural icon (Adams &
Rollings, 2007), illustrated with enhanced or even exaggerated physical features, such as
large breasts and hips, further emphasised by revealing costumes and sexualised poses.
Nevertheless, it should be noted that the teacher has chosen a modest image of Blaise,
where the action part of the character is in focus: a zoomed-in picture, cropped from the
shoulders up, of Blaise aiming a gun at the reader. 1
To counter and contrast the representation of Modesty Blaise, the next panel the teacher
shows is an image of the male superhero the Phantom.
Excerpt 4. Women as helpless or strong. Whole class
The choice of character is not surprising, considering the Phantom's popularity in Sweden,
making him a recognisable sign for anyone, even if they have never read a Phantom comic
(Aman, 2018a, 2018b). Like Modesty Blaise, the Phantom also faces gender distortion but
of another type. Like other superheroes, the Phantom embodies hegemonic masculinity,
defined by his muscles, weapons, jawline and other features (cf. Dallacqua & Low, 2021).
However, the teacher here asks the students to identify the differences between Modesty
Blaise and two women in the Phantom comic image, possibly raising awareness of Modesty
Blaise as a potential norm-breaking woman (cf. Butler, 1999), unlike the frightened women
12 WALLNER and AMAN
in the Phantom comic. Student J argues that ‘Modesty Blaise, it's like she's the one who
seems strong and such but here instead it's the Phantom who protects’ (11–12). Thus, the
student affirms that Modesty Blaise comes across as a strong female character, while her
counterparts in the image with the Phantom become damsels in distress. In this way, the
student pinpoints what can be described as a gender-norm restrictiveness: that women can
be powerful, but less so than their male peers. This is illustrated by the fact that in these
images, the Phantom protects women, while Modesty Blaise does not protect men. A reason
for this, Reynolds (1992) contends, relates back to the fact that the adolescent male remains
the perceived audience for superhero comics. As previously mentioned, powerful women—
super-enhanced or otherwise—are regularly depicted in a sexualised manner aligned to
emphasised femininity, and their powers are either condemned or significantly weaker than
those of the male heroes. Stated differently, even if Modesty Blaise's actual powers as a
form of superheroine may rival those of the Phantom, these examples reveal the hegem-
onic nature of this social hierarchy as the reader rests assured that the Phantom remains
securely at the top of the pyramid (Aman, 2020). In this respect, they both play their respec-
tive roles, while also being unified by their whiteness, which has been underlined as an
essential feature of both hegemonic masculinity and emphasised femininity (Connell, 2002).
This discussion on masculinity and femininity in relation to superheroes is further explored
as the students translate the discussions around Modesty Blaise and the Phantom onto
other superheroes such as Wonder Woman and Superman to illustrate similar differences.
In the following excerpt, taking place during a later lesson, a student group discuss gender
difference in comics in general. They have Disney animal comic images in front of them, but
the conversation steers onto the topic of superheroes.
Excerpt 5. The sexualisation of the superhero body. Group discussion.
In this interchange, the students talk about the bodies of superhero characters—similar
to the imagery of Modesty Blaise and the Phantom in previous excerpts—by contrasting
representations of the male vis-à-vis the female body in a superhero costume. Accentuating
body shape is important in superhero comics in order to demonstrate a character's strength
or sex appeal. As Kahn (2014, May 15, n.p.) puts it: ‘sexy superheroines in sexy costumes
being put in sexy situations’. In our excerpt, women are described as having ‘broad hips, big
breasts, thin waist’ (22), while men have a ‘major sixpack and [are] … all muscular …’ and
‘very like ve (gestures a V-shape in the air)’ (29–33). The students address the female bodily
aspects that they specify explicitly as ‘the stereotype of a girl’ (20), something they then
contrast with the male stereotype in comics. They are here critiquing the overt heteronor-
mative sexuality of the characters, and this is one way of criticising these gender norms—
drawing on the extreme versions—something which is also typical for the superhero genre
(cf. Dallacqua & Low, 2021). In short, they target both perceptions of hegemonic masculinity
and emphasised femininity.
Note that in lines 26 and 28, D and E agree that the Disney characters they have in front
of them do not fulfil the bodily stereotypes of more adult comics. With the younger target
audience of Disney comics, these comics obviously differ from the older target audience
of superhero comics. As such, it is unsurprising that the Disney characters are less overtly
sexualised (aside from the fact that they are animals). As they lack human bodies (even
though they display human characteristics and behaviour), it is logical that the students
would find it more difficult to read bodily gender aspects into these characters.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
In this paper, we have analysed the use of comics as a way to discuss and criticise gender
norms in a secondary school classroom. In our analysis, we have uncovered ways in which
students engage with some comics (social realism/satire and animal comics) in a way that
somewhat enforces existing stereotypes and engage with other comics (superhero comics)
through norm-critical discussion by demonstrating awareness of stereotypes. Students
analyse and criticise stereotypical aspects of behaviour, character, body and clothing when
it comes to superhero comics (cf. Eriksson Barajas, 2008; Moeller, 2011). The students
show competence in this work, and they utilise different critical aspects to discuss the super-
hero comics (cf. Dallacqua & Low, 2021). Furthermore, similar to Eriksson Barajas' (2010)
study, the students in the current paper demonstrate confidence in their talk about gender
stereotypes, and they utilise both the imagery available to them, as well as their previous
experience of comics, to playfully criticise and deconstruct gender roles. However, while they
joke about the stereotypical depictions of muscular superheroes, they also engage with other
gender constructions, no less stereotypical, but not necessarily as exaggerated. Although
we see results similar to Dallacqua and Low (2021), where students engage in critique of
the visuals of girly Daisy and Minnie, with their pink bows and dresses, or the sexualised
bodies of Modesty Blaise and the Phantom, the social characteristics and mannerisms asso-
ciated with gender seem to be more difficult to tackle. Students critically examine animal
comics, such as Donald Duck as a male provider, and social-realistic comics, such as Zits
depicting stereotypical male and female thinking, but these are not as easily laughed off as
stereotypical, and the character of Donald is less easily defined as ‘male’. Thus, one could
argue that the type of comics the students have play an important part here in resisting or
affirming a social hierarchy attached to masculine hegemony and emphasised femininity
(Connell, 1995). Even though students display critical readings of comics (cf. Dallacqua
& Low, 2021), these readings may be done with exaggerated gender roles, and not be as
easily done with other kinds of comics. Presenting these exaggerated gender roles may
14 WALLNER and AMAN
not lead to the gender-aware students that we hope for. It should be noted that we do not
want to criticise the teacher in this study; rather, what we want to raise is that the types of
comics used here put limits on the types of discussions that can be had. If use of other types
of comic publications was encouraged, and made more easily available and affordable for
teachers (e.g., if knowledge of useful webcomics were more widespread), classroom discus-
sions could be more constructive.
However, in the group discussions, we observe that students have the opportunity to
critique gender roles more in depth, but these are fleeting moments not often brought out
or discussed in the whole class, and, as such, it is difficult to know whether the majority of
students have taken part in this critical discussion, or learned something about harmful stere-
otypes. Perhaps the introductory presentation that the teacher does with the whole class,
with the example from Zits, raises student awareness of binary gender roles, thus critiquing
these (it is not clear from the teacher's instructions whether this is the explicit purpose). As
part of the teacher's framing of the issue here, however, there is little room for non-binary
gender construction, and the students end up ‘doing gender stereotypes’ (cf. Eriksson Bara-
jas, 2010), wherein they come to affirm gender roles rather than critique them. The teacher
could be further reinforcing these stereotypes (cf. Menzies & Santoro, 2018) by giving
students only binary options, ‘girl or boy’, similar to how the superhero comics present easily
identifiable exaggerated body imagery. When it comes to superhero comics, students make
explicit the ideals represented in clothing and character traits of comics, thereby uncovering
a gender binary, and they relate this binary to their own lives. In this way, the gender aspects
found in the superhero comics become constructed as caricatures of real-life gender roles.
As the data in this paper was collected prior to the existence of more feminine-focused or
gender-progressive mainstream superhero movies and TV shows—such as Captain Marvel,
Ms Marvel, Birds of Prey, etc.—it would be interesting to return to classrooms and see if the
discussions were different now when it comes to superheroines.
Thus, we see an opportunity here to use comics to further critique stereotypes and
gender roles; to queer, that is, ‘to disrupt or deconstruct binary categories of sex, gender,
and/or sexuality’ (Lanser, 2018, p. 924). However, in order to more fully take advantage
of this opportunity, there is a need to work with a wider range of comics displaying fluid
gender roles, transgender perspectives and non-gendered characters (see, e.g., Kedley &
Spiering, 2017), where gender aspects can be critically discussed on a broader scale than
muscular superheroes and girly ducks. In today's comics publishing, and especially in a
Nordic context, there are plenty of examples of progressive use of gender roles and critique
of gender norms (see, e.g., Warnqvist, 2017). Cocca (2016) concludes that the comics
industry has undoubtedly changed in the past 20 years of publishing, but there is still some
way to go in order for non-white, non-male readers to feel represented in comics in general.
Knowledge of these types of comics and how to use them needs to be more widespread,
for example through teacher education or teacher networks. Furthermore, teachers need to
be able to devote more time to these types of discussions in the classroom, and remember
that using the stereotypes displayed in comics, humorous though they may be, could further
enforce harmful stereotypes rather than critique them. Used with enough time and proper
care, comics could be used as a progressive take on gender roles, to discuss norm critique in
the classroom as part of the ongoing work to combat gender patterns through comics' poten-
tial as a multimodal medium to open up different ways of thinking, illustrating and disrupting
our social world.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers, as well as colleagues, who helped us
mould this paper into the product it has become, and of course the teacher and pupils that
partook in the study.
F U N D I N G I N F O R M AT I O N
The researchers received no additional funding for the study.
C O N F L I C T O F I N T E R E S T S TAT E M E N T
There is no conflict of interest to report for this study.
D ATA AVA I L A B I L I T Y S TAT E M E N T

There is no available data from this project.
E T H I C S A P P R O VA L S TAT E M E N T
All the participants, as well as the guardians of students, have given written and oral consent
to the participation. The study has been done in accordance with the guidelines for ethical
research given by the Swedish Ethical Review Board (see also https://www.vr.se/english/
applying-for-funding/requirements-terms-and-conditions/conducting-ethical-research.html).
ORCID
Lars Wallner https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6922-4294
Robert Aman https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2387-1883
TWITTER
Lars Wallner @LarsWallner
Robert Aman @RobertGAman
ENDNOTE
1
Pictures from most comics discussed by the students have not been included here as we do not have the rights
to share them and displaying them has not been deemed relevant for the analysis of the interaction.
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How to cite this article: Wallner, L., & Aman, R. (2023). Muscular superheroes and
girly ducks: Gender talk using comics in the classroom. British Educational Research
Journal, 00, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3866
18 WALLNER and AMAN
A P P E N D I X A . TRANSCRIPTION CONVENTIONS (AFTER JEFFERSON, 2004)
(X.X) Indicates hearable pause of X.X seconds

x (in speaker column) Indicates several simultaneous speakers
? (in speaker column) Indicates unknown speaker
? Indicates rising intonation
Indicates falling intonation
, Indicates continuing intonation
(()) Embeds description of non-verbal activity as well as author's comments
[] Indicates beginning and end of speech overlapping with previous turn
(guess) Indicates author's guess of what is being said in unclear speech
underlined Indicates emphasis of word or syllable
: Indicates prolongation of the preceding sound
- Indicates sudden stop in speech
CAPITAL LETTERS Indicates talk louder than surrounding talk
°° Embeds talk quieter or softer than surrounding talk
>< Embeds talk produced faster than surrounding talk
<> Embeds talk produced slower than surrounding talk
.h Indicates hearable inhalation
h. Indicates hearable exhalation

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Received: 24 March 2022 Accepted: 27 February 2023

Muscular superheroes and girly ducks: Gender

Lars Wallner1 | Robert Aman2

Br Educ Res J. 2023;00:1–18. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/berj 1

What is the main issue that the paper addresses?

What are the main insights that the paper provides?

… reading strategies to understand, interpret and analyse texts from different

Aims and purpose

Gender and norms

Studies on gender and comics in education

METHODOLOGY AND PARTICIPANTS

Analysing ongoing classroom practice

To investigate interactional aspects such as intonation, repetition of phrases and words,

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Acting the part—Establishing a gender binary

F I G U R E 1 Participants during whole-class introduction.

The Zits comic strip displays a humorous depiction of a stereotypical heteronormative

Superheroes vs superheroines—Active agents and sexualised objects

D ATA AVA I L A B I L I T Y S TAT E M E N T

A P P E N D I X A . TRANSCRIPTION CONVENTIONS (AFTER JEFFERSON, 2004)

(X.X) Indicates hearable pause of X.X seconds

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