Discovering Doom: approaches to measuring transmedia characteristics

The way that a fictional entity behaves within a storyworld is a fundamental aspect of their transmedia existence, but there is little to no agreement on how this can be assessed or measured. This paper will compare several different approaches, using transmedia appearances of Doctor Doom in a sample of 69 texts during “The Marvel Age” (1962 to 1987) as a case study. These will include:
· A survey of 225 superhero and comics fans
· A psycholexical analysis of character descriptions within the texts themselves
· A psychological approach using a shortened version of The Big Five Index
· A statistical analysis of textual motivations
The results of each approach will be compared in an attempt to discover which, if any, can produce a reliable means of assessing the behavioural characteristics of transmedia entities. Building on the secondary texts listed below, I hope to offer a fresh perspective to the 'statistical turn' in comics studies, by examining the use of fan audiences to inform quantitative research methods.