Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: Youth, Race, and the Hypertext

Exploring the dynamic genres of animation and comic book films, this book examines the transmedia role of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and its critical involvement in attempts to diversify representations in youth-oriented cinema and culture. Five years after the movie’s immense commercial and critical success, this book looks back on the innovative features of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018). The film’s force derives from how it uses the story of its young, ‘emerging’ Afro-Latino superhero to openly engage with a web of pressing topics in the field: transmedia storytelling, identity formation, race relations and minority representation. By offering an accessible analysis of the film’s hypertextual design and animation techniques, the book reflects on how it approaches the combustible dynamics of racial representation in contemporary American youth culture. Written in an approachable style, this book is suitable for undergraduates, postgraduates and specialists in the field. The book is a versatile resource for media studies, film studies, animation studies and cultural studies courses, but will also appeal to fans seeking to investigate the thematic underbelly of Into the Spider-verse.