[Commlist] New Book—Reboot Culture: Comics, Film, Transmedia

Since the release of Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins in 2005, there 
has been a pronounced surge in alternative uses of the computer term 
‘reboot,’ a surge that has witnessed the term deployed in new contexts 
and new signifying practices, involving politics, fashion, sex, nature, 
sport, business, and media. As a narrative concept, however, reboot 
terminology remains widely misused, misunderstood, and misinterpreted 
across popular, journalistic, and academic discourses, being recklessly 
and relentlessly solicited as a way to describe a broad range of 
narrative operations and contradictory groupings, including prequels, 
sequels, adaptations, revivals, re-launches, generic ‘refreshes,’ and 
enactments of retroactive continuity.

Adopting an inter-disciplinary approach that fuses cultural studies, 
media archaeology, and discursive approaches, this book challenges 
existing scholarship on the topic by providing new frameworks and 
taxonomies that illustrate key differences between reboots and other 
‘strategies of regeneration,’ helping to spotlight the various ways in 
which the culture industries mine their intellectual properties in 
distinct and novel ways to present them anew. /Reboot Culture: Comics, 
Film, Transmedia/ is the first academic study to critically explore and 
interrogate the reboot phenomenon as it emerged historically to describe 
superhero comics that sought to jettison existing narrative continuity 
in order to ‘begin again’ from scratch.

“William Proctor interrogates reboot culture like he’s leading a 
courtroom drama: marshalling evidence, challenging assumptions and 
exposing the careless thinking of previous work (including my own) 
through a series of fascinating case studies. […] Passionate, 
provocative and pedantic, this book provides an invigorating experience 
and a fierce, focused argument that should inspire media students and 
set a spark to scholarly debate.” ― *Will Brooker*, Professor of Film 
and Cultural Studies, Kingston University, London


“A very enjoyable, readable ride on the history of film and comic 
reboots from an engaging academic perspective, including related 
phenomena like retconning, re-launches, spin-offs, and more.” ― *Mark J. 
P. Wolf*, Professor in the Communication Department at Concordia 
University, Wisconsin


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