Coining the term "fractal narrative," this dissertation examines the complex storytelling structure that is particular to contemporary American superhero comics. Whereas other mediums most often require narrative to function as self-contained and linear, individual superhero comics exist within a vast and intricate continuity that is composed of an indeterminate number of intersecting threads. Identical to fractals, the complex geometry of the narrative structure found in superhero comics when taken as a whole is constructed by the perpetual iteration of a single motif that was established at the genre's point of origin in Action Comics #1. The first appearance of Superman institutes all of the features and rhetorical elements that define the genre, but it also encodes the entire genre with the specific ideology of The New Deal era.
In order to examine this fractal narrative structure, this dissertation traces its historical development over the last seven decades and offers a close reading Marvel Comics' 2006 cross-over event, Civil War.