What Is Spider-Man's Real Name? Marvel Comics as Fictional Journalism

We develop and defend a novel interpretation of mainstream Marvel Comics - an interpretation we call the Fictional Journalism Interpretation. We then show how this interpretation of Marvel comics (i) challenges standard accounts of the manner in which fictional truths are generated by fictions and (ii) provides us with novel, interesting, and in some cases simpler explanations of, and understandings of, phenomena within these comics that are hard to deal with adequately on more traditional accounts, including both contradictions in the fiction and various metafictional storytelling strategies. We conclude by defending the view from a number of objections.