Ryan Gorcey: Connecting People Through Storytelling
Pop Culture IP
From his upcoming book on the Arthurian roots of comic book superheroes to his work researching and assessing the value of Hollywood memorabilia for Julien's Auctions to spec work on theme park design, Ryan is intimately familiar with a wide range of pop culture intellectual properties.
Scholarship
Before "Avengers: Endgame," before the DCEU, before comic book superheroes became billion-dollar box office stars, they were inspired by stories three millennia old. But how did we get from Samson, Hercules, King David, Gilgamesh, and Achilles to Superman, Captain America, Iron Man, and the Green Lantern? The answer can be found in a hero who emerged in sub-Roman Britain.
The Arthurian Roots of Modern Super Heroes
The same week "Iron Man" premiered in theaters across the United States in 2008, I turned in my honors thesis at Berkeley, 189 pages arguing that the first example of the class of characters we know today as superheroes was, in fact, none other than King Arthur.
An avid comic book reader in my youth, I've also had a lifelong obsession with Arthuriana. I'd always known there was some connection, but it took the study of this manuscript during my sophomore year at Berkeley to discover what that was: In their means of transmission, their modes of production, their literary evolution, their themes and their inventions, the stories of King Arthur are the literary missing link between ancient heroes—King David, Gilgamesh, Hercules, Samson, Alexander the Great—and the panoply of super-powered heroes that emerged in the mid-20th century: Captain America, Superman, the X-Men, Spider-Man, Thor, the Flash, the Green Lantern and more.
At the time, I was cautioned not to go into comic book scholarship, because there was no future in it, so I stuck to my lifelong plan of becoming a sportswriter. In the 16 years since, a robust community of fellow travelers has blossomed, and in early 2024, I was urged by several of their number to join them. Having been recently laid off, I balanced my job search with what I thought would be a simple matter of editing and submitting my thesis.
I wound up embarking on a major overhaul. Among other edits, I intentionally made it more expansive and inclusive. I deepened my investigation into how the trope of outsidership has expanded from comics' earliest incarnations to include the wonderful spectrum of race, creed, gender identities, and sexualities that have found on-page expression in the past decade as comics and their creators increasingly represent their diverse readers.
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As the book is now being developed under McFarland Publishing, you may read sample chapters at the link below, while the full book moves toward production.
In 2021, as part of an evaluation process for a theme park design group, Ryan was asked to ideate the E-ticket ride at the center of a new, Lord of the Rings-themed land, in a 1,500-word proposal.
Ryan wrote the 1,500-word treatment not just about the ride, but the entire land, including its in-universe history and how its architecture, environment and even plant life would tell an immersive story (drawing from Disneyland's Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge and the Gotham City Backlot at Six Flags Magic Mountain). He packaged that with a vectorized hand-drawn conceptual map of the land and the activations and other attractions within it.
As I stood with my mouth agape, staring at the multicolored lights dancing across the ceiling of Savi’s Workshop, I knew that what I was experiencing was engineered (or, Imagineered). I knew that Frank Oz’s disembodied voice, the musical cues, and the very room I was standing in were meticulously designed, market tested and curated to elicit specific, powerful emotions. Nevertheless, the feeling I experienced as I ignited my lightsaber was nothing short of magical. This was the stuff of dreams that gave chills even to a jaded longtime journalist, and I knew I wanted to be a part of it.