Finding the Lost Light: The Performance of Myth in <i>Transformers</i> Comic Books

Abstract As worldbuilding becomes more and more popular in both popular and academic discourse, folklorists have an opportunity to bring the methods and perspectives of the discipline to a wider audience. This paper explores invented folklore in a fictional context: performances of a creation myth in a Transformers comic book. I delineate two types of fictional mythologies while exploring how genre fiction allows for the invention of other-than-human folklore, facilitated by the affordance of the comic book form.