*3.2.1 Creating the superhero images*

Starting with a blank slate, a diverse (African American, Mexican, Mexican American, White, Japanese American, male, female, gay, and heterosexual) 12-member student research team began developing images. All students (one graduate, 11 undergraduates) were active consumers of the comic superhero genre. After deciding to develop images of American Indian, Arab Muslim, White, Latino, African American, and Asian American male images, the team first developed a generic athletic body image as a base that would be applied to each figure. The team then developed what they perceived to be a generic hero costume that they would apply to each figure. The key element was to create heroes that were unique as to not resemble current mainstream comic book heroes. This was to avoid biases in the attributions within the study. Team members with artistic skills then developed a generic head shape with a blank face, followed by adding eyes, eyebrows, nose, and lips, each of which were tweaked to reflect a recognizable racial face image, with traits based on images of real people of these backgrounds, as well as existing comic/media depictions. As the team developed each figure, the images were shared with fellow students and in classrooms. The images were returned to the team with feedback and redrawn, then reshared with other students for feedback. In an iterative process that took over one full academic year, these six images were finalized (see Appendix C, **Figures 1C**–**6C**).
