“…This collection focuses on the often-overlooked role of sidekicks across time and genre. In the opening essay, the editors make a case for taking a closer look at these secondary characters and their role in storytelling, asking “Who gets to speak? Who gets to listen? Who tells the story, and whose story gets told along the way?” The authors of the four Critical Contexts and eleven Critical Readings essays explore these questions across a wide range of genres and media, from the evolution of siblings as sidekicks in contemporary Disney films to the “tragic sidekick” in the novels of George R. R. Martin. Other essays investigate the trend of adult-male player-characters who are responsible for protecting child sidekicks through the lenses of game studies and feminist media scholarship and consider the ways the video game medium reshapes the sidekick archetype..."