In Progress

Each issue of the 2019 Marvel Fearless featured three stories by women writers and artists about women characters. Critics assumed it was a heavy-handed message of female empowerment, with a side of male-bashing, undermined by gender stereotypes. The series, however, proved to be a showcase of women’s talent with stories about not only empowerment, but also of tolerance and self-acceptance. This chapter examines how Fearless demonstrated that the women of Marvel are strong characters (and creators), not just strong women, and that a good story does not have to be apolitical.

By considering how, and if, artistic renderings of Bob Dylan songs by Dylan and others engage movement, musical symbols and icons, and inter or intra-panel rhythms, this chapter argues that graphic narrative depictions of Dylan’s songs are not merely representations and re-presentations of the lyrics, but that they are effectively musical covers of classic Dylan tunes, wherein music imagery engages readers on multiple cognitive levels, reinterpreting and remixing songs’ meanings and sounds for different times, audiences, aesthetic tastes, and rhetorical purpose.

This chapter looks at the Cló Mhaigh Eo comicí Gráinne Mhaol (‘Grace O’Malley’) about the legendary pirate queen of 16th-century Ireland. Like Ireland’s comic industry, women’s place in Irish history was long neglected and O’Malley’s story is found mostly in English annals. Gráinne Mhaol can thus be read as a reclamation of Ireland’s heritage through its Irish language, women’s history through its subject matter, and improved gender representation in comics through its heroine and lead creator. With attention to how O’Malley is represented, analysis focuses on the mise en scène.

This chapter considers hermeneutic images and visual motifs of violence and death in comics from and about World War I. Focusing on graphic narratives from the United Kingdom and British Commonwealth, the chapter examines, compares, and contrasts primary graphic accounts created by soldiers during the Great War, secondary graphic accounts created through interpretations of historical research, and tertiary accounts that blend primary narratives with reimagined visuals premised on secondary sources. Building on distinctions of memory and post-memory of the war it considers how different proximities to violence shape portrayals of violence.

Comics creator Will Eisner capitalized on the commercial demand for comic books by creating a comic book supplement for Sunday newspapers, in cooperation with the Tribune Syndicate and Quality Comics, introducting  The supplement appeared as a sixteen-page booklet with an eight-page lead feature story of Eisner’s The Spirit and two four-page secondary stories, in which appeared one of the first costumed female heroes of comics: Lady Luck. The Spirit was not only served as a model for the superhero tradition but as a transitional space for America’s entrance into World War II. This chapter, accordingly, argues that Lady Luck was a precursor to, and ready model for, the changing roles of women that emerged during World War II and that her vigilantism marked a Depression-era rejection of upper-class values.

Captain America, appearing in 1941, is the personification of patriotism with a strong moral code – a hero born from the apparent clarity of purpose of World War II. The Punisher, appearing in 1974, is traumatized killer, broken by the failings of his government – a disturbed figure born from the violence and anxieties surrounding America’s involvement in Vietnam. More than just representative of the wars that inspired them, they embody the U.S. public’s ambivalence for military veterans, who are caught between misplaced hero worship and social stigmatization. This chapter examines key storylines of national identity, war, and civil-military relations for Captain America and the Punisher to discuss what the figure of the militarized superhero reveals about veterans’ place in the U.S.

Just as the Dark Knight cinema trilogy epitomizes the influence of post-9/11 symbolism and conflicts of the era of terror on the Batman franchise, the 35-issue “Fear State” event is emblematic of the post-truth era’s influence in the Batman universe, as the concerns of COVID, conspiracies, coups, and killings, confront and confound the Caped Crusader. In crises and catastrophes, the promulgation of fear is seen as a necessary means of prompting people to act for the protection of the wellbeing of society – though it also serves to increase the power of the political actors who can leverage cultural phobias. This is the idea at the heart of DC Comics’ 2021 Batman crossover event, “Fear State,” in which the villainous Scarecrow tests his “Fear State Theory” on a traumatized Gotham City, in a story arc that reflects real-world crises of the 2020s in the trappings of Gotham.

In 1960, John F. Kennedy called upon youthful Americans to blaze trails into “a new frontier,” charting space, solving war, conquering prejudice, and resolving poverty. This is the frontier of television’s 1965-1966 The Loner. Written and created by Twilight Zone visionary Rod Serling as a “mature” Western series, The Loner featured Lloyd Bridges as William Colton, an ex-Cavalry officer who survived the American Civil War and “traveled West” with “a dedication to a new chapter in American history.” His journey was more philosophical than physical, a dialogue, rather than gunfire, heavy morality tale that invited viewers to confront the futility of war, post-traumatic stress, disability, racism, immigration, and alienation: challenges of Kennedy’s New Frontier more than those of the mythical Wild Frontier.

Since her original appearance in 1966 as a murderous mantrap with a plant motif, Poison Ivy has been alternatively positioned as a traditional villain in Batman’s Rogues Gallery, a vindictive spurned woman, tragically and criminally insane, an egomaniacal terrorist, a criminal mastermind, an anti-hero, a victim of abuse, a vigilante, and a mad scientist. As a villain, Ivy is a femme fatale in the Poisonous Damsel tradition and her character has become synonymous with ecoterrorism. But when considered in broader socio-political and cultural contexts, she is so much more. his essay explores the history of Poison Ivy within the Batman Universe, with particular attention to her characterization in Cycle of Life and Death and DC Comics’ Bombshells, to discuss her development from forgettable rogue to hypersexualized femme fatale.

With a focus on images created between 2015 and 2020, this article approaches the use of metaphor and allusion in political satire according to the interaction view of metaphor developed by philosopher Max Black (1977) and the concept of domestication offered by Erving Goffman (1979) to argue that the meaning attached to Dark Side allusions in political cartoons is dependent on not only the audience’s familiarity with and knowledge of Star Wars canon, but also on its particular relationship with the franchise and individual characters – recognizing that familiarity may breed complacency.

The year 1975 marked the beginning of the United Nations Decade for Women. During the early years of the Decade, Wonder Woman was unofficially, but notably, affiliated with the United Nations through a series of stories in which Diana Prince served as a troubleshooter and then publicist for the organization. This essay considers Wonder Woman’s early association with the United Nations relative to its Decade for Women and to the U.N.’s pursuit of two concepts of sovereignty - judicial equality and nonintervention between states, and the rights of citizens within states and international responsibilities to those citizens – to suggest that Wonder Woman has an important, if troubled, history as a political figure and as a political leader.

Though it has been argued that the 007 films were, in comparison to the Ian Fleming novels, deliberately depoliticized and distanced from their Cold War origins, this essay argues that the movies’ engagement with religious locations grounds the franchise in Cold War, and “New Cold War,” politics. Using metaphorical criticism, analysis focuses on action sequences in religious spaces, such as those mentioned previously, to explore how the 007 cinematic franchise both participated in and responded to the propagandizing of religion in opposition to communist, and other, international threats. The metaphors surrounding the religious places in the films make statements about public and private religion and about political conflicts involving not only communism but also theocracy and race relations.

Syncretic mother worship is evident in Spider-Man comics, which engage various forms of divine motherhood to support and advance Spider-Man’s story, moral development, and spiritual journey. With Peter Parker’s own mother bearing the name of Mary, and repeated appearances of the crucifix and the church, Spider-Man comics develop their own kind of mariamic mother worship. Three maternal villains, in particular - Shriek, Shathra, and Ero - embody the transformative character of the sacred feminine. Through his interactions with them, Spider-Man embraces his dual-nature of being both supernatural and human (his incarnation). He submits to his destiny of being part of something greater than himself (his passion). And he dies and is reborn, facing the doubts of a skeptical world, as he fights for the lives, if not the souls, of his family (his resurrection).