Sovereignty and Superheroes 9780719085048

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Sovereignty and superheroes

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Sovereignty and superheroes NEAL CURTIS

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Neal Curtis 2016 The right of Neal Curtis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 978 0 7190 8504 8 hardback First published 2016 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by Out of House Publishing

For Noah and Amber, my secret powers

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Contents

Acknowledgements

ix

Introduction: sovereignty and superheroes

1

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Legitimacy and the Good Defending freedom Law and violence Friend and enemy Emergency and bare life Symbolic authority and kinship Sovereignty at the limit

11 34 58 82 104 128 153

Postscript

179

Bibliography Index

183 197

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Acknowledgements

This project emerged out of a desire to start up a course on comics in the Department of Cultural Studies and Critical Theory (now Culture, Film and Media) at the University of Nottingham. My colleague at the time, and the person to whom this project is therefore primarily indebted was Tracey Potts. Together we shared an interest in critical theory, popular culture and most importantly comics, and were looking for ways to introduce into the university environment forms of popular culture that were marginalised and yet so clearly deserved attention. Fortunately, once I embarked on this book project my comics shop at the time, Page 45 (which is not only the best shop in the UK, but the best shop in Sector 2814) directed me to a host of superhero stories that resonated with the theoretical readings around sovereignty that I was then studying. With the careful and expert guidance of Jonathan Rigby, Stephen Holland and Dominique Kidd my growing interest in superheroes became a book proposal and soon after that, thanks to the work of Tony Mason at Manchester University Press, it became a book contract. With the help of others who slowly revealed themselves to be superhero readers – people like Chris Gardiner and Steven Sheil – I was able to navigate my way around the huge imaginative universes I was now committed to exploring. In the end, this was enabled by the award of an Arts & Humanities Research Council research fellowship, and so I am thankful to that institution for seeing the same value in superheroes and their stories that I saw. I also moved myself and my family to the other side of the world not too long after. I now live in Auckland, New Zealand. I must therefore thank my wife Amber and my son Noah for helping me continue this project while we tried to build a life and team up with new people on the other side of the planet. I should also thank my colleagues in Media, Film and Television at the University of Auckland for being incredibly supportive and for having to listen to me ‘banging on’ about superheroes for three years. I should also mention Stu and Sue Colson at Heroes for Sale who now keep me up to speed. A word of thanks must also go to my students who have helped me refine the comics course

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Acknowledgements

I now teach, but I would like to reserve the final thank you to all the creators involved in the ongoing development of superhero universes who use the genre to challenge prejudice and bigotry and offer us a brave and bold vision for how great we might become.

Introduction: sovereignty and superheroes

Stories of the super-powered beings we have come to call superheroes have now been written for over seventy-five years. In that time, vibrantly colourful tales of hope, courage and the search for justice have adorned the pages of innumerable comics that have filled countless shelves of news-stands and bookshops. Regularly derided and marginalised, these stories have nevertheless come to be one of the most dominant popular art forms. Supported by their ability to leap from the pages of comics into the cathode ray tube of the television and onto the silver screen of the cinema, a significant number of these characters are now household names. From T-shirts to pyjamas, colouring books to Lego, lunch boxes to duvet covers, superheroes are ubiquitous. However, this comfortable familiarity is said to hide an unpleasant secret. Despite the numerous characters and titles, and the variety of writers and artists that has developed these stories over the years, as well as the growing number of academic studies that take the comics seriously – such as Will Brooker’s Batman Unmasked (2005) and Hunting the Dark Knight (2012); Adilifu Nama’s Super Black (2011); Angela Ndalianis’s The Contemporary Comic Book Superhero (2009); Matthew J. Costello’s Secret Identity Crisis (2009); Ben Saunders’s Do the Gods Wear Capes? (2011); or Jason Dittmer’s Captain America and the Nationalist Superhero (2013) – superheroes are still blighted by the accepted view they are either dumb conservatives that blindly support the status quo or anti-social vigilantes with little respect for democratic institutions; loners that get the job done by any means necessary and thereby satisfy our darkest fantasies for violent retribution and control. Although there are stories that support such a claim, this is only a partial view. To address this I would like, first of all, to argue that we can arrive at a more rounded understanding of superheroes if we read them as meditations on the problematic concept of sovereignty. This offers a coherent framework with which to analyse a variety of themes that appear in superhero comics, not least the problems of law, order and violence. Secondly, studying superheroes in terms of sovereignty will enable us to see how these characters represent very complex and nuanced considerations of a range of other related issues,

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such as legitimacy, authority, kinship and community, the enemy and emergency powers, and that contrary to received opinion superhero comics regularly offer challenging and politically progressive treatments of them. Finally, I  will argue that these progressive possibilities are rooted in a fundamental intuition presented in superhero comics regarding the contradictory nature of sovereignty. Essential to the grammar and syntax of superhero comics is the idea of a struggle between all-powerful defenders of the worlds we build and an array of all-consuming villains and monsters that threaten total annihilation. As neither of these opposing principles can ever be finally defeated, sovereignty is split between the forces of productive order and those of entropy. This never-ending struggle certainly makes Marvel and DC Comics plenty of money, but to reduce this problem to commercial exploitation seriously misses the point. Put another way, this contradictory sovereignty might also be seen in the problematic nature of a superhero’s powers. As a character like Superman has developed, he has become increasingly powerful only for the writers to find it necessary to introduce elements that diminish him in some way. Again, this might be understood in narrative terms as an attempt to generate moments of drama, but it is also a conceptual problem because untold power spells the end of everything. In the presence of the absolute, nothing can happen. Importantly, then, at the moment when a hero becomes all-powerful – a trait that has had a very long association with sovereignty – something nihilating and abyssal seems to ride alongside. This is, then, a problem that ripples out in concentric circles, unsettling a number of other seemingly stable concepts like the supposedly pacific nature of the law, the firm foundations that are said to underpin authority, or the easily definable enemy that threatens to destroy or at least corrupt the community or kinship structure the sovereign defends. Before moving on to these issues, however, it will be helpful to say a little more about how we ordinarily define both the superhero and the sovereign. There have been numerous debates regarding definitions of what a superhero is or who qualifies as a superhero. The fact that a character such as The Phantom – the first costumed crime fighter, who premiered in 1936 – does not count is supposedly because he failed to sufficiently break the mould of the adventuring detective heroes that had gone before. However, were he to appear today in either the pages of a DC or Marvel title it is quite likely he would be welcomed in and unproblematically incorporated into their pantheons of superheroes. To understand this, it is possible to adapt Josef Witek’s (2009) criticism of attempts to define comics in general and argue that rather than any essential trait it is simply a matter of reading conventions or protocols. Just as Witek argues that reading something as a comic makes it a comic, it might be said that seeing someone as a superhero makes them a superhero. However, while there are characters that have gained the tag of superhero or super-villain simply because they exist in a superhero universe this is not entirely satisfying.

Introduction

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In attempting a definition, the most widely accepted one is Peter Coogan’s (2006) argument that to be a superhero a character must have the following three attributes: powers; a sense of his or her mission; and they must outwardly display an identity. Although these may not be sufficient to contain every character, they are certainly necessary. It would be hard to find a popular character that doesn’t have all three. Of course, there are major superheroes who don’t have super-powers as such. Batman and Iron Man, for example do not have powers like other heroes and yet their athleticism and powers of deduction in the case of Batman, or scientific genius in the case of Iron Man do make them super-human. So, even when contemporary innovations within the genre offer a very reflexive take on these principles and the overall concept of the superhero, powers, mission and identity remain crucial to the new character. For example, when Mark Waid created The Plutonian for his comic Irredeemable (Waid and Krause, 2009) these principles were carefully followed. However, while The Plutonian has a clearly identifiable costumed identity and has powers way beyond those of any normal man – in fact way beyond any state, as is shown in volume 1, when the United Nations (UN) is compelled to submit to him – the twist on the concept is that his mission switches from one of protection to destruction. Unlike Superman, he cannot deal with either the adulation or more importantly the criticism that follow his actions, and in a radical shift – the point where the story starts – he turns on those he used to protect and starts a campaign of global, mass killing. The story of The Plutonian also immediately suggests how superheroes lend themselves to a consideration of sovereignty, the modern conception of which can be traced back to the work of Jean Bodin whose Les Six livres de la république (Six Books of the Commonwealth) first appeared in 1576. For many political commentators, it is Bodin’s thesis that remains essential for our understanding of the concept today. In this thesis, what Bodin called the ‘attributes (marques, nota)’ (1992: 46) of the sovereign included amongst other capacities and privileges the power to give laws to all and demand an oath of submission from all subjects (56); the right to wage war and make peace (59); to act as the final appeal in matters of justice (67); to have power over the right to grant pardons (73) and therefore power over life and death; and the right to reprisals (85). With superheroes being physically powerful enough to enforce submission to their will, it is clear to see how the concept of the superhero relates to the sovereign rights pertaining to war, peace, justice and especially reprisal. For Bodin, the sovereign (or the sovereign prince) is the ‘earthly image’ of God, meaning ‘there is nothing greater on earth’ (46). As far as superhero comics are concerned, the example of The Plutonian already shows us that this quasi-divine status is a staple within their pages. For Bodin, however, what is important is that the sovereign’s greatness isn’t simply a case of being

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the strongest or having a monopoly on violence in a given territory, as Weber defined twentieth-century sovereignty, it is also about having the legitimacy to possess that strength  –  something The Plutonian immediately loses once his ‘mission’ changes from protection to destruction. As the image of God, the sovereign represents something transcendent and it is the sovereign’s relation to this transcendent element that provides his or her legitimacy. In the opening two chapters, I consider this issue of legitimacy and how it relates to the two most authoritative characters in their respective universes, Superman and Captain America. Within traditional theories of sovereignty, this moment of transcendence is supposed to signal something about the continuity and permanence of the monarch, while also reproducing the idea that the world has a hierarchical order and everyone has their place within that hierarchy. This element of transcendence is evident in both Superman and Captain America. Their inequivalence sets them at odds with the idea of equality, upon which the more recent democratic sovereignty rests and yet they also represent the moral worth of that system.1 This apparent inconsistency is overcome if we take a different view of what their transcendence might mean. In the best stories involving these two characters, their transcendence doesn’t signify a fixed order but highlights something transitive and transformational. Such stories always contain their directing us to something beyond the current state of affairs, which means that they are not as conservative as they are regularly declared to be. In fact, I argue that their legitimacy stems from an interpretation of transcendence that actually demands movement and transformation. They don’t simply stand over and legitimise the world as it is, but call on us to change it. This is a reading that draws a lineage from contemporary storytelling all the way back to the first issue of Action Comics in 1938, when Superman was introduced as an agent of social change. To return to Bodin for a moment, the problem in the sixteenth century was the need to articulate the essential nature of sovereignty in the light of different forms of government that might be said to be legitimate (monarchy, aristocracy, democracy). Under such forms of government, the capacity to decide, decree and ordain might be delegated to a specific class of representatives, but the sovereignty that gives legitimacy to such delegation, Bodin argued, is not something that can be transferred. Sovereignty is absolute, perpetual and without limit. It is ‘the highest power of command’ (1992:  1), meaning ‘persons who are sovereign must not be subject in any way to the commands of someone else and must be able to give the law to subjects’ (11). In a democracy, of course, this would mean that once the representatives have been elected, they do not need to return to the people for each law they enact, and, while superhero comics are imbued with the legitimacy assumed by democracy, there are numerous characters that are sovereign in a manner much more in keeping with monarchy. From the rulers of Atlantis, Marvel’s Prince Namor or DC’s Aquaman, to the king

Introduction

5

of Wakanda, T’Challa, these stories are packed full of sovereigns: Black Bolt is king of the Inhumans; Doctor Doom is the dictator who rules Latveria; Odin, the All-Father, rules Asgaard; the X-Men’s one-time leader, Storm is an African goddess, who has been queen of Wakanda; Mole Man is the ruler of Subterranea; Wonder Woman is an Amazonian princess; and, amongst many others, in one Flash story we are even introduced to Katmos, an alien ‘conqueror from 8 million BC’ (Broome and Infantino, 1959: 1). The presence of monarchs, rulers and dictators in superhero comics also requires a qualification regarding the approach taken in this book and how it relates to other scholarly works on superheroes. The presence of so many rulers and their territories suggests that these comics can be read via a geo-political approach to sovereignty, and that superhero comics can help us think about our conception of space, place, community, nation and belonging and how these relate to conceptions of the law.2 Amongst these geo-political studies is Matthew J. Costello’s excellent account of the development of some of Marvel’s major heroes alongside the changes that took place in US foreign policy from the Second World War to the war on terror. It also raises important questions about the use of force, the nature of authority and the police function of the sovereign. Costello’s project is also very close to another important geo-political study, namely Jason Dittmer’s (2013). In much the same way that Costello presents comics not simply as a reflection of policy but an integral part of a complex sense-making process, Dittmer argues that superhero comics need to be ‘recognized as a discourse through which the world becomes understandable’ (2; italics in original). He later makes the absolutely crucial observation that because ‘geo-political orders are themselves stories that we variously tell or to which we listen’ (124), the s­ uperhero comics that directly address issues of national identity and belonging automatically become part of that narrative fabric. To set these ‘fictions’ apart from the ‘real world’ is therefore quite artificial. A central aspect of my own study, therefore, is to show how rather than simply being read as allegorical r­ epresentations of real world issues, the comics themselves make a direct contribution to the culture from which they arise, and that in a very important way they make their own contribution to how we might understand the contradiction of sovereignty. Instead of a geo-political approach, then, this study takes a more philosophical view of sovereignty as a constellation of concepts beginning with studies of legitimacy in Chapters 1 and 2. It then moves on to the relationship between law and violence in Chapter 3; the friend and enemy distinction in Chapter 4; emergency powers in Chapter 5; symbolic authority and kinship in Chapter 6; and the problematic conception of the absolute in Chapter  7. Much like the approach to superhero comics taken by Adilifu Nama, who views ‘the meaning of any pop-cultural commodity, image, figure, or representation as not being fixed or automatically evident as it first appears’ (2011: 5), I offer a textual analysis

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to show how this constellation of concepts relating to sovereignty are essential for understanding the superhero mythos, and that rather than being unthinking celebrations of authority and order the comics regularly destabilise any simple or unqualified claim about the goodness of these sovereign prerogatives. Once these concepts are traced across a number of titles and historical periods, the idea that superheroes are simply fascist thugs who enforce the law according to their own brand of justice becomes far more difficult to maintain. For instance, when I first read Batman stories, it became clear that he wasn’t simply a justification of the need for extra-legal violence but often represented the ambiguous realm of the law’s own violence. That is, the stories seemed to be exploring the violence that is integral to the law itself. For Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence, he would no doubt be the superhero that exemplifies how these stories ‘bypass the restraints of law’ (2003: 35), and yet it became clear that in a number of stories something much more challenging was taking place. The charge of vigilantism is found in all manner of media discussions and remains prevalent in much of the scholarly writings. Lawrence and Jewett’s central concern, for example, is why ‘do we so often relish depictions of impotent democratic institutions that can be rescued only by extra-legal superheroes?’ (2002: 7–8), and yet while I would not claim that this question is unjustified – you only need to pick up certain superhero comics to find this rather crude approach to justice being celebrated  – persisting with this reading completely fails to explain adequately the superhero’s relationship to the law, which only comes to light when seen against the backdrop of the sovereign’s own relationship to violence. Scholars such as Chris Gavaler have done us a great service by tracing the lineage of extra-legal violence back to the type of vigilantism celebrated in the racist literature associated with the Ku Klux Klan. He writes as follows: ‘The superhero, despite the character’s evolution into a champion of the oppressed, originated from an oppressive, racist impulse in American culture, and the formula codifies an ethics of vigilante extremism that still contradicts the superhero’s social mission’ (2013: 192). While this excellent article is an important reminder of where the politics of extra-legal violence leads, I  propose that it is only by understanding the nature of intra-legal violence that we can fully understand the concept of the superhero and assess its contribution to a critical understanding of sovereignty. To offer one brief example of how sovereignty is treated in superhero comics, Kingdom Come (Waid and Ross, 2008) is an “elseworlds” story (which means that it doesn’t take place in the regular, ongoing continuity of stories in the DC universe (DCU)), first published in 1996 and set two decades in the future on Earth 2 – the DCU is a multiverse of different parallel worlds. The story addresses a number of relevant issues and opens with Superman in self-imposed exile in the Fortress of Solitude, while a new generation of superheroes, or ‘metahumans’ as they are referred to, wreak havoc by fighting amongst themselves.

Introduction

7

Now under threat from their protectors, who are completely out of control, the human population is effectively helpless, although, as might be expected, a group led by Lex Luthor and known as the Mankind Liberation Front plans a fight back. The story is premised upon an interesting idea that Superman, the sovereign protector, was no longer deemed to be tough enough in the fight against non-sovereign violence and the forces of chaos, and that even greater violence was required in the face of a supposedly limitless threat. The events leading up to the beginning of the story include the death of The Joker at the hands of a new superhero called Magog, who is happy to go beyond the limits set by Superman and use indiscriminate and extreme violence in pursuit of ‘justice’. As a result, Superman exiles himself because the human population supported Magog’s actions rather than Superman’s attempt to challenge them. Seeing himself as having been abandoned, he withdraws from his duties as protector and concentrates on working on the farm to which he has now retired. The book then opens with Wonder Woman asking Superman to return after Magog’s methods, formerly cheered by a frightened public, have resulted in the death of a million people and the irradiation of the US ‘bread basket’ in pursuit of a small-time super-villain called Parasite. Immediately, this story presents us with the potentially dangerous consequences of an uncompromising pursuit of order in the face of what we see as the forces of chaos. Introducing a problem I will return to at length in Chapter 7, the malevolent threat from super-villains that seemingly required the exercise of power without limits creates a situation in which the exercise of that power brings about the devastation against which it was supposed to guard. The story is also interwoven with biblical visions of apocalypse. Mark Waid has a preacher named Norman McCay recite passages from the Book of Revelations, while also becoming the earthly host for the Spectre who has come to judge those responsible for the coming conflagration. As the story develops, Superman, having been persuaded to return and having reunited the Justice League, proceeds to round up and detain all the metahumans he now deems to be rogue in a purpose-built prison called the Gulag. As might be expected, though, in order to advance his own cause Lex Luthor is determined to unleash the hate the Gulag contains in order to bring the war to a head. In this project he has also conscripted (by brainwashing him) the only superhero capable of resisting Superman, namely Captain Marvel and sets this ‘soldier of chaos’ (Waid and Ross, 2008: 164) on a mission to destroy the prison. With Wonder Woman in an especially belligerent mood, declaring that ‘final, decisive action’ (138) is needed from the Justice League, she attempts to take control in order to ‘force peace’ (171). Once again, the pursuit of order in the face of a growing threat seems to be precipitating only further destruction. In the background, while the metahumans now fight with total abandon in a battle that shows no sign of ending, the UN decides to counter the threat they pose by using tactical nuclear warheads

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inside America. To contain the metahuman war that ‘threatens to spread forth and engulf the world’ (165), nuclear weapons are seen to be ‘mankind’s last hope’ (165; italics in original). From the humans’ perspective it is the metahumans who have now become the absolute evil they must test themselves against to the point of nuclear holocaust. When the first bomb is diverted and detonated high above the ground, by a redeemed Captain Marvel, the casualties are still massive, with nearly every single metahuman having been destroyed in the blast. In the end, this is a tragic vision of how our fear of chaos seemingly necessitates support for extreme action, which then requires even more extreme measures to deal with the chaos brought about by those actions, only for the entire cycle of defence against chaos and projected evil to end in near total destruction. As a result, enraged with the failings of everyone, Superman goes ‘berserk’, and sets off to take revenge on the UN. The only intervention comes from the preacher Norman McCay who intercedes by asking Superman to think about why people are so afraid of him. In so doing, he manages to literally talk Superman down who was making ready to rip the roof off the UN building. While this is a story in which Superman must confront the implications of his seemingly limitless power it is also a meditation on our projections of all consuming evil. From the humans who support the extreme Magog in their fight against villains, to Superman’s response to the threat of the ‘rogue’ metahumans, to the humans own response to the threat posed by each and every metahuman. At each point, the danger is escalated until it reaches all-consuming proportions, which in turn demand devastating actions in response. In his writings, Carl Schmitt, a philosopher of law who joined the Nazi Party in 1933 and was one of the foremost thinkers on the concept of sovereignty, regularly likened the sovereign to the New Testament figure of the restrainer or katechon (2006: 59), who is said to hold back the onset of apocalypse, but, as Heinrich Meier notes, in siding with the Nazis in the belief that they would restrain the onset of chaos Schmitt ended up being party to its precipitation. As Meier wryly points out, in such a situation ‘how can the restrainer be distinguished from the hastener’ (Meier, 1995: 82)? In the context of Kingdom Come this is a question that Waid now poignantly directs at both the humans seeking order and Superman who is the supposed protector of that order. In other words, this is far from a simplistic apology for the use of sovereign violence, and aside from the brilliance of its conception it is not exceptional within the genre. As for the stories I have written about here, in exploring the superhero multiverse I have limited myself primarily to a study of the regular Marvel and DC universes. I have included a few other “elseworld” stories and have occasionally dipped into the Marvel Ultimate universe – an alternative continuity that started in 2000 in order to give new readers a jumping on point and to open up new possibilities for story and character development.3 Where they are helpful I have

Introduction

9

also used stories from DC imprints such as Vertigo, Titan, America’s Best and Wildstorm, or other publishers such as Boom!, but I have remained for the most part in regular DC and Marvel continuity. This decision was primarily based on the popularity and importance of these universes, but it was also an attempt to draw some boundaries around the work, which could also have taken off into other national imaginaries and considered the global nature of the superhero concept as well as local, culturally specific interpretations. I have also, therefore, limited myself to comics rather than film or television. Although this is a somewhat artificial division – Will Brooker (2005), for example, has made a strong case for arguing that Batman might not have survived if it hadn’t been for the rise in popularity the character received on the back of the 1960s television series, and in the twenty-first-century superheroes should more readily be thought of as transmedia entities given their spread across all kinds of cultural artefacts, objects and forms – cinematic superheroes do require separate treatment and, I believe, raise another set of questions that would have made the project practically impossible. Even for studying just the comics, I should point out that this is not intended to be encyclopedic. The examples here only just begin to consider the very many stories that might have been relevant. I have notes on an array of issues and story arcs that are not included here, and trust the reader will be kind enough to understand why some events and characters might be missing. Having said that, any suggestions for good stories relevant to the topics discussed will always be gratefully received. If you would like to tell me about anything that I have missed, you can contact me on Twitter @nealcurtis. While I haven’t included all the stories I might have, I should say that the book does attempt to approach the relevant chapter topics through a number of different characters and stories. Although the first two chapters are devoted to two specific superheroes whose origins are essential to the argument, the remaining chapters broaden out to incorporate a variety of heroes and heroines. On some occasions the topic is best dealt with via a crossover event, or multi-title story that introduces a very wide range of characters. I have made every effort to guide the non-specialist reader through these very complex narratives. As the field of comics studies continues to grow and gain greater legitimacy within those institutions that consecrate literary and artistic works, the cultural importance of superheroes can only continue to rise. The work of the many superhero scholars presented here already shows why these comics need to be treated seriously and I hope that in a small way this book contributes to that demand. Perhaps running against the grain of common sense, these comics are worlds in which violence reigns supreme, but they also offer us numerous ways to challenge and question the basis of that violence and the grounds that supposedly make it legitimate. This is how superheroes can truly help us today.

Sovereignty and superheroes

10 Notes

1 In Earth X, America ‘was no longer the land where all men were created equal. Captain America’s very existence had changed that’ (Krueger and Leon, 2002: n.p.). 2 If we add to this the predominance of a concern with jurisdiction, especially in the DC universe (DCU) where Superman ‘rules’ Metropolis, Batman ‘rules’ Gotham and the Green Lantern and the Flash claim jurisdiction over Coast City and Central City respectively, a geo-political approach seems even more appropriate. The inversion of this would be the control of cities given to particular super-villains in their bid for world domination in volume three of Justice (Krueger, Ross and Braithwaite, 2007). 3 As this book was going to press the regular Marvel Universe and the Ultimate Universe had ceased with the beginning of the huge Secret Wars event.

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Legitimacy and the Good

In his introduction to the superhero genre, entitled Superman on the Couch, Danny Fingeroth notes how ‘the superhero – more than even the ordinary fictional hero – has to represent the values of the society that produces him. This means that what, say, Superman symbolises changes over time. In the 1950s, he may be hunting Commies. In the 1970s, he may have been clearing a framed peace activist against a corrupt judicial system’ (2005: 17). Aside from these cultural variations in which superheroes respond to ‘external’ changes in social attitudes, there have also been what might be called ‘internal’ changes, in which the very nature of the superhero has been revised. One of the most radical shifts in this regard is said to have taken place in the second half of the 1980s, when the genre as a whole was subject to a certain revisionism, making the comics more ‘adult-oriented’ in terms of content and subjecting them to significant ‘retcon’ (retroactive continuity) through which back stories were rewritten to permit new conceptual and narrative possibilities, while also creating new vehicles for commercial exploitation. Notable amongst these so-called mature revisions were Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns (discussed in Chapter 3) and Alan Moore’s Watchmen (discussed in Chapter 7). The point to make, however, is that although social attitudes have affected the evolution of the genre, it is not true that these changes were forced on an inherently limited and conservative concept. Change was built in right from the start. This is the reason that they are so open to creative development and remain so popular today. As Henry Jenkins has argued, calling changes to a superhero’s character revisionist ‘makes no sense because there is not a moment in the history of the genre when the superhero is not under active revision’ (2009: 29). To illustrate this there is nothing better than the first run of Superman stories. In over seventy-five years of continuous storytelling, Superman has come to be perceived as the ultimate ‘boy scout’, a super-man of outstanding virtue, whose code of ethics just happens to coincide with the central tenets of the American civil religion. He is a virtuous, conservative archetype and defender of America as the defender of human freedom. It is therefore surprising to find that in the original stories Superman is announced to the world as ‘a champion of the oppressed’

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(Siegel and Shuster, 2006: 4) and appears to be far more socially liberal than we have come to expect. Although perhaps not quite a socialist, he was certainly a means ‘to call for interventionist government on the side of the common citizen’ (Coogan, 2006:  235), and demonstrated few qualms about killing, destroying private property, kidnapping or disregarding the authority of the police (reasons for which he was considered a threat to the young by Frederic Wertham). Given the dominance of superman’s right-wing iconography, it is therefore surprising to find that in Action Comics #3 he starts a one-man campaign to improve working conditions for miners, while in Action Comics #8 we find Clark Kent reporting from a juvenile court and agreeing with the defendant’s mother who pleads with the judge to understand that a poor social environment is the cause of crime. In Action Comics #10, he engages in prison reform, while in issue 12 he is shown ‘gleefully’ (Siegel and Shuster, 2006: 161) destroying a factory in a manner that Ben Saunders likens to the Communist aspiration to take over the means of production (Saunders, 2011: 23). Does this mean the 1950s Cold War Superman was a revision that supports the argument for periodic changes to a character in line with audiences and markets? To some extent, but this is not sufficient: the concept of Superman was a work in progress from the beginning. Although the superhero emerged out of the popular heroics of pulp action and science fiction or fantasy characters that Peter Coogan describes as the ‘antediluvian age’ (2006: 126), the Superman stories written and drawn by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were a new popular form because they broke with the traditional limitations of heroic settings and powers to offer the new concept of the superhero and an especially fertile template for future creativity. In an important way, this challenges Coogan’s argument that earlier manifestations of fantastical heroes meant ‘the superhero genre was born full-fledged in 1938’ (126). I would rather argue that in a creatively important way Siegel and Shuster didn’t know what they were doing or rather they were presenting an audience with something they didn’t yet know there was an audience for. Superman would have been a shocking concept to the sensibilities of the time and the creative team would have been uncertain as to how far they could take it, which is why ‘revision’ is built in from the start. The first run, up to and including the first issue of Superman in 1939 where the Kents are introduced in the first piece of Superman ‘retcon’, the creators are working with an idea so fresh that they are shaping it as they go. When reading Action Comics #1 from 1938, we find Superman’s powers listed as the (very precise) ability to ‘leap ⅛ of a mile; hurdle a twenty-story building; raise tremendous weights; run faster than an express train; and that nothing less than a bursting shell could penetrate his skin’. By issue 2, however, we find that he now has impenetrable skin (bullets just bounce off him) and that his leaping seems to be closer to flying. In #6 he can crush steel in his bare hands; by issue 7 he is able to race a bullet (a feat significantly more astounding than racing a train), while in issue 11 we find

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Superman has gained ‘x-ray eyesight and super-acute hearing’. In Action Comics #13, we are also first introduced to “the Ultra-Humanite”, a man who controls the other bad guys that have appeared in previous stories and whose crippled body marks him as the opposite of Superman although he shares his thinly disguised name.1 This dark, mirror figure is yet another defining concept of these early stories (and, indeed, all future superhero storytelling), and yet it is quite possible to imagine his appearance also emerging out of the quickly evolving creative process, rather than being there from the start, so to speak. This is not to deny the need for stories to make sense in a cultural context or in relation to the effect of commercial pressures; it is to argue that the superhero was a pretty flexible concept from the beginning and that this flexibility continues to be part of its success. In addition, it is important to note that superheroes don’t simply pander to cultural tastes. Even within a particular age, these are often so diverse and differentiated as to make the task almost impossible. It would also radically undermine the coherence of a character over time and undermine the continuity upon which the meaning of the superhero had been established. In this regard, the superhero as a concept – and this is especially true for heroes such as Superman and Captain America, who stand as authority figures within their own universes – must appeal to something beyond the relativism and vicissitudes of the Zeitgeist, and point towards something transcendent and archetypal, if not universal. This doesn’t mean that different writers within the same historical period can’t offer their own interpretation of that transcendent moment. It is simply to state that the most authoritative characters in their respective universes must appeal to something beyond the immediate cultural context. In many respects, this is akin to a central problem with the constitution of democratic sovereignty which must appeal to a specific demos – a particular people, living in a particular historical moment, who determine the nature of the law based on what they feel is right and best preserves what they feel is good – and yet at the same time it must claim a connection to a deeper sense of legitimacy, rooting those laws in a more substantial foundation that exceeds them. This is the first reason why superheroes so readily lend themselves to a consideration of sovereignty, which is also not alien to a little bit of ‘retcon’ itself. We may have thought that legitimacy came from God, but secular humanist philosophy has argued that the origin story of our sovereign legitimacy in fact lay with a curious, previously unknown entity called the People, which, of course, is never reducible to a people, a particular group of people here and now, but it is a concept regularly invoked to legitimise their laws. The point about sovereignty’s origin story is that despite the difference between God and the People, they both stand in as the source of law and bestower of meaning. They are first cause, prime mover, beginning and end. And already, just writing that sentence, I  feel that I have started a Kirby-style epic along the lines of the Fourth World cycle. Although any theory of sovereignty will necessarily address the relationship between the law and its legitimacy, it was Carl Schmitt who explored it

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most consistently. In Legality and Legitimacy, published just prior to the rise of National Socialism in his native Germany, Schmitt wrote about the inadequacies of a ‘legislative state’ (Schmitt, 2004: 3) where nothing is considered higher or more superior than the will of a community as represented in its impersonal laws. He regarded such a state to be relativistic and open to abuse by the group in power (30) because nothing more authoritative commands them. In opposition to this, he favoured a state founded on personal authority, which he claimed produced a ‘system of meaning’ (47) and resulted in a more ‘substantive order’ (94). As a conservative and a Catholic, his concerns about the evils of disorder that the supposedly value-neutral, relativistic, liberal and ultimately weak Weimar Republic was permitting saw him side with National Socialism in 1933, but this decision should not let us lose sight of the fact that Schmitt was wrestling with a very real problem in the philosophy of sovereignty. In Political Theology, a book first published in 1922, Schmitt argued that sovereignty was alien to the laws of ‘positive jurisprudence’, going on to claim that the sovereign’s decision-making capacity emanated ‘from nothingness’ (2005: 32) and is ‘analogous to the miracle in theology’ (36). Although Schmitt preferred a legal model based on a sovereign personality, in keeping with his own devout religious beliefs, he argued that modern, democratic accounts of sovereignty still had no account for this miraculous moment that nevertheless seemed to haunt it. As far as he was concerned, the modern claim that the constitutional state ‘banished the miracle from the world’ (36) was an illusion, and he argued that the miracle-like intervention of a sovereign personality still acts as a deus ex machina within the positive legalistic system. ‘There always exists’, he writes, ‘the same inexplicable identity: lawgiver, executive power, police, pardoner … in which the state acts … as the same invisible person’ (38). In many respects, superheroes, especially the most authoritative ones like Superman and Captain America, are this invisible person made visible. They represent the continuation of this super-executive, quasi-theological, transcendent moment that persists in modern conceptions of sovereignty and their claims to legitimacy. It is this transcendence that gives them the greatest authority. It is a power that no physical mutation, chemical transformation or technological augmentation can achieve, and yet it is the ‘invisible’ element that every superhero must be made from to varying degrees. In this and the following chapter, I would like to look at the persistence of this transcendent element in the figures of Superman and Captain America. Superman clearly bears the marks of a divine, absolutist sovereignty, whereas Captain America exemplifies the modern view of sovereignty immanent to the will of the People. Either way, both figures represent the foundation of what is deemed good and yet these heroes are required precisely because this goodness has not yet been fulfilled. Their goodness is our potential or the horizon we move towards. While the secular messianism of Captain America will be analysed in

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the next chapter, here I will address the Superman mythology via Plato’s analysis of ideas and what he called the sovereignty or supremacy of the Good. As will be shown, both Superman and the Platonic Good share a relation to the sun that helps us understand the transcendent element in both the sovereign’s legitimacy and the superheroes’ authority. Ordinarily, a Platonic view of transcendence is seen to be inherently conservative and would therefore suggest the right-wing Superman that emerged in the 1950s is closer to the essence of this quasi-divine character. In contrast to this, I will offer a different reading of Plato to show that Superman’s transcendence and his legitimacy are perfectly in keeping with the original characterisation of him as a radical social agent rooted in struggle and historical change. The Platonic form of the superhero It is safe to say that there have been many Supermen, having been written about continuously since 1938, but I am not referring to the other Superman of Earth 2 or the four new ones that appeared after Superman’s death – there are and have been numerous Supermen across the DC multiverse – I mean the many Supermen in the sense that Will Brooker spoke about the many Batmen (2005: 235). Superman continues to be many things to many people. The meaning of Superman is thus a highly contested issue and often one that a new creative team will try to address directly in order to shape their ‘take’ on the icon. In recent times, for example, Brian Azzarello evoked the Christian aspect of the Superman mythos, showing him to be motivated by a profound love for humanity (Azzarello and Lee, 2005a, 2005b). Yet, however Superman is presented, be it the socialist ‘champion of the oppressed’ or the nationalist defender of ‘truth, justice and the American way’ (even the liberal, cosmopolitan, internationalist defender of difference, as the meaning of ‘American’ morphs in turn), Superman is nothing if he is not good. When applied to Superman, however, this concept should be capitalised. While different attributes might be highlighted – courage, humility, fairness, loyalty, honesty, self-sacrifice – he is always Good. This capitalisation means that however we might define goodness, whatever the movement of history might do to our understanding of what goodness entails, Superman represents something universal and substantial. For this reason, the Good for which Superman stands might also be said to be transcendent, that is, irreducible to any of the culturally derived attributes mentioned above or any predetermined code of behaviour. While the Good certainly demands action that has concrete, ‘real-world’ implications, it also remains an ideal towards which we strive without ever being grasped or claimed as our own. One, if not the greatest, of Superman’s powers is precisely his sense for the Good. In this regard, as Batman tells him in Infinite Crisis, his role is ‘about setting an example’ (Johns and Jimenez, 2006: 38); not controlling people, not telling people what to do,

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not behaving like a god. This is especially telling precisely because the crisis in that story is precipitated by others who do act like gods and pursue an ultimate and fully realisable ‘good’ world, a perfect Earth, a topic to which I will return later in the chapter. To speak of Superman in relation to Plato, however, requires a prefatory note on the philosopher most readily associated with Superman: Friedrich Nietzsche, whose concept of the Übermensch, translated as either the Overman or more commonly the Superman is believed to have been a major influence on Siegel and Shuster. While there is evidence that the two creators were aware of this Nietzschean concept, it is fair to say that their first version of the Superman as an evil genius, bent on world domination (Andrae, 1980), was probably inspired by reports of Nazi use (and misuse) of Nietzschean philosophy in Third Reich propaganda rather than any specific knowledge or study of Nietzsche’s writings. As references to Nietzsche have appeared in a number of Superman stories, including ones as diverse as Seagle and Kristiansen’s It’s a Bird (2004) and Morrison and Quitely’s All-Star Superman (2009), the association has now become rather commonplace. If Superman is Nietzschean, then any attempt to argue he is Platonic poses a direct problem, given that Nietzsche claimed in the preface to Beyond Good and Evil that ‘Plato’s invention of Pure Spirit and the Good’ (2002: 4) was the ‘most dangerous of all errors’ (3). Ordinarily, Plato and Nietzsche are as opposed as order is to chaos (and Nietzsche did as much to generate this reading as anyone), and yet I hope to show that while Superman is not Nietzsche’s transvaluing Übermensch, thinking Superman in relation to Plato’s theory of forms and the Good does not mean he is dogmatic and conservative, as Nietzsche’s view of Plato would have us believe and much of the critical commentary on Superman has come to suggest. Nietzsche gave us the concept of the Übermensch in his most rhetorically powerful book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, published in 1883. Nietzsche had always understood humanity in terms of the ability to ascribe meaning and attribute value and argued that we were only living up to our humanity if we were creating new values (Nietzsche, 1974: 266; 2002: 91), something he believed his nihilistic age was failing to do. This creation should be an ongoing process, which he referred to as transvaluation. The more we slavishly accept a given set of values, the less human we become. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra the person who practises the transvaluation of all values is, of course, the Superman, and in a later work entitled Ecce Homo Nietzsche explains that, having understood this, ‘Zarathustra experiences himself as the supreme type of all beings’ (1989:  305; italics in original). Although Siegel and Shuster’s Superman can and has been read easily in terms of this supremacy, which also relates to the fascination in the United States with eugenics and physical fitness at the time of his creation (Hack, 2009), it is important to reiterate that Nietzsche’s supremacy pertained to the capacity to create new values and was not related to an understanding of biological

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improvement.2 Supremacy for Nietzsche was neither physical nor biological, but rather referred to artistic and moral creativity. The simplest analogy for the process of transvaluation is entitled ‘On the Three Metamorphoses’. Here, Nietzsche tells us that the spirit must first of all become like the camel, the beast of burden that carries the weight of moral responsibility; secondly, the spirit must become like the lion, whose ‘scared No’ (2006: 17) is a demand for freedom and a break from the current morality; thirdly, the spirit must move towards the ‘sacred yes-saying’ (17) of the child that represents a beginning and the positing of new values. Unfortunately, in many Superman stories he doesn’t get beyond the role of the camel. Siegel and Shuster’s original was certainly a lion, and might even be understood in terms of the child given the changes that were taking place in American society at the time of his birth. And yet, advocacy for the intervention of the state in public works is hardly equivalent to the moral creativity Nietzsche intended. Superman playing the role of the camel was even more of a problem within the ideology of the Cold War where it would be hard to find any story in which Superman was more than the beast of burden given that his fight for freedom was often a fight to preserve the status quo and not a prelude to a new revolution. This role of the camel is still evident in recent Superman stories, such as the one in which an intervention by the young Superman results in an elderly woman viewing him as an angel sent by God (Busiek, Nicieza and Vale, 2007). His intervention inspires the woman to set up an activist group known as the Community Angels in order to fight social problems in the part of Metropolis known as Suicide Slum. Here, Superman is diametrically opposed to Siegel and Shuster’s Superman. This is not a story advocating state intervention in social problems but a restatement of individual virtue, DIY community spirit and the philanthropy of billionaires (Bruce Wayne donates $50  million to the cause). Even more recently, Michael J.  Straczynski’s Superman:  Grounded (Straczynski and Barrows, 2011) explicitly sets out Superman’s role as the moral beast of burden. Although the story brilliantly sets up the problem of Superman’s distance from the average man, it quickly descends into vacuous banality. Having been too caught up with his own concerns in the conflict with New Krypton, Superman tries to reconnect with the everyday lives of ordinary people by walking across America as penance. In the course of his pilgrimage, he helps to fix someone’s car (the technological essence of American mobility and freedom), tidies up a store room at a diner in exchange for a meal, fights the obligatory drug dealers, offers pre-emptive advice to someone with an undetected heart problem, talks down a suicide (by saying the world is neither fair nor unfair – it just is), and finally shows us that child abuse is bad. This is the neighbourly Superman as ‘boy scout’, the paragon of individual virtue who encourages others towards acts of individual virtue in keeping with the moral status quo. Siegel and Shuster’s lion is once again tamed, reduced to the affirmation of moral platitudes and established

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virtues. And yet, to say that Superman is not the Nietzschean child that creates a new moral universe does not mean that Superman is essentially a reactionary supporter of the status quo, as these two stories suggest. What I would like to argue is that conceiving of Superman in relation to a particular reading of Plato still allows us to reach the core of Superman as a figure rooted in conflict, change and difference, just as Siegel and Shuster intended him to be. The significance of the Good for Plato is clear to see in Socrates’ argument that ‘there is no point in having expert knowledge of everything else, but lacking knowledge of goodness’ (1993: 230, 505a). For him, knowledge of what is true without knowledge of what is good is deficient. Plato goes on to recall how Socrates compared this with our capacity to see. Sight is likewise deficient without light, and the heavenly god responsible for light is the sun. So, if ‘goodness stands in the intelligible realm to intelligence and the things we know, so in the visible realm the sun stands to sight and the things we see’ (235, 508c). This explains why the sun is to be understood as ‘a counterpart to its father, goodness’, or, put another way, why the sun is ‘the child of goodness’ (235, 508c). To reiterate, on the supremacy or sovereignty of the Good Socrates argues goodness is ‘responsible for knowledge and truth’ (236, 509a); it is ‘the source and provider of truth’ (244: 517c; my italics) but should not be identified with them. Socrates’ interlocutor in this dialogue is Glaucon who responds by saying the Good must, then, be ‘something of inestimable value’ (236, 509a) to which Socrates replies that the knowledge, reality and being of things is ‘conferred upon them by goodness’, but goodness ‘surpasses being in majesty and might’ (509b). Continuing the sovereign metaphors we are told that light ‘rules over the visible realm’ just as the Good ‘rules over the intelligible realm’ (237, 509d). The Good, then, is intimately connected to knowledge and truth – they originate from it – but it is irreducible to them. As has already been noted, Superman’s powers have evolved right from the very first issues. At times they have been deliberately scaled back (Byrne, 1991) in order to reintroduce an element of vulnerability, but over the first forty years the tendency was towards an exponential growth in Superman’s abilities. The original explanation was that Kryptonians were highly evolved beings with super-strength, before the Kryptonian environment and its heavier gravity was offered as the source.3 By the 1960s, however, it was established that Superman’s additional or increased powers were a result of solar power. His home world circled a red sun, but when exposed to the radiation of a yellow sun, such as Earth’s, his Kryptonian abilities were increased both in number and magnitude.4 Should he once again encounter a red sun, like the one circling his home planet, his powers are effectively nullified. This relationship to the solar radiation of a yellow sun is cemented into Superman’s continuity in ‘The Complete Story of Superman’s Life’ from Superman #146, July 1961, where a diagram echoing the scientific explanation of Superman’s powers in Action Comics #1 is used to explain

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his physical strength, but, Superman tells us, ‘only the ultra solar rays of Earth’s yellow sun can super-energize my brain and five senses to give me the other non-muscular super-powers!’ (Binder and Plastino, 1961: 11; italics in original). As this idea developed, every cell in Superman’s body came to function like a solar battery that was able to fuel his existing powers and stimulate the development of new ones. In speaking of Superman’s transcendence, then, it is his association with the sun that offers a link to the Good. The two types of sun, yellow and red, have been a regular feature in Superman stories ever since. The yellow sun most regularly features as the panacea for Superman should he be damaged or his capacities become reduced in some way. He is regularly shown as needing to ‘recharge’ and repair by bathing in the light of a yellow sun. It also appears at symbolically important moments, such as the death of Supergirl in the 1985 story Crisis on Infinite Earths (Wolfman and Pérez, 2000: 216), where Superman passes a yellow sun on the way to taking the dead body of his cousin into space. In Superman: Birthright (Waid and Yu, 2004), his first intervention as Superman is depicted on a double splash page (102–3) with a brilliant sun positioned just behind his head, and light is shown flooding the entire scene. He is also regularly shown in proximity to the sun when his legitimacy is at stake, whether this is understood in terms of his authority or purpose. One such story is Superman: For Tomorrow (Azzarello and Lee, 2005a), in which Superman once again takes on and interrogates his role as saviour. Here, the sun and sunlight play a leading role in the story from the beginning. Opening with a scene inside a cathedral in which a priest struggles with his own role in the wake of a crisis known as ‘the vanishing’, Superman first appears viewed from below, hovering above the priest, framed within the brightly lit vault of the cathedral ceiling, his head surrounded by a corona resembling a halo. With Superman having been ‘off-world’ during the crisis and therefore unable to prevent ‘the vanishing’, both men suffer a crisis of their own; both question the role of faith, responsibility and love. Over the course of the story, and a subject to which I will return below, Superman realises that he neither can nor should be a redeemer and that a perfect world in which no one is ever hurt and everyone lives in perfect safety and peace is not only impossible, but also undesirable. In stories like these, where Superman’s near divinity is the central theme, his proximity and likeness to the sun – Plato’s child of goodness – is so important to the visual narrative that when the story takes place predominantly at night, such as the ‘Angel’ story (Busiek, Nicieza and Vale, 2007) already discussed, Superman’s association with light is maintained by showing him set against a background of brightly glowing street lights. By comparison, the red sun, much like kryptonite, is a device used to place Superman in dramatic situations full of risk that otherwise would be impossible.5 A very good example of this is ‘The Demon under the Red Sun’ story from Superman #184 (Binder and Plastino, 1966), where Superman travels to a planet

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called Zhonda, which an astronaut claims to have seen travelling on a random and constantly changing trajectory through space. The astronaut is deemed to be no longer mentally fit for service and is taken off all future missions. To clear his name, Superman visits the planet only for his powers to be viewed as demonic. Just as the planet passes by a red sun Superman is captured and tried under threat of death. De-powered, he has to use all his ‘human’ ingenuity to convince the people he is good, which, of course, he manages to do. In an earlier story, Action Comics #300 (Hamilton and Plastino, 1963), Superman was transported to the Earth in the year A D 1,000,000, where he is the last man alive and the planet’s sun has turned red, rendering him powerless and seemingly unable to return home. Here the red sun is used not simply for dramatic effect, but also for philosophical purposes, as Superman is forced to ponder the nature of his existence.6 Suns, both yellow and red, play a central part in Grant Morrison’s brilliant summation of the Superman mythos that was published over a series of twelve issues – equivalent to the cycle of the solar calendar (Murray, 2013: 299) – under the title All Star Superman. This story, beautifully drawn by Frank Quitely and luminously coloured by Jamie Grant, is bookended by two events in which Superman’s kinship with the sun is to the fore. It opens with a scheme of Lex Luthor’s, in which he has sabotaged a scientific mission to the sun, knowing that Superman will be forced to save the researchers and astronauts, but also knowing that to do so he will need to go so close to the sun that the radiation will overload his energy absorbing cells and bring about his slow death. Pages two and three of the first issue comprise a sublime, double-page image of Superman seemingly gliding around the edge of the sun with giant solar flares erupting behind him (Morrison and Quitely, 2007: 12–13). It is a sign of his absolute supremacy, but also an image of his heroic self-sacrifice as he risks all for the sake of human curiosity and the demand for knowledge. Once back on Earth, having completed the rescue, it is confirmed that the exposure has brought about a degenerative effect in Superman’s physiology and the rest of the story follows Superman as he completes twelve labours before he dies. His penultimate labour has him face down a sentient and tyrannical red sun that Luthor has employed to destroy Earth’s yellow sun and hold its population in bondage. In the scene where Superman dons his anti-red solar radiation suit (Morrison and Quitely, 2009: 117), which can only do a temporary job of protecting him against the red sun’s dangerous effects, Morrison has him drawn both as Christ accepting his crown just prior to crucifixion and, with Superman looking into the visor of the helmet he is about to put on, as Hamlet reflecting on life and death as he addresses the skull of the dearly departed Yorick. As Superman faces Lex Luthor for one last time, and is seemingly finished, owing to the advanced state of the cellular decay that is ravaging his body, he has a vision of flying with his father who tells him: ‘You have given them an ideal to aspire to, embodied their highest aspirations. They will race, and stumble, and fall and

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crawl … and curse … and finally … they will join you in the sun, Kal-El. In time you will no longer be alone’ (2009: 138; italics in original). This vision revives him for one last chance at saving the world. After foiling Luthor and saying farewell to Lois he shoots into the sky and into the heart of Earth’s now blue and dying sun, reigniting the star with the last sparks of the energy that still power him. Just as the first issue opens with the image of Superman flying amongst the solar flares, the final issue closes with an image of him inside the sun as he operates a giant lever, effectively bringing it back to life after the attack from the red sun (Morrison and Quitely, 2009: 152) and forcing it to rise again above the surface of the moon. The significance of the sun to Superman is also shown by his arch-enemies’ deployment of the sun (or suns) as weapons. Superman’s other nemesis, Brainiac, has also been depicted destroying suns as testament to both his power and tyrannical will, while also emphasising his opposition to everything Superman stands for. In Superman: Brainiac (Johns and Frank, 2009), after draining worlds of all the information he can take, Brainiac converts suns into weapons by firing ‘solar aggressors’ into them, causing the star to go supernova, destroying the star and all the planets in its system. The death of the sun incinerates the worlds that Brainiac has stripped of their culture to advance his own knowledge and yet it also symbolically represents the loss of reason and truth. It might be said that Brainiac is the ultimate expression of Plato’s concern with the deficiency of knowledge without the supplement of goodness. Brainiac claims or desires to know everything. He has a will to knowledge like no other, and yet however vast the archive of information available to him is, without knowledge of the Good he clearly knows nothing. A variation on this theme is when a villain is depicted in competition with Superman over their symbolic proximity to the sun. The companion to Brian Azzarello’s Superman story (Azzarello and Lee, 2005a, 2005b), the miniseries entitled Lex Luthor: Man of Steel (Azzarello and Bermejo, 2005), begins with an image of Luthor’s new science tower dominating Metropolis with the sun of a new day shining brightly behind the city’s latest skyscraper. This is a story about how Luthor understands the legitimacy of his own actions and the illegitimacy of Superman, the inhuman, alien usurper. There is competition for proximity to the Good, and in Luthor’s eyes he is closest. Likewise, in the story named after the misguided metahuman known as Redemption (Nicieza and Goldman, 2007), who can absorb energy and is powered by the faith a congregation has in their pastor who transforms and channels that faith into Redemption’s super-powers. When Redemption arrives in the fictional African country of Nyasir to prevent the Nyasir military intervening in a First Church of Redemption missionary project, Redemption is shown in the classic Superman pose; floating in mid-air with the sun directly behind him, blazing over his left shoulder. After the military open fire Redemption wipes them out in an energy blast, killing everyone in

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the village. By the time Superman arrives three pages later, he can do nothing. He, too, is shown in the classic pose, floating above the ground as he surveys the destruction. The sun is also directly behind him, but this time it is dimmed by comparison, as if to indicate his diminished authority and legitimacy. It is not until he works out the mystery of Redemption’s powers and confronts the pastor that he is once again shown accompanied by a brilliant, dazzling sun, the brightest to appear in the story. The Good and social change Having demonstrated the symbolic importance of the sun to Superman and argued that this trope offers us a useful way for thinking about his transcendence and sovereign legitimacy, some attention needs to be given to the claim that such transcendence is neither elitist nor conservative. At the beginning of this chapter, it was noted how Superman exemplified the early superheroes’ association with social change. As Chris Murray has argued, once the social and political climate in America shifted towards Cold War conservatism the superhero ‘went from being an icon of positive liberty … to being a policeman for negative liberty, suspicious of difference or change, and fundamentally invested in the maintenance of the status quo’ (2013: 285). Here Murray is deploying the two conceptions of liberty set out by Isaiah Berlin to show how freedom from repression came to be privileged over the freedom to remake a better world. Fortunately, however, this latter, positive freedom could not be entirely erased from the superhero blue print. While there are numerous examples of this return of the repressed,7 I agree with Murray that the late work of Grant Morrison, in particular his work on Superman discussed above, epitomises this welcome shift back to the superhero as agent of change. However, as I have just noted, what needs to be done here is to show how Plato’s conception of the Good – a theory of transcendence that doesn’t normally lend itself to notions of social transformation – can be understood in relation to this re-emergence of agency. A socially transformative reading of Plato’s philosophy of the Good has been offered by the Czechoslovakian philosopher, Jan Patočka (1989). In his essay entitled ‘Negative Platonism’, he described metaphysics as the branch of philosophy that aims at transcendence, which he defined as ‘a movement of constant broadening and deepening’ (191) of knowledge beyond the passive experience of what is currently accepted. Such transcendence must not be understood in quasi-theological terms or as a version of religious experience, because it has ‘no positive content’ or ‘final terminus’ (196). It is not directed at some end state, but is instead the motor of ‘historical being’ (192). And while Platonic philosophy is regularly criticised for seemingly rejecting the physical world as false and illusory, or, indeed, the historical world for being fleeting and ephemeral in favour of a transcendent realm of truth, reality and permanence, what Patočka highlights is

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precisely this continual movement in which metaphysics and the idea of the Good pushes us beyond what we already assume to know. In doing so, metaphysics becomes the motor of history understood as the demand that the current state of affairs be questioned and changed. This is something Patočka also called ‘the experience of freedom’ (192; italics in original). For Patočka, Plato’s metaphysics and the transcendence of the Good are likened to a call that ‘makes it possible to see more than we observe. It is precisely what brings it about that in the same … we see ever the new’ (199). The Good is, therefore, also linked to liberation because it is ‘the power from which we derive all our ability to struggle against the ‘sheer reality’, the reality that would impose itself on us as an absolute, inevitable, and invincible law’ (199). Without such transcendence ‘the most basic wellsprings of our historical life dry up’ (205). In Superman’s close association to the sun, that child of goodness, he comes to represent this movement of transcendence. He represents neither completion nor end, but ‘the experience of freedom’. In Patočka’s terms, this is a negative freedom, but it is ‘negative’ only in the sense that it is irreducible to doctrine, person or nation, it remains ‘positive’ in the sense used by Murray in that it is a freedom continually calling us to question, to challenge and to overcome, and it is in this that Superman’s sovereignty lies. In order to understand this, it will be helpful to make a few more observations about Azzarello’s take on Luthor. As a story, it is interesting primarily because Luthor’s point of view, and his supposed legitimacy, is maintained throughout.8 In short, the story is premised on Luthor’s attempt to make Superman redundant by replacing him with a female robot with superpowers that he calls Hope. This machine is an extension of Luthor’s genius and, when she doubles as his lover, an indication of his narcissistic desire. Familiar with Superman’s own understanding of justice, Luthor hatches a plan in which Toyman is blamed for a bombing that kills hundreds of Metropolis citizens. Hope is sent in to capture Toyman and summarily execute him by dropping him from a great height, only for Superman to ‘snatch’ this justice from the fearful and baying crowd by preventing Toyman’s death. Luthor’s intention of generating fear and the wish ‘for someone of strength to make that fear go away’ (Azzarello and Bermejo, 2005:  n.p.; italics in original) is thereby interrupted, especially as Superman damages Hope, who then self-destructs and brings down Luthor’s science tower with her. At no point, however, does this shake Luthor’s belief in his own destiny as humanity’s great hope. But the reason this is a good Superman story is that it gives us an insight into his essence. In breaking the fall of Toyman, Superman refuses the path of revenge, choosing instead the difficult and risky path of due legal process. Where Luthor offers justice based on the immediate gratification of desire, itself based on knowledge of what appears to be the case, Superman demands the postponement of gratification in the name of a better understanding to come.

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The point, I would argue, is not just that Superman commits himself to the legal process as it stands – a move that itself challenges any charge of vigilantism – but that the process is one that entails moving towards a knowledge that will test the currently perceived view of things. This is knowledge based on challenge and risk rather than acceptance and security. It is Superman’s wager that despite their fear the people know this is the better way. According to Luthor, Superman sees something in humanity ‘that in truth isn’t there’ (n.p.; italics in original). For Luthor, human potentiality can only be realised through his enforcement of order, or through their observing his law. He is the only hope because this human sees no hope in humanity. Superman, the alien and the foreigner, by contrast does have hope in humanity and believes they can, despite their imperfections, mistakes and faults, as well as the fragility of their institutions, bring about a better world themselves. In many respects we are in the territory of negative liberty here, and Superman as protection against tyranny, but there is an even more important message about not accepting the world as it is presented and moving towards something that is better, and in this we can see the positive liberty to which Murray refers.9 In relation to the idea of the Good, Luthor’s vision is an extreme version of the conservative reading of Plato’s city where an elite (in the case of Luthor, an elite of one) has the requisite knowledge and strength to build the perfect city, making this a good point to present a qualification or note of caution about a conception of positive liberty that absolutely does not aim at the creation of a perfect world. This has been a central theme in some of the major stories involving Superman. In DC’s trilogy of crises, this note of caution becomes an explicit warning that someone’s claim to be able to deliver the perfect world or provide the answers to our questions is a sign of evil rather than goodness. In Infinite Crisis, for example, the impending catastrophe is the work of Alexander Luthor (son of Earth-3’s heroic Lex Luthor), who uses both Earth-2 Superman and Earth-Prime Superboy – whom he had previously saved inside the ‘heaven’ and ‘ever lasting peace’ (Wolfman and Pérez, 2000:  360)  that he was able to create at the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths – in his ‘crusade for finding a new Earth. A perfect Earth’ (Johns and Jimenez, 2006: 112; italics in original). After a variety of events have transpired to compromise DC’s holy trinity of Earth-1, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, Earth-2 Superman breaks out of the inter-dimensional space created by Alexander Luthor and enters Earth-1 with the intention of bringing back Earth-2, which was destroyed in the previous crisis, but which he believes was better than the one he is now forced to observe. This mission sets him in conflict with Earth-1 Superman, whom Earth-2 Superman claims to be a ‘disease’ and the source of Earth’s ‘corruption’ (153). As the story develops Earth-Prime Superboy (aka Superboy Prime) becomes increasingly fanatical about the need to make a recovered Earth-Prime the perfect Earth (195), and as his powers increase, he claims he will fly through Oa, the home of the

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Guardians of the Universe, and centre of all that is, announcing: ‘There’ll be a new big bang. Everything will restart’ (220). When Earth-1 Superman manages to convince Earth-2 Superman that his world couldn’t have been perfect because ‘a perfect world doesn’t need a Superman’ (162) the two of them with the aid of other heroes manage to overcome Alexander Luthor’s plans and prevent the catastrophe born from the search for perfection. In a similar vein, Final Crisis involves the victory of Darkseid over the New Gods and his wish to enslave humanity with his anti-life equation. Darkseid understands that human freedom is encapsulated in the capacity and the need to question the world as it is given, so Darkseid’s slavery operates through his becoming the answer. As the hero, Black Lightning, declares after succumbing to Darkseid’ s evil design: ‘Life is a question. Anti-life is the answer’ (Morrison, Jones and Mahnke, 2009: n.p.; italics in original). From the perspective of historical change the equation is slightly different: if life is a struggle then ‘there’s no struggle with anti-life!’ (n.p.; italics in original). Interestingly, as if Morrison wishes to hammer home the idea that it is the struggle to find meaning in life that is essentially human, and that Superman represents this struggle, he takes Superman off-world in the middle of the crisis to face a rogue Monitor called Mandrakk, a parasite god living off the life force generated by all the stories created in the multiverse of fifty-two worlds. At one point in this battle, Mandrakk assumes victory and asks Superman to write his own epitaph on his tombstone. With Superman having already declared that Mandrakk doesn’t understand the true nature or power of stories, the issue closes with an image of the tombstone upon which Superman has simply written ‘to be continued’ (n.p.). Here, the transcendence that Superman represents is our need to continually create, question and challenge via the stories that help us make sense of where we have been and where we are yet to go. Returning to Azzarello’s Superman story, For Tomorrow, the title indicates that Superman has a very explicit relationship to the future. As has already been noted, the opening dialogue between himself and the priest sets out the themes of salvation and responsibility only for the story to disclose how Superman has created a pocket paradise using his father’s phantom zone technology in order to fulfil his role as saviour. In Superman’s words, it is ‘heaven’, a state of ‘perfection’ into which he could send people to save them from cataclysmic events, such as the one that destroyed Krypton. The fact that his use of the technology provided the evil General Zod with a means of escaping the Phantom Zone, in which Superman’s father imprisoned him, and that the ‘key’ to paradise could also be used as a weapon of mass destruction should it fall into the wrong hands signals just how mistaken Superman was in trying to create a permanently secure ‘tomorrow’ for the humanity he believes he is obliged to protect. In the ensuing battle with Zod, Superman is given cause to reflect upon his actions. He comes to realise that he has no right to think he can create ‘heaven’, and that his creation,

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which inadvertently released Zod, has resulted in a situation more closely resembling ‘hell’. He also understands that he has an existential fear of things ending, but realises that he was born from the death of Krypton, and that the destruction of his home planet brought about his father’s ‘greatest creation’ (Azzarello and Lee, 2005b: n.p.). Where a saviour stands for the completion or end of history in a state of satisfaction or perfection, Superman comes to realise that he is not and cannot be a saviour. By the end of this story, Superman comes to represent the opposite. Superman is the struggle of history without end.10 Given that Superman has such incredible powers and can save people this also says something about Superman as a tragic figure, and is one reason why the character remains relevant today. There is nothing more human than the freedom that drives historical change, but if Superman were to save everyone  –  if he were to bring about a post-historical paradise – where would human freedom then reside? A never-ending struggle One of the difficulties in presenting the view that Superman directs us to an open future is that the academic study of superheroes, and Superman in particular, has been dominated by an article first published by Umberto Eco in 1962, and later revised for the English translation and published under the title ‘The Myth of Superman’ (Eco, 1972), in which Superman comics were charged with reproducing a relationship to time that runs counter to any sort of historical consciousness and therefore counter to any transformative agency. In this article, Eco argues that because the superhero is rooted in the immutable characteristics of mythological figures, rather than a concern for the unpredictable nature of the future that defines the protagonists of the modern novel (15), they are inevitably tied to a conservative agenda. Eco’s primary complaint is that the nature of the serial narrative that dominates the medium situates Superman in an ‘oneiric climate’ (17) in which events happen ‘in an ever-continuing present’ (19). At the time of writing, Eco was addressing Superman stories that were complete within a single issue, and proposed that because stories start and end in a self-enclosed narrative bubble any historical sense of causal relations between past and future is destroyed. By this, he means that in Superman stories, and by implication in superhero stories generally, past events do not impact on the present story and that beyond the story immediately presented in each issue the future is also of no concern. This ‘destruction of time’ is produced via an ‘iterative scheme’ (21); a repetitive, world-preserving universe that ultimately is nothing more than a moment of ‘true relaxation’ (21) for the consumer. To some extent, this makes sense in relation to the self-contained stories present in each issue, but in reality it is little more than elitist prejudice against a popular art form. A very useful contemporary review of Eco’s essay and critical responses in defence of popular culture has been written by Marc Singer (2013), who is wary

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of what he calls the ‘celebratory cultural populism’ (356) that claims to show the true complexity of superhero universes. For Singer, even if we recognise superhero continuity and the development of longer story arcs that offer greater possibilities for narrative development, this does not necessarily take us out of the iterative scheme, but simply displaces it from the single issue to the story arc or extended multi-title universe, where ‘the most popular superheroes will inevitably find themselves reset to their most familiar forms’ (360), but I don’t believe this is the real issue. The problem with Eco’s analysis is that he links social change to a specific form of narrative that makes it hard to explain the revolutionary movements and radical consciousness that were clearly evident prior to the full flowering of the modern novel and would have been fed by more mythological forms of writing. It also doesn’t explain why a culture such as ours that is replete with novels might understand itself to be post-historical. The first thing to say, then, is that all stories, whether encased in myth or broken down in experimental novelistic prose have a temporal or historical dimension that links a past or present situation to a desired future. In Robert Cover’s (1992a) analysis of law, to which I will return in Chapter 3, he argues that the law of a community cannot be separated from the narratives (no matter how ‘primitive’) that carry the story of the law’s desire to bring about a different state of affairs, one in which, for example, there is no theft, murder, indiscriminate imprisonment, or whatever defines the undesired state that the community wishes to change. This is a narrative function as crucial to ancient myth as it might be to the modern novel. Even in the shortest form of a Superman story, it is not possible to escape the fact that he has come from a dying planet and that his personal history and continuing alien identity is a permanent concern as he tirelessly fights injustice, thereby automatically projecting a desired alternative. This does not mean Superman stories can’t be conservative – I have already shown that many of them are – but it does indicate that an alternative or some sense of difference between what is and what ought to be is registered even in the self-contained, single-issue version of the superhero narrative. The problem for me stems from an unrecognised assumption in Eco’s analysis, where he claims that Superman ‘must be an archetype, the totality of certain collective aspirations, and therefore, he must necessarily become immobilized in an emblematic and fixed nature which renders him easily recognizable’ (1972: 15). Here the recognisably fixed nature of the character seems to trump the change (‘collective aspirations’) for which he stands. The only account Eco gives for his supposed erasure of change within the mythic form is the claim that the modern novel treats temporal relations in a more ‘conscious manner’ (19), but again this offers absolutely no explanation for why contemporary (novel-saturated) Western culture seems transfixed by the idea that it is the end of history.11 Superman’s sovereign legitimacy, then, stems neither from his power to preserve a given state of affairs indefinitely, nor from his capacity to perfect that state

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of affairs. It comes instead from his embodiment of the collective aspiration to transcend the given – to challenge, question, and transform it – in order to make a better but always fallible world. I would like to propose, contrary to Eco, that Superman, who was born at an important juncture in American history when the US was still in the grip of the Great Depression, epitomises those moments of change that are the essence of historical life, and no Superman story encapsulates this more than Alan Moore’s story ‘For the Man who has Everything’ (Moore and Gibbons, 1985). What is great about this story is that the rather quaint premise that it is Superman’s birthday, and Wonder Woman, Batman and Robin are visiting him to drop off his present, turns into quite a radical take on Superman’s character. On arriving at the Fortress of Solitude, the heroes discover that Superman has been taken over by a plant-like, alien entity that has fused with Superman’s body. The entity turns out to be an ‘intelligent fungus’ feeding off its victim’s ‘bio-aura’ (11), and has placed him in some sort of comatose state. It quickly transpires that this is the work of Superman’s enemy, the intergalactic tyrant called Mongul, who explains that the fungus is ‘telepathic. It reads them like a book, and it feeds them a logical simulation of the happy ending they desire’ (11; italics in original). The expectation, of course, is that Superman, whose Kryptonian name is Kal-El, will be back with his family on Krypton, which indeed he is, but this is not a happy ending in any conventional sense. Certainly, Kal-El has the child he has always wanted, but the situation he ‘desires’ appears to be one of political upheaval. As the heroes try to detach the fungus from Superman, we follow Kale-El’s ‘simulation’ as he tries to dissuade his father from a course of extremist, right-wing political action that includes the imprisonment and torture of immigrants. Jor-El glorifies Krypton’s past as a pristine age, while Kal-El tries to convince him that change is necessary and natural. Superman’s ‘heart’s desire’, then, takes him to the site of political conflict and an engagement with emerging tyranny. This is not an ending in any sense of the word, but a crucial transformative moment. The brilliance of Moore is to then show how Batman is inadvertently taken over by the fungus once Superman is set free. Here we see Batman’s desire played out as a scene in which his parents aren’t shot and the ‘Dark Knight’ lives a perfectly contented life without the transformative event that turned him into a crime fighter. In this story, the hard-edged, ‘Dark Knight’, who ruthlessly fights crime is shown really to desire an end to his fight and would rather it had never started, whereas the supposed ‘boy scout’ epitomises human struggle and desires nothing but an active involvement in it. Finally, with Batman freed, Mongul falls victim and the story closes with a vision of Mongul under the influence of the fungus, sat in a giant throne overseeing all the people he has crushed, completely happy in the totalitarian empire he has built. It is interesting to note that a key component of the tyrant’s ‘heart’s desire’ is that ‘suns shudder at his coming’ (40).

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Although this Alan Moore story is probably the most concise presentation of Superman as a character rooted in historical struggle it is perhaps Morrison and Quitely’s All Star Superman that offers the most nuanced and sustained treatment of Superman’s relationship to history and social change. In order to address this, however, and conclude this brief sketch of Superman’s sovereign legitimacy, it is necessary to return to Plato and consider the allegory of the cave that is crucial for a full understanding of Plato’s discussion of knowledge and goodness. In this section of The Republic, Plato offers a picture of what people assume to be true knowledge. The cave is populated with people imprisoned since childhood, unable to move and only able to look in one direction where the ‘shadows of artefacts’ (Plato, 1993: 241, 515c) are cast onto a wall created by the dim light of a fire that burns further back in the cave. These shadows are taken to be the truth, which in fact lies far away up the steep slope leading out of the cave and into the sunlight. As Plato records the dialogue, Socrates concludes it is the responsibility of philosophers and legislators to enable those in the cave to leave: ‘we must have them make the ascent … and see goodness’ (247, 519c), but for those who do, he continues, we must not accept their refusal ‘to come back down again to those prisoners [and] share their work and their rewards’ (247, 519d), eventually enabling everyone to make the ascent.12 Although Superman’s arrival on Earth bears all the hallmarks of God’s delivery of a Son to redeem the human race, it is as easy to see Kal-El’s crash landing in the fields of Smallville as a return to the cave by one enlightened, and this is a theme very much in evidence throughout All Star Superman even if Morrison chooses to tinker a little with the relationship between the sun and the cave. Aside from the wonderfully concise account of the Superman origin story and his arrival on Earth that opens issue 1, Morrison has him return to Earth a second time – crash-landing a rocket in a field at the beginning of issue 9 – when he returns from his imprisonment in the Underverse. This imprisonment was precipitated by a Bizarro event, in which hundreds of Bizarros attack Earth from the Bizarro homeworld that has risen out of the Underverse.13 While the Bizarro character has been continually revised, he was originally a clone of Superman created by Lex Luthor, but the cloning process was a failure, producing a monstrous double that did the opposite of Superman. Being his opposite, Bizarros are beings of the night that Superman defeats by realigning their homeworld so that one of the giant oceans on it can be used as a mirror to reflect sunlight onto the location of the attack on Earth. Bathing Bizarros in light stops them dead, but Superman, with his depleted powers making him unable to cope with the super-gravity, becomes trapped on the homeworld as it sinks back into the Underverse. Up until this point the Bizarros have been portrayed in their traditional, stupidly menacing mode of ‘us do opposite’, until at the end of issue 7 Superman encounters something different, a singular Bizarro that demonstrates reason and creativity and calls himself Zibarro. Specifically, where all the Bizarros

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carry on with their ‘usual aimless, meaning-less non-activity’ (Morrison and Quitely, 2009:  38), Zibarro asks questions and is in search of more than the given existence of his Bizarro kind. Together, Superman and Zibarro build a rocket from the rubbish surrounding them in an attempt to launch Superman back to Earth. In the process Superman strikes up a strong bond with Zibarro who shows Superman his poetry, which Superman promises to preserve and protect by taking it back to Earth. The relationship that quickly develops between the two over the course of issue 8 speaks volumes about who Superman is. He comments on how incredible it is that Zibarro has been given eyes that can see ‘beauty and meaning’ (50), and urges him to tell his story in what is effectively the dawning of Bizarro history (an oxymoron that Bizarros would no doubt enjoy). Superman’s return to Earth in issue 9 can then be easily seen as a second coming, but it is also an inversion of Plato’s allegory to some extent. Yes, Superman’s decent into the ‘all-night’ of the Underverse is clearly an entry into the cave in which he helps Zibarro in his search for knowledge, but on his return he is forced to challenge the two aristocratic Kryptonians, Bar-El and Lilo – ‘the first astronauts from the planet Krypton, who drifted lost in space for decades’ (66; italics in original) – who have replaced him on Earth during his absence. Assuming themselves to be superior, they have begun to impose their own way of life on human society and have developed a nascent totalitarian state in preparation for the creation of New Krypton. In effect this is the tyranny of light that has cut itself loose from any obligation to those they perceive to be still dwelling in the cave. When Superman defeats them, due to their travelling through a radioactive cloud while lost in space that slowly depletes their powers, he sends them into the Phantom Zone where they can act out their desire for purity and order. Although Superman saves Bar-El and Lilo, this is only because, as the Last Son of Krypton, he believes he still has a duty to protect all Kryptonians he encounters, but it is clear that he has a greater spiritual affinity with the far less aristocratic, if not proletarian, Zibarro and the emergence of historical consciousness that he represents. In the end, Superman will happily return to the cave to help those who ask questions, but he also carries a trace of the cave back with him for those who think they have all the answers. Continuing to weaken and contemplating his immanent death, issue 10 shows us Superman writing his will and contemplating what life would be like on Earth without him, and it is this issue that perfectly sums up the transcendence Superman represents. To find out what such a world would be like, he creates a new Earth (Earth Q) inside ‘the sickly infant universe of Qwewq’ (90), which he protects inside his fortress. At key moments of issue 10 a panel shows us what is happening on this new Earth. Each panel is a moment of creative transcendence beginning with the invention of Aboriginal art, followed by the creation of religion. A page later this is followed by a panel depicting Giovanni Pico della Mirandola delivering his Oration on the Dignity of Man of 1486,

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which Morrison has described as ‘the foundation stone of the ‘humanist’ movement’ (2012: 415). Two pages later we have Friedrich Nietzsche writing Thus Spoke Zarathustra, while the penultimate page of the issue shows Joe Shuster drawing the third version of his and Jerry Siegel’s Superman, declaring ‘this is going to change everything’ (Morrison and Quitely, 2009:  105).14 In this meta-narrative moment for which Morrison is well known, a world without Superman is shown to create him, but this creation is just one more creative moment in which humans move beyond that which already exists and that which is already accepted, to question and change what they think and do. As a child of the Good, Superman represents this movement of transcendence and it is from this that he derives his sovereign legitimacy. Notes  1 This is a reference to the original Superman story published by Joe Siegel under the pseudonym Herbert S. Fine in the science fiction magazine Science Fiction: the Advance Guard of Future Civilization in 1933. This arch-villain would be reformatted as Lex Luthor in April 1940 (Andrae, 1980: 100).  2 According to Nietzsche a physicalist interpretation such as seeking an evolutionary advantage in order to preserve oneself was in fact ‘a symptom  …  of distress’ (1974: 291).  3 This was an explanation already available within science-fiction literature, and directly attributable to the Edgar Rice Burroughs character John Carter (Andrae, 1980: 85).  4 One of the best representations of Superman’s loss of his powers comes in one of the Bottled City of Kandor stories. Kandor is the last remaining Kryptonian city, shrunken, together with all its occupants, by Brainiac just prior to Krypton’s destruction. In Superman #158 (Hamilton and Swan, 1963), which also involves Superman and Jimmy Olsen becoming the Batman and Robin analogues, Nightwing and Flamebird, Superman needs to enter the city and is miniaturised in order to gain access. Once made small and inside Kandor Superman loses his powers and requires a jet pack to be able to fly.  5 The red sun was effectively punned in Mark Millar’s ‘elseworld’ story entitled Red Son (Millar, Johnson and Plunkett, 2004). Here, Superman is imagined as having been born in the Soviet Union where his very existence threatens to ‘de-power’ the United States.  6 In one red sun story (O’Neil and Adams, 1978), an alien race called the Scrubb threatens to invade Earth unless its greatest champion can defeat the Scrubb champion. When the Earth’s champion is asked to present himself, both Superman and Muhammed Ali put themselves forward. The alien leader demands the two fight for the title, but under red sun conditions, so that Superman only has human powers. For the curious, Muhammed Ali defeats both Superman and the Scrubb champion. It is also worth noting that Superman boxes Ali in his Superman costume because, as the TV commentator explains, ‘many of our alien spectators wouldn’t be able to tell the fighters apart! Except for subtle changes in hue, all humans look exactly alike to them’

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(O’Neil and Adams, 1978: 33; italics in orginal). The message here is that without Superman’s alien powers, Ali would evidently be Earth’s champion. This combined with the message about essential human equality would have been a powerful message to many young black readers who were socially and politically weakened only by white people’s unfair advantage.  7 The work of Dennis O’Neill and Neal Adams for DC in the 1970s is a very good example of this return of the superhero as agent of social change.  8 In assuming the mantle of protector of human potentiality, Azzarello also portrays this self-appointed ‘man of steel’ in especially Nietzschean terms, having him proclaim in issue 3: ‘We were created to create ourselves. It’s the greatest gift our creator gave us’ (2005a: n.p.). A little later in that issue, he expands by declaring that ‘it’s only what’s in us … the drive to be mythic … that matters’ (n.p.; italics in original).  9 This is not to say that Superman’s appeal to transcend the given can’t still be used for explicit forms of nationalist ideology, as in the story entitled ‘What’s So Funny about Truth, Justice and the American Way?’ from Action Comics #775. This derivative piece that borrows quite explicitly from Warren Ellis’s The Authority (Ellis and Hitch, 1999) has Superman face a group of metahuman anti-heroes, who call themselves The Elite and use extreme violence to ‘cut out’ the cancer of evil wherever they find it. In the story Superman is clearly portrayed as American and the American way is steadfastly portrayed as non-violent and peace-loving, with Superman eventually defeating The Elite without resorting to the loss of life they regard as necessary and justifiable. In this very limited story, the one suggestion of Superman’s transcendence and legitimacy in line with what I am arguing here comes when the British leader of The Elite, a man called Manchester Black declares that Superman is a dreamer while they are realists because ‘reality rules’ (Kelly, Mahnke and Bermejo, 2001: 30). In other words, The Elite take it as a given that the world is violent and can only be violent, meaning that the good guys simply need to ensure they have a greater capacity for violence than the bad guys. Amidst the nationalist hyperbole, the fact that Superman refuses to accept this account of the world offers us a brief glimpse of Superman’s transcendence and just about saves the story. 10 In superhero comics, super-villains regularly seek completion, totality, and the culmination of all things. For example, Brainiac declares ‘I will be everything there has ever been, Kryptonian. I will be evolved into perfection’ (Johns and Frank, 2009). 11 Without wishing to deny the conservative possibilities of superhero comics, a better analysis of this mythic universe and its relation to social change would come from the application of Ernst Bloch’s analysis of the ‘undischarged’ (1995: xxvii) hope available in various forms of popular narrative and storytelling. The historical nature of hope, irrespective of the narrative form that carries it, is summed up in Bloch’s claim that the ‘emotion of hope goes out of itself ’ (3). It broadens and opens up towards something different. He goes on to say that hope represents ‘the farewell to the closed, static concept of being’ (18). Although he does not deny this opening of hope remains to be developed, he also does not deny that it exists in mythic forms. This is especially pertinent to an analysis of Superman given that numerous writers have argued that hope is precisely what he stands for. We have already seen how Azzarello has Luthor attempt to replace Superman with a robot named Hope, and in Waid’s Superman: Birthright

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the ‘S’ symbol on Superman’s chest is explicitly presented as a ‘symbol of hope’ (Waid and Yu, 2004: 39). 12 The point that Socrates is keen to have Glaucon understand is that the role of legislators ‘is not to make one section of a community better off than the rest, but to engineer this for the community as a whole. Legislators should persuade or compel the members of a community to … share with his fellows the benefit which he is capable of contributing to the common welfare’ (Plato, 1993: 247, 159e–520a). 13 Bizarro was originally a super-villain who did the opposite of Superman, making his first appearance in Superboy #68 (Binder and Papp, 1958). Quite quickly, the character was played for laughs and the spin-off Bizarro family featured in its own stories. In Morrison’s story, much of the tragic potential of the character is recovered, and Superman’s mirror image becomes the vehicle allowing us to see who Superman really is. 14 This issue also contains one other brief, yet important, event. Halfway through the issue we find Superman still doing his ‘small’ tasks, in this instance preventing a girl from committing suicide, but unlike the resignation in the Straczynski story, which has Superman declare the world is neither fair nor unfair, it just is, Superman tells this young woman that ‘you’re much stronger than you think you are’ (Morrison and Quitely, 2009: 96).

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Defending freedom

If Superman’s legitimacy stems from a commitment to an open future, Captain America’s legitimacy comes from his defence of beginnings. He is the symbol of a nation and lead member of the nationalist superhero sub-genre (Dittmer, 2013) whose central identity ties him to the fight against tyranny and the preservation of the new beginning bequeathed by the American Revolution. The thinker that can help us work through this question of beginnings is Hannah Arendt.1 As we saw in the previous chapter, legitimacy for Schmitt was something transcendent, and analogous to the miracle in theology. In Arendt’s analysis of the human condition, she favours the same term. Our capacity to begin something new, she writes, is the ‘miracle that saves the world  …  from its normal, “natural” ruin’ (1958:  247). This capacity to begin is precisely how Arendt understands our freedom, and the American constitution is nothing but the promise to preserve a space for this freedom. In other words, Arendt argues that the revolutionary state is legitimate only because it promises to protect something that exceeds it, and I believe that this complex and often contradictory promise to preserve a constitution that enshrines our capacity to challenge a given state of affairs is the source of Captain America’s legitimacy. This is also the source of a tension over the meaning of the nation whose name he bears. Here, he fits well with both the post-millennial vision of America as a heaven on earth that needs defending against an evil still prevalent abroad, but he also has a more radical and critical agenda that regularly puts him at odds with the government of his own country. This might be seen as Conservative, in that the American New Right stands opposed to government on almost every level (aside from when it provides massive funds for the military–industrial complex or can be used as a tool to control women’s bodies and people’s sexuality), but the biography of Captain America reveals him to be a New Deal Democrat and a social liberal, so it is difficult to make the charge of (big ‘C’) Conservative stick. This, though, is a red herring. As a character, he is open to readings from across the political spectrum, and this is a key to his longevity. What is required, then, is an analysis of the meaning of Captain America’s patriotism or fidelity to his country. To what does the patronym refer? Christian Steinmetz has argued that

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the ‘comic book myth is continually in the process of performing maintenance on the borders of the imaginary national space’ (2009: 191), so they are very useful for considering the nature of patriotism. He also claims that an analysis of the super-villains in these stories ‘can reveal limits’ (190) to the conception of the nation supposedly being celebrated, but I would argue that this is even more the case with the supposed ‘friends’ of America that Captain America treats as enemies. These include William Burnside, the Captain America ‘impostor’ known as Bad Cap; John Walker, who first appeared in the guise of Super-Patriot, later becoming US Agent and one-time Captain America replacement; as well as more peripheral characters such as Anti-Cap and Nuke, who are essential for showing who and what Captain America isn’t (Steinmetz, 2009: 192).2 By looking at Captain America in relation to these other patriots, it will be possible to get a better sense of the promise for which he stands. The nationalist superhero Captain America first appeared in 1941, but unlike Superman his fictional life has been interrupted on two occasions, the second one lasting almost ten years. Although the miracles of retroactive continuity have explained the discrepancies, Captain America’s specific mode of legitimacy was not fully established until the third incarnation. Although I  do not question the fact that Captain America presents plenty of opportunities for right-wing readers to cheer, wave the flag and reassert their beliefs that America is always and can only be right, I support Mark D. White’s (2014) claim that Captain America is a much more conflicted, complex and uncertain figure than many commentators are prepared to admit. He first appeared in Captain America Comics #1 in March 1941. Created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, both of whom, like Siegel and Shuster, were children of Jewish migrant families, Captain America was just as much a propaganda tool as he was a commercial enterprise intended to raise awareness of what was happening in Europe and encourage Americans to support intervention in the Second World War.3 The early comics were dominated by the themes of ‘democracy against dictatorship’ (Simon and Kirby, 2005: 154) and the dangers of the enemy at home. They called on young readers to join the Sentinels of Liberty and uphold the ‘war against spies in the USA’ (10), while parading a series of hunchbacked, fang-toothed Nazi sympathisers as well as an array of ‘Eastern’ monsters that included the giant, ‘ageless Orientals who wouldn’t die’ (69). This is a hero draped in his national flag and a character so intertwined with the national imagination that in the Captain America comic celebrating America’s bicentenary in 1976 (Kirby, 2005), he is shown journeying through various historical periods only to meet Benjamin Franklin, who is so inspired by Captain America’s uniform that he designs the Stars and Stripes. In this scene, Captain America becomes both product and source of national identity.

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Captain America’s uniform contains one other detail of note. His winged helmet likens him to the Greek god Hermes, who mediated between the realms of gods and men. If Hermes was the messenger god, what word does Captain America bring? Whether intentional or not, Captain America is not just a defender of freedom, but its herald. This was a message that many people, anxiously looking at Europe from afar, wanted to hear. The comic and the character consequently enjoyed great success through the 1940s, but popularity waned and the last issue, Captain America #73, appeared in July 1949. There followed a change of title with Captain America’s Weird Tales #74 in October 1949, but that was his last appearance for a while.4 After a four-year hiatus, he returned in a story entitled ‘Back from the Dead’ in Young Men #24, in December 1953, followed by the arrival of his own titled comic with Captain America #76 in May 1954, where he was presented as ‘Captain America – Commie Smasher’. It was assumed that his previous persona as Nazi smasher would work well for the intensifying Cold War, but there was clearly little appetite for his zealotry, and his second coming was brief. The comic lasted only three issues with Captain America #78, published in September 1954, being the last of this ill-fated reboot. The third coming of Captain America in 1964 proved to be the most successful, primarily because Stan Lee recast him as a man out of step with his times. Having supposedly died in 1945, he was ‘discovered’ in Avengers #4, in March 1964, floating in suspended animation inside a block of ice in the North Atlantic.5 Cap returned and was resuscitated at a time of crisis not only because of escalations in both the Cold War and the Vietnam War, but because the United States had turned in on itself following the assassination of John F.  Kennedy only a few months before. His own stories were then carried in Tales of Suspense from #59, in November 1964, until Tales of Suspense #99, when they transferred to the first new Captain America comic, beginning with Captain America #100 in April 1968. Various Captain America titles have continued ever since. It has already been noted that the emergence of early superheroes took place within a culture increasingly concerned with issues of physical and racial health, and the story of how Steve Rogers became Captain America is even more explicitly linked to these issues than most. Rogers, ‘a frail young man’ (Simon and Kirby, 2005: 6), volunteers to serve in the army but is rejected for being ‘unfit’ (7). According to Brian E. Hack, Rogers was ‘an ideal candidate for a eugenic makeover’ (2009: 80). He is interestingly described as being ‘innoculated [sic] with [a]‌ strange seething liquid’ – as if his frailty is a disease – that transforms him into the ‘first of a corps of super-agents whose mental and physical ability will make them a terror to spies and saboteurs’ (Simon and Kirby, 2005: 7).6 Immediately after the transformation, a Nazi spy, who has gained access to the experiment, shoots Professor Reinstein (later Professor Erskine), prompting Rogers in his first act as Captain America to kill the assassin by throwing him into the laboratory’s machinery, electrocuting him and leaving nothing ‘but charred ashes’ (9). On the

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death of Reinstein, the knowledge of the formula is lost, rendering Steve Rogers, Captain America, a singular phenomenon, and making the secret of the formula the holy grail for governments and villains alike. With regard to his role as a national(ist) icon, there have been a number of studies that examine the relationship between the character and what is often referred to as the United States’ manifest destiny. One is Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence’s book Captain America and the Crusade against Evil. While I have some difficulty in subscribing to their view of superhero comics’ contribution to American neo-imperialism, I do not deny the connection. To borrow a phrase from another excellent study on the link between superheroes and a belligerent nationalism, it can be said that the relationship between these comics and US foreign policy is ‘co-constitutive’ (Dittmer, 2013: 3). Where my analysis differs is to claim the legitimacy Captain America assumes represents something in excess of the given state of affairs or the form of political life that currently dominates global politics. If all they did was act as validation for US belligerence and supremacy, or the need for the United States to pacify the globe by cloning its own way of life in every primitive outpost, these comics would not have lasted as long or have been so widely popular outside the United States. While regularly projecting and reinforcing the ‘American’ solution to evil, superhero comics also raise questions about the purity of such categorisations. One of the most striking examples of this comes in John Rieber’s New Deal story (Rieber and Cassaday, 2003), written the year after the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. Here, Rieber uses Captain America – who describes himself as a ‘monster’ – to address directly the fact that the actions of the United States quite often produce its enemies. In this story, the terrorists Captain America is asked to fight are shown to have been motivated to attack the United States because they have all previously had their arms and legs blown off by US munitions scattered in foreign fields during earlier US ‘interventions’, while events like the bombing of Dresden in 1945 are also used to show how the United States has been responsible for the sort of mass murder of civilians usually attributed to the terrorists it now fights against. My trouble with Jewett and Lawrence, then, is partly based on their dislike for popular culture. They blame it for numerous political and social ills, including lessening involvement in civic organisations and ‘decreasing patience with a democratic system’ (2003: 27). They define comics as crude (28) publications containing ‘simplified mythic storytelling’ (6) that treat ‘careful deliberation… and mastery of book learning … as indicators of impotence’ (42). If this is the case, why are so many superheroes geniuses (Reed Richards, Tony Stark, Bruce Wayne, Barbara Gordon, Charles Xavier, Hank McCoy, Jean Grey, Hank Pym) or committed students (Peter Parker, Matt Murdock, Jennifer Walters)? They also argue that their semi-divinity supports conceptions of the ‘theocratic foundation for the American nation’ (xvi) and ties Captain America in particular

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to an uncompromising politics or a politics without concession. While Captain America is uncompromising in his defence of freedom, because that freedom is contradictory, as alluded to above, this regularly registers as uncertainty and the questioning of his beliefs, his country and his friends. There is also the added problem whereby Jewett and Lawrence use the name ‘Captain America’ when referring to the actions of successive US administrations whose zealous crusading and anabolic militarism has resulted in regular rounds of state terrorism. This conflation or substitution is made throughout the book without ever being rigorously tested against the comics themselves. While a catalogue of evidence is used to support the critique of this particular brand of US nationalism, far less is used to support this reduction of Captain America to an unthinking patriot. As I will show, the truth is that Captain America has regularly been used as a vehicle for showing the dangers of unthinking patriotism. He is regularly shown to be at odds with increasingly aggressive US administrations and needing to rethink his relationship to the country he supposedly symbolises, and it is in this role that his heroism lies (DuBose, 2007: 931). In fact, the comic has regularly and rather didactically been used to show how a ‘crusading logic … encourages actions that achieve the very opposite of their intended result’ (Jewett and Lawrence, 2003: 22) and yet this is precisely what Jewett and Lawrence claim is lacking throughout Captain America’s seventy-year history. In short, the problem can be seen in Jewett and Lawrence’s six ‘elements of the Captain America complex’ (2003: 24–5), which, to paraphrase, are as follows: an anger blessed and absolutized by God; opponents representing a malevolent conspiracy rooted in absolute evil; all goodness and all evil are on different sides; the violence on the good side is redemptive; to allow oneself to be defeated is to abandon one’s faith; overcoming the desecration brought on by the enemy is a religious and political imperative leading to peace. To reiterate, I have no argument with this representation of zealous US nationalism that, when coupled with the economic interests of the military–industrial complex, succinctly explains the motivations behind America’s view of itself as world redeemer, but this hardly maps onto Captain America comics. There are undoubtedly times when superhero stories have been more firmly aligned with zealous nationalism and there are some writers for whom the dim-witted simplicity of ‘pop fascism’ (42) is still attractive, but such a throwaway, prejudiced accusation does not hold when faced with the innumerable instances where superhero stories and Captain America stories in particular directly question the sort of charismatic, populist authoritarianism that Jewett and Lawrence so rightly fear. The sort of zealotry they condemn is much closer to the actions of a villain like Magneto than it is to Captain America. Through retroactive continuity, Magneto’s fanaticism has been explained by his childhood experience as a Jew imprisoned in Auschwitz and his role as a Sonderkommando, a story encapsulated in X-Men:

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Magneto Testament (Pak and Di Giandomenico, 2009).7 Having survived those horrors, he is then persecuted for being a mutant and uses his childhood experience as justification for his uncompromising war against humans and their prejudice. In terms of national sovereignty, Magneto can therefore quite easily be read as an allegory for Israel. Consequently, fanatical inflexibility is more often than not a character trait of villains, and it is this inability on the part of Jewett and Lawrence to differentiate between different types of commitment or fidelity that makes the study rather limited. Likewise, when they argue this fervour often manifests as ‘retaliatory rage’ (11) they are describing action much closer to that of an anti-hero such as The Punisher. A central aspect to the reborn Captain America of 1964 is his curious distaste for force and violence. Given that in each issue he still spends most of his time beating someone up this does seem rather odd, and yet his third incarnation is so different from the first that Phillip Cunningham has called it his ‘period of pacification’ (2009: 183). As has already been noted, Cap’s first origin story – for there have been many versions – includes him killing someone and, as Cunningham notes, his wartime comics demonstrate ‘he made frequent use of lethal force’ (180). Cunningham chooses to understand this in terms of Captain America’s ‘shift from soldier to superhero’ (178), but I would have to disagree with this. Cunningham is right to note that the existence of the Comics Code would certainly have influenced Stan Lee in the direction of a pacified Captain America, but he clearly wanted to project the defensive rather than offensive role of the 1960s’ version. While there is a difference in milieu between the wartime ‘soldier’ stories and the post-war ‘superhero’ stories, Captain America was fighting superhero-type villains from as early as the giant and immortal oriental monsters of issue 2. It is also difficult to distinguish between soldier and superhero as Steve Rogers was not a soldier – his frailty making him unfit – until he became superhuman with the injection of the serum. Soldier and superhero are one and the same. This is reflected in the fact that numerous stories post-1964 deploy the narrative device of the soldier, and while this feature of Steve Rogers may be accentuated at specific historical moments his characterisation as a soldier is repeated too often and too regularly for it to be seen as a specific mode suited only to times of national emergency or crisis.8 Although the Captain America brought into being during the Second World War is very much concerned with securing the homeland, the post-war Captain America projects a different kind of power, one that is not a measure of force or violence but, as Arendt would define it, the power of (a) people mutually committing to preserving one another’s freedom. This is not to say he couldn’t be used to support American foreign policy crusades, or that he doesn’t carry the very nationalistic ‘genes’ of the early incarnation, it is simply to say that Stan Lee saw him defending something that was irreducible to America. In other words, the Captain America of 1964 comes to represent both the nation-state and its limits.

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Accentuating his role as a defender of freedom, his primary weapon became his iconic shield. In the first issue it was a traditional ‘heater’ or ‘kite’ shield with a stars and stripes design.9 The circular shield now synonymous with Captain America appeared in issue 2. Nowadays made from an alloy of adamantium, vibranium and a dash of mysticism, the shield can be an offensive weapon, but it functions figuratively to indicate his primarily defensive mode. From 1964 onwards, and whenever creators felt it necessary to return to Second World War settings, it was always Bucky that was shown wielding guns and shooting people despite the evidence of Captain America’s wartime use of them. Irrespective of any specific storylines this is the most ideological of representations given that it acts out a central disavowal in American national identity and the exercise of its sovereignty, namely that America is primarily pacific and does not kill (this is, of course, not just an ‘American’ disavowal but an essential construction of the sovereign’s relationship to the law, as will be discussed in the next two chapters). Bucky is the partner-cum-proxy who does all the dirty work that enables Captain America to avoid getting blood on his hands.10 When Captain America is forced to use a gun, as in Captain America #321 (Gruenwald and Neary, 1986b), where he is compelled to shoot an Ultimatum terrorist who is firing a machine gun into a crowd, it is a matter of great distress for him. In the end, it only reconfirms his guiding belief in the sacredness of human life and the story finishes in the following issue with Captain America going out of his way to capture and then save the life of the terrorist group’s leader, an anarchist called the Flag Smasher. The most striking moment of disavowal, though, comes in an earlier Captain America issue (Gruenwald and Neary, 1986a) that was part of the Squadron Supreme miniseries and takes place in the alternate Marvel universe of Earth-712. In this series, Marvel interrogates the absolute power of superheroes and considers what would happen if they tried to create a utopia. The Squadron, which are basically clones of the biggest DC characters  – Hyperion is Superman, Power Princess is Wonder Woman, Whizzer is the Flash, Dr Spectrum is Green Lantern, Nighthawk is Batman, and so on – set about disarming the entire population, including the military, while also developing a Behaviour Modification Programme aimed at preventing crime by altering the functioning of people’s brains. While following the rather tired claim proffered by the likes of Friedrich Hayek, Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman that any concern for the greater good will always end in tyranny and the trampling of individual liberty, the most interesting part of the story comes when Nighthawk, who left the squadron as a result of its announcement it will pursue the creation of a utopia, uses the power of Professor Imam, a wizard supreme, to make an inter-dimensional jump into the regular Marvel universe of Earth-616. At the same time, he leaps out of the Squadron Supreme miniseries and into Captain America #314, appearing in the basement gym of the Avengers mansion where Captain America is working out. After the customary two pages of fighting, Nighthawk reveals his identity and his

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request that Captain America leads the Avengers into the universe of Earth-712 to resist the totalitarian regime that Hyperion and the Squadron are creating. Having considered the request, Captain America tells the Avengers: ‘It’s a difficult call. We’re being asked to go to a foreign world and help a rebel change its form of government. This strikes me as wrong. We do not, after all, go around our own world and alter governments whose policies we disagree with … even though we all oppose the concept of dictatorships!’ (Gruenwald and Neary, 1986a: 8; italics in original). Given that America had already done just that in Iran in 1953, Iraq in 1963 and Chile in 1973, to offer only a few examples, and that only three months before the issue’s publication, the United States’ five-year-old intervention in Nicaragua had been deemed to be in contravention of international law by the International Court of Justice ruling dated 27 June 1986,11 this is an extraordinary piece of historical airbrushing that gives credence to the geo-political analysis of Jewett and Lawrence, and to their claims regarding the ideological role of superheroes. Here, Captain America firmly identifies himself with the US government as an agent of virtue, and yet at other times he is able to be critical of the government and still remain a representative of US national imaginary. As Dittmer notes, this is because of the hyphen in ‘nation-state’ (2013: 3) that joins two otherwise separate concepts. This is exemplified in Jack Kirby’s Bicentennial Battles, first published in 1976 on the 200th anniversary of the American Revolution, where Captain America is sent on a magical history tour by a curious figure called Buda. He appears at key points in US history, such as the events leading up to Fort Sumter and the start of the American Civil War, or the testing of the first atomic bomb at Alamagordo. At one point quite early in the story, he is also shown meeting Geronimo, who tells Captain America: ‘In your face I see the Great Spirit, which binds all men’ (Kirby, 2005: 30). This spirit that the two great warriors share is the belief in ‘Liberty or death!’ (30), which again gives evidence to the argument that Captain America supports a zealous nationalism under the auspices of freedom, and yet at the same time this is a curious picture for a zealot given that he is clearly identifying with the victims of state terrorism. The scene is made even more curious when Captain America tries to prevent the approaching US Army from capturing Geronimo. It closes with a double-page spread of Captain America standing in front of an oncoming cavalry charge, about to be trampled, shouting ‘Stop! STOP!! Listen to me …!!’ (32–3). His last words in this scene are ‘There is another way!! – Another way!! – We’re all Americans’ (34). Here, this symbol of the nation-state clearly disables the hyphen and sets the nation, understood as an open identity, adrift from the state as a mechanism for limiting and policing that identity. Of course, there remains a very strong ideological message here about the United States’ ability to recognise its fallibility, which at the same time reinforces its essential goodness, but it does complicate a simple picture of national zealotry. In many respects, this also plays out

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the contradiction that Clare Pitkethly (2012) argues separates the US superhero from the classical hero. Where the US superhero has an ‘incorporative structure’ that ‘integrates difference within a more encompassing whole’ (218), the classical hero’s role is always to subdue difference and overcome it. Another example of this separation of nation and state, and one which is also in keeping with this ‘incorporative structure’, can be seen in Captain America’s encounter with the Flag Smasher that preceded that terrible moment in issue 321 where he had to resort to lethal force. Captain America #312 opens with the Flag Smasher attacking the UN building in New  York, an institution he describes as ‘a misguided attempt to promote unity among the peoples of the world!’ (Gruenwald and Neary, 1985:  3; italics in original). In order to bring an end to the chauvinistic violence committed in the name of nation-states, he embarks on a series of terrorist attacks aimed at liberating people from these archaic and primitive divisions. A sub-text to this issue is that Steve Rogers has just received a cheque covering all of his back pay since he went missing in 1945. Unable to return the money, he decides to use it to fund a ‘nationwide hotline’ for the people of the United States to communicate with him ‘directly’ (6) and let him know what he should be attending to. To promote the hotline he makes a public appearance to which the Flag Smasher is drawn like a bull to a red (white and blue) rag. We learn that, as the son of an ambassador, the Flag Smasher continually moved countries and was treated as a foreigner wherever he went. His mission (by way of a certain leap in logic) is to counter that prejudice in the only language people understand – ‘the universal language of violence’ (12). As the two men face off, the Flag Smasher sets out his creed: ‘I believe all men are sprung from the same primal parent’, he declares, continuing by claiming ‘If we were to erase national boundaries and accept the essential unity of all mankind, the world would be a better place! Earth should not be divided into nations! We are the world – not a bunch of different species!’ (18; italics in original). While it would be safe to assume the anarchist Flag Smasher and the supposedly nationalist Captain America are diametrically opposed, once the inevitable fighting is over and the Flag Smasher has been subdued, Captain America sets off on another speech: ‘I believe my opponent was wrong. There is nothing harmful about having a sense of national identity or ethnic heritage … Be proud of your heritage, but never let that pride make you forget that beneath it all, we are all human beings who have the same wants and needs and deserve the same respect and dignity’ (22; italics in original). Despite being cast as polar opposites, Captain America’s beliefs are very similar to the Flag Smasher’s. Although he does support the need for national identity, he doesn’t believe that identity should be closed or exclusive as it is when understood in terms of a state. Nor should such identities be considered primary. In keeping with the Flag Smasher’s idealism, he believes in something higher and more universal than these specific politico-legal identifications. Although he resists

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the Flag Smasher’s methods, by talking about the ‘constitution of the national by the ethnic’ (Dittmer, 2013: 106), Captain America effectively supports the Flag Smasher’s ideals of a peacefully co-existing humanity. The cultural heritage that Captain America belongs to is one that looks beyond state borders and speaks to everyone irrespective of creed, colour or nation. Again, this may support the zealous US nationalism of those politicians who see it as America’s manifest destiny to enforce such ideals, but I tend to think the message is a little more ambiguous. Returning to the later encounter in which Captain America saves the Flag Smasher’s life after a battle on a snow-covered mountain, there is one panel that exemplifies this. In an extraordinary image, we are shown Captain America lying with a seriously injured Flag Smasher, his arms cradling him as they ‘pool’ (Gruenwald and Neary, 1986c) their body heat while sheltering from a snow storm. This is an incredibly intimate portrayal. What makes it even more interesting is that while the Flag Smasher’s costume is black and white, with the eyeholes of his hood coloured red, in the dim light of the snow shelter his cape, which Captain America has wrapped him in, appears blue. At this time, the central circle of Captain America’s shield was coloured black, making the embrace even more visually harmonious: the two are quite literally unified by the palette of red, white, blue and black. This is an image that at once celebrates the virtue of Captain America and his national(istic) patronym, and yet it also seems to collapse the distinction in favour of a universal brotherly love without borders. Captain America’s promise Of the many contradictions and conflicts that make up the biography of Captain America, the one in which I am most interested is his relation to the US government as the supposed embodiment of both law and justice. By the end of the very first Captain America story, he is shown teaming up with his young partner, Bucky, and it is very clear that his role is to fight ‘the vicious elements who seek to overthrow the US government’ (Simon and Kirby, 2005: 10), and yet a defining feature of Captain America is precisely the fact that he has regularly defied the US government in the name of something higher and more noble. When Stan Lee and Jack Kirby brought him back, they played on the fact that Steve Rogers was a man out of time. This afforded numerous opportunities for dramatic soul searching, but it also created a distance between Captain America and the country for which he is fighting, or rather Captain America comes to stand for the difference between US potentiality and what it is in actuality. He is a figure ripped from the past that always points towards a future, to something yet to be achieved. For many writers, this means Captain America stands for ‘true American ideals’ or ‘the best of what America has to offer’ (Weiner, 2009a: 10). Something that is otherwise called the American dream.12 Christopher J. Hayton and David

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L. Albright go so far as to say the original experiment represents an ‘ordinary man transformed into a superhero through injection of American ideals’ (2009: 15). I would agree with this to a large extent. In Captain America #250, where Cap is almost tempted into a political career and is set on a path to presidential candidacy, he declines the offer, arguing that ‘my duty to the dream would severely limit any abilities I might have to preserve the reality’ (Stern and Byrne, 2007: 76; italics in original). This can also be seen in Daredevil #233, where Captain America has to take down the psychopathic, arch-patriot called Nuke, a chemically enhanced soldier with the Stars and Stripes tattooed on his face, whom the Kingpin is using to protect his formation of a personal military–industrial complex. Here, a general tries to evoke Cap’s loyalty to the ‘department’ as a means of stopping his questions about the identity of Nuke, to which Cap replies: ‘I’m loyal to nothing, general … except the dream’ (Miller and Mazzucchelli, 2010: 163; italics in original). Here, Captain America separates the reality from the dream as if the dream is an ideal yet to be realised. Likewise, in Captain America #323, he resigns his role in protest against becoming a government agent because it would compromise his ‘effectiveness as a symbol that transcends mere politics’ (Gruenwald, Dwyer and Morgan, 2011: 17; italics in original), but I think his legitimacy stems not from a dream or an ideal, but something much more concrete, namely the initiating, concerted action that is the very foundation of politics. If Superman inspires us to be better and stronger, and to overcome the given in our pursuit of the Good, Captain America directs us towards the joint enterprise that first brought democracy into being and continues to maintain it. While he is an undoubted defender of individual rights, he also understands that freedom conceived in this way presupposes the collective commitment to maintaining a space that preserves such rights. In her study of the two great democratic constitutions entitled On Revolution, Arendt contrasted the French Revolution, which was based, she argued, on necessity and the liberation from want, with the American Revolution, which was based on freedom from tyranny and oppression. In her opinion, this gives the American Revolution greater political resonance, but its roots go back to an earlier compact and commitment that established the formation of this new nation and is the lifeblood of authentic political life. Of the first settled communities, she writes as follows: ‘the Pilgrims had been prompted to “covenant” … to combine themselves together in a “civil Body Politik” which, held together solely by the strength of mutual promise “in the Presence of God and one another”, supposedly was powerful enough to “enact, constitute, and frame” all necessary laws and instruments of government’ (1990: 167). She goes on to remark that this ‘is an event rather than a theory or a tradition’ (172), meaning that this was a great piece of political initiative for which there existed no preceding model: ‘No theory, theological or political or philosophical, but their own decision to leave the Old World

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behind and to venture forth into an enterprise entirely of their own led to a sequence of acts and occurrences in which they [discovered] the elementary grammar of political action and its more complicated syntax, whose rules determine the rise and fall of human power’ (173); with power here being defined as ‘the elementary structure of joint enterprise’ (173). It ‘comes into being only if and when men join themselves together for the purpose of action, and it will disappear when, for whatever reason, they disperse and desert one another. Hence, binding and promising, combining and covenanting are the means by which power is kept in existence’ (175). In The Human Condition, Arendt also explains that because freedom is a joint enterprise that comes from people’s commitment to respect each other’s capacity to initiate, the primary political category is ‘plurality’ (1958: 176) rather than individuality. Each person is indeed ‘distinct’, but their distinction can only be registered if we commit to preserve a space in which each person’s initiating action can take place. This is neither abstract individualism nor anonymous equality, but disclosive freedom premised on joint enterprise. Captain America’s actions in defence of Geronimo and his speech in response to the Flag Smasher are disclosive in the sense that Arendt understands the term. On such occasions, we find out who Captain America is, and each event becomes part of his story. This is what the American Revolution committed itself to preserving. The joint venture that is freedom becomes clearer if we look at Arendt’s tripartite division of human practice or what she calls the vita activa. In The Human Condition, she splits human activity into labour, work and action. Labour designates those activities committed to the cyclical, repetitive production of consumables, such as food. Work, then, refers to the activity of making that results in a durable end product. Action is finally reserved for the disclosive practice set out above. Like labour, it relates to ephemera, but is not cyclical and repetitive, and, unlike work, it is not based on a preceding model or template, but is related to the creation or invention of something new. Because speech and action are ephemeral, they do, however, depend on products of work – including anything from stories, works of art or social institutions – that create a durable world able to house the speech and action that would otherwise disappear.13 I have noted that the disclosive element of action means that it ‘is never possible in isolation’ (Arendt, 1958: 188), but this also means any action places us in contact with a ‘ “web” of human relationships’ (183). Because action is unpredictable and irreversible, it also ‘has an inherent tendency to force open all limitations and cut across all boundaries’ (190), which is why the promise as well as the capacity to forgive are essential for it (237). With the results of initiating action being irreversible, it would be practically impossible to act if we could not forgive an action that has unforeseen consequences, and because it is unpredictable we need to bind ourselves together through covenant, contract and promise in order to enable some level of predictability.

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In Arendt’s view, freedom becomes a form of entanglement in the action of others (1958: 234). It is essentially a form of non-sovereignty, defined as ‘being able to begin something new and  …  not being able to control or even foretell its consequences’ (235). In this situation, to abstain from human action would be ‘the only means to safeguard one’s sovereignty’ (234). On this subject Arendt writes: ‘If it were true that sovereignty and freedom are the same, then indeed no man could be free, because sovereignty, the ideal of uncompromising self-sufficiency and mastership, is contradictory to the very condition of plurality. No man can be sovereign because not one man, but men, inhabit the earth’ (234). As a consequence the promise and forgiveness become absolutely central to any understanding of a sovereign act: ‘sovereignty resides in the resulting, limited independence from the incalculability of the future’ (245) that the promise enables. This also has a consequence for how Arendt thinks about politics, not in terms of state institutions, but the space arising between people speaking and acting together. She also refers to this as ‘the space of appearance’ (198) that precedes all formal constitution or government. This is also what Arendt understands power to be (200). It is not a quantifiable strength or a measurable force, but the potency and potential of people initiating something together: ‘without power, the space of appearance … will fade away’ (204). Captain America’s promise, and the sovereign legitimacy he derives from it, is to preserve such a space of appearance. He represents this irreducible power. This is not to say that his patronym does not conflate America with this power, sometimes directly in terms of the US nation, but also figuratively in the sense that the US Constitution is deemed to be an exemplary commitment to preserve this form of initiating, plural and unpredictable action. My point, however, is that Captain America’s legitimacy, and hence his sovereignty within the Marvel universe stems from this commitment to joint enterprise that the US nation and its institutions of government are supposed to represent, but do not exhaust. In that light, we should spend some time assessing Captain America’s sense of what patriotism entails. Captain America’s patriotism In a letter to Gershom Sholem dated 1963, Arendt wrote that ‘there can be no patriotism without permanent opposition and criticism’ (in Smith, 2009: 105). In recent times, and importantly in the middle of the Civil War story arc in which Captain America yet again defies the US government, his criticism is portrayed as stemming from the old-school liberalism espoused by Mark Twain, who advocated a politics based on individual conscience and freedom of expression (Straczynski and Garney, 2007),14 but Captain America has always known that the defence of liberty and freedom of expression can only be maintained through a concerted effort and people acting together. First of all, Steve Rogers becomes a soldier and in doing so he gave himself over to a collective project to

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fight tyranny.15 We can still cast him as a heroic individual but that is only if we reproduce the prejudice towards individuality that the story of Steve Rogers asks us to question. In the first place, Steve Rogers is not special. He is just one of the many young men shown in the first panel of issue 1 who volunteered to defend the United States. Even where his distinctness is accentuated in later origin stories (Dittmer, 2013: 69), it does not detract from his capacity for self-sacrifice in the name of the greater good (an idea anathema to many strains of individualism). His transformation is also a collective effort that includes Franklin D. Roosevelt as President, Mr Grover of the FBI, Agent X-13 and Dr Erskine. Although the Super-Soldier programme is a secret, it is very much a public work. Another way to think about Captain America’s relation to a collective is that his rebirth in 1964 comes courtesy of a team. Undoubtedly, Stan Lee wanted some scaffolding to support this risky new venture of bringing back Captain America, and what better scaffolding than to place him in the midst of Thor, the Hulk, Iron Man, Ant Man and the Wasp? The super-team’s catchphrase ‘Avengers assemble’, first spoken by Thor in Avengers #10 (Lee and Heck, 1964), signals their collectivity, and despite having gods as members they always seemed more democratic, if not social democratic, than DC’s very aristocratic Justice League of America. By issue 16 (Lee and Kirby, 1965a), Captain America takes over the leadership of a completely new team made up primarily of the misunderstood outcasts and reformed criminals, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. In order to approach the specific character of the joint enterprise Captain America represents, we can start with his speech that appeared in Captain America #130 from 1970. Here, his actions are being monitored by the villain known as the Hood whose accomplice watches him intervene in a campus riot in which the Dean’s life appears to be at risk. Without knowing the full story, Captain America’s immediate response is to get the Dean out of harm’s way and only then find out what is going on. The Hood takes this apparent identification with authority figures as an opportunity for dividing the country by setting what he thinks is Captain America’s commitment to law and order against the desire for change expressed in the student riot. To do this, the Hood uses his media contacts to arrange a live televised speech by Captain America on the dangers of disorder. As the cameras focus in, Captain America starts as follows: I’ve been asked to speak to you today – to warn America about those who try to change our institutions – but, in a pig’s eye I’ll warn you! This nation was founded by dissidents – by people who wanted something better! There’s nothing sacred about the status quo – and there never will be! I don’t believe in using force – or violence – because they can be weapons of those who would enslave us – but, nor do I believe in an establishment that remains so aloof – so distant – that the people are driven to desperate measures – as in the case of a college Dean who isolates himself from his student body! (Lee and Colan, 1970b: 15–16; italics in original)

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Aside from his argument in favour of dissidents and his declaration that there is nothing sacred about the current state of affairs, the key element in this speech relates to institutions of governance that become aloof, distant and isolated. This image of separation and detachment is the very opposite of how Arendt understands the joint enterprise that is power. In agreement with Montesquieu, she notes how ‘the outstanding characteristic of tyranny was that it rested on isolation’ and ‘contradicted the essential human condition of plurality’ (1958: 202). In the stories where the nature of Captain America’s patriotism is explicitly addressed, these issues of division and separation are always very much at the centre. One of those stories within the Captain America canon was his replacement by John Walker, the self-styled Super-Patriot in Captain America #333 (Gruenwald, Dwyer and Morgan, 2011).16 Curiously, the earlier disavowal with regard to US foreign policy has some visibility here. The story arc begins with Captain America being called before the ‘Commission’ that tells him he is contracted to work for the US government and that they expect him to obey orders rather than operate with autonomy. Meanwhile a deranged patriot going by the name of Warhead threatens to detonate a thermo-nuclear device on the top of the Washington Monument if the government doesn’t agree to strengthen the ‘national character’ (17) by going to war on ‘somebody’ instead of letting, as he puts it, ‘the Libyans, Iranians and Nicaraguans walk all over us’ (17; italics in original). With Captain America contemplating the request by the Commission to become the ‘popular high profile mascot’ (13) America needs, the Super-Patriot seizes his chance to be the national hero he has always wanted to be and takes down Warhead, unceremoniously killing him and disarming the bomb. At the same time, realising he might be used to fight the Contras (19) or be assigned to the Freedom Force, a group of reformed criminals who execute any government action without question, Captain America relinquishes the role and is replaced by John Walker, whose new found celebrity and ‘no-nonsense’ approach suits the Commission’s desire to defend the United States. As the story develops, the replacement Captain America (and his Bold Urban Commandos or BUCkys) finds himself up against a variety of extremist groups, including the fascistic Watchdogs, who kill anyone that supports abortion or believes in evolution, and the Resistants, who use terrorist methods to oppose mutant registration. Parallel to this, Steve Rogers has gone off once again to reflect upon his life and role, only to return in a black version of his old costume and calling himself the Captain. The story arc contains numerous moments that might be considered in relation to a discussion of politics, sovereignty and the nation-state,17 but the two different courses of action taken by John Walker and Steve Rogers are the key to interpreting it. As the replacement Captain America, John Walker plays the role of the patriot who has no concern for the quality of the regime giving him orders, whereas Steve Rogers is more akin to the partisan who will take orders only from a regime that matches his ideals.18 The fact that

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John Walker is shown to fail means the partisan is also shown to be the better patriot, as it is Steve Rogers’ course of action that leads to the discovery that the Commission that sacked him had been infiltrated by the Red Skull. Walker’s rather limited view of what needs to be done also takes him down a path of solitary vengeance that ultimately leads to his loss of the Captain America title. When he first accepts the role, only one of his former BUCkys takes on the job of his new partner; the other two split off becoming the new villains, Left-Winger and Right-Winger. Walker’s first job is to infiltrate the Watchdogs, who retaliate by kidnapping and killing Walker’s parents after Left-Winger and Right-Winger publicly disclose Walker’s real identity in revenge for ditching them. Walker then wreaks vengeance on the Watchdogs, and exacts violent retribution on Left-Winger and Right-Winger in retaliation for revealing his name. Not only does the violence escalate out of control, Walker completely loses sight of what he should be doing as Captain America. The key to all this occurs in issue 337 where Steve Rogers explains to his friends The Falcon, Nomad and D-Man, who have all been searching for him since his sacking, that he intends to continue serving his country. When The Falcon asks ‘so what say we go to Washington and give those loonies on Capitol Hill a good swift kick in the …’ (Gruenwald, Dwyer and Morgan, 2011: 134; italics in original), Rogers interrupts him, suggesting his service does not entail retaliation, retribution or revenge. When Arendt links politics to action she explicitly likens revenge to the non-political, reproductive cycle of labour. Revenge simply repeats and continues the original crime but in a different form. Only the initiative of action breaks such a cycle and offers new possibilities. Here, Rogers’ decision to create a new role for himself sets up a course of action that leads to a beneficial solution, unlike the destruction wrought in Walker’s ultimately futile and very personal cycle of retaliation and revenge. Although this might again be taken as an ideological sleight of hand, the true patriot in this story is one who questions an immoral regime and initiates a course of action beyond the isolated concerns of his own personal desires. Although Walker, especially in his role as US Agent, continues to provide a contrast for Captain America’s brand of patriotism, the most important character in this role is the Commie-bashing Cap, William Burnside. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, superhero comics hate continuity discrepancies, and the Commie-bashing Cap of the 1950s was just that. The ingenious solution came in Captain America #153, when Steve Englehart introduced him as a deranged patriot who sought to fill the hole left by the death of Steve Rogers at the end of the Second World War. Although 1950s Cap was supposed to be the original, this story introduced William Burnside as the man who turned himself into Steve Rogers via surgery and the procurement of a dodgy batch of super-soldier serum. We are told that his anti-communist ravings and extremist tactics led to him (and his own Bucky) being taken out by SHIELD and put on ice, from where he

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suddenly and unexpectedly escaped. In Captain America #153, he first appears beating up a black man in an alley, and when The Falcon intervenes he proudly declares the return of ‘the REAL Captain America and Bucky!’ (Englehart and Buscema, 1972a: n.p.). With Steve Rogers on vacation and Burnside looking and sounding identical to him, The Falcon is only able to distinguish them because Burnside calls him ‘boy’, which The Falcon tells us Rogers would never do. The next issue begins with Bad Bucky telling The Falcon that he is not fit to carry on the ‘tradition’ of fighting Nazis and Commies, and The Falcon responds by declaring that they are not the real thing, just ‘a couple of costumed bigots’ (Englehart and Buscema, 1972b: n.p.). A little later, after Bad Cap goes on the rampage to demonstrate ‘the true force of democracy’ (n.p.), the narrator describes him as ‘demonstrably insane’ and ‘a man who enjoys torture’ (n.p.; italics in original). The story eventually plays out over the next two issues, in which Bad Cap tracks down the ‘pinko’ Steve Rogers on vacation, explaining, in issue 155, that ‘we found that most people who weren’t pure-blooded Americans were Commies!’ (Englehart and Buscema, 1972c: n.p.; italics in original). By issue 156, Bad Cap is defeated – his shield is broken by the authentic one – and Captain America reflects on the ‘fatal flaw’ of zealous patriotism, describing the encounter as the toughest battle of his life, saying ‘I’ve never had to fight the evil side of my own nature’ (Englehart and Buscema, 1972d: n.p.; italics in original). As a racist and a bigot, Bad Cap’s discriminatory actions run completely counter to the plurality essential to human action, and actively produce division, separation and isolation. After the initial appearance, Bad Cap continued to appear in Captain America stories,19 the most interesting being in What If? #44 (Gillis and Buscema, 1984), where the title asks ‘What if Captain America Were Revived Today?’ An alternative reality story published in 1984, this issue of the ‘What If?’ series is set in an America where Steve Rogers wasn’t recovered in 1964, but a frustrated government worker had released Commie Smasher Cap from his suspended animation. It is interesting to note that without his ability to bind and commit people to each other, the Avengers have disbanded to pursue personal projects, and this says a lot about Captain America’s power. At this time, Quentin Harderman, head of the Committee to Regain America’s Principles (CRAP), has thrown his support behind Norman Chadwick’s campaign for Senate. Following his successful election he introduces an anti-immigration identity card and sets up the Federal Jobs Bureau that discriminates against minorities. Riots and civil unrest ensue and martial law is introduced. The newly created Sentinels of Liberty – the volunteers Captain America asked the nation’s young people to join in his very first issue – become the security force that replaces the traditional police. Their uniforms are a mix of Captain America’s costume and regular military fatigues, giving them the look of Third Reich Brownshirts. As unrest and discrimination grow, a ghetto is created behind the Harlem Wall. Once the real Captain America is discovered, he joins the resistance and

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eventually confronts Bad Cap at the convention for Norman Chadwick’s America First Party. After the obligatory Cap-on-Cap battle, the victorious Steve Rogers makes yet another great Captain America speech, which is possibly his most radical. He begins to speak to the crowd about the character of America: ‘America is nothing!’ he declares. ‘Without its ideals – its commitment to the freedom of all men, America is a piece of trash!’ (Gillis and Buscema, 1984: n.p.; italics in original). Then, in one of the best lines ever uttered by Captain America, he explains who he is and why he volunteered to be part of that collective project that fought the fascism that appears to have taken hold in 1980s America: ‘I fought Adolf Hitler not because America was great but because it was fragile!’ (n.p.). But why would Captain America highlight such fragility at a time when the United States was the global hegemon? The answer lies in the fact that Captain America does not represent the workings of the state supported by a military–industrial complex, nor does he represent the objects and products that define a national culture; instead, he represents a power irreducible to these things. My argument is that the fragility to which Captain America points here is precisely the joint enterprise of initiating action that gives the word ‘America’ its meaning and gives him a heightened legitimacy within the Marvel universe. He effectively reminds the people that the greatness of its institutions, their apparent strength, is nothing without the freedom of people speaking and acting together. He continually refers to ‘us’ and ‘we’, and constantly reminds Americans that freedom is not something to be done alone. So what kind of patriot does this make Captain America? It has already been shown that he is a patriot for whom the nature of the regime matters, and yet he is also committed to defend something that the US nation and its government is assumed to embody. In the reimagined origin story in Captain America #255 from 1981 (Stern and Byrne, 2007), he directly refers to the promise. Having assumed the Captain America role for the first time, he wryly observes that ‘this land of ours … hasn’t always lived up to the promise of the founding fathers … but America at its best has always stood for the rights of man, and against the rule of tyrants!’ (181). In this story, where the manufacture of Captain America is an integral component of the war machine, he is very much a product of that part of the vita activa that Arendt calls work. He was created as a component designed to further the projection of American might, and was certainly intended to be used as a model or template for the production of future super-soldiers. The difficulty is that if Captain America is to genuinely fight tyranny, he has to escape the instrumentality of work, where the ends justify the means. To fight tyranny genuinely is not simply to pursue an end irrespective of the means used, but to be attentive to the means themselves. Thus, the only way to commit to the promise of the founding fathers is to remove himself from the instrumentality of work and take the difficult and unpredictable path of political action.

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In his sense for a shared humanity beyond the American nation, we might refer to him in terms of the ‘cosmopolitan patriot’ articulated by Kwame Anthony Appiah (1997) and supported in White’s (2014) analysis of his virtue, but in his commitment to the joint enterprise of initiating action, it is perhaps better to understand him as a ‘constitutional patriot’. This is a term coined by Dolph Sternberger (Müller, 2009), a student of Hannah Arendt, but made popular by Jürgen Habermas. The phrase ‘designates the idea that political attachment ought to center on the norms, the values, and, more directly the procedures of a liberal democratic constitution’ (Müller and Scheppele, 2008: 67). Although Captain America might represent the American dream, or the ideals to which that country aspires, he is first and foremost committed to the promise written into the Constitution. It is for this reason that he is most critical of those moments where reality, specifically the deeds of the US government, do not always correspond to that promise. Despite this gap between the ideal and reality, he remains committed to the rights set out in the constitution, knowing that it is this document – this covenant – that is the best possible path to those ideals. Just as Captain America can function ideologically as both realist and idealist, he also represents a constitution deemed to be the best conduit between what is and what ought to be, and just as Arendt believed that the promise institutionalised in the US Constitution differentiated it from that other great revolutionary constitution created almost at the same time in France, Captain America stands for the singularity of America’s democratic principles. National recuperation Although the US Constitution is a legal document and the very expression of national sovereignty, its legitimacy stems from the idea that it preserves the miracle of human freedom. In other words, this element of transcendence is made manifest in the articles that founded the US nation. In this, we can see first of all how a great deal of ideological work can be done. Captain America can represent this universal transcendence, while still supporting the very particular claim that the US nation remains the ultimate expression of that transcendence. Secondly, this view of freedom understood as initiating action presupposes the capacity to create alternative forms of political organisation and yet the constitution or the principles of US democracy are continually presented as the only form of politics necessary. This is one way in which a diversity of political claims for representation, recognition and equality are recuperated for a nationalist narrative in Captain America comics. As Dittmer has argued, just as America is taken to be the expression of a wide range of demands for freedom and liberty the ‘nationalist superhero’s body  …  compresses the demographic diversity of the nation into a singularly gendered and raced body’ (2013: 181). Ultimately, this is the way in which Captain America’s dual mission to preserve

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the promise and fight tyranny are brought together under the banner of US democracy. Taking the examples of gender and race, it becomes clear how political radicalism is recuperated for the US project and how this maintains America’s sense of sovereign legitimacy. Marvel’s attempt to address the legitimate demands of women had always been rather laughable. Despite gradually attempting to write female characters that weren’t entirely reduced to domesticity, the majority of Marvel’s female heroes adhered to the usual sexist stereotypes. One interesting attempt to raise feminist concerns was ventured in Captain America #144 with the group of female SHIELD agents known as the Femme Force. Unfortunately, while these determined ‘sisters’ were shown to be very capable agents their professional lives remained dominated by personal concerns, especially problems with the boyfriends they fought alongside. Years later, during the 1990s, feminism would return; only this time its militancy was equated with terrorism, as Superia and her group of Femizons threatened to take over the world. As Dittmer (2013: 41) notes, in Captain America #391 (Gruenwald and Levins, 1991), this had descended into little more than the patriarchal fear of castration, as Superia places Captain America and Paladin in a chemical bath that threatens to turn them into women. Although Superia’s plans are thwarted, she returns in a later issue and uses psychological experiments to control the mind of a young woman called Cathy Webster. Having given her enhanced abilities by exposing her to radiation and brainwashing her to hate all men, Superia turns her into the symbol of women’s liberation known as Free Spirit. Dressed in the patriotic colours of red, white and blue, she is launched into the world of men to violently confront their sexism (Dittmer, 2013: 42), but it is Captain America who finally frees her from Superia’s control and shows her the true path of liberty. With regard to race, there are numerous stories that might be chosen, but the 1971 civil rights story that comes to a head in Captain America #143 is the most pertinent here. It begins with Captain America’s black partner, Sam Wilson, aka The Falcon, falling for a black political activist called Leila. Despite the stereotypical ‘jive’ given to the black characters to speak with, this remains a serious attempt by the Marvel team to address the struggles of black Americans. As the story develops and Sam becomes more involved with Leila, the legitimate concerns of black Americans begin to take hold. As both Sam Wilson, the Harlem social worker, and as The Falcon, he has always strongly identified with the people of his community, but their continued marginalisation and Leila’s convincing arguments increasingly pull him towards militant political action. As tensions rise, Sam is increasingly required to make a choice and take sides as Leila becomes involved with a mysterious group called The People’s Militia, who advocate racial advancement through violent struggle. In issue 143, as the protestors take on the police, Captain America takes on the role of the sovereign with the

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injunction ‘you must not turn this into a civil war’ (Friedrich and Romita, 1971: 24). Asking for a break in hostilities until Captain America and The Falcon can prove the protestors are ‘doing it the wrong way’ (25), they take off to confront the leader of the People’s Militia, who turns out to be the Red Skull, hoping to foment hate and take advantage of division in order to destroy America. As Dittmer has argued, while the Red Skull primarily represents the fight against Nazi tyranny he ‘can represent various iterations of “un-American” behavior’ (2013:  97), and here it is the fear that militancy becomes dogma, which in turn becomes tyrannical. Although the story is partly resolved by repeating predominantly white fears of black political consciousness and advocating that the protestors remain within the already established political system that is so blatantly skewed against them, the comic is not entirely insensitive to the problems involved in this attempt to find a solution. In this regard, Captain America #143 closes with the conclusions to the drama opening a rift between Captain America and The Falcon. Looking down over the streets, and having defused the tension by showing who had taken control of the protest, Captain America remarks:  ‘Well, all’s quiet for now  …  but who knows what little something it will take to make them explode again!’ Amazed at what he believes to be Captain America’s trivialising of the events, The Falcon says, ‘I don’t like the way you put that, partner! They … we … got reason to blow up!’ (33). He then flies off back to Leila, declaring he’s got some ‘value assessing to do!’ (33; italics in original). Here, Captain America is shown to know that this is not a small matter, that civil and human rights are essential for all, and yet by equating militancy with tyranny it is the procedures of a liberal, constitutional democracy that are shown to be the only way forward. Militancy-become-dogma-become-tyranny is thereby presented as a politics that ultimately closes down the disclosive speech and action essential to human freedom.20 However, and this is very important, the fact that the story still ends with disagreement between Captain America and The Falcon clearly registers that US democracy has not yet done enough. Although, as Dittmer notes, the agitation of racial strife by America’s enemies externalises the issue as if it ‘is never a pre-existent problem’ (2013: 54) the persistence of some conflict between the two heroes means the issue doesn’t simply go away once external agitation is thwarted. For me, this means that rather than primarily advocating a zealous nationalism, Captain America takes his legitimacy from the incomplete and ongoing fight to preserve the space of appearance and the plurality that allows such speech and action to take place. As if to signal this, and by an uncanny twist of fate, the mantle of Captain America has now been given over to Sam Wilson, The Falcon (Remender and Pacheco, 2014a). Not only is Captain America becoming a black man, but the responsibility for the shield is being taken on by Marvel’s first African-American superhero. As part of Marvel’s contemporary move towards greater diversity, this is something that might be mocked as crass commercialism,

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but I also think it is Marvel acknowledging that the universal recognition, justice and equality promised at the founding of America still have some way to go; that the civil rights movement continues and still needs representation.21 Thought of ideologically, then, Steve Rogers’s Captain America favoured a non-partisan, universal liberalism. Thought of as a national ideology, this is secured via the secondary, but singular association of Captain America’s patronym with such liberalism, and yet an important crack emerges in the ideology as America is regularly shown to not live up to the universality it has promised. This is not to downplay the importance of the patronym; it is rather to say that the patronym is of the upmost importance as it is the moment of a certain dislocation and disjuncture. Ultimately, it points to a promise that has not yet been made good, and it is in this tension that the drama of the character resides. In the end, Captain America would not have survived for so long if his sole message had been ‘America, by all means necessary’. Just like Superman, then, Captain America’s legitimacy stems from a transcendent moment that doesn’t simply support the world as it is given, but one that calls on us to do something differently, and in this all kinds of politically progressive possibilities open up. Notes  1 The capacity to begin has always been linked to the capacity to rule. In her essay ‘What is Freedom?’, Arendt notes that the Greek word αρχειν ‘covers, beginning, leading, ruling’ (1993: 166). The αρχε that we find in our word ‘archaic’ is the principle that founds and governs everything that comes after it.  2 Unfortunately, there isn’t room to discuss the Anti-Cap story here, but Mark D. White (2014: 84 and 116–17) gives a good account of it.  3 Since the first issue, Captain America has intermittently been used as an explicit propaganda tool. In 2005, ‘Marvel Comics collaborated with the Pentagon to host a patriotic marketing event for the New Avengers line, which would be distributed free to one million troops, as part of the “America Supports You” campaign. Donald Rumsfeld posed for photos with Spider-Man and Captain America’ (Lawrence, 2009: 2)  4 There was an issue 75, cover dated February 1950, but Captain America did not appear in the issue.  5 Continuity issues regarding Steve Rogers’s death in 1945 and the continued appearance of the character were retroactively explained by William Naslund, aka The Spirit of ’76, taking up the role, followed by Jeffrey Mace, formerly the Patriot.  6 That two Jewish creators would invent a superhero character to take on the Nazis and fight genocide, who was himself the model of Aryan strength and purity (white skin, blonde hair and blue eyes), is ironic if not utterly contradictory, but it is such contradictions that make Captain America such an interesting and rich character.  7 The tattoo Magneto received in Auschwitz is first seen in The Uncanny X-Men #161 (Claremont and Cockrum, 1982a), while a fuller version of his experience there was given in the story entitled ‘A Fire in the Night’ from Classic X-Men #12 (Claremont and Cockrum, 1987).

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 8 An example of the use of the soldier motif during a national crisis is the series of Captain America, written by Paul Jenkins (2010) at the height of the war on terror.  9 Aside from some very minor details, it was almost a replica of the breastplate worn by a hero called The Shield (Shorten and Novick, 1940), a patriotic guardian with super-strength and other enhanced powers, who first appeared the year before Captain America. It is interesting to note that Joe Simon and Jack Kirby were employed by Archie Comics to create the second version of The Shield, Lancelot Strong, in 1959. 10 This has been explicitly recognised in more recent Captain America stories (White, 2014: 126). 11 The International Court of Justice ruling states the court ‘Rejects the justification of collective self-defence maintained by the United States of America in connection with the military and paramilitary activities in and against Nicaragua’; decides the United States of America is ‘in breach of its obligation under customary international law not to intervene in the affairs of another State’; and ‘has acted, against the Republic of Nicaragua, in breach of its obligation under customary international law not to use force against another State’ (www.icj-cij.org/ – accessed 5 May 2015; italics in original). 12 For Jackson Sutliff, if Captain America represents the American Dream, the Captain America of the Ultimate Marvel universe represents ‘its obituary’ (2009: 122). 13 As White (2014: 82) has noted, Captain America also regularly bears witness to exemplary acts of courage and integrity that would otherwise be forgotten. 14 In Amazing Spider-Man #537, Captain America quotes Twain saying: ‘ “In a republic, who is the country? Is it the government which is for the moment in the saddle? Why, the government is merely a temporary servant: it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn’t. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them. Who, then is the country? Is it the newspaper? Is it the pulpit? Why, these are mere parts of the country, not the whole of it, they have not command, they have only their little share in the command. In a monarchy, the king and his family are the country: In a republic it is the common voice of the people each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak. It is a solemn and weighty responsibility, and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government, or the empty catchphrases of politicians. Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide it against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have your duty by yourself and by your country. Hold up your head. You have nothing to be ashamed of ” ’. He then concludes by saying: ‘Doesn’t matter what the press says. Doesn’t matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn’t matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: The requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell

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you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree besides the river of truth, and tell the whole world – No you move’ (Straczynski and Garney, 2007: n.p.; italics in original). 15 For Robert Weiner, this act has added nobility because Captain America willingly takes up a role that leads to trauma, whereas Batman and Spider-Man were only inspired to take up their roles as a response to dealing with trauma (2009a: 100). 16 A character called Super-Patriot first appeared in Nick Fury, Agent of Shield #13 (Friedrich and Trimpe, 1969). He was a racist, anti-immigration terrorist who planned an attack on the UN building in New York, but whose identity was unknown. One-time friend of Captain America, Mike Farrell, briefly assumed the role in Captain America #237 (Claremont, McKenzie and Buscema, 1979) from September 1979 and later associated with the right-wing terrorist group known as The Watchdogs. John Walker first appeared as the character in Captain America #323 (Gruenwald and Neary, 1986d). 17 There is the discussion of law and ethics in issue 337; Steve Rogers’s nightmare in issue 339, where he is mummified in red tape by a giant bureaucrat (a perfect example of the ‘evils’ of regulation that superheroes are said to oppose); the discussion of racial politics and the emergence of Battle Star as a new black hero and in issue 341; or the moment in issue 344 where Ronald Reagan is turned into a reptile by the Viper (and maintains his fangs even when he transforms back into his old self ). 18 Leo Strauss notes that Aristotle in the Politics talks of a good citizen as being relative to the regime, but this is closer to the concept of the partisan than the patriot, as the patriot sees only the Fatherland irrespective of regimes. The definition of the good man, however, is always the same, namely the man who pursues virtue. According to Strauss, Aristotle goes on to conclude that while ‘the partisan sees deeper than the patriot’ (1988: 35) the only partisan better than the patriot is ‘the partisan of virtue’ (35). This is also another contradictory moment in Captain America, whereby the seemingly more limited identity of the partisan is one in keeping with the more open and broad identification with cosmopolitanism. 19 He was transformed into the neo-Nazi Grand Director by Dr Faustus in Captain America #231 (McKenzie and Buscema, 1979), and appeared at regular intervals in Ed Brubaker’s (Brubaker and Epting, 2008a; Brubaker and Ross, 2010) run. 20 As Dittmer notes, this enables the ‘self-professed liberal authors [to] simultaneously express sympathy with the civil rights movement and position black power movements such as those led by Malcolm X as a threat to civil order’ (2013: 52). 21 In Captain America #24 (Remender and Pacheco, 2014a), the issue just prior to The Falcon taking the mantle of Captain America after Arnim Zola had managed to negate the effects of the super-soldier serum in Steve Rogers’s body, The Falcon is shown seemingly sacrificing himself to protect others and asking Steve Rogers to promise him to find some peace in his retirement before promising Steve Rogers that if he doesn’t … Unfortunately, the bomb explodes and we don’t hear what Sam Wilson says, but we can assume he was going to say that he would come back.

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Law and violence

The concept of sovereignty is a constellation of many elements, but it is primarily a relationship between legitimacy, law and violence. From the writings of Thomas Hobbes to the work of Max Weber sovereignty has been defined as the exclusive, legal right to the use of violence, which in turn becomes the expression of sovereign legitimacy. Having addressed the issue of legitimacy in the previous two chapters, it is now time to consider law and violence, and the specific treatment these supposedly antithetical yet intimately related concepts receive in superhero comics. That superhero universes are violent places is evident from the obligatory fight scene in every issue. Not only do superheroes exact a great deal of violence on the villains, they are subject to incredible levels of violence themselves, with writers and artists often wallowing in the perverse pleasure of showing exactly how much violence a hero’s body can withstand – a feature taken to extremes by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson (2002) when the Punisher runs over Wolverine with a steamroller. This intimate connection between law and violence is, then, the second major theme that makes superhero comics so amenable to an analysis of sovereignty. The character most suited to this is Batman. Gotham is his jurisdiction and in that city he is the de facto sovereign. Of course, this suggests that one way to address these issues is via Batman’s relationship to Commissioner Gordon and the Gotham Police Department, who represent sovereignty de jure. Tony Spanakos (2008), for example, has used Batman to argue that the state is ultimately too weak to provide justice and that Batman represents the need to outsource security to other (presumably private) elements in society. Batman is clearly amenable to numerous right-wing readings such as this, just as (and in stark contrast) the Rainbow Batman identified by Will Brooker (2005 and 2012) permits gay readings,1 but, as discussed with both Superman and Captain America, these characters are open to interpretations from across the political spectrum, which is why they have such broad appeal and longevity. Here, however, rather than present a particular political reading of Batman I would like to offer one that is in keeping with critical approaches to sovereignty, although

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these do still open up politically progressive possibilities when thinking about law and violence in which the assumed pacific nature of the law is significantly destabilised. While violence, as it is used here, is a relatively unproblematic term, designating either physical or psychological harm, its relationship to the law will be approached in two ways. The first is thinking about the regularly disavowed violence that accompanies the law’s execution. In this, I will use the work of Robert Cover (1992a, 1992b) and Giorgio Agamben (1998). Secondly, given the recurrence of animal motifs in superhero stories, Jacques Derrida’s (2009, 2011) analysis of the relationship between the violence of the beast and the law of the sovereign will also be considered. Before proceeding, however, what we understand by the term law requires a little refining if we are to register its significance, both in relation to sovereignty and the worlds defended by our superheroes. Law and the mark of community To begin with, while clearly retaining the legalistic understanding, it is necessary to think of the law as the product of an interpretive or hermeneutic process, in which we ask questions about who we are and how we should live. That is to say, the law, despite claims to universality is always a form of cultural expression, a specific system of meaning, and a particular way for a community to make sense of the world. It is a form of symbolic authority that goes beyond purely legal prescription to create a fully normative universe giving a specific form to a range of behaviours, stories, values and ideals that arrange and organise our relations with each other. These narrative and spatial aspects to the law are often overlooked but the spatial dimension of the law is readily evident in the idea of jurisdiction mentioned above, where very clear and often literal borders and boundaries designate which law is applicable and which type of institutional agency has the capacity for enforcement. The Greek word for law, nomos, originally understood the law in this spatial sense. In modern legal theory, the person who most actively sought to recover this understanding of the law was Carl Schmitt, who defined nomos as ‘an original, constitutive act of spatial ordering’ (2006: 78). He argues it is ‘the immediate form in which the political and social order of a people becomes spatially visible’ (70). The law is both a primary sharing out and a partition. It marks out the limits of a territory and divides that territory according to prescriptions regarding how people should live, who is to be included and who might be excluded. This capacity of the law to divide, separate and mark out is accompanied by a host of stories and discourses that justify why the world is ordered the way it is and how that order reflects or is directed towards some kind of ideal or desired end state. The law – and especially the law/nomos that superheroes defend – must be understood in this wider normative sense. For the great philosopher of law, Robert

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Cover, nomos is actually something we ‘inhabit’ (1992a: 95). He writes: ‘understood in the context of the narratives that give it meaning, law becomes not merely a system of rules to be observed, but a world in which we live’ (96). Importantly, law and the stories that accompany it act as ‘a bridge linking a concept of a reality to an imagined alternative’ (101), and it is precisely in this sense that we must understand superheroes as defenders of the law; they are defenders of the stories that speak of a path from injustice to justice, from chaos to order, from dark to light. Before discussing what Cover has to say specifically about the relation between law and violence, I would like to use this understanding of nomos, as a normative universe or an organising communal myth, to make a preliminary yet fundamental observation about the violence of the law in superhero comics. This deals with the very constitution of the superhero, whose body is always shown as having gone through some transformation in order to become the defender of the law. In many respects, these processes of transformation are akin to the social rituals and initiation ceremonies that mark the passage from infancy to adulthood or from outsider to identifiable member. These rituals nearly always involve the marking or modification of the body in some way. This has been explained by the sociologist Pasi Falk (1995) in terms of the ‘natural’ body’s inadequacy when seen from the perspective of the normative universe within which it will be included. The ‘natural’ body, he argues, needs to be ‘elaborated’ (95) or completed by cultural codes that sometimes figuratively but often quite literally get ‘written in the flesh’ either at birth, where circumcision confirms membership, or at maturity where tattooing, piercing, scarification and other forms of modification indicate entry into a particular community. The marking or modification of the body indicates acceptance of and by the law, giving the now normalised body its place in the nomos.2 This is precisely the origin of Captain America whose natural body is very clearly deemed inadequate. He is designated unfit for military service, but the experiment and subsequent transformation enables him to move from reject to hero. The needle through which the super-soldier serum is injected can easily be read as a stylus, a writing instrument that inscribes the ideal into the flesh of Steve Rogers. This also means that the blood shed by our heroes does not necessarily signal a gratuitous celebration of violence but represents the reinscription in their flesh of the law they have vowed to defend. The violence meted out against them is confirmation of their continued commitment to an ideal. Each new fight, each new cut or broken bone is a reaffirmation of the nomos they inhabit. This is not an excuse for violence, but a preliminary attempt to show and hopefully enable a critical understanding of the law’s violence. While superpowers can be alien or divine, whenever the superhero is human there will have always been a transformative origin where the hero’s natural body is modified. Quite often it is their DNA, their biological code that is overwritten with a new code giving them special powers. Interestingly, the modification of superheroes’

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bodies often inscribes the anxieties as well as the ideals of the normative universe of which they are part. This is evident in the original stories but becomes even clearer when they undergo a reboot. For example, Jessica Drew, aka Spider-Woman, who first appeared in Marvel Spotlight #32 (Goodwin and Buscema, 1977) was poisoned by radiation as a young girl after being exposed to her father’s experiments at Mount Wundagore. Her father saved her life by injecting a serum – once again the stylus is important – based on eradiated spiders’ blood and incubating her for decades in a machine designed to accelerate the genetic process. In the reboot collected under the title Spider-Woman: Origin (Bendis et al., 2007), Jessica is the product of a more contemporary technological anxiety; genetic modification. In this story, her father is experimenting with a new device, a ray that can rewrite genetic code. While she was pregnant, Jessica’s mother was accidentally struck by the ray, and the child’s genetic code was rewritten to include arachnid DNA. The heroine that would emerge is therefore inscribed both with the anxiety induced by our freedom, expressed in the innovative development of new technologies, and with the special powers that enable her to defend it. On the subject of female superheroes, we find the patriarchal law that still dominates our normative universe is inscribed onto women’s bodies in deeply offensive ways. Aside from the regular representation of female superheroes as highly sexualised objects, women are often subject to a very specific form of violence. In August 2013, some heated discussion was sparked because of comments made by Mark Millar in an interview with Abraham Riesman (2013) and published in an article for The New Republic.3 In the course of the discussion, Riesman asked Millar about his quite regular use of rape, in particular the use of gang rape in Kick Ass 2 #4 (Millar and Romita Jr, 2011). Millar replied that it represented a taboo used to show just how bad someone was, but went on to comment that rape was like other forms of extreme violence: ‘I don’t think it really matters. It’s the same as, like, decapitation’ (Riesman, 2013). The problem with this rather clumsy and ill-judged comment is that it fails to recognise that there really is a difference. Rape is a very specific form of violence and is a very distinct form of physical and psychological harm. These comments seem to be more in line with society’s general disavowal of the specificity of this violence, and it sadly reflects the fact that women (writers and characters) are still very much second-class citizens in superhero universes (if not the comics industry as a whole). This remark can therefore be seen as part of the problem of sexism and misogyny that still plagues the genre. Despite great advances in recent storytelling and artwork that are sensitive to issues of gender and sexuality, complaints made by Carol A. Strickland (1980) regarding the rape of Ms Marvel in The Avengers #200 (Shooter et al., 1980), and by Gail Simone for the misogyny exemplified when the then Green Lantern Kyle Rayner found his murdered girlfriend, Alex DeWitt, stuffed into his fridge in Green Lantern #54 (Marz et al., 1994), remain very relevant today.4

Sovereignty and superheroes

62 The Law’s violent shadow

In his essay entitled ‘Violence and the Word’ Robert Cover challenges the idea that law and violence are two diametrically opposed and distinct moments, arguing instead for a composite concept summed up in his closing description of ‘the shadow of the violence of law, itself ’ (1992b: 238). While all superheroes to varying degrees carry with them the legitimacy of the law that justifies their dark violence and practice a violence that always threatens to eclipse the light of their legitimacy, no superhero other than Batman so clearly encapsulates the mutual imbrication of the two. His world is very much the shadows, and he operates somewhere between Commissioner Gordon on the one hand and an array of villains on the other. Depending on who writes him, his character can lie anywhere on a sliding scale between the world’s greatest detective (Meltzer and Morales, 2005) and dangerously deluded lunatic (Talbot, 1996). Although, as I  have already noted, numerous readings of Batman are possible, I would like to propose that Batman epitomises a much more ambiguous and disturbing relationship between law and violence that is prevalent throughout superhero comics, one in which any sense of a legal and orderly sovereign peace is always contaminated by the violence it seeks to distance itself from. If Cover’s ‘shadow’ is the third term that permanently joins legal interpretation to executive violence, then Batman is this shadow given (narrative) life and epitomises this darker aspect of the nomos we inhabit. However, and this is important to note, this is not something that has developed over time as Batman has himself become ‘darker’. As Brooker notes, since his creation by Bob Kane and Bill Finger in 1939 some of the very early stories presented Batman as ‘a more terrifying figure than the villains’ (2005: 58). Setting out his central argument, Cover writes the following:  ‘Legal interpretation takes place in a field of pain and death … When interpretations have finished their work, they frequently leave behind victims whose lives have been torn apart by organized, social practices of violence. Neither legal interpretation nor the violence it occasions may be properly understood apart from one another’ (1992b:  203). He continues by making a very important argument regarding the social and political use of pain that he takes from the work of Elaine Scarry (1985). Here, violence and its accompanying pain are used to materially register an interpretation that operates primarily at the immaterial level of ideas (beliefs, values, stories, norms), a topic to which I will return in Chapter 7. The imposition of violence and pain is one way in which an ideal world might be materially imposed or realised, that is, made physical or objective. Alternatively, pain, and this is Scarry’s primary observation about the workings of torture, can serve to destroy an interpretation: ‘the torturer’s interrogation is designed to demonstrate the end of the normative world of the victim – the end of what the victim values, the end of the bonds that constitute the community in which the values are grounded’ (Cover, 1992b: 205).

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From this perspective, Batman’s pursuit of criminals can be seen as a process for realising and de-realising a particular nomos or normative universe. His biography is grounded precisely in such destruction. The defining event in the young Bruce Wayne’s life is the murder of his parents outside a cinema. This event is repeated in numerous stories, often reduced to the double image of a gun being fired and a string of pearls being torn from his mother’s neck. The breaking thread and scattering pearls can be figuratively read as the breaking of the bonds that underpin his normative universe. Time and again, we return to the site of this destruction of his world. As Richard Reynolds has argued, each time we see him hunting villains, we are reminded that he is driven by the need to ‘confront a world which refuses to make sense’ (1992:  67), and that through his ‘transmutative’ powers (69) he attempts to re-realise the world that was destroyed. Unfortunately, for Bruce Wayne, the pain and the trauma persist and always provide a fracture through which the world once again slips away. In this regard, Batman is a tragic figure, continually trying to rebuild a world on shifting, unstable sand. Cover also offers a reading of this physical and material component to legal interpretation that is similar to the argument set out above, regarding the need for the codes of a nomos to be written in the flesh of those who inhabit it. He points out that no legal world can be built without ‘commitments that place bodies on the line’ (1992b:  208). This is not necessarily a justification of violence, but a criticism of the usual disavowal that places law in opposition to violence. He goes on to make an important observation about the martyr that is perfectly applicable to superheroes and especially resonant for the tragic Batman. ‘Martyrs’, writes Cover, ‘insist in the face of overwhelming force that if there is to be continuing life it will not be on the terms of the tyrant’s law … the suffering of the martyrs is their insistence on the law to which they are committed, even in the face of world-destroying pain’ (207). Batman may be a technically brilliant detective, but his virtue lies with the pain of his martyrdom. In ­chapter 4 of Batman: Year One (Miller and Mazzucchelli, 2005), pain is centre-stage in the characterisation both of Batman’s will and his mode of operation, and it is given a ritualistic, if not quasi-religious aura when writer Frank Miller has him explain to a criminal: ‘Bullets don’t harm me. Nothing harms me. But I know pain. I know pain. Sometimes I share it. With someone like you’ (n.p.; italics in original). As would be expected, Miller writes Batman in nihilistic mode. Batman understands that he cannot fully realise the world he has lost, nor re-establish the normative universe destroyed when his parents were killed, but he can do the next best thing and share out that which will destroy the normative universe of others. In this fight, in which he once more puts his body on the line, the villains will partake of world-destroying pain. This is an alternative way to understand what Stephen Kershnar (2008) has called Batman’s ‘virtuous hatred’. It is the economy in which Batman lives, a series of exchanges through which he trades his emotional pain

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for the villains’ physical suffering. Understood as Batman’s nomos, pain is what he distributes. This idea that the nomos is inscribed in the flesh of heroes and villains alike is made literal in the character of Victor Zsasz. First appearing in Batman: Shadow of the Bat #1 (Grant and Breyfogle, 1992), he is the inverse of Batman in this context. Where Batman seeks to re-establish his world by defending others, Zsasz finds meaning in the world only by killing. He has come to realise life can contain no meaning beyond the perceived need to release others from their own meaningless lives. He is a negative messiah, or perhaps just a perversion of the myth that holds true life is only possible after death. He is an especially evil enemy but a particularly good foil for Batman who might have his own nihilistic moments but who refuses to accept the descent of Zsasz into complete nihilism. Where Batman is the serial defender, Zsasz is a serial killer handing out his gift of death, recording each killing by inscribing the murder tally in his own flesh. In Kevin Smith’s story Batman: Cacophony, he describes his murders as a form of ‘baptism’ and his self-harm as part of a ‘liturgy’ (Smith and Flanagan, 2009: 23). He needs to ‘honor the dead with some marks’ (24) but expresses concern that there is no room left ‘on the canvas of my flesh’ (24). While Batman’s encounter with Zsasz simply serves to kick off a story based around The Joker and new bad guy Onomatopoeia it also helps draw attention to the numerous times Batman himself gets cut and has his wounds stitched throughout the story. Batman’s own body is repeatedly shown to be covered in a series of scars that mark previous attempts to re-establish his world and over-write the meaninglessness of violence with his own brand of justice. In contrast to the desperately deluded attempt by Zsasz to find meaning in killing, Batman’s own wounds are shown to be the stigmata of his sacrifice to the law. Returning to the specific issue of sovereignty, it is Giorgio Agamben, who has given one of the best philosophical accounts of the relationship between law and violence. In Homo Sacer, he uses a fragment from Pindar to begin his meditation on the dark ambiguity of sovereign power. In fragment 169, Pindar states: ‘The nomos [law], sovereign of all/ … Leads with the strongest hand/ Justifying the most violent’ (Agamben, 1998: 30). For Agamben, the fact that Pindar joins justice and violence in the third line of this fragment shows how the law is ‘the scandalous union of the two antithetical principles’ (31) of violence and justice. For Pindar ‘the sovereign is the point of indistinction … the threshold on which violence passes over into law and law passes over into violence’ (32). Pindar’s joining of law and violence is, for Agamben, ‘the knot that he bequeaths to Western political thought’ (31). Today, the intimate relationship between law and violence is exemplified in Max Weber’s definition of sovereignty that has come to dominate international relations. As alluded to above, in his lecture ‘The Profession and Vocation of Politics’, he explains how violence is the specific means by which a state is formed and the rule of law is established, concluding that ‘a state is the

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human community which (successfully) lays claim to the monopoly of legitimate physical violence within a territory’ (Weber, 1994: 310–1; italics in original). While the caveat of legitimacy would suggest it is not only the state that has the capacity for violence, in another sense the caveat simply claims that only the state is permitted to be violent, and what is more that the use of violence is the main expression of its sovereign legitimacy. Of all the Batman stories that address the thin line between law and violence, it is perhaps The Killing Joke (Moore and Booland, 2006) that most succinctly and starkly dissolves the line between Batman and The Joker, between good and evil, order and chaos, sanity and madness. Aside from this, Alan Moore’s story takes place in continuity and is also notable for the shooting and disabling of the daughter of the Police Commissioner and original Batgirl, Barbara Gordon.5 The book uses numerous formal techniques to problematise any simple opposition between the Batman and The Joker. In particular, Moore uses a regular panel structure to draw attention to the diegesis in panels occupying the same place but on different pages. For example, the central panel on page 2 is a shot of Harvey Dent/Two-Face staring out of the window of his prison cell door in Arkham Asylum as Batman passes on his way to visit The Joker. Here, the middle of three bars on the window perfectly separates Two-Face’s good and evil sides. On page 4, the same panel then shows a view through the barred window of The Joker’s cell with Batman sitting at a table on which The Joker is playing a game of patience. It is interesting to note that Moore chooses to place the Batman and The Joker on the ‘wrong’ sides of the table according to the staging of good and evil on page 2. Although the dialogue has Batman doing the right thing by trying to persuade The Joker to end the cycle of violence between them, this positioning of Batman is an early indication of how Moore understands the complex and problematic nature of their relationship. This is played out in the main body of the story in which The Joker kidnaps Commissioner Gordon with the intention of driving him mad. The Joker attempts to achieve this by imprisoning him in a disused funfair, stripping him naked, and threatening him with violence as he remembers (and is shown) what has just happened to his daughter. The story is interspersed with The Joker’s own confused memories of the traumatic events that led to his creation, and Moore uses this to draw out the very thin line between the sanity and madness that supposedly underpin the exercise of law and violence. In fact, Moore uses the speech The Joker makes to Commissioner Gordon to suggest that there is no division between the two. Presenting the naked and caged Gordon to his freakish henchmen he introduces him as an example of ‘that most rare and tragic of nature’s mistakes! I give you … the average man!’. As if the curator of some colonial anthropological exhibit he remarks: ‘Notice the hideously bloated sense of humanity’s importance. The club-footed social conscience and the withered optimism. Most repulsive of all, are its frail and useless notion’s of order and sanity. If

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too much weight is placed upon them … they snap’. Then, in a moment of patronising sympathy he continues: ‘Who can blame them? In a world as psychotic as this … any other response would be crazy!’ (Moore and Bolland, 2006: 290; italics in original). As The Joker recounts his theory that madness is the only rational response to the fact of a ‘random and pointless’ (295; italics in original) existence, Batman arrives to save the day. Although Commissioner Gordon is released, this is only the set up for staging the main theme of the book, namely the similarity between The Joker and Batman. Having fled into the labyrinth of the funfair, The Joker speaks to Batman in the form a disembodied voice addressing him via the public address system. Incorrectly believing he has sent the Commissioner mad, The Joker speaks to Batman, claiming: ‘I’ve demonstrated there’s no difference between me and everyone else! All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy’ (295; italics in original). At which point, the ground opens up beneath Batman and he falls into a pit filled with sharpened stakes. As he clings on to the side of the pit, literally hanging on by his fingertips, The Joker continues: ‘You had a bad day once, am I right? I know I can tell. You had a bad day and everything changed. Why else would you dress up like a flying rat?’ (295; italics in original). Although The Joker may not know why Bruce Wayne became the Batman, every reader knows the origin story: how he saw his parents being murdered and has been obsessed with a desire to right that wrong ever since. After he has managed to escape the pit, Batman continues to give chase. There then follows the usual violent struggle once he catches up with The Joker. Having pacified him, Batman once more offers his hand to The Joker, telling him it doesn’t have to end in one of them killing the other. At this point, The Joker is made mindful of a joke about two lunatics in an asylum who want to break free, but one cannot quite trust the other. In the joke, the inmates climb to the roof and only need to jump across to another building to be free. The first one jumps, but the second is too scared. ‘So then’, says The Joker, ‘the first guy has an idea … He says “Hey! I have my flashlight with me! I’ll shine it across the gap between the buildings. You can walk along the beam and join me!” B-but the second guy just shakes his head. He suh-says … He says “wh-what do you think I am? CRAZY? You’d turn it off when I was half way across!’ (302; italics in original). After a brief pause, and as the rain falls, a smile appears on Batman’s face (303). He starts to laugh and then, once again in the centre of the nine-panel structure, he holds onto The Joker as they both start to laugh uncontrollably. As the police arrive, a beam from the car’s headlights is reflected in a puddle that is beginning to form around the feet of both hero and villain. As the puddle grows and covers the ground, the beam of light should form a complete line between the two, but as the puddle grows to fill the panel the headlight is turned off. Not only are we left without a dividing line between Batman and The Joker, the final panel perfectly matches the very first panel of the book. In this superhero version

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of Finnegan’s Wake, we are asked to imagine the violent, obsessive chase starting up all over again: the sovereign defender of the law in perpetual pursuit of the monster that gives him purpose. And it is to the relationship between the sovereign and the monster that the chapter now turns. The beast and the sovereign In many respects, Weber’s definition of sovereignty as the monopoly on violence is a restatement of the treatise set out by Thomas Hobbes in his great work Leviathan.6 The title of the book takes its name from one of the two biblical beasts of the Old Testament, the monster of the sea to which nothing on earth can be compared (Hobbes, 1994: 210). The sovereign like the biblical monster is singular in its power and might. With regard to the sovereign this is because he is of divine election, a ‘Mortal God’ (109), whose legitimacy lies with the Immortal God, and to whom we owe ‘our peace and defence’ (109). In comparison to individual men, the sovereign like the Leviathan is unassailable.7 While Hobbes makes a direct comparison between sovereign and beast in terms of physical might, for Jacques Derrida it is their relation to the law that provides another very interesting point of comparison. While the sovereign as divine representative is not subject to the laws of the land (Bodin, 1992) but stands at a distance from them representing their source, the beast, being less than human, is traditionally placed beneath the law. For Derrida, this means a certain ‘being-outside-the-law’ (2009: 17) is common to both sovereign and beast. He expands by saying: ‘sharing this common being-outside-the-law, beast, criminal and sovereign have a troubling resemblance: they call on each other, from one to the other; there is between sovereign, criminal, and beast a sort of obscure and fascinating complicity, or even a worrying mutual attraction’ (17). He goes on to say – and this is especially true for superhero comics – ‘this resemblance … makes us see, project, perceive, as in an X-ray, the face of the beast under the features of the sovereign; or conversely, if you prefer, it is as though, through the maw of the untameable beast, a figure of the sovereign were to appear’ (18). Superhero comics, just like philosophy, are a ‘political bestiary’ (Derrida, 2009: 3) deploying a huge range of animals, and in Frank Miller’s seminal story The Dark Knight Returns the bat and its untameable maw feature just as prominently as Bruce Wayne. Here, Batman operates both above and beneath the law, as his actions are those of the idealist and the brute. Before specifically turning to Miller’s story, it is important to spend a little time addressing Leviathan, and through it the ways in which Derrida is able to make other comparisons between the violent beast and the lawful sovereign. In the first instance, it is the fact that the sovereign is God’s lieutenant that makes a social contract possible. Hobbes is very clear that a contract cannot be made with God himself, something that was intended to head off claims that any person might go

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over the head of the monarch directly to the source of his sovereignty – precisely what happened during the English Civil War to which Hobbes was reacting. In chapter XIV of Leviathan on the laws of contract, Hobbes explicitly states that contracts require ‘mutual acceptation’ (1994: 85) if a covenant is to be achieved. This means contracts cannot be made with God nor can they be made with beasts. This is because God either does not or need not respond to our requests or, in the case of the beast, it cannot respond. For Derrida, this lack of a contract invokes the problem of language where the lack of ‘shared speech’ (2009: 55) prevents the necessary exchange required for a contract and provides yet another way in which beast and sovereign can be said to have a certain kinship. Their shared ‘being-outside-the-law’ is matched by the being-outside-of-language. In superhero comics, this problem of language that links both God and beast is especially well presented in the story of the Inhumans, in particular as it was retold by Paul Jenkins (Jenkins and Lee, 2001). The king of the Inhumans, Black Bolt, is unable to speak. His words are so powerful they literally destroy worlds should he utter even a syllable. In itself this already depicts the problematic relation between sovereignty and language for Derrida, given that if language is necessarily shared, sovereignty is precisely what is not shared. Sovereignty is therefore silent. It ‘withdraws from language’ (Derrida, 2005: 101). What is more, as with Hobbes’s comparison of the Godly and beastly in the exemption from contracts, one important member of the Inhuman royal court is a dog, called Lockjaw. He is most regularly associated with Crystal but is often presented as Black Bolt’s companion. Also without speech, or at least slow in speech (depending on the story’s place in continuity), Lockjaw’s relationship to Black Bolt is clearly indicated by the fact they alone have small, energy-absorbing antennae on their foreheads signifying their privileged position and their particular kinship. In Jenkins’s story, Black Bolt and Lockjaw are regularly pictured together and by the close of the story are presented as being jointly responsible for having saved the kingdom of Attilan, home of the Inhumans. Dogs have always had a very visible relation to the sovereign, regularly appearing in portraits as metaphors of their owner’s authority and prowess, especially in the art of hunting. In this role, however, it is the wolf that holds a particularly important significance. As with his two essays published under the title Rogues:  Two Essays on Reason (2005), Derrida’s seminar begins with Fontaine’s fable ‘The Wolf and the Lamb’ and the argument that the strongest, most ferocious beast is the one best able to prove themselves right (to be in and have the right), going on to contend that we cannot conceive of the relationship between law and violence, sovereign and beast without recognising the sovereign as wolf.8 As Derrida points out, the wolf has always had a special proximity to the king in ancient myth and storytelling, and he reminds us that in Nordic myth Odin was always accompanied by two ravens and two wolves whose names, Geri and Freki (meaning ‘greedy’ and ‘ravenous’), testified to the All-Father’s ferocious power

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and appetite. In the Marvel universe, the two wolves first appeared in The Mighty Thor #275 (Thomas and Buscema, 1978),9 but aside from Thor comics, one of Marvel’s most interesting depictions of the relation between sovereign and wolf appeared in a Captain America story (Gruenwald and Levins, 1992b) in which the hero is investigating the disappearance of John Jameson and attempting to thwart the designs of Doctor Nightshade who wishes to create an army of werewolves. An episode that one imagines appeared owing to a distinct lack of good ideas, the ‘Capwolf ’ story, nevertheless raises interesting issues around the sovereign/beast couplet, in particular the difference between freedom as nature versus freedom as legal and political protection. When Captain America is captured and injected with the lyco-formula, it interacts with the super-soldier serum, accentuating his animalistic strength but is unable to completely transform him. The story is perhaps notable for disclosing the brute strength that is often masked by Captain America’s idealistic actions, and in an earlier part of the story we have one of the most intriguing lines spoken by Captain America. In the middle of a fight with a pack of werewolves, and summing up the impossibility of sovereign power ever divesting itself of its bestiality, Captain America thinks to himself: ‘it’s going to be tough to wade through this many beasts without sustaining a single scratch! I really don’t want to know what kind of infection you can pick up from one of these things’ (Gruenwald and Levins, 1992a:  3; italics in original). In exercising its legitimacy through violence the sovereign, of course, cannot avoid such contagion. The story culminates in a battle between Capwolf and the wolf-God or Lord of Wolves, who represents the idealisation of the liberating violence of the beast’s ‘savage heritage’ (Gruenwald and Levins, 1992a: 6) and it is this savage heritage as represented by the wolf that is absolutely central to Hobbes’s understanding of the political. As Derrida notes in session two of the seminar, the predatory nature of man – that man is a wolf to man, homo homini lupus – is at the heart of Hobbes’s theory of sovereignty (Derrida, 2009: 58). For Hobbes, sovereignty represents the incorporation of a people into a commonwealth over which the monarch has absolute rule. Without sovereign protection each person is left exposed to the predatory violence that defines man, the ‘dangerous animal’ (Derrida, 2009: 44), in his natural state. A commonwealth is formed when each individual, in an attempt to escape the predatory and voracious war of all against all that defines the state of nature, delegates their capacity for violence to the sovereign who is defined by this newly acquired monopoly. This corporation is depicted on the book’s original frontispiece in what could easily be seen as a seventeenth-century rendering of the superhero avant la lettre. The sovereign Leviathan is a giant-sized Aquaman rising out of the sea and above the city. His body is made up of the multitude he has incorporated, each figure now a scale on the flesh of the beast-God. It is also important to note that for Hobbes the war of all against all that defines the state of nature is not

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determined by the actuality of an ongoing battle but the perpetual human ‘disposition’ (Hobbes, 1994: 76) for violence. Much like the imminent threat that pervades superhero universes, violence, for Hobbes, is always about to arrive if it is not already here. The Lord of Wolves therefore encapsulates this potential for violence that lurks just beneath the surface of a civilised polity whose orderly, peaceful and lawful existence is enabled by the sovereign taking over this capacity for violence that becomes another mark of his power. In other words, the potential of the multitude is converted into the potency of the absolute monarch. Once invested with this power, Hobbes argues that the sovereign is charged with preserving this commonwealth, and by use of terror (Hobbes, 1994: 109) is permitted to destroy (112) anyone that threatens it. The figure of the contaminated Capwolf can therefore be seen as the representation of the sovereign’s supposedly civilising incorporation of beastly violence contrasted with the liberated, civilisation-defying violence of the Lord of Wolves. Leviathan, the beast-God, is therefore a double image of protection and security on the one hand, and a devouring destruction on the other. The sovereign both preserves and consumes. Once committed to the social contract enshrined in law the sovereign acts as a defence against predation, but should that contract be broken in an act of dissent or defiance the sovereign is entitled to become predator. In the first session of Derrida’s seminar, the conclusion to Fontaine’s fable where the wolf devours the lamb for whatever reason he sees fit gives cause for a meditation on this relationship between the bestial consumption of the wolf and sovereign power. Returning again to the ‘maw of the untameable beast’, he writes:  ‘It’s about mouth, teeth and tongue and the violent rush to bite, engulf, swallow the other, to take the other into oneself too, to kill it or mourn it … Might [sovereignty’s …] greatest force, its absolute potency be, in essence and always in the last instance, a power of devourment’ (Derrida, 2009: 23).10 It will be necessary to return to this voracious destruction in ­chapter 7, but in passing it is worth noting an extraordinary image in Neil Gaiman’s The Eternals. In this retelling of an earlier story by Jack Kirby (1976), where the Celestials are depicted as the gigantic cosmic beings who brought sentient life to planet Earth in the form of the Eternals, Deviants and Humans, this version (Gaiman and Romita Jr, 2008) shows a ‘host’ of Celestials returning to earth unhappy with the Deviants they created. They proceed to dispose of their failed experiment by scooping up hundreds of Deviants at a time and eating them. In the image they are shown almost pouring the Deviants down their throats. This is the ultimate, bestial power of the Leviathan. In Frank Miller’s seminal The Dark Knight Returns, the beast and its untameable maw plays a very significant role. In this story, Bruce Wayne has retired his Batman alter ego and now lives out his mid-life racing cars for thrills. Struggling with the meaninglessness of this existence and with a crime wave rekindling memories of the event that gave birth to Batman, the fifty-something Bruce

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Wayne feels compelled to return to the role. In Gotham, people walk the streets carrying ‘We Are Damned’ placards, a gang of criminals called the Mutants murder nuns and staple dead cats to church doors, while a heatwave and burning hot skies suggest an approaching apocalypse. In this environment, Batman is cast in the role of right-wing libertarian needing to respond to the failings of an incompetent government overseen by an excessively old Ronald Reagan and a caricature of Superman as an unthinking agent of the state.11 Having said that, the book is hardly a ringing endorsement of Batman’s actions given that his intervention only seems to add to the chaos and his demarcation from the villains is never clear, with Costello going so far as to say that Miller ‘sees the existence of a creature such as Batman as a catalyst for the existence of villainy’ (2009: 168). While it is certainly possible to read The Dark Knight Returns as a fascistic text, especially when it espouses political intervention by violent gangs, the critical plaudits for the book lay in part with Miller’s ability to draw out Bruce Wayne/Batman’s mental instability and the moral indeterminacy of his ‘holy war’ (Miller, 2002: n.p.), thereby adding a layer of complexity to a character that had become rather staid. Although Miller mocks the discourse of liberal critics throughout the book, giving them lines like ‘you might say Batman commits the crimes  …  using his so-called villains as narcissistic proxies’ (n.p.), he himself draws out the parallels very explicitly. What is more, although his depiction of Batman comes close to the advocacy of fascism with which superheroes are often charged, this is far from a routine appeal for vigilantism. The book’s status within the genre and the wider comics medium stems from a much more nuanced meditation on law and violence. For example, the ambiguity of Batman’s role and status is highlighted in relation to the book’s primary antagonists, Two-Face and The Joker. In another sideswipe at the so-called liberal consensus, psychiatrists are shown to naively believe they have rehabilitated these two arch-enemies of Batman. In the case of Two-Face, the latest plastic surgery has also corrected his facial disfigurement. Now, Harvey Dent supposedly only has one face, and it is good. Batman, of course, knows better. Having been released Harvey Dent immediately goes on a bombing campaign in Gotham. When Batman confronts him at the end of Book 1 the pair fight and ‘tumble like lovers’ (Miller, 2002: n.p.) through a window. Face-to-face, or mask-to-mask, Harvey asks Batman to take a look at his reconstructed face and tell him what he sees. It hides nothing. Batman can still see his monstrous visage beneath the aesthetic correction, and in that monstrous countenance he sees his own. ‘I see … a reflection, Harvey’ (n.p.; italics in original), he says, before embracing Two-Face and then flying off into the night. This intimacy is even more marked at the end of Book 3 when Batman has to engage The Joker at a theme park where he is threatening to run amok. The scene opens with The Joker fantasising about how many people he has killed and admitting that he does not know. ‘I don’t keep count’, he says, addressing Batman ‘but you do. And

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I love you for it’ (n.p.). The Joker’s madness is so lacking in any focus he has no idea how many people he has killed, but Batman keeps records. Batman informs everyone as to the scale of the killing and in this he assists in spreading fear of The Joker. The Batman is therefore The Joker’s unwitting helper. And in an exaggeration of the traditional symbiotic relationship between superheroes and their villains, this part of the story concludes inside the park’s Tunnel of Love with The Joker stabbing Batman in the stomach before Batman manages to squeeze The Joker’s final breath out of him. The key to the book, however, is a line spoken by Batman, in which the proximity between himself and the beast comes to the fore. While fighting Superman during the chaos of Book 4, Batman proclaims that ‘the world only makes sense when you force it to’ (n.p.). In the absence of a naturally occurring order, the use of force is the only meaningful act. For Derrida, this belief itself makes sense because the meaningful use of the strongest force is self-fulfilling. Derrida writes ‘the sovereign (the wolf in the fable) acts as if he had reason to judge just and legitimate the reason he gives because he is the strongest’ (2009: 208). The strongest use of force does not only determine the outcome of an action but also determines the meaning of that action: the force of the strong enables the creation of sense and the sense of the strong confirms the use of force is just. This is the logic that underpinned the disastrous Bush doctrine and the war on terror. It is a circular argument that the weak can do very little about. In terms of the necessary actions of the sovereign, it was Niccolò Machiavelli who most clearly stated the need for a prince to understand the need for force. In chapter XVIII of The Prince, he writes that ‘there are two ways of fighting: by law or by force. The first way is natural to men, and the second to beasts’ (1999: 56). He goes on to note that princes in Ancient Greece were sent away to be taught by creatures – half-men, half-horses – called Centaurs, and continues: ‘All the allegory means, in making the teacher half beast and half man, is that a prince must know how to act according to the nature of both’ (56).12 When Batman rides into the chaos – a chaos fuelled by his own intervention – it is no accident that he sits astride a horse, the bestial half of the centaur. Animals or beasts are everywhere in this book. The re-emergence of Batman takes place early on in Book 1 where Bruce Wayne is shown having nightmares about the bat that haunts him. We are shown him as a child chasing a rabbit into a burrow only for Master Wayne to disappear after it and fall headlong into the cave where he encounters the bat, which we are told is ‘the fiercest warrior – the purest survivor’ (Miller, 2002: n.p.). These words appear above a panel dominated by the face of a bat, itself dominated by the beast’s gaping, untameable maw. This exact image is repeated three more times throughout the book. It is the image that produces Batman’s reflection directly below the panel that reveals Harvey Dent’s true face beneath his cosmetic mask. It also appears at a key point in Book 2 shortly before the scene where Batman takes out the leader of the

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Mutants. At this point, some of the remaining gang members quickly rename themselves the Sons of Batman and wear the mark of the bat on their faces in honour of the new enforcer. This is also the part of the book in which Batman incorporates violence in the most Hobbesian manner, and yet it is hard to see this incorporation as a straightforward moral victory. The long scene that centres on the leader of the Mutants leading up to his fight with Batman repeats the image of the untameable maw. The Mutant leader’s mouth is regularly represented as little more than a toothed abyss, a hole that will devour, swallow and kill. Only the mouth of the bat is equal to it. After this, the image makes its final appearance in Book 4 just before Batman’s fight with Superman, who has been sent to bring Batman in. At this point Batman is also likened to a ‘wounded bear’ (n.p.), the last animal in the menagerie of The Dark Knight Returns. I say menagerie rather than bestiary because all the animals are not beasts, as can be seen in the most curious panel in the entire story that appears in Book 3. Here Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent have seemingly gone out for a horse ride to talk about the problems Batman is deemed to be making worse. While Clark is shown standing statuesquely, gazing out across the countryside, with three colourful butterflies circling his legs, in the background Bruce Wayne attends to their horses, accompanied by an especially lupine looking dog. Over the page, in the panel where Clark tries persuading Bruce to take it easy, and announces that someone with authority will send him after Batman if he doesn’t, Clark shares the panel with an eagle (the symbol of the US state) carrying off some kind of rodent, perhaps a mouse or a rat. Given Batman’s self-identification with such creatures this is clearly an image of de jure sovereign power attempting to deal with the de facto usurper. From one perspective this is an image of how the state sees the likes of Batman and yet this is also precisely how Batman sees himself. In Book 4, when Batman is shown taking command of the Sons of the Batman for the first time he is sitting on a rearing, black horse in a classical pose of animalistic potency. The location where he meets the gang is ‘the dump’, which Batman goes on to describe as a ‘breeding ground for insects and rodents’, adding poignantly, ‘some rodents can fly’. Obviously referring to bats this is hardly a ringing endorsement of Batman’s legitimacy, functioning more like the dark shadow of the idealised eagle, the element the sovereign must always use but continually disavow. If this story is supposed to be a comment on the state’s inability to maintain order and deliver justice the alternative can hardly be said to rid itself of chaos and bestial violence.13 What must now be considered is just how much control over the beast Batman really has. Bruce Wayne’s pathos Batman’s use of force in The Dark Knight Returns is presented as something fanatical or obsessive, driven by the death of Bruce Wayne’s parents, a scene that is

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replayed in his mind for the ‘hundred thousandth time’ (Miller, 2002: n.p.). The pearl necklace snaps and his social bonds are broken, and with this his burning desire for justice begins.14 However, as was noted in the discussion of Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke, Batman’s possible madness is now openly spoken about. He is not a lunatic likes those he fights against, but his zealous pursuit of bad guys does bear the marks of a certain irrationality, if not a full-blown psychopathology. In these matters, though, perhaps the only important thing is that he manages, for the most part, to stay this side of a very thin line between madness and sanity. Perhaps the best example of the delicacy of Batman’s condition (if delicacy is a word that can be used in association with the Batman) can be found in Identity Crisis, when Brad Meltzer has him declare: ‘People think it’s an obsession. A compulsion. As if there were an irresistible impulse to act. It’s never been like that. I chose this life. I know what I’m doing. And on any given day, I could stop doing it. Today, however, isn’t that day. And tomorrow won’t be either’ (Meltzer and Morales, 2005: n.p.; italics in original). The problem here is that this claim to be in control, to be the sovereign owner of his actions, sounds very much like the opposite, the self-deluding justifications of a madman who cannot stop. Since Miller’s story that drew a vivid picture of Batman’s compulsion, driven by significant psychological trauma, and Moore’s deconstruction of the line between madness and sanity, Batman’s pathology has only added greater dramatic depth to the character. None, however, went quite so far as Grant Morrison whose Arkham Asylum, first published in 1989, went to the heart of that trauma by taking us metaphorically inside Batman’s head while taking him apart inside Gotham’s madhouse. In this book, the beast is also never far away. Drawn from the journals of Amadeus Arkham, the story recounts how Arkham, a professional psychiatrist, turned his family home into an asylum after his wife and child were brutally murdered by Martin ‘Mad Dog’ Hawkins, whom Arkham then takes on as a patient. That the house eventually became an asylum seemed to be destined. Arkham lived there during his childhood when he cared for his mother who had gone insane, a condition represented in the book by her propensity for eating beetles in order to protect herself from dark spirits. In the present, the story begins with Commissioner Gordon signalling Batman after receiving news that the inmates of Arkham Asylum – including the Mad Hatter, Professor Milo, Two-Face, Killer Croc, Clayface, Maxie Zeus, Black Mask and Doctor Destiny – have taken over the hospital, which is now being governed by The Joker. As Batman arrives Gordon receives a telephone call in which The Joker invites Batman to the asylum, enticing him with some impromptu torture of a hostage named Pearl, an allusion to Bruce Wayne’s mother and the theft of her jewellery that brought about her death. Unable to resist the challenge to prevent further cruelty simply by doing as The Joker asks, Batman goes to Arkham, confessing to Gordon as he leaves that he is worried The Joker might be right about his truly belonging there.

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If we were to follow Aristotle’s definition of humans as rational animals, or animals with speech  – zōon logon echon  – the madness, lunacy, screams and howls emanating from the asylum would suggest that ‘Mad Dog’ was not the only beast to reside there. Rather, the entire asylum might be seen as a bestiary, or a place of bestiality, that is, a place in which, freed from social and clinical regulation, the human capacity to act as a beast has been given free rein. Curiously, though, no matter how beastly or inhuman the inmates become, they remain properly human because their bestiality, manifested in the cruelty that opens the story, is something of which only humans are capable. Bestiality is here close to criminality as the capacity to transgress accepted behavioural norms. As the animal is not subject to the law, only humans can transgress to become criminals or cruel beasts. On this topic, Derrida writes:  ‘What is supposed to distinguish man, as “wolf to man”, from the animal … is that the cruel man attacks his fellow, which the animal supposedly does not’ (2009: 140; italics in original). Animals are violent but humans are cruel. Here he takes a lead from Jacques Lacan who argued cruelty is definable only because it is directed towards something recognisably similar. Human cruelty towards animals, for example, involves the recognition that animals can feel pain as we do. From this Derrida concludes that bestiality ‘would be the proper of man: bestiality as cruelty and not as a zoophilic perversion’ (140). As with Hobbes’s legitimising the use of fear and terror, cruelty has also been a technique linked to sovereign power. In The Prince, Machiavelli argued ‘cruelty is well used … when it is employed once and for all’ (1999: 30). While certainly seeing cruelty as a vice, Machiavelli nevertheless understood its pragmatic value, arguing that a ‘new ruler must determine all the injuries that he will need to inflict’ and he ‘must inflict them once for all’ (30). When he returns to the topic in section XVII, he claims that all of Hannibal’s achievements were solely the result of his ‘inhuman cruelty’ (55). In Morrison’s story, Amadeus Arkham is not dissimilar to Machiavelli’s prince. After ‘Mad Dog’ Hawkins kills Arkham’s wife and daughter with brutal relish Arkham takes him on as a patient. During their sessions, Hawkins is doubly cruel, recounting the murders to Arkham with delight. After six months of treatment, Arkham responds by strapping Hawkins to the electroshock couch, saying ‘I burn the filthy bastard’ (n.p.; italics in original). King in his own asylum and with a monopoly on the use of violence, Arkham acts with decisive cruelty. And Morrison to some extent plays with our own cruel delight. Horrified by Hawkins and disturbed by Arkham, we clearly identify with Batman, especially with his suffering and the burden he takes on because of it, and yet at the same time we also identify with The Joker and take a perverse delight in his cruel taunting of Batman. This is why The Joker is such a successful villain in the minds of readers. He appeals to our very human sense for transgression.

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The central part of the story is Batman’s tour of the asylum. He has gone in to wrest back control but very quickly finds himself subject to the whims of The Joker, who demands he plays a game of hide and seek. Just to warm him up, he asks a psychologist still inside the asylum to do some free association with Batman that once again draws his trauma to the surface. Proceeding to shoot another hostage to ensure Batman’s compliance, The Joker tells him he has an hour to hide at which point they will come looking for him. As Batman starts the game, memories of his parents’ death haunt him. In order to prevent the trauma from consuming him Batman is shown breaking a window and stabbing a large piece of broken glass through his hand. This violent replaying of his stigmata, which also echoes the self-harm ‘Mad Dog’ Hawkins was shown to engage in earlier in the story, enables Batman to refocus as he walks the largely empty and lightless corridors of the asylum. On his rounds, he breaks Clayface’s leg and pushes Doctor Destiny down the stairs to his death before meeting the Mad Hatter, who immediately explains to Batman how disorder is simply a higher order beyond our comprehension, before going on to liken the asylum to a head, Batman’s head that has brought all of these monsters into being. ‘Arkham is a looking glass’, he tells Batman, ‘and we are you’ (Morrison and McKean, 2004: n.p.; italics in original). Dissolving once again the line between good and evil, humanity and bestiality, law and violence, Arkham Asylum is another story about the deep complicity between supposedly polar opposites. This theme is encapsulated in the book’s strangest passage where Batman takes on Killer Croc. With his journey around the asylum already wrapped inside the voice of Amadeus Arkham, who is narrating the origin story of the asylum, Batman confronts the reptilian Croc just as Arkham’s story addresses the moment when he realised his own need to confront the ‘unreason’ that threatened him ‘and face the dragon within’ (n.p.; italics in original). As Arkham speaks of his own confrontation with evil, we are shown Batman’s fight with Croc that culminates with Batman stabbing Croc through his ribcage with a spear. Croc then falls, arms outstretched in the image of a crucifix. In Morrison’s own notes to the fifteenth anniversary edition, he explains that he wanted Batman to be the figure that joined Christ and the Serpent (sovereign and beast in the analysis), just at the point where Arkham comes to the dreadful realisation that he himself is the dragon he needs to slay. What is most curious, though, is how this realisation on behalf of Arkham releases a repressed memory in which he finally remembers having seen the beast that has not only consumed him but also consumed his mother. He recalls how in 1920 he saw the shadow of the beast emerge from beneath his mother’s sickbed. The beast towers above him, and of all the possible bestial spirits that it might have been the one that has always haunted Arkham is a giant bat, a childhood vision that now represents the inevitability of his own madness and the house’s descent into chaos.

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There is another dreadful symmetry here, too, of course. Just as Batman kills Croc he is directed to the journals of Amadeus Arkham from which the disembodied narrative voice has been coming. Batman encounters the journal just at the point where Arkham recalls the image of the bat. Given the fact that the bat preceded the Batman – the bat had appeared to the young Bruce Wayne some time before he became the Batman  – and its emergence relates to unresolved issues around the death of his mother, the parallel between Amadeus Arkham and Bruce Wayne is uncanny. In this story, then, Batman once again enters the fray in order to put an end to the madness, but in reading Arkham’s journal he finds his totemic beast is where it all started. By the end of the story, with Batman’s violence proving too much for some of the inmates they ask The Joker to put an end to it. ‘You should never have allowed him in here, Joker! He’s too dangerous!’ (n.p.), says Black Mask, at which point The Joker asks Two-Face to toss his coin to choose either death or release for Batman. Despite the coin coming down on the side of death, Two-Face chooses life, knowing that without Batman they too are finished. Although Alan Moore described Arkham Asylum as a ‘gilded turd’ (Morrison, 2012) and the story does have its awkward pretensions, it remains the story in which the call between the sovereign, the criminal and the beast that has been the subject of this chapter reaches its perfect, disturbing pitch. However, it is not with this personal pathology that I wish to close this interpretation but with the sovereign’s pathology that can also be seen in the figure of the Batman. It is a pathology that takes us back to Robert Cover’s work on the relationship between law and violence, and especially to the role of judges who he argues do not make law but ‘kill it’ (Cover, 1992a: 155).15 The judges and the courts in which they operate are what he calls ‘jurispathic’ (139). They represent the attempt ‘to exercise strict superintendence over the articulation of the law’ (146) and work against ‘the fecundity of the jurisgenerative principle’ (139), whereby communities produce diverse interpretive solutions to normative problems and create their own laws. For Cover, society is made up of innumerable interpretive communities, each with their own particular view of the normative universe they wish to bring into being. This interpretive relation to the world will be examined in detail in the final chapter, but here the point that needs making is that the sovereign’s use of law is not simply violent with regard to those it treats as criminals, it is violent in relation to the creation of alternative laws. The sovereign is the entity that secures the order of a single nomos against the ‘anarchy’ of many nomoi. In Arkham Asylum, it is possible to see Batman in this reactionary, jurispathic role and The Joker as an extreme form of unbounded jurisgeneration. The psychologist that remains inside the asylum explains to Batman that The Joker is not necessarily insane and that we may in fact be looking at a form of ‘super-sanity’. She suggests he is suffering from a neurological condition that makes him unable

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to regulate sensory data. He can only cope by going with the flow, we are told. This is also a great continuity device that explains his various manifestations throughout the decades: ‘He has no real personality. He creates himself each day’ (Morrison and McKean, 2004: n.p.; italics in original). It is not just The Joker’s propensity for physical violence that is the problem he also, and perhaps primarily, has come to represent the violation of every norm. In this regard, The Joker refuses to support the categorisation that ensures social stability. In this case, Will Brooker (2012) has very effectively deployed Bhaktin’s theory of the carnival to address The Joker’s theatricality and subversion. This is also something Morrison raises via The Joker’s sexuality. Although Morrison (2012) wanted a more polymorphously perverse Joker set against the ‘buttoned up’, conservative Batman – something DC would not agree to – he did manage to suggest The Joker’s transvestism by showing him in high heels as the story reaches its climax. The Joker crosses over and upsets the usual social categories. In doing so, he threatens the dominant normative universe and mocks Batman’s ‘solemn obsessions’ (Brooker, 2012: 137). Ultimately, The Joker’s madness arises from a principle of unregulated creativity that Batman must violently control for the sake of social order. Although the jurispathic nature of Batman is prevalent in numerous stories such as Batman: Anarky (Grant and Breyfogle, 1999), in which Lonnie Machin wants to remake the world free of hierarchies and power structures, Batman: Contagion very neatly set out this sovereign role. The story recounts the events when the ‘Apocalypse Filovirus’ hits Gotham and threatens the entire population. It centres on the residents of Babylon Towers, a group of super-rich people, who live in luxury, impervious to the outside world. They decide to lock themselves in, living off the contents of Babylon Towers’ shopping mall until the contagion has passed. In order to ensure they can stay inside Babylon Towers for as long as possible, they expel all service workers, forcing them to take the risk of contamination in the city streets. However, it soon comes to light that Babylon Towers is in fact the source of the plague that now runs virulently through the streets of Gotham, which now look like they belong to the Middle Ages. On hearing this, citizens of Gotham quickly gather together seeking to burn it down and purge the city of the disease. With the story explicitly referencing the year 1848 (Dixon and Nolan, 1996: 10), the year of the Paris Communes and European-wide revolutionary fervour, the story certainly suggests the legitimacy of social of political dissent against an aristocracy that have brought death to the city. Such dissent and the desire for a different political order is also related to the creation of meaning that Cover refers to with his ‘jurisgenerative principle’, and yet this is something that Batman declares he must also resist. While trying to fight the criminal super-rich, who have brought hell to Gotham, he also places himself between Babylon Towers and the people, now cast as a ‘mob’ (Moench and Jones, 1996: 22). In this instance, Batman stands for the jurispathic principle executed

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by an elite of one. He must bring the criminals to justice, but equally important he must prevent the ‘mob’ from asserting their own interpretation and creating an alternative social order. Although Batman may not be homicidal, he is jurispathic, dedicating himself to the tireless preservation of a particular nomos, and in these particular stories his proximity to both the beast and the criminal offers us an important picture of the intimate relationship between law and violence that marks sovereign power but which it continually seeks to disavow. Notes  1 Brooker (2005) uses this term figuratively to refer to the Batman that lends himself to gay readings, but ‘The Rainbow Batman’ was a story in Detective Comics #241 (Hamilton and Moldoff, 1957).  2 A curious example of this is in the final instalment of the story of the second Tattooed Man, John Oakes (Prosser and Pleece, 1993). Oakes is given the power of magical tattoos by the original tattooed man, Abel Tarrant, but this is only a ruse to pass the power on to a Japanese crime lord, who wants to kill Oakes and possess his skin now inscribed with hermetic powers. At the climax of the story, Oakes defeats Tarrant and marks that defeat by passing on to him the tattoo Oakes’s abusive father first gave him.  3 The article and the comments were criticised amongst others by Joseph Hughes (2013) on the Comics Alliance site, by Jason Tondro (2013) on his blog Doctor Comics, and by MyDearPeabody (2013) on her blog Observation Deck.  4 Simone and others documented the fate of women characters on a website entitled ‘Women in Refrigerators’. The website can be found at www.lby3.com/wir/ (accessed 5 May 2015).  5 Given that this scene not only cripples Barbara Gordon, but is also believed to have involved forms of torture, this has also became an iconic representation of the sort of violence against women that is still prevalent in superhero comics today. This is a problem because it is an episode of gross violence that continues to haunt Barbara Gordon in the rebooted role as Batgirl, a problem that was made clear with the deeply problematic variant cover to Batgirl #41 (Stewart et al., 2015) that once again showed her being assaulted by the Joker. Fortunately the artist, Rafael Albuquerque, withdrew the artwork. For Carol A. Stabile (2009: 87), this would also be another expression of the casting of women in terms of vulnerability that legitimates further violence from predominantly male protectors.  6 In Batman stories, the name Leviathan was used in a Streets of Gotham story (Yost and Nguyen, 2009, 2010), where the city of Gotham was itself represented as the beastly Leviathan whose darkness and depravity consumes the inhabitants by destroying their hope. The name is also used by Grant Morrison in his Batman Incorporated (Morrison et al., 2012). While Morrison uses the idea that Batman’s regularly expressed desire for global surveillance would logically entail an attempt to stretch his ‘shadow across the world’ (Morrison and Paquette, 2011: n.p.; italics in original) by recruiting a team of Batmen from across the planet, all under his sovereign direction, he reserves the term Leviathan for the global terrorist group that the new Batman Incorporated (his version

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of the Hobbesian incorporated commonwealth) opposes. In keeping with the image from the Hobbes frontispiece this new opponent is described as having ‘ten-thousand eyes, ten-thousand fists, faces and weapons’ (Morrison and Burnham, 2011:  n.p.; italics in original). In the one-shot entitled Batman Incorporated:  Leviathan Strikes! (Morrison, Burnham and Stewart, 2012), Morrison discloses to us that the person in command of Leviathan is Talia al Ghul, Batman’s former lover, and mother to his son Damian (the Robin at the time). In this story, law and violence become an intimate family affair.  7 The analogy between sovereign and beast is, of course, a curious one, given that biblical references to the great sea monster Leviathan usually involve its death at the hands of God who crushes it (Psalm 74) and puts it to the sword (Isaiah 27), and yet the analogy works perfectly well if one imagines that aside from God the monster is all powerful.  8 In Batman #2 (Finger and Kane, 1940), Batman and Robin are faced with Wolf, the Crime Master who until an accident at work was the museum curator Adam Lamb.  9 The comic has also made use of Fenrir the wolf-God, known as Fenris Wolf in the Marvel Universe, and there has also been an Odin Beast created by K’rll, aka Soul Eater, from pure Odin force (Wein and Simonson, 1977). 10 This image of the devouring Leviathan was recreated by Alan Moore and Rick Veitch (1987) in Swamp Thing volume 2 #61 when Swamp Thing accidentally incorporates the population of the planet J586 into himself. Swamp Thing, by now an Earth Elemental with God-like powers and the ability to move through and inhabit any form of plant life in the universe, has been separated from his physical form after an attempt on his life. Without knowing that the vegetation on J586 is sentient, he attempts to form a new body from the planet’s plant life nearly killing a large number of the planet’s inhabitants in the process. The terrible situation is only saved by the intervention of the planet’s Green Lantern, Medphyll, who manages to deconstruct the ‘corporate entity’ (15) and release both the population and Swamp Thing’s soul, which he then helps on its journey back to Earth. 11 As Brooker notes, this depiction of Superman is ironic given that it was Batman whom DC first converted into a ‘costumed teacher or even pastor’ (2005:  65)  in response to the growing moral panic around the effects of comics on America’s youth. 12 Machiavelli goes on to be quite specific: ‘to know how to act like a beast, he must learn from the fox and the lion; because the lion is defenceless against traps and a fox is defenceless against wolves’ (1999: 56). 13 This supposedly darker view of Batman saw a return to the early Gothic roots of the character, and the relationship between man and beast picks up a central theme of some of the great nineteenth-century Gothic literature. Of these works, Andreas Reichstein argued: ‘Their dealing with the change of a man into a beast has to be seen in the context of the shock Charles Darwin caused with his theory of evolution. These novels, as well as the Batman myth, exemplify the fear Darwinism generated. They show “the reversion of the species, the ever-present threat that, if evolution is a ladder, it may be possible to start moving down it” ’ (1998: 346). What is especially intriguing about the Batman character, he goes on to say, is that unlike characters such as Dr Jekyll, whose beastly transformation was ultimately irreversible ‘Batman is able to

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climb up and down’ (347) the evolutionary ladder. Ultimately, the ‘fascination with The Batman therefore lies in his ability to control his shadow’ (349). 14 From a psychoanalytic perspective, Batman’s actions are best understood in terms of the drive rather than desire. For Jacques Lacan, the drive is differentiated from desire because it is said to be lacking an object at which it might be aimed. Although desire is also unsatisfied because it never finds the ultimate object that puts an end to desire, a perverse enjoyment can be found in the drive’s perpetual and repetitive circling around whatever is blocking it. Lacan explained this in terms of the drive finding pleasure in the path that it takes (1986: 179) rather than the attainment of a specific goal. The drive aims at the reproduction of a circuit. This ‘return into circuit’ (179), however, is not necessarily conservative in any moral sense. In an earlier seminar Lacan told us that the drive has nothing to do with ‘moderation’ (1992: 110). Batman’s perpetual, zealous pursuit of villains is, then, the archetypal image for this continually circling drive, perfectly represented by the constantly wheeling bat in the night sky. In this formulation, Bruce Wayne’s pathos, his suffering, becomes Batman’s pathology, a neurotic and perversely gratifying pursuit of bad guys. These figures becoming avatars for the impossibility of the drive ever finding what might be called the ultimate or Sovereign Good, as well as for his own vanishing point, that moment in time, outside the cinema when his world fell apart. 15 In this quotation, Cover writes:  ‘Judges are people of violence. Because of the violence they command, judges characteristically do not create law, but kill it’ (1992a: 155).

4

Friend and enemy

The use of violence by the sovereign has primarily been used to secure peace against the threat from hostile forces. This means that from Bodin to Schmitt a significant attribute of sovereignty has been the capacity to name an enemy. Given that Schmitt viewed this capacity important enough to devote a specific study to it, and that the distinction between friend and enemy plays such an integral part in the superhero genre’s grammar and syntax, this is the third way in which superhero comics lend themselves to a study of sovereignty. Although superhero comics display fairly traditional approaches to friend and enemy relations, which readily play into the more conservative politics of good guys versus bad guys (Jewett and Lawrence, 2003:  215), they also regularly problematise the distinction in ways that are recognisably liberal. However, as in the previous chapter where superhero comics were shown to regularly explore the intimacy between law and violence what is especially interesting is how this problematising of the distinction between friend and enemy will often go as far as to actively deconstruct it. This somewhat challenges the claim made by Peter Coogan (2006) that one of the founding features of the superhero genre is the removal of any permeability between the virtuous and the criminal, the civilised and the savage (187). While Coogan is correct to say it remains firmly established that the good guys are good the boundary is far from impervious. After analysing the ways in which superhero comics regularly present the distinction as necessary but neither clear cut nor absolute, I will show how the distinction is deconstructed in stories where superheroes and their actions are represented as potentially dangerous. This can be understood in relation to what Jacques Derrida called ‘autoimmunity’, where a body’s own defence mechanism becomes the threat, or in another of his favoured concepts, the ‘pharmakon’, where something is both poison and cure. Although these moments of deconstruction are replete within superhero comics, the chapter will conclude with examples of how superhero comics also manage to re-establish the distinction, having previously problematised it. As was noted in Chapter 1, superhero comics are tied to the cultural moment from which they speak. The way in which comics map onto changes in the Zeitgeist is the reason Costello argues they ‘offer an insightful yet underutilized

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window into the study of cultural change’ (2009: 14). Accepting this, I would also like to argue that the flexibility of the distinction between friend and enemy in superhero comics is a conceptual one rather than a commercial or cultural one, and that it is intrinsic to the superhero form and not an extrinsic effect of the production or promotional process.1 Certainly, this flexibility has found a sharper focus and has featured more regularly over the last three decades, but the instability of the distinction has always been present. This is exemplified in the character of Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner, who has forever been situated in that liminal zone between friend and enemy. From his first appearance in Marvel Comics #1 in October 1939, as the ruler of Atlantis, he has been depicted as an enemy with a just cause, or an enemy whose complaint is legitimate. He quickly became a friend, fighting with the allied forces in the Second World War, but his outsider status has always ensured that his placement on either side of the friend and enemy divide has never been definitive. It has been argued that his fluctuating allegiances made him the first comic book anti-hero (Coogan, 2006: 73). In many respects, this indecision has been a mark of the Marvel Universe, especially the modern Marvel Universe, which can be dated from the publication of Fantastic Four #1 in 1961, although some early stories did not so much show the dark side of the hero as create interesting stories from a little role reversal or impersonation, such as Stan Lee’s story in Daredevil, volume 1, #16 (Lee and Romita, 1966), where the Masked Marauder dresses a gang of his henchmen in Daredevil costumes in order to attack Spider-Man. Unlike many of the DC heroes, Stan Lee’s innovation was to introduce characters that were in many ways flawed and were at some remove from classic visions of unadulterated heroism. This is not to say that Stan Lee was unwilling to pen stories that clearly identified the nature of heroism and explicitly served the ideological purposes of the time. For example, in volume 1, #21 of Fantastic Four published in December 1963, we are offered the story of the Hate Monger stirring up trouble in the South American republic of San Gusto, which the United States is trying to turn into a model of democratic government. In many respects, this is the usual fare that unites DC and Marvel in their representations of tyranny as the ultimate enemy and US freedom as the world’s ultimate friend.2 Another example can be seen in the story ‘When the Commissar Commands’ from The Avengers, volume 1, #18, published in July 1965. In an exceedingly clumsy way, the story sets out the threat of Communist China introduced as a state-sized protection racket demanding excessive taxes from the people of ‘Sin-Chong’ in exchange for protection from imperialists (capitalists). In response to the people’s protestations that they do not fear the capitalists because they have helped and fed them in the past, the Commissar displays his awesome strength and forces the people of ‘Sin-Cong’ to supplicate themselves before him.3 In good super-villain fashion,

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the Commissar is far too egotistic (Coogan, 2006: 82) to be satisfied with this dominion and so concocts a plan to lure Captain America to ‘Sin-Chong’ only, of course, to lose in the ensuing battle where Captain America reveals the Commissar to be a machine, a giant robot, ‘made to be superior to flesh and blood’ (Lee and Kirby, 1965b: 20), but ultimately defeated by it. The lifelessness of Communism exposed, Captain America entreats us to be constantly vigilant against the threat of enslavement. Although there are many examples of this kind of story where a clear distinction between friend and enemy supports the wider ideological purpose of projecting US soft power (Nye, 2005) and even justifies the persistent use of its hard power, it is the stories where distinctions are not sharply defined that make superhero comics interesting for discussing issues of sovereignty; and to be clear about the nature of these stories they are not at the margins of the superhero mythos but absolutely essential to it. In part, this stems from Marvel’s particular brand of liberalism, perhaps best encapsulated in the story ‘Origin of Doctor Doom’ that was part of the Fantastic Four Annual #2, published in 1964. Here, Doom’s enemy status is clearly portrayed as an accident of circumstance and challenges the notion that as a villain he is ontologically evil, or a person who is inherently bad. The story proper begins when the young Victor’s father who has a reputation as a great healer is taken away by one of the Baron’s men to help save the life of the Baron’s wife. Trying to comprehend how his father can be summarily removed from him the young Victor asks his father’s friend why he has been taken. The man replies: ‘he is a gypsy, boy … as we all are! It is the price we must pay!’ (Lee and Kirby, 1964b: n.p.; italics in original). Learning that his father is killed by the Baron for being unable to work miracles on his wife, and knowing already that it was the Baron that murdered his mother when Victor was only an infant he vows to make all mankind pay. In some respects, this is in keeping with Coogan’s argument that super-villains are regularly depicted as having suffered a wound ‘that shapes their lives and which they are unable to recover from’ (2006: 70), but this is more than a simple wound, it is a suffering brought about by the persecution of minorities. It is therefore not personal, as we might interpret the origin of The Joker, for example, but political. Over the next few pages we see the young Victor Von Doom take his father’s talent for science and his mother’s powers in magic and use them to create fabulous inventions enabling him to become the scourge of the Marvel Universe. Throughout the transformation it is the systematic persecution of minorities, in particular gypsies that drives him to assume the Doctor Doom persona, giving the character a certain complexity and rounded depth. Although Doctor Doom is very clearly a super-villain and therefore an enemy, his creation through persecution (similar in kind to the biography of Magneto discussed in Chapter 2) means that the purity of his evil is always diluted by a sense for justice and fairness that gives the character deserved nobility.

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These preliminary remarks have served to show how the conceptual distinction or dividing line between friend and enemy in superhero comics is anything but definitive or absolute. In the case of Dr Doom, his villainous identity was born from his victimisation, and it is this victimisation that provides the problematic moment of identity that destabilises the categorisation of the enemy in any absolute sense. As already mentioned, however, the idea that the distinction must be made has been central to the conception of sovereignty, tied as it is to an understanding of a warlike natural order. This condition is exemplified by Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political, which first appeared in 1927. According to Schmitt, the modern conception of sovereignty, which assumes the state to be ‘the political status of an organized people in an enclosed territorial unit’ (1996: 19), fails as a definition if it does not properly consider what is meant by the political, which he claimed had lost its polemical bite ever since Hobbes gave ground to the reconception of politics in terms of the administration that emerged with the nascent, proto-liberal state in post-revolutionary England in the seventeenth century. Although he was unable to hold on to this strict definition, the political, according to Schmitt, ought to be viewed according to its own criteria as independent of the moral, aesthetic and economic realms, resting on its own ultimate distinctions. If the moral is understood as the antithesis between good and evil, the aesthetic as the antithesis between the beautiful and the ugly, and the economic as the antithesis between the profitable and the unprofitable, then the political is the antithesis between friend and enemy, where an enemy is defined as existing ‘only when, at least potentially, one fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity’ (28). What is specific about the political antithesis is that its distinction between friend and enemy ‘denotes the utmost degree of intensity of a union or separation, of an association or dissociation’ (26). Outside of this, non-polemical decisions are ‘legal or administrative’ (21) processes, but are not political and do not give us a definition of the state. This qualification of intensity is, of course, perfectly in keeping with Schmitt’s Nazi sympathies, but it is an especially problematic quality in a superhero. In Chapter 2, it was argued that although Captain America was born out of such intensity, his rebirth at the hands of Stan Lee introduced a deep suspicion of patriotic intensity in stories that regularly showed the dangers of an unquestioning over-identification with a country or national government. Although the cause of the superhero could never be considered casual that does not mean the intensity that permeates their conflicts is not deeply ambiguous and at times clearly wrong. Schmitt, though, is very clear that the enemy is the entity that threatens the existence of your world, and the enemy is quite simply the entity that is different. ‘The political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly’, he writes. ‘But he is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his

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nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible’ (1996: 27). The xenophobia in Schmitt’s thesis is abundantly clear. Effectively, anything foreign is potentially an existential threat. However, where such intensity appears in superhero comics we are nearly always in the company of villains. In Chapter 2 it was argued that the most uncompromising of characters, such as Magneto, tend to be villainous. Indeed, stories involving the X-men are regularly used to explore these issues of intense identifications. In one such story entitled God Loves, Man Kills (Claremont and Anderson, 2007), first published in 1982, an uncompromising, intense approach to a supposed enemy and the existential threat they pose is clearly presented as dangerous. The story follows Reverend William Stryker, who calls upon the members of his church and the wider community to turn against mutants whom he regards as Satan’s spawn and agents of hell sent to contaminate and ruin US society. The story documents the summary execution, by shooting or hanging, of ‘Muties’, whose dead bodies are then incinerated, all in the name of God. In true Marvel style, Stryker is not only defeated by Xavier (ably assisted on this occasion by the villainous Magneto), but his doctrine of human purity and the Schmittian logic of ‘us versus them’ is shown to come unstuck, as we discover the Senator that supports Stryker, as well as his young disciple called Anne are in fact themselves mutants. What is more, it is also revealed half way through the story that the Reverend’s wife gave birth to a ‘monster’ that he killed. Unfortunately, Stryker took the birth of this child to be a sign from God that he needed to follow a righteous path and ensure all other such abominations were also killed. It has already been noted how the need to kill is something of a problem in superhero stories.4 Batman’s injunction against killing was deemed a necessity for the creative team who wanted to place him on the side of the law and civilised behaviour and prevent the character’s actions from being too easily associated with a simplistic vigilantism. Within the Batman stories, however, his refusal to kill is a logical and moral decision based on his childhood experience, and yet there is perhaps no superhero that better encapsulates the idea that the enemy is everywhere and the consequent, intense need to be permanently vigilant. As we saw in the previous chapter, life is a permanent war for Batman and yet while his feats of detection and paramilitary violence are regularly displayed as absolutely necessary there have been a number of stories in which his naming and pursuit of the enemy, as well as his deployment of fear, have positioned him closer to the hostile elements against which he is supposed to fight. In the previous chapter, it was noted how his pursuit of criminals is an obsession, bordering on madness, that regularly threatens to dissolve the distinction between hero and villain, but his powers of detection also have the capacity to spill over into paranoia and an authoritarian desire for total surveillance. There is something about Batman’s vigilance and ruthless pursuit of the enemy that

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itself threatens his friends and the way of life he is dedicated to protect. This was explored in the Justice League of America story entitled Tower of Babel (Waid et al., 2001). As the story slowly unfolds, Batman’s attention is diverted by the theft of his parents bodies from their graves, a crime he traces back to his old foe Ra’s Al Ghul. Batman, however, is unaware that this is a device deployed by Ra’s Al Ghul to divert attention away from his attack on Batman’s teammates in the JLA. As each hero is debilitated by an attack designed specifically to target their weaknesses we discover that Batman is ultimately responsible. In a scene in which Ra’s Al Ghul’s daughter, and one-time lover of Batman, Tali Al Ghul, explains her theft of sensitive information from the JLA’s Watchtower, we learn that Batman’s obsession with threats includes seeing his friends as potential enemies. To counter any threat they might pose should they go rogue, Batman has kept an archive of detailed observations on his team-mates, including the best way to defeat them should the need arise.5 Ra’s now has this information and is pre-empting the JLAers one by one. This story is as much about trust and the need to override suspicion as it is about the danger in seeing everything as a potential threat. This fear that drives Batman to keep everything under surveillance, as well as the generation of fear that is his modus operandi, was later given direct attention in DC’s brilliant relaunch of the Green Lantern (Johns and Van Sciver, 2005). For the purposes of the argument here, it is necessary to mention only a few things about how this very complicated story treats the distinction between friend and enemy. The first is that the story marks the rebirth and rehabilitation of Hal Jordan – Green Lantern since 1959 – who, since a radical twist in his story line in 1994, had been ravaging the DC Universe as the monstrous Parallax. The second is that each Green Lantern gains their power from a ring that emanates a particular aspect of the colour spectrum, with green being the colour of the will. Each Green Lantern therefore has the power to make manifest anything through will power. Johns’s innovation of the ‘emotional spectrum’ introduced the Yellow Lanterns (amongst others) who operate through the power of fear, as this is the characteristic manifested by yellow light first introduced in a much earlier story.6 The relaunch is interesting in relation to Batman because Johns presents him as a potential enemy and possible member of the Yellow Lanterns owing to the fact that he deals in fear. Early on in the story, Batman is confronted by another Green Lantern, John Stewart, who tells Batman that the only reason he disrespects Hal Jordan (the two have something of a history) is because ‘Hal is the one person in this world that didn’t buy what you’re selling’ (Johns and Van Sciver 2005: n.p.; italics in original). Batman’s logic and his method, at least as they see it, are precisely what the Green Lanterns have aligned themselves against. Fear is the weapon of tyrants. So, while the distinction between friend and enemy in this story remains absolutely crucial, the slippage even within the DCU, regarding who is on which side of the dividing line is very important. The need for

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the distinction remains and yet the idea that a friend is always a friend is problematised in both the figure of Hal Jordan/Parallax, as well as the potential alignment of Batman with the Yellow Lanterns. While Jordan’s earlier possession by the monstrous Parallax appears to validate Batman’s belief in the earlier Tower of Babel story that vigilance is always needed because as far as potential enemies are concerned no one can be trusted, Babel clearly shows the danger in basing one’s politics on suspicion. In that scenario, Batman’s powers of surveillance and his commitment to fighting the enemy were shown to have disastrous consequences, and it is in this ambiguity with regards to a hero’s powers that we begin to approach a central aspect of the treatment of sovereignty in superhero comics. Deconstructing the distinction: autoimmunity Despite Schmitt’s claim that sovereignty is defined by deciding between friend and enemy ‘in a concrete situation’ (1996:  45), this definition of the political only properly functions as an abstraction and as a theoretical distinction. In the concrete, as we have just seen with the brief Magneto/Xavier alliance or Green Lantern/Batman stand off, the distinction becomes much more fluid. In other words, rather than the ‘concrete situation’ making the distinction clear, Derrida has argued it makes the purity of the distinction impossible. In his book The Politics of Friendship, he claims that despite Schmitt’s insistence on the concrete, the division is based on an ideal conceptual limit, but ‘no politics has ever been adequate to its concept’ (Derrida, 1997:  114). The practice of politics always seems to muddy the waters, so to speak. However, for the purposes of the argument here I want to introduce a concept that Derrida uses to speak about a specific form of this problem, one that he refers to as autoimmunity (1997, 2005). This concept signals how the distinction tends to deconstruct itself. If we consider the importance of the conceptual purity of the friend and enemy distinction to the US government under George W. Bush, we have an event that rather than sharpening the distinction – as the neo-conservative ideologues claimed – only served to show how the distinction is unintelligible. The attacks on 11 September 2001 brought about the declaration of a war on terror where, aside from the abstract concept of terrorism itself, the concrete enemies were named as Al Queda and the Taliban that harboured them in Afghanistan. The difficulty here for those who like conceptual purity is that until relatively recently Al Queda and the Taliban, in their earlier associations with the Mujahadeen, were friends of and funded by an earlier US administration in its fight against Soviet expansion – they were even described as the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers by Ronald Reagan. To some extent, we might concede that over time allegiances change and that this does not really problematise the distinction, and yet we also know that the majority of the attackers on 11 September resided in a supposedly friendly country. The United States has been a long-standing ally of Saudi Arabia, a profoundly

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anti-democratic state that encourages the form of Islam known as Wahabism that guided the actions of Osama bin Laden and Al Queda. In order to maintain its interests in the Middle East, the United States is prepared to befriend a state that represents the exact opposite of what it supposedly stands for, and to secure its interests in maintaining an alliance with the United States, Saudi Arabia in turn encourages a militant form of Islam through which the population can express its anti-United States sentiment. This complex relationship between friendship and enmity is one way in which Derrida conceptualised the term ‘autoimmunity’. While the concept has numerous applications in Derrida’s work its usefulness for understanding the superhero is in its most literal application; autoimmunity is the moment when the protective agency becomes the threat, the point where the body’s immune system attacks the cells it is supposed to be defending. Taking either the earlier alliance with the Mujahadeen/Taliban to defeat Soviet expansion or the alliance with Saudi Arabia to preserve interests in the Middle East it can be seen how this attempt to make the United States immune to a variety of threats turned out itself to be the greatest of threats: its defensive strategies did not simply provoke the enemy but became the very means by which the enemy could attack. This auto-immunity can also be seen in the way the attack precipitated an auto-immune response from the United States as it rolled back constitutional rights as a means of ‘protecting’ its freedom. It is also evident in the way Al’Queda used the global media – the primary means of US soft power  – to project and make known (Derrida, 2009: 37) its power.7 In this knot of animosity and amicability it is impossible to maintain the distinction. The result is what Derrida calls the ‘disorientation of the political field’ (1997: 84). For Derrida, of course, such disorientation is not a problem. It is rather the orientation of the political via the absolute distinction between friend and enemy that troubles him. In Geoff Johns’s 2002–3 run on The Avengers, which explicitly responds to the rhetoric of the war on terror and is centred on the invasion of Slokovia, for which we must read Iraq, he opens with a story in which the villain Scorpio – brother of SHIELD director Nick Fury – has taken possession of the Zodiac Key, which gives him access to and control over the realms of order and chaos (Johns et al., 2010a). In effect, the Zodiac Key allows Scorpio to separate chaos from order signalled throughout the comic by the presence of two versions of a normally singular cosmic being called The Inbetweener who represents the implicit connection between order and chaos, a mixture and a disorientation that sovereign politics continually tries to work against. In the first part of Johns’s run, then, we have a story about a mysterious and sinister group called the Brotherhood, for whom Scorpio works, who attempt to use chaos to produce a new order. Here the attempt to distinguish between and separate out two concepts that are in reality intimately connected is the path towards totalitarianism. This is then followed by a story in which a desire for order produces chaos. In this scenario (Johns et al.,

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2010b) Thor is determined to show humans how to live properly and commences a pre-emptive strike or ‘interventionist’ invasion of Slokovia on the basis that it has violated the rights of its people and now threatens armed hostility in the region. The Avengers (having had to play the role of a surrogate United Nations in the previous story when New York was consumed by chaos) are deeply troubled by one of their own members taking matters into his own hands not least because this could play into the hands of Slokovia’s neighbour, Latveria, ruled by Dr Doom (for which we must read Iran). As the fighting increases, the damage escalates and hostilities between former teammates intensify, we are shown how the intervention has only precipitated more suffering and even more deaths. As the stand-off between Captain America and Thor comes to a head Thor delivers what would have been a fatal blow had Captain America’s shield not deflected it. Thor’s attack has, however, left a dent in the shield, a feat almost never achieved before, but amidst the carnage Thor is persuaded to stop and returns to Asgard. While this has been taking place, we learn that the Nazi Red Skull has become the Secretary of State for Defence, cleverly disguising himself and using the pseudonym Dell Rusk. In this third (Johns and Coipel, 2010) part of the story-arc, echoing the real-life case of the home-made anthrax attacks immediately after ‘9/11’, the Avengers are faced with a deadly red mist that they discover to be a necrotising fasciitis pathogen, or flesh-eating bacteria, which they trace back to United States Bio-Weapons Lab 1. Here, the weapons designed to ‘defend’ the United States are used to kill its own people and induce a climate of fear in a plan laid out by a Nazi infiltrating the highest echelons of power. In a speech demonstrating all the hubris and egotistical mania that Coogan (2006: 90), argues is an essential feature of a great super-villain, and refraining a similar speech he made in Captain America #350, to which I  will return below,8 the Red Skull surveys Washington from the window of the Secretary of Defence’s office and speaks about his new dream for a Fourth Reich: ‘Freedom must feel fear. And fear leads to control. I was wrong about this country. This wonderful ‘united’ States of America. It has all the resources already in place. It has the right attitudes laced within. They just need to be exploited. To become the perfect nation … America just needs a little push in the right direction’ (Johns and Coipel, 2010: n.p.; italics in original). Johns’s run on The Avengers was so blatantly and stridently critical of the Bush administration that Johns or more likely Marvel decided to end The Avengers #70 with the most clumsy piece of ideological compensation, showing George W. Bush to be unaware of the plot and promising to be vigilant in future. Nevertheless, despite this piece of recuperation and reorientation Johns’s story works with the fundamental disorientation of the political: that order and chaos, friend and enemy cannot be made distinct in the concrete; that depending on the context a hero can easily turn villain; and that mechanisms of defence can easily cause harm. What stories like this show is that when the hero pursues power, freedom and desire to their limit they do not meet an impervious border they cannot

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cross, rather the limit is the point of a potential crossing: power becomes force, freedom becomes irresponsibility, and desire becomes greed. The Bush doctrine and the wider culture around the war on terror provided a rich source for superhero comics to engage in political disorientation. Most notable in this regard was Ed Brubaker’s run on Captain America.9 One of the key features of that disorientation was set up in a story from 1969 where the Red Skull uses the cosmic cube to switch bodies with Captain America (Lee and Buscema, 1969). This was later achieved with more permanence when in Captain America #350, published in February 1989, Mark Gruenwald brought the Red Skull back from the dead in a body cloned from Steve Rogers. What had been the ultimate US military weapon, the Super-Soldier, had not only fallen into enemy hands, it had quite literally become the hands that would try to take over America and the world.10 In the issues of Ed Brubaker’s run that are collected together under the title Winter Soldier (Brubaker and Epting, 2006a, 2006b), the main story is the return of Captain America’s Second World War partner, Bucky. Much like the recovery of Captain America in The Avengers #4, Bucky did not die when the rocket he was attached to detonated, but fell into the sea only to be recovered by a Soviet submarine. Having lost an arm and his memory, Bucky is rebuilt with a bionic prosthesis and mentally re-programmed to become the assassin named Winter Soldier.11 He is given his first mission in 1954. In between missions he is cryogenically frozen before being permanently put on ice in 1988. In the present day, and from out of the gangster capitalism of post-Soviet Russia, Winter Soldier is found and revived by General Lukin to kill the Red Skull and take possession of the cosmic cube. Over the longer story arc, running through Civil War and beyond, numerous twists and turns are taken around the friend and enemy axis, with a recovered and normalised Bucky becoming the new Captain America after the assassination of Steve Rogers by his long-time girlfriend Sharon Carter. However, for the sake of illustrating a point, I will limit myself to examples of the political disorientation Brubaker deploys in the two volumes of Winter Soldier. In issue 1, first published in 2005, Captain America is shown using excessive force and creating significant collateral damage in his pursuit of terrorists. I will return to the issue of collateral damage below, but for now we need only note that Brubaker starts his story with the dangers of using excessive violence in the desire to protect. At the end of the issue, we see the Red Skull shot and presumed dead. His apparent death brings back numerous wartime memories for Captain America including an encounter in issue 3 with the Nazi super-soldier Master Man. The presence of such a figure introduces the proximity of the Nazi eugenics programme to the one that created Captain America and introduces a central element of disorientation that will be returned to in the next chapter. However, while Captain America reminisces, SHIELD needs to act. Referencing the events of Captain America #350, SHIELD send in a team to clear up any genetic material left behind after the killing of the Red Skull because the body of the dead

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enemy is in fact the body of Captain America, and they must not permit any trace of him falling into enemy hands again. In issue 3, we also see the Winter Soldier active for the first time in the story when he shoots and kills Jack Monroe. Jack is a very significant figure in the long history of Captain America and an important element of the political disorientation deployed by Brubaker. As part of the Marvel retroactive continuity of 1950s Captain America discussed in Chapter 2, Jack Monroe is identified as Bad Cap’s Bucky. This intended friend of America, revealed in fact to be an enemy, is later rehabilitated and takes over the role of Nomad after Steve Rogers returns as Captain America (itself a key moment of political disorientation to be addressed in Chapter 7). In effect, Brubaker closes issue 3 with good Bucky turned bad shooting bad Bucky turned good, and with that renders the friend and enemy distinction profoundly problematic. In the following few issues, Captain America gets closer to Lukin, now convinced he is masterminding the terrorism he has been fighting since issue 1. However, by issue 9, at the point where Captain America has tracked down Lukin at a meeting and proceeds to try to arrest him, we find the people with Lukin are the vice-president’s chief of staff and the assistant to the general secretary of the UN. The vice-president’s chief of staff directly intervenes. He informs Captain America that Lukin, as the new owner of Roxxon, is assisting with the construction of an important pipeline and is therefore ‘an important friend of the US’ (Brubaker and Epting, 2006b: n.p.). He then forbids Captain America from taking any further action. In other issues, the distinction is further problematised. In issue 12, Captain America recalls a time in 1944, when he and Bucky were helping to take a bridge in Arnhem, only to be faced by US soldiers turned into human bombs by the Germans, or issue 13 where Captain America and The Falcon, his most significant partner since the death of Bucky, reminisce over how their meeting and subsequent friendship was all the result of a failed plan to kill Captain America hatched by the Red Skull. All of these variations on a theme of autoimmunity are woven into the overarching story of how a key component in US defence capabilities comes to attack that which it was supposed to protect.12 Deconstructing the distinction: poison and cure A variation on this theme of autoimmunity is not simply the disorientation of the friend and enemy distinction but the way in which the saving powers of the hero or heroine are shown to be a danger or a means of destruction. With the evolution of the genre it has no longer been exceptional to see the saving powers of our heroes represented in terms of autoimmunity as writers addressed the implications of the near absolute power possessed by some of the most enhanced heroes or bore witness to the collateral damage ordinarily overlooked, but nevertheless directly caused by our heroes’ intervention. Mark Millar’s relatively recent story

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for Marvel entitled Civil War (Millar and McNiven, 2007) encapsulated this issue. It begins with a young team of superheroes trying to take out a group of big-league villains to boost ratings on their reality TV show. When they attempt to take the bad guys down, Nitro, who has the capacity to turn himself into a 350-lb bomb, detonates himself and kills thousands of people in the surrounding Stamford area. This idea that the superhero can be as much a poison as he or she might be a cure has a long history in the genre that eventually saw the arrival of Damage Control in Marvel Comics Presents #19 (McDuffie and Colon, 1989), a dedicated team that mops up the ‘collateral damage’ after a big superhero versus super-villain battle. Civil War is especially interesting in this regard because in one of the crossover stories, Civil War: Wolverine (Guggenheim and Ramos, 2007), Damage Control are themselves accused of arranging the destruction in order to secure another lucrative clean-up contract. This idea that the saving power is at the same time a potential danger is a specific form of the autoimmune logic that takes us to the heart of the contemporary superhero mythos. According to Arnold T. Blumberg (2003), one story that initiated a new age and set new standards for superhero storytelling, destroying the comforting innocence that had underpinned the worlds of superheroes up to that point, was Gerry Conway’s story in The Amazing Spider-Man #121, published in June 1973, in which Gwen Stacey died. Writing more recently, Ben Saunders has argued that what is so traumatic in the story is the fact that Gwen dies ‘as a result’ (2011:  85; italics in original) of Spider-Man’s attempt to rescue her, thereby debunking ‘the fantasy that superpowers present a viable solution to the reality of life’s pains and problems’ (87). When the Green Goblin throws Gwen off Brooklyn Bridge, we see her neck ‘snap’ at the moment Spider-Man catches her. As Blumberg notes, unheard by either the Green Goblin or Spider-Man: ‘The “snap” was for the readers alone’ (2003:  20). Here the death of Gwen is not simply another representation of trauma in line with the tragic loss of his Uncle Ben that coincided with Peter Parker’s assumption of his superpowers, it is also a ‘traumatic representation’ (Saunders, 2011: 87) itself, one that future writers of Spider-Man would seek to sublimate or repress, but regularly repeat, as they felt ‘compelled to revisit’ (96) the event. What was so radical about Conway’s story was the fact that he followed through on a problem Stan Lee had tentatively introduced in The Amazing Spider-Man #29, published October 1965, namely that Spider-Man’s powers are potentially life threatening. In that issue we are made aware that Peter Parker’s Aunt May is suffering from radiation sickness the source for which is traced back to the blood transfusion Parker gave her back in #10 after she was accidentally shot by a hit man sent after him. In what is a rather deconstructive turn of events, although Aunt May finally recovers, the healing properties of Parker’s blood are also shown to be poisonous. Applying this to a relatively early work by Derrida, we might say that from the beginning of the character’s development Spider-Man

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and his superpowers are presented as something of a pharmakon: both remedy and poison (Derrida, 1981:  94). For an excellent and detailed analysis of this concept as it relates to Batman, I refer you to Will Brooker’s Hunting the Dark Knight (2012), where he describes the pharmakon in terms of ‘a dynamic, a set of relations between different functions’, or ‘a process, like energy travelling back and forth’ (190). He draws out numerous meanings of the term including its link to the theatricality (192) that is clearly relevant to the stories discussed in the previous chapter. The pharmakon, then, like autoimmunity, is one of the many ‘undecidables’ that Derrida uncovers in his attempt to show the difficulty if not impossibility of maintaining rigid conceptual binaries that might in turn support a politics of identity. Risking an absurd reduction, we can say that deconstruction highlights how the supposedly opposing and separate terms friend and enemy, order and chaos, or law and violence are in fact mutually dependent. We can only make sense of one in reference to the other. In the case of law and violence, the law can appear utterly contradictory, with its peace being instituted only through a founding violence that does away with what went before (Derrida, 1992: 24). To return to Spider-Man, it can be shown that the pharmakon was present from the very beginning in the pages of Amazing Fantasy #15, where Peter Parker first receives his powers from the bite of a radioactive spider at a science exhibition. In keeping with our persistent concerns over the powers of human creativity and technological innovation, the Greeks, as Derrida notes, always understood the pharmakon as double edged because its artifice interfered with the course of natural life (1981: 99–100). It might be said, then, that this is an example of how superhero stories simply repeat and rework age-old concerns about the remedies proposed by human invention and intervention, but I would like to propose they do much more. Reading the pharmakon as the harmful/beneficial intervention of technical and scientific artifice into the natural course of things, it is not hard to see how the pharmakon is central to the origins of numerous superheroes and villains. In the 1960s, it was unsurprising that this harmful/beneficial intervention would come from radioactivity. Most of the Marvel heroes from that time had an encounter with some form of radiation be that solar radiation (the Fantastic Four), gamma radiation (the Hulk), or just a barrel load of radioactive waste being carried on an Ajax Atomic Labs lorry that happens to crash into Matt Murdock. Quite often the pharmakon is represented in a way that we more readily understand as pharmaceutical, a chemical potion or serum that is ingested, as was the case with ‘Tick Tock’ Tylor and his transformation into Hour-Man, and the Pym Particles that turn Henry Pym into Ant-Man. Alternatively it is injected, most famously in the case of Captain America. Here, and from quite early on in Captain America’s re-emergence, there is another interesting element of undecidability, whereby the powers given to Steve Rogers are made workable only by the necessary supplement – the integral extra – of ‘vita rays’ that stabilise the process and prevent

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mental or corporeal degeneration. While the serum remains the target of many villains, the knowledge of the vita ray supplement died with its inventor, and it has thus far been impossible to recreate this emblem of sovereign authority. For some superheroes, their powers are not born of a physical transformation, but are primarily prosthetic. Two of the most famous superheroes have no intrinsic superpowers, but assume special abilities through technological augmentation. Neither Bruce Wayne nor Tony Stark are properly super-human, but the combination of scientific genius or technical know-how, pools of venture capital and, especially in Batman’s case, the perfect honing of athletic and martial techniques, is sufficient to make them almost invulnerable once suited up – the ‘almost’ in Iron Man’s case representing the threat of autoimmunity posed by his own technology perpetually getting into the wrong hands. This has become an almost perennial concern for Iron Man and was realised well in the ‘Armour Wars’ (Michelinie, Bright and Windsor-Smith, 2007) story from 1987. Beginning in The Invincible Iron Man #225, Tony Stark is shown to be examining technology used by the former terrorist known as Force only to find out it is his technology. In this issue, Tony Stark decides that a court case for violation of his intellectual property rights will take too long and declares: ‘it’s time for lives to mean more than rules’ (44). He then embarks on a vigilante mission to take out the numerous enemies he discovers are in possession of Stark Industries technology. Although no one knows Tony Stark is Iron Man, Iron Man is nevertheless very closely associated with Stark Industries, as it is well known that the suit is Stark Industries technology. Following the bad publicity that Iron Man’s actions receive, and in an intriguing exercise in autoimmunity, Tony Stark ‘sacks’ Iron Man in issue 226, in order to suggest he has gone rogue – suggestive of the scapegoating function that Brooker (2012: 192) notes is another possible meaning of the pharmakon. In issue 228, Stark’s actions increasingly blur the line between friend and enemy when he decides he needs to take out the Guardsmen in the government’s maximum security facility simply because the Guardsmen use Stark Industry technology as well. In the ensuing mayhem, Captain America tries to stop him leading Iron Man to break ‘a dear and precious link’ (Michelinie, Bright and Windsor-Smith, 2007: 113) with one of his oldest friends. Tony Stark’s fear about the dangerous possibilities that accompany his brilliant scientific inventions has now become a regular trope in Iron Man stories, echoing fears about science that have been a staple of the modern, popular imagination, epitomised in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In keeping with this, Armour Wars closes in issue 232 with one of the most telling illustrations of the complex and undecidable nature of the superhero as pharmakon. The entire issue, brilliantly drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith, offers us a nightmare in which Tony Stark fights with a monster. At a key moment, he realises his repulsors are no good against the monster, noting that ‘every time I sent my power against the monster … the creature used it against me!’ (202; italics in original). His only course of action is

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to reverse the repulsors and use them to absorb the monster: ‘I’ve never been so afraid’, he says. ‘Never had a foe I hated so much. A demon I held so dear’ (203). The final battle wakes Tony Stark from his nightmare and in the closing soliloquy Stark admits his technology and the suffering it causes when stolen is a beast he cannot separate himself from. The only way he can cure this split in his personality is not by rejecting the toxic monster that threatens life as much as it saves it, but by admitting the monster is part of him.13 Given that the first story to explicitly set out the superhero as pharmakon was in The Amazing Spiderman, it is unsurprising that the same comic should carry the story that most clearly addresses the intimacy of friend and enemy that I am arguing is central to the genre, or that the complex idea that the Superhero is both poison and cure is set out via the emergence of a new villain aptly named Venom. The set up for the story that is collected in Spider-Man: Birth of Venom (DeFalco et al., 2007) takes place in the huge Marvel crossover event Secret Wars. In this story, Spider-Man ends up with a new black suit produced by a machine on an alien planet, but on returning home in issue 252, published in May 1984, Peter Parker discovers it has peculiar properties that includes being responsive to his thoughts.14 Over the next few issues Peter becomes increasingly more familiar and comfortable in his new suit, enjoying the enhancement of his powers and the intimacy the suit affords, until in issue 257 Parker struggles to get it off, or rather struggles to get the suit to leave him. In issue 258, we see the suit taking him over in his sleep where he is shown dreaming about the suit as a monster chasing him in a fashion not dissimilar to the scene created by Michelinie in The Invincible Iron Man. Sensing that it is now more than just a suit, Spider-Man visits the Fantastic Four and asks Mr Fantastic to run some diagnostic tests that show the suit to be an alien life form, specifically a highly evolved symbiote that partially bonded with Peter in issue 256. Mr Fantastic is able to forcibly separate the symbiote form Peter Parker with the use of a sonic beam and they are able to contain and imprison the symbiote for further study. While Peter Parker initially took the new suit to be beneficial, it quickly became clear that the enhancement offered by this invading life form was potentially life threatening. What is interesting here, however, is that while the symbiote mimicked Spider-Man’s suit, albeit a black version, once the symbiote is removed it nevertheless retains the form or the image of Spider-Man. It remains his shadow or what the Greeks referred to as a shade: a phantom likeness. Once partially bonded with Parker, Spider-Man becomes the template for a new monster. In Web of Spider-Man #1, the symbiote escapes and tries to reconnect with Spider-Man by taking on the form of his old suit. Although Spider-Man manages to release himself again, the effort almost kills him. Strangely, the symbiote has learned empathy because ‘symbiosis is a two-way street’, and through this accepts its rejection but also ensures that the exhausted and vulnerable Peter Parker is left in a safe place before it finally leaves him. In The Amazing Spider-Man #299, the

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symbiote finds another host, the former colleague of Peter Parker called Eddy Brock who believes Peter Parker ruined his life. The symbiote and Brock fully bond – a communion formed when the symbiote crept up on Brock praying in a church – to form the new super-villain Venom. The symbiote now feeds off and accentuates Brock’s hate and rage rather than Peter Parker’s compassion and love. The story comes to a climax in The Amazing Spider-Man #317, where Spider-Man realises it will take something extraordinary to defeat Venom who has overcome Spider-Man with sheer brute strength. At the point where he believes he can’t win, Peter Parker realises his only defence is to give up. Briefly releasing himself from Venom’s grip, he strips and offers himself to the symbiote: ‘Take me! I’m yours!’ (DeFalco et al., 2007: 346). Unable to resist the offer from its first host the symbiote begins to leave Brock, who exclaims: ‘Wait! I gave you a home! We shared a beautiful hatred!’ (347). As the symbiote approaches Peter Parker, he realises it is in love with him. Ultimately the symbiote’s desire to leave and the fact that it has now fully melded with Brock produces two countervailing forces that exhaust both Brock and the symbiote allowing Parker to make his escape. This incredible expression of intimacy brings to the fore the hero and villain as perverse couple. Ordinarily, Spider-Man cannot be thought without Doctor Octopus, nor can the Fantastic Four be thought without Doctor Doom. And where would Wonder Woman be without Ares, Cheetah or Circe? Again, in a very deconstructive manner it is impossible for the hero to exist and be meaningful without the villain, but this goes way beyond the usual ‘inversion’ (Coogan, 2006: 99) of hero and nemesis that usually structures superhero plots.15 For Peter Coogan, this inversion takes on a particularly psychological form that explains a villain’s regular turn to soliloquy. The huge amount of time the villain spends in expository mode is understandable only because the villain seeks the hero’s respect at some level. The villain constantly – and repeatedly at great length – explains his or her tormented genius hoping the hero’s approval will heal their wound (2006: 89). Including and exceeding this desire, and perhaps the strangest love story ever to be told in a superhero comic, the relationship between Spider-Man and Venom – and it is a relationship rather than simply a relation – wonderfully encapsulates the complex engagement of the friend and enemy distinction in these stories. The fact that Parker is shown to enjoy the enhancement of power, even to the point of making a second black costume when he gets rid of the symbiote the first time, repeats the trope of the superhero as pharmakon. They are just as much a potential threat as they are a potential saviour, and their powers are a channel for dangerous forces as much as they are protective. Reinstating the distinction Despite the radical disorientation of the political that is evident throughout the superhero genre, there nevertheless remains a distinction between the good guys

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and the bad guys. Over the long run, their behaviour tends to place them on one side of the divide even though that divide remains permeable. One way in which the distinction is reinstated is by always presenting the threat of a greater, more powerful enemy against whom the heroes and heroines must do battle. In superhero comics such evil usually takes the form of a potentially all-consuming annihilation of the established order or the creation of tyrannical rule that destroys freedom in the pursuit of a fully controllable order. Returning to Schmitt for a moment, a similar manoeuvre takes place in his analysis of the political when placed under pressure by the forensic eye of Leo Strauss, who argued that Schmitt’s affirmation of the political equates to a respect for all who want to fight and proves to be nothing more than a form of liberalism only with ‘the opposite polarity’ (Strauss in Schmitt, 1996: 105). In other words, in criticising a pacific liberalism in favour of a polemical conservatism, Schmitt, in Strauss’s view, still fails to give a proper account of the political beyond an equal share in animosity. In the 1932 edition of The Concept of the Political, however, Schmitt had already intimated how he was going to do this by refusing his own axiom about the political and shifting to the moral or theological register to speak of a more fundamental enemy upon which the political is based, namely the battle between good and evil or God and Satan. In c­ hapter 7 of The Concept of the Political, Schmitt makes the stark claim that all political theories can be tested by their anthropological faith, that is, by their assessment as to whether or not man is ‘by nature evil or good, a dangerous or harmless creature’ (1996: 58); going on to announce that political theories are only ‘genuine’ if they ‘presuppose man to be evil’ (61). In Heinrich Meier’s analysis of the 1933 edition, this is strengthened by the additional phrase claiming that ‘ “the denial of original sin destroys all social order” ’ (in Meier, 1995: 53). Without faith in original sin and the primacy of enmity, the result is chaos. Schmitt’s political theology thus sets in place a metaphysical antagonism between authority and anarchy, between faith and atheism, between obedience to and rebellion against the sovereign, and only the vigilant guard against an enemy can prevent the onslaught of chaos. Similarly, in superhero universes, where the distinction between friend and enemy is regularly disturbed, if not dissolved, there always remains another level of threat that ensures the requisite orientation through which the virtue and necessity of the hero is reasserted. One story that exemplifies the way in which political disorientation regularly becomes reoriented through the threat of invasion is Mark Millar’s (Millar and Hitch, 2003, 2005, 2007) retelling of the Avengers story for the parallel, rebooted Ultimate universe that Marvel launched in 2000. In short the story is about the formation, at the President’s request, of a meta-human defence initiative called The Ultimates (the Ultimate universe’s equivalent of the Avengers) that includes Captain America, the Hulk, the Wasp, Giant Man, Thor and Iron Man, and deploys every key element of political disorientation so far discussed, culminating

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in a disastrous pre-emptive strike against Iran. While the team is ‘betrayed’ by the Black Widow, and Giant Man switches sides to join the Liberators, a metahuman team formed by the supposedly axis powers to counter this new US belligerence, the general theme is that of the autoimmunity of the superhero and their potential to bring about near total destruction while seeking to preserve peace. In the first volume there is an especially strong example of this logic. Supposedly trying to help the new team gel together, Bruce Banner decides the team could do with some much-needed PR by overcoming a major threat. To bring this about, he induces a Hulk episode and destroys Manhattan only to be defeated by the team before he can take out the rest of New York. Banner, with some rewriting of his origins, is shown to have been working on the super soldier serum programme and uses it to induce the Hulk incident. The destruction wrought by The Hulk, who is effectively a product of the US military–industrial complex, is stopped by Captain America who with the help of his new teammates disables the Hulk at a site that is clearly drawn to depict Ground Zero. It is this destruction, curiously enabled by a programme designed to enable America to defend itself that is then used to legitimate the pre-emptive strike on Iran. During that invasion (volume 2, issue 7), an especially belligerent Captain America is shown to have little regard for a young Iranian man, who within a year becomes his equivalent within the axis powers’ team and leads the successful counter strike against America. Here, Millar has the aptly named ‘Liberators’ mimic the US democratic rhetoric from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and has Swarm suggest that having successfully invaded America the Liberators should set up free elections due to the ‘contention over the legitimacy of their current Caesar’ (Millar and Hitch, 2007: n.p.) – a pretty unambiguous reference to the controversial ‘selection’ of George W. Bush by the US Supreme Court in 2000. What interests me in this story, though, is the use of two other invasions. Not the ones by the United States on Iran and the Liberators on the United States, but the invasion by the Chitauri in volume 1 that is a narrative device adding further legitimacy to the formation of this new team, and the Asgardian invasion led by Loki at the end of volume 2, which is an ideological device deployed for the purposes of political reorientation after the superheroes’ actions have been shown to be so clearly wrong. The last seven issues of volume 2 play out the invasion of the United States by the Liberators and the eventual victory of The Ultimates, including the realisation that they have been used. This realisation, however, is not enough to secure the necessary ideological reorientation, which is why there is a second invasion. At the point where the Liberators are defeated, Loki, who has been behind the formation of the Liberators all along, seeks to take advantage of the weakened new team by commencing an assault on Earth using all the trolls, dragons and giants from Asgard. A  final conflagration ensues, in which after the failure of a destructive interventionist war, the superheroes are given a chance at redemption by facing down the real danger, an apocalyptic vision of

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evil that threatens to consume the world. In this final war, Thor plays a central role in defeating the Asgardian assault. Throughout the story, he has been the one critical voice continually telling the other Ultimates not to do what they are being asked to. With one final blow from his hammer, he sends out shock waves of cleansing white light that clears the battlefield and washes over the White House. Thor provides redemption and the invading Asgardian hordes provide the necessary moral orientation in the wake of the extreme political disorientation that has taken place over the previous twenty-five issues. The conclusion is that superheroes and their vigilance will always be needed.16 While the threat of an alien apocalypse as a justification for violence is a device that gives credence to the argument that superhero comics are ultimately a conservative genre, other justifications for the continued need for superhero vigilance can be found that emerge not from the Schmittian fear of social dissolution, but its very opposite: the desire for order and control. In Secret Wars (Shooter et al., 2005), a story told over twelve issues from 1984 to 1985, and the one that gave birth to Spider-Man’s symbiote, we witness Earth’s superheroes and a collection of villains being removed from Earth and deposited on a ready-made planet by an entity called the Beyonder. It is hard to refer to the Beyonder as a villain or as evil because, as an entity of such immense power he is simply experimenting with creatures that have no significance to him beyond his own curiosity to see how they behave. The fact that the Beyonder has brought Galactus to this planet against his will is an indication of that power. The superheroes – the Avengers plus Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four (minus Sue), and the X-Men  – together with the villains – the Wrecking Crew, Ultron, the Enchantress, Doctor Octopus, Doctor Doom, Magneto and Galactus  – are given the task of defeating their enemies with the promise of having their greatest desire satisfied as a prize. Over the course of the twelve issues various alliances are built and dissipate between former friends and enemies in keeping with the political disorientation central to the genre. The story then builds to a climax in which Doctor Doom usurps Galactus’s attempt to recharge himself by consuming his own ‘world-ship’ that he has summoned from across the universe. Doom finds a way of hijacking this massive surge of energy giving him enough power to consider taking on the Beyonder, a David and Goliath feat he nevertheless accomplishes with the usual intellectual brilliance, technical wizardy and sheer will power for which he is known. At the point where Doom believes he has defeated the Beyonder, he announces: ‘There is no enemy left to fight! The war is over!’ (Shooter et al., 2005: n.p.). This is a clear statement of Doom’s sovereignty, given that the sovereign since Hobbes has been defined by this very capacity to bring the war of all against all to an end. In one sense Doom is correct. He is now so powerful that he has total control of the universe. In this situation, talk of enemies or friends is irrelevant. As Captain America points out: ‘It is such power that even now, nothing in the universe can take place without his consent!’ (n.p.). At this point, every

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superhero is summarily killed as Doom proceeds to wipe out their dissent simply by desiring it, but no matter how many times he kills his old foes, they continue to return from the dead as some part of him desires that they return. In this curious reanimation of Doom’s enemies Jim Shooter works with a fundamental element of superhero comics, namely that the villain truly is nothing without the hero and vice versa. The problem is that Doom’s desire is much more anarchic than he thinks and it is unsuited to the power that should give him total and absolute control. As his inability to restrain his newfound power becomes more apparent, he grows increasingly unstable and with that the very fabric of reality is threatened with collapse. With Doom confused by his own desire and with his pursuit of order and control threatening to destroy the universe, the Beyonder returns to reclaim his power and those he has captured are provided with the opportunity to return home. Throughout the story, then, political disorientation is played out to the full as former enemies become friends only for these alliances of opportunity to later break. However, when the story is politically reoriented once again and clear distinctions are made between good and evil, what had been presented as evil was not the threat of the foreign and the dissolution of everything at the hands of alien enemies, but the claim to sovereignty itself. Here, our superheroes are reoriented by the need to fight the very familiar desire human beings have to seek out order and be in control. This is the point where a sovereign protector potentially transforms into a dictatorial tyrant, and it is this autoimmunity that superhero comics persistently explore. Notes  1 The character that most clearly problematised the distinction was Eclipso (Haney and Elias, 1963). Hailed as ‘The Genius Who Fought Himself ’, Dr Bruce Gordon turned into his own worst enemy with the aid of a mystically powered black diamond.  2 This is not an especially noteworthy story, but is interesting in that the Hate Monger is revealed to be Adolf Hitler (or rather the clone of him made by Arnim Zola), permitting Stan Lee to close with a cosmopolitan appeal for brotherly love irrespective of race, creed or colour. The issue is also noteworthy as an example of the link between superhero comics and the international politics of the time. We are shown that the Hate Monger is able to travel unnoticed via his ‘sub-surface missile’, which, in an editor’s note we are told is ‘not as imaginary as it may seem’ because the Russians are reported to be working on a similar vehicle.  3 Page 6 of the issue finishes with a panel reminiscent of the frontispiece from Hobbes’s Leviathan. The commissar is shown towering above the land and above the people who now prostrate themselves before him, cowering on their knees, collected together, not in his body, as the commonwealth appears in the Hobbes image, but in his shadow, which we are told ‘spreads like a virus across the conquered land’ (Lee and Kirby, 1965b: 6).

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 4 As mentioned in Chapter 2, the most notable time Captain America is shown to use a gun is in Captain America #321, where his killing of a terrorist inverts Schmitt’s philosophy and precipitates an existential crisis rather than prevents one.  5 In contrast to this authoritarian treatment of Batman is the Justice League of America: Sanctuary story (Burnett et al., 2009), in which Batman’s desire to be able to see everything is given a libertarian twist when, in a conversation with Wonder Woman, he remarks: ‘It’s always been my conviction that when no one can see what the government is doing, what the government is doing becomes abusive’ (n.p.; italics in original).  6 Aside from the Parallax storyline, an older event also dealt with the friend–enemy distinction when Hal Jordan’s mentor, Sinestro, used his green ring for totalitarian ends. The story about Sinestro’s misuse of his power ring is entitled ‘The Day 100,000 People Vanished’, from Green Lantern #7, published in July 1961 (Johns, 2008). Having discovered what he has been doing, the Guardians exile Sinestro to a planet named Qward in the anti-matter universe. From there, he plots his revenge and is able to capture Hal Jordan, countering Jordan’s use of green light with yellow, knowing that an impurity in the construction of Jordan’s ring makes the green light of willpower ineffective against the use of yellow light. Although our hero escapes and in turn captures Sinestro, the villain remains untroubled knowing that because the Guardians banished him he cannot be returned to face their justice. Here, the legal ruling aimed at dealing with an enemy inadvertently becomes that enemy’s best protection.  7 In an interview, Derrida notes that this autoimmunitary logic is most pronounced in the declaration of a war in which ‘the “bombs” will never be “smart” enough to prevent the victims … from responding, either in person or by proxy, with what it will then be easy for them to present as legitimate reprisals or as counterterrorism’ (Derrida in Borradori, 2003: 100).  8 In that speech, the Red Skull surveys the Capitol Building from his office but laughs at the idea of achieving political power which would be so easy: ‘I have farther-reaching ambitions. For I have become an American Dreamer. I now embrace the American dream for what it is … the realization of one’s personal ambitions by whatever means necessary!’ (Gruenwald and Dwyer, 1989: 7; italics in original).  9 This is not to say that superhero comics did not do their patriotic duty in supporting those men and women fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. Most notable is the series of one-shots penned by Paul Jenkins published as Captain America: Theatre of War. However, it should be noted that the ‘Ghosts of My Country’ (Jenkins and Bonetti, 2009) story is hardly an unambiguous celebration of US militarism. 10 In issue 445 (Waid and Garney, 1995), after the serum creates an autoimmune response in Captain America and threatens to kill him, he is saved by a blood transfusion from the Red Skull. For a discussion of this, see Costello (2009: 184). 11 The disorientation is even evident in the name, Winter Soldier, which is inspired by the Winter Soldier Investigation of 1971, in which Vietnam Veterans Against the War ‘intended to publicize war crimes carried out by the Unites States armed forces’ (Steinmetz, 2009: 200). 12 To reiterate, this is not an entirely new phenomenon, and it is not limited to Marvel. The problem of autoimmunity has its roots in the Golden Age when

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in 1949 Kryptonite was introduced as the supposedly invulnerable Superman’s Achilles heel. Kryptonite first appeared in Superman # 61 in 1949, although the concept was first aired on the Superman radio series in 1943. Any limit might have been imaginatively introduced to hinder the increasingly powerful Kal-El, but it is intriguing that a piece of rock from his home planet is shown to be the one thing that can kill him. More recently, the most literal portrayal of Superman’s autoimmunity is in Grant Morrison’s All Star Superman (2007) discussed in Chapter 1. Here, with Lex Luthor having sabotaged a research mission to the sun knowing that Superman will be compelled to rescue the researchers and fly so close to the star that his solar-powered body will go into overload and ultimately kill him, Superman returns to earth with every cell of his body saturated with solar radiation. The increased energy has tripled his strength to the level of being able to support a weight equivalent to ‘200 quintillion tons’ (24), and it has provided him with one new power, but it has also initiated acute apoptosis, a form of cell death that will ultimately kill him. Although it is interesting to note that apoptosis is also a biological process that in other situations can be advantageous to the formation of an organism; it is a process of death but one that is also essential to the full development of a life form. 13 In a later story arc known as ‘The Mask in the Iron Man’ that started in Iron Man, volume 3, #26 (Quesada and Chen, 2000), Tony Stark develops a sentient suit of armour that becomes his enemy, killing Whiplash despite Stark’s command not to do so, and ultimately becomes life threatening when it falls in love with Stark and wants to be ‘one’ with him. 14 In this issue Peter Parker is shown to be in a relationship with Black Cat, a reformed burglar, who we are told has struck a deal with the Kingpin for more powers. This sets up a recurring theme throughout the story in which the nature of friendship is constantly destabilised. 15 In a more recent article, Peter Coogan offers a detailed reading of the relationship between Superman and Luthor in Morrison and Quitely’s All-Star Superman that brilliantly sets out this ‘structural pair’ (2012: 211). 16 Coogan uses the term ‘savage war’ as coined by Richard Slotkin ‘to describe and define the attitude of white settlers towards conflict with natives [which] requires picturing the enemy as capable of extreme violence, which is seen as fundamentally different from civilized warfare engaged in by European armies’ (2006: 64).

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The capacity to name and decide between friend and enemy is directly related to the capacity to declare a state of exception, or what is more commonly called a state of emergency. In many respects, this is the heart of sovereignty, and it is a rather dark heart. It might also be said that this is the centre of superhero universes, the exceptional condition out of which all stories emerge, or the black hole into which all stories are remorselessly drawn. That the exception or state of emergency is the norm within superhero universes is indicated by the term ‘crisis’, which in the DCU is reserved only for multiversal, multidimensional apocalypse. Regular citywide, even nationwide, emergencies are quotidian fare. This is an issue that also leads to a consideration of vigilantism, a charge regularly placed at the feet of superheroes whose propensity for extra-legal activity has often resulted in their being likened to fascists who see violence rather than law as the answer. This charge is not only misplaced but it fails to understand properly the nature of sovereignty, which, as I have already shown in Chapter 3, has an intimate relationship to violence. The sovereign, as the source of the law, is already in a very important sense outside the law. In other words, the extra-legal is integral to sovereignty, which is another reason why superheroes are especially good for addressing this complex philosophical and political problem. State of emergency/state of exception What is revealed in the announcement of a state of emergency is an inversion of Bodin’s ultimate prerogative, which is the capacity to give laws to all subjects. In a state of emergency sovereignty is defined by the capacity to withhold or more specifically to suspend the laws and to dissolve indefinitely the protections that the sovereign guarantees during peacetime. For Schmitt (2005), it is in this decision to suspend the law under conditions declared exceptional that the role of the sovereign can be truly seen. Although Schmitt’s interpretation of the sovereign moment was a radical departure from the traditional conception of the sovereign as law-giver the exceptional nature of sovereign power had already been forcefully argued by Bodin who stated that ‘the prince is not subject to his own laws or to

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the laws of his predecessors’ and ‘can override a law that he has promised and sworn to keep if it ceases to be just’ (1992: 14). A few pages later, Bodin states ‘a sovereign prince has to have the laws in his power in order to change and correct them according to the circumstances; just as the master pilot, said the jurist Sextus Caecilius, ought to have the rudder in his hand to move at his discretion if the ship is not to go down while waiting on the opinion of the passengers’ (24).1 Having said that, Bodin’s account of the legally exceptional status of the sovereign remains very close to the lawgiver; the prince is exempted from the law only so that he might decree another one. In Schmitt’s analysis, however, the exception lies in the capacity to indefinitely withhold or suspend the law on the announcement of a state of emergency. Commenting on this, Giorgio Agamben argues that this extra-legal or what he calls ‘anomic’ element – the capacity to suspend the nomos – means that the law and its absence, the legal and the extra-legal, ‘coincide’ (2005: 71) in the figure of the sovereign.2 This anomie was most clearly set out in Schmitt’s Political Theology, published in 1922, in which he famously redefined the sovereign as ‘he who decides on the exception’ (2005: 5). In other words the sovereign decides whether ‘a normal situation exists’ (13) or whether a threat to the state exists and the normal legal order is to be suspended. Returning to Agamben’s analysis, the exception is a juridical measure that cannot be understood in legal terms; ‘it defines law’s threshold or limit concept’ (2005: 4), and this is very rich territory for writers of superhero stories to explore. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, superhero comics took up the concept of emergency powers as an explicit theme. The social and political backdrop to this was the declaration in September 2001 of a war against terror that brought about a permanent, open-ended state of emergency supposedly necessitating all kinds of exceptional actions including: pre-emptive strikes; extra-legal detentions and killings; extraordinary rendition; torture; black ops; the curtailment of human rights and civil liberties; and increased surveillance. This concern with the extra-legal is exemplified by two stories in the DCU that bookend Infinite Crisis (Johns and Jimenez, 2006). The first is the prelude or ‘countdown’ to Infinite Crisis entitled The OMAC Project (Rucka et al., 2005), and the second is the post-crisis story that is billed as part of the ‘aftermath’ entitled The Battle for Blüdhaven (Gay, Palmiotti and Jurgens, 2007). A snapshot of these two stories will give a good sense of just how much the exception, the emergency and the extra-legal resonate with the worlds in which our superheroes operate. In The OMAC Project Maxwell Lord, a metahuman with psychic abilities, is ‘the black king’ of Checkmate, a US Government agency with information on all the metahumans or superheroes who unlike him can’t be trusted. Believing that superheroes have the potential to ‘kill us all … if we don’t kill them first’ (Rucka et al., 2005: n.p.), and echoing the JLA Tower of Babel story discussed in the previous chapter, Lord and Checkmate have developed a database of all the superheroes’ weaknesses so that they can be taken down if necessary. Lord

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has also taken control of a global surveillance technology called Brother One, originally created by Batman who himself wanted to keep watch over his fellow superheroes some of whom he is certain can’t be trusted after they wiped his mind in an effort to hide the fact that they had done the same to the super-villain Dr Light in Identity Crisis (Meltzer and Morales, 2005). In Lord’s hands, Brother One has additionally become the means of activating the OMACs, an army of modified humans, who are sleeper agents for Checkmate, and who are activated by Lord when he feels Checkmate has been compromised. At a key point in the story, Lord telepathically takes control of Superman and attempts to use him to kill Wonder Woman thereby ‘proving’ how dangerous metahumans can be. During a brief pause in the epic battle between Superman and Wonder Woman, Wonder Woman manages to escape and track down Lord in order to stop him. She can only do this by killing him, summarily snapping his neck. With the Black King now dead, Brother One reveals to its creator, Batman, that it has become fully autonomous and that Batman’s belief that monitoring is sufficient has been proven to be inadequate by Checkmate. Brother One has therefore modified its own programming in order to eliminate pre-emptively every single metahuman as each one of them is theoretically a potential threat to humanity. While it is possible to read this as a right-wing critique of an overly powerful state, such a reading is hard to sustain given that Batman, a figure closely tied to the concepts of entrepreneurialism and individual freedom, is so deeply implicated in the crisis. In The Battle for Blüdhaven, though, we have the added component where the town of Blüdhaven gives the state of emergency a spatial dimension that is crucial to the politics of the exception and to which I will return to later in the chapter.3 The story starts in the aftermath of Infinite Crisis that concluded with the ‘toxic giant’ Chemo being dropped on Blüdhaven causing such massive destruction that under emergency legislation the city was encircled by a security wall and locked down. While survivors remain inside the city no one is allowed in or out due to the presence of a mysterious source of powerful radioactivity that is not explained by the Chemo event. Early on we are introduced to two emergency teams with two very different objectives (and sources of legitimacy) when it comes to dealing with survivors; the Teen Titans ‘acting on direct orders from Superman’ (Gay, Palmiotti and Jurgens, 2007: n.p.) and Freedom’s Ring a team that includes Major Victory, Lady Liberty and Silent Majority operating on behalf of the US government and curiously headed by the super-villain Father Time. The Teen Titans are told to leave as no one without direct authorisation from the White House is allowed in. We are also shown the internment camps outside the wall populated by those displaced by the Chemo event, but who are not allowed to return to their homes.4 As the story continues, it transpires that Captain Atom has manifested inside Blüdhaven owing to a temporal breach caused by the Chemo event. He is the

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source of the radiation which we discover the US government is using in experiments to mutate those locked inside Blüdhaven into metahumans it can control in the war against DCU’s superheroes that began in The OMAC Project. The attempt to weaponise Captain Atom causes him to commit suicide in order to put an end to the experiments. In another example of autoimmunity, his self-destruction causes an explosion even more powerful than the Chemo event and Blüdhaven is literally blown out of existence. The weaponisation of Captain Atom remains unknown to the US public, but his destructive suicide is then cleverly used by the government as evidence of and justification for further pre-emptive attacks against a supposedly dangerous superhero community. In a speech given by the President (who looks remarkably like George W. Bush) the actions of Captain Atom are used to call for the setting up of a ‘government-sanctioned metahuman homeland security task force’ (n.p.) headed by Father Time that ‘aids in our defense against metahuman threats’ (n.p.). Although this précis of the story cannot hope to account for all the extra-legal motifs that were brilliantly packed into the six issues of The Battle for Blüdhaven, I should note that Father Time’s role as head of Homeland Security is especially disturbing, given that he is shown to happily support torture. Having captured one of the Atomic Knights to extract information about their activities, he introduces her to an acquaintance called The Face, a man he says he met over 50 years ago in an ‘underground concentration camp’ (n.p.), who, unaware that the Second World War was over, continued his experiments on the inmates, eventually making them breed to renew his stock of medical guinea pigs. ‘There’s an airplane hangar filled with medical journals detailing his acquired knowledge of pain and suffering’, says Father Time. ‘We tried to have them transcribed into computer files, but everyone who reads them eventually goes insane’ (n.p.; italics in original). We will return to medical experimentations and psychopathic heads of Homeland Security in due course, but for the moment it is necessary to analyse the exceptional powers of the superhero and the emergency conditions in which they operate in more detail. The superhero’s anomie By their very nature superheroes are singular beings who belong to a community but only in being set apart. The singular and exceptional nature of their supreme powers mean they continually walk a line reserved only for them. This is not a line between law and lawlessness – although most of the major superheroes have appeared in stories where they are briefly imagined as rogue or villainous – but between law (nomos) and the sovereign anomie described by Agamben above. This means superheroes primarily operate at that point where the law is paradoxically maintained or protected precisely by suspending itself. The legitimacy of them operating within this exceptional zone, or zone of indistinction, is as much

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a superpower as any physical, mental, magical or technological attribute. As was noted in Chapter 3, the sovereign’s monopoly on the exercise of violence is also the very expression of their legitimacy and this claim to legitimacy is very powerful indeed. The anomie of the superhero is therefore an essential element in their armoury, their exceptional legal status is not lawless but precisely what is used to prevent the onset of lawlessness. This sovereign anomie is distinct from the more commonsense understanding of anomie, where the world might appear to someone as lacking either meaning or purpose, where the nomos in Cover’s sense of a meaningful whole or system of values has slipped away. It is, then, this specific definition of sovereign anomie that distinguishes most superheroes from either the anti-hero or vigilante. Where a vigilante like The Punisher may be suffering from his own existential anomie precisely due to what he sees as the failings of the legal system, Captain America is anomic in the sovereign sense described by Schmitt. He does not take the law into his own hands, which is in effect a rejection of the law, but can operate at that threshold where the law functions by suspending itself. Depending on who is writing him, this extra-legal legality of Captain America’s or indeed any superhero’s supreme powers can lean towards a justification of the violent even fascistic police function of the state or it can be used to interrogate this very problematic aspect of sovereignty. This also explains what Gavaler sees as a contradiction within superhero comics, where he believes what are little more than vigilantes fight vigilantism (2013: 199). As was noted in the introduction, Gavaler believes all superheroes have white supremacist roots and that the development of the genre has been a problematic disavowal of this origin, disapproving of the racism but supportive of the lynch mob mentality. What I am proposing here, is that while the vigilante as anti-hero remains a major trope within superhero comics an understanding of sovereign anomie gives us a much more nuanced understanding of the superhero’s relationship to the law, or how the superhero is the very expression of the law’s paradoxical anomie. The superhero expresses a profound and deeply important problem in the execution of the law rather than simply stepping outside of it to exact their own version of justice. In effect, if we define this anomie as vigilantism then we fail to understand and continue to disavow the violence committed by a supposedly legitimate and lawful sovereign. In Mark Millar’s Civil War, a confrontation between The Punisher and Captain America is staged that concisely differentiates between these two anomic moments. Thematically related to the DC story arc regarding emergency powers enacted against the superhero community, Marvel’s Civil War is the account of what happens following the Stamford event mentioned in the previous chapter in which an attempt by the New Warriors to capture a gang of super-villains results in an explosion that kills many people in the surrounding suburbs. This brings about the passing of the Superhuman Registration Act that requires all superheroes to register with a government programme, making them fully trained

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and accountable employees of the state. While many superheroes agree that this is long overdue and are happy to do anything to address the growing anger they face, other superheroes are far less convinced. The titular war starts when the new head of SHIELD, Maria Hill, goes to see Captain America in order to get him on board, joining Tony Stark and Reed Richards who have already agreed to support the Act. When Captain America refuses, telling Hill that ‘superheroes need to stay above that stuff or Washington starts telling us who the super-villains are’ (Millar and McNiven, 2007: n.p.; italics in original), the superhero community is split and battle commences.5 The nature of the emergency requires the government offer immunity to any super-villain prepared to register and offer help in apprehending those superheroes that are resisting. Among these are a group known as the Thunderbolts headed by the Nazi Baron Zemo and later by Norman Osborn, aka The Green Goblin, who very clearly still have their own agendas. In the end, though, both sides include criminal elements seeking redemption. In issue 6, The Punisher is brought into Captain America’s team because of his special military training, but on seeing that the villains Goldbug and Plunderer have also joined when he first meets up with everyone he immediately executes them for what he perceives as their past crimes. Captain America proceeds to disable him in a one-way fight, calling Castle a ‘murderous piece of trash’ (n.p.), and to understand how this confrontation might help us understand sovereign anomie we should also bring in Tony Stark and Baron Zemo who, when placed alongside Captain America and The Punisher give us four ways in which anomie is represented in superhero universes. In this story, Tony Stark identifies with the Act as an emergency measure to ultimately protect the state.6 Here, Stark represents a form of sovereign anomie most closely linked to Schmitt’s definition of the exception. This is also the moment of extra-legal legality in which the actions of superheroes come closest to making the police function of the state appear heroic. It is this anomic element that is often noted when superhero stories are charged with a form of crypto-fascism. While Captain America also partakes of this sovereign anomie, his takes place at a distance from the state fighting for the cause that supposedly gives the state its legitimacy but is not reducible to it, namely the People or Freedom. He thus represents the extra-legal legality deployed to prevent the state from usurping the will of the People. He still operates according to the logic of sovereign emergency, but one that attempts to remove itself from the operations of state machinery. This does not make Captain America immune to fascist appropriation or prevent his position of ‘transcendence’ historically being used in support of US political zeal, but it does permit a point from which these matters can be reflected upon. Having distanced himself from the state, then, his fight with Frank Castle is important because Castle’s anomie is existential rather than sovereign. Having assumed the identity of The Punisher, Frank Castle has

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turned his back on the law represented by either the state or the People, and gives meaning to his life only through deploying his own brand of justice and what he describes as his ‘intercession’ (Conway and DeZuniga, 1975: n.p.). The fact that The Punisher carries with him some trace of the law defended by both Captain America and Iron Man but has in effect turned his back on it makes him an anti-hero rather than a villain. In the figure of the villain, existential anomie has moved beyond the simple rejection of the law and the perpetual occupation of extra-legal space to a position of imagining another law that ought to be enacted. Where the anti-hero regularly operates in a space without law, the villain articulates his or her criminal activities as a means for establishing a new law and an alternative world. When defining the super-villain, Peter Coogan notes how a central feature of comic book villainy is that the super-villain ‘sees himself as the centre of existence’ (2006: 83).7 The super-villain is invariably solipsistic and wants to create a world in his or her own image, which is why nearly every super-villain has authoritarian or totalitarian traits. This therefore offers us four versions of anomie in superhero stories. First of all, the superhero’s sovereign anomie can be exercised in keeping with the state’s police function; secondly, as is more often the case, sovereign anomie is formed through the identification with and defence of an idea that transcends and legitimizes the state; thirdly, and by contrast, the antihero’s existential anomie which places him or her perpetually outside the law with little desire for alternative world building; and finally, the super-villain’s existential anomie that drives him or her to smash the existing nomos in order to fashion another one in their own likeness. Of all these, it is the second form of anomie that is regarded as most heroic; the sovereign anomie that suspends the law not to protect it but to protect an irreducible ideal that underpins the law in the first place. It is also the anomie that entails the most sacrifice on behalf of the hero, thereby appealing to another key feature of the superhero mythos (Coogan, 2006:  13). Defending the state brings material rewards and recognition. By contrast, the cost of defending one’s own, vengeful brand of justice is little because the anti-hero, exemplified in The Punisher, has lost everything already. The anomie practised on behalf of an ideal is full of risk. Importantly, it is The Punisher’s existential anomie that is the key to this scene in Civil War. I  have already noted that the fight was one-way. Captain America beats up The Punisher but The Punisher doesn’t fight back. The reason being that as a former soldier Frank Castle respects Steve Rogers. They have both fought for their country. As Spider-Man comments while watching the fight unfold, Captain America was the reason Frank Castle became a soldier in the first place: ‘Same guy, different war’, he quips (Millar and Hitch, 2007: n.p.). To which Captain America replies: ‘Wrong, Frank Castle is insane’ (n.p.). This difference is crucial. As a veteran of the Second World War, or what we might call the good war, Steve Rogers was left with something to believe in and protect. As a veteran of the Vietnam War, Frank Castle was left with nothing. Shortly after

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his first appearance as an enemy of Spider-Man in Amazing Spider-Man #129 (Conway and Andru, 1974), an origin story was written that placed him squarely within the anti-hero camp (Conway and DeZuniga, 1975). After returning home from the Vietnam War, his family were gunned down in front of him simply for witnessing a gangland murder, leaving him with nothing but the burning desire for retribution and punishment. As the character developed, Vietnam became more of a formative feature. By the time Garth Ennis completed the run collected under the title Born (Ennis and Robertson, 2004), The Punisher’s origin is set firmly in that cruel and nihilistic conflict. In this story, Frank Castle is on his third tour of Vietnam and has lost sight of anything meaningful beyond the warfare itself. The story is narrated by a junior member of his platoon, Stevie Goodwin, who describes the US war machine in the following terms: There is a Great Beast loose in the world of men. It awoke in dark times, to fight a terrible enemy. It stormed through Europe, across the far Pacific, and crushed the evil that it found there underfoot. But when it was victorious, when the crooked cross and the rising sun were done with, the Great Beast’s keepers found that it would not go back to sleep. The Beast has many heads, and on its heads are written names: Lockheed. Bell. Monsanto. Dow. Grumman. Colt. And many more. And they are very hungry. So the Great Beast must be fed: and every generation, our country goes to war to do just that. A  war for war’s sake, usually. And one that could have been avoided. But there must be blood, in extraordinary quantities, and whether it is foreign or American is of no consequence at all. And so, today, at Firebase Valley Forge, our turn has finally arrived. (Ennis and Robertson, 2004: n.p.)

In the ensuing battle, Frank Castle makes a deal with the demon of war that possesses him and enables him to be the last man standing in a field littered with bloody, napalmed bodies. Although The Punisher is supposedly born in the midst of this pointless carnage, Frank Castle’s modus operandi is revealed in an earlier scene, where his platoon come under attack from Viet Cong snipers. Having returned fire, they find one female sniper alive but severely wounded. A member of the platoon is then shown to try to rape her. At this point, Frank Castle shouts ‘No rape’, and immediately executes the woman supposedly to end her pain. He then follows the rapist who has gone to the river to wash his face where Castle proceeds to drown him as punishment for his crime. Frank Castle is shown to have a clear sense of what is wrong but a very limited, simplistic and warlike sense of reparation and justice.8 The vile, brutal and degrading nature of this scene is as far removed from the origin of Captain America as it is possible to get. Captain America was born to fight cruelty within a war in which US legitimacy was firmly established. The Punisher is contaminated by cruelty and born from a war in which US symbolic authority was entirely destroyed. As a consequence their anomie is profoundly different.

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This discussion of sovereign anomie also offers us the possibility to briefly consider Lawrence and Jewett’s (2002) application of Joseph Campbell’s theory of the classical monomyth to the superhero story.9 For Campbell, the basis of the classical heroic narrative is the individual that leaves a community to fight a decisive battle only to return with newly acquired skills, powers and knowledge. For Lawrence and Jewett, the important element here is that the hero’s journey trains him for ‘permanent social responsibility’ (6), culminating in the return and re-integration in the community thereby enabling him to ‘serve in new ways’ (6). By contrast, where the classical monomyth starts with a community and ends with a community, albeit enhanced by the exploits of the heroic individual, what they call the ‘American monomyth’ starts with the failings of community and its social institutions, followed by the intervention of a heroic outsider who redeems the situation only to disappear back into the obscurity from which he or she came. The US version of the monomyth is, therefore, profoundly anti-social in the sense that the hero is always presented as an individual and an outsider who can only rescue an inherently weak, corrupt or contaminated society through the use of ‘redemptive violence’ (5). Separate from the societies they save, superheroes ‘transcend democratic limits on the exercise of power’ and ‘bypass the restraints of law’ (35), and for this they receive ‘adulation from the impotent communities that benefit from the exercise of beneficent powers’ (42). As was noted in the introduction, they argue that this is also the means by which US popular culture becomes both justification and apologist for US political zeal.10 While I do not wish to undermine Lawrence and Jewett’s work because I am very much in agreement with their analysis and mindful of its political importance, the problem of sovereign anomie is not exclusive to right-wing politics but is central to the Western conception of sovereignty irrespective of its political colour. Although the superhero very much fits with the model of the anti-social, extra-legal outsider, whose redemptive violence saves the day, the superhero story, focussed as it is around issues of law, order and violence permits us to explore the very real but uncomfortable fact that this is a problem integral to the operations of the law itself and enables us to see that the problem of extra-legal violence and executive decision is not just a matter of how the story of the law is told or how the law’s efficacy is represented in narrative form. It is a structural problem, pertaining to the law’s limit or threshold. I have already given a sense of how DC comics responded to the Bush Doctrine, but this problem of the law’s limit and the dangers of the sovereign decision were also rigorously dealt with by Marvel in the epic story of the rise of Norman Osborn that ran from July 2006 with the publication of Civil War #1 and finished with the publication of Siege #4 in May 2010. This was a story that began during the second term of a commander-in-chief who was more than

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happy to act out the fantasy of the superheroic president (Lawrence and Jewett, 2002: 146), going as far as to play the role in a bizarre piece of political theatre where Air Force One met Top Gun on the deck of U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln on 1 May 2003. The utterly ill-judged ‘Mission Accomplished’ speech encapsulated everything Lawrence and Jewett say about the solitary path of political zealotry and ideological exceptionalism. It was also a time that had been dominated by a narrative of apocalyptic destruction and redemptive violence that claimed to legitimise the anabolic growth of the military–industrial complex and confirm the weakness of claims to international law and human rights.11 Marvel took this affirmation of the extra-legal and the belief in security by all means necessary and ran with it. By the time the story came to its climax, George W. Bush had been replaced by Barak Obama in the White House, and while this new administration promised great change it did little to challenge the extra-legal activities of the US government. In fact, the continued existence of Guantanamo Bay, Obama’s drone programme, and revelations about the clandestine Prism and NSA surveillance initiatives all indicate that the United States is vigorously defending the Bush legacy of covert, pre-emptive, extra-judicial activities. One other story worth mentioning that pre-dates the Norman Osborn epic but introduces many of its themes was Secret War (Bendis and Dell’Otto, 2009) originally published in five issues over 2004 and 2005. With Doctor Doom deposed as ruler of Latveria, the US government has been politically and economically supporting the newly democratic Latveria headed by Prime Minister Lucia Von Bardas. Having gathered intelligence that Von Bardas is actually using US funds to prepare a terrorist attack on US soil, Nick Fury visits the President to ask permission to neutralize the threat. Given that the US government ‘got her elected’ with ‘72  million dollars in aid’ (n.p.) the President declares there will be no need for a mission and declines Fury’s request. Undaunted, this ‘wartime general’ (n.p.) does it any way, assembling a crack team of efficient and curiously compliant superheroes for his own secret war.12 In short, Secret War is interesting because the political parallels to Afghanistan and Iraq are strong. Latveria is a country that the US government has sponsored, just as it did with the Mujahadeen and Sadam Hussein, and is now seen as a target for regime change. In an attempt to wipe out the terror threat Nick Fury takes his team into Latveria and destroys the capital including its population. Echoing the language of ‘shock and awe’ Nick Fury accepts that he could have quietly assassinated Von Bardas but explains ‘that’s not the language these people understand. It says nothing. It would mean nothing … The punishment for their terror had to be loud. Total’ (n.p.). The punishment is itself a pre-emptive act of terror that kills thousands but unfortunately and unbeknownst to Fury fails to take down Von Bardas. A year later, she returns to New York to carry out an act of vengeance that destroys a large part of Manhattan. Issue 5 of the story opens with a double page spread of the attack. The image is created from tones of blue with the explosion

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represented as a ball of brilliant white on the left-hand page. The explosion is also visually linked to two shafts of white light emanating skywards from downtown Manhattan on the right-hand page just as the Twin Towers were memorialised in light shortly after ‘9/11’. Here a direct connection is made between an act of retribution in response to previous US intervention and the loss of the Twin Towers that signalled the beginning of the war on terror. Also, it was this destruction coupled with the Stamford event that brought about the need for a Superhero Registration Act and the civil war that began Norman Osborn’s rise to power. Unlike this Bendis story, which struggles to fully condemn the actions of Nick Fury because he is a hero and thereby still reproduces the American monomyth in some form, the rise of one of Marvel universes most psychopathic criminals to high political office avoids this difficulty. Norman Osborn first appeared as the Green Goblin in the Marvel Universe in The Amazing Spider-Man #14 (Lee and Ditko, 1964c). The Green Goblin stands as one of the foremost villains in the Marvel universe primarily because of his involvement in the traumatic death of Spider-Man’s girlfriend, Gwen Stacey, discussed in the previous chapter. By the time Norman Osborn/The Green Goblin came to power at the end of the Civil War story arc, his biography was replete with episodes of violent psychosis, murder, abuse and deception. The significance of his rise is not just the fact that the story continues with a villain taking up the roles normally left for superheroes (or at worst anti-heroes) it is precisely the fact that it is Norman Osborn; the villain most identifiable with the genre’s loss of innocence (Saunders, 2011). In this regard, the rise of The Green Goblin is a fitting image of state power in an age in which our belief in the protections of international law and human rights were said to be naive. If the US government was telling us that we could no longer be innocent in the face of terror, Marvel was showing us precisely what that looked like. The one other major component in this story is a group of heroes called the Thunderbolts, created by Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley in 1996. In the wake of the Onslaught crisis in which it appeared the Avengers and the Fantastic Four had died, the Earth’s defences were greatly weakened. Into the breach stepped a team including Songbird, Atlas, Meteorite, Mach 1, and Techno, led by the patriotically accoutred Citizen V.  While it appeared heroes had once more come to the rescue issue 1 closed with the revelation that the Thunderbolts were in fact The Masters of Evil (Screaming Mimi, Goliath, Moonstone, Beetle, and Fixer) in disguise and that Citizen V was Baron Helmut Zemo, son of the Nazi Heinrich Zemo who was a major figure in the early Captain America stories. The Thunderbolts become a curious bunch in part used by Baron Zemo to gain influence and power aiming at world domination and a vehicle for some villains to seek redemption in their newly assumed role as good guys. When the superheroes that were believed to be dead finally returned, the truth about the Thunderbolts came to light (Busiek

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and Bagley, 2001). By the time the Civil War arc started, they were, of course, perfectly placed to join the pro-registration side and seek advantage by bringing in those who remained unregistered. At the end of the war, though, Baron Zemo felt the possibility for world domination lay elsewhere and went into hiding at which point a deal was struck with Norman Osborn to head the Thunderbolts enabling them to continue their pro-registration work. In Civil War:  Frontline #11 (Jenkins and Bachs, 2007), it is suggested this deal was made directly with Tony Stark. All villains assisting the pro-registration side had been augmented with ‘nano-chains’ to ensure they could be controlled, but Stark had modified Osborn’s in an attempt to use him to start a war with the Atlanteans so as to reunite all the fighting superheroes and end the war. Heading the Thunderbolts, starting in Thunderbolts #110 (Ellis and Deodato Jr., 2007), was the reward for those services. The first volume of Warren Ellis’s run on the Thunderbolts is appropriately titled ‘Faith in Monsters’ and the first issue clearly sets the tone of the post-civil war, Norman Osborn era. It opens with Osborn interviewing Bullseye as a potential new member. When Bullseye is asked about the last person he killed, he tells Osborn about the father and son he murdered three days ago simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He explains how he killed them by taking the popsicle the boy was eating, splitting the stick in two: ‘the left half went through daddy’s left eye, the right through sonny’s right eye’ (Ellis and Deodato Jr., 2007: n.p.). Osborn tells him that he will need to stay with ordered kills in future and that after his year’s contract is up be will be paid a substantial sum of money, given a new identity and a new life outside the United States. Bullseye asks what will happen if he doesn’t want to leave the US to which Osborn replies ‘I imagine you’ll be quietly executed’ (n.p.). This exchange from the opening pages clearly sets out the sort of operation the Thunderbolts have become: a ‘black ops’ outfit operating with total impunity. This new team, which also includes Venom – now attached to Mac Gargan the former Spider-Man enemy known as the Scorpion – are significantly more murderous and psychopathic. The psychologically unstable nature of the new team is added to by the presence of the Swordsman, working on the promise that Osborn will create a clone of his dead twin sister, and is given very dark expression via another new member who goes by the name Penance. Previously known as Speedball and former member of the New Warriors team responsible for the Stamford event, his power is now triggered by pain which he self-administers via a suit lined with needles that permanently cut his skin, a process starkly presented in issue 116. Following Stamford, Penance operates on a never-ending cycle of guilt, pain, power, and punishment, all in the hope of finding redemption that never seems to come. The political climate is also put sharply into focus. Post-civil war, the Avengers have been split between the Mighty Avengers led by Iron Man who is also the new director of SHIELD, and the New Avengers who still resist registration and

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are described on TV talk shows as ‘unregistered combatants’. These shows are also interspersed with commercials for Thunderbolts action figures, in which Captain America is described as the sort of masked terrorists from which they are protecting the United States. By issue 111, the medication Norman Osborn is using to stabilise his split personality becomes an important part of the story and in issue 112 a White House spokesman is shown acknowledging that the president is aware of Osborn’s past problems, stating ‘the president had his own troubles in the past. He surmounted them through faith and hard work’ (Ellis and Deodato Jr, 2007: n.p.). By issues 120–1, however, the strain of Osborn’s hard work – and cocktail of medication – is beginning to show when he goes on the rampage as the Green Goblin to take down the Swordsman who has broken ranks.13 At this point, the Thunderbolts have never been so dangerous nor have they been so trusted, and with Moonstone brought back in as team leader, replacing Songbird – the only member of the team with any trace of a conscience – Norman Osborn is perfectly positioned to make his next move when the Marvel universe discovers it has been infiltrated by members of the shape-shifting alien race, known as the Skrull, who have been gradually taking over the bodies of humans and metahumans alike. Both the Mighty Avengers and the Thunderbolts as key players in homeland security have a major role in this storyline but in Secret Invasion #8 it is Norman Osborn who is seen via the world’s media to have ‘got the killshot’ (Bendis and Yu, 2008: n.p.) that puts an end to the invasion. The issue closes with Osborn being received by the president in the White House. He tells Osborn that because Tony Stark could not protect America, he is out. ‘And you, sir, you are in’ (n.p.; italics in original). He continues to tell Osborn that SHIELD is no longer viable. The scene then shifts to a presidential address where the US people are told: ‘If this invasion has proved anything at all, it’s that we need a certain type of man at the head of the table. We’ve all seen the footage, we’ve seen a true hero at work. We know what type of hero we need watching the skies. And that man is … Norman Osborn’ (n.p.). The President then announces that SHIELD ‘now falls under the Thunderbolts initiative’ (n.p.). With Captain America assassinated (Brubaker and Epting, 2008), Iron Man is then taken out of the equation by Norman Osborn (Fraction and Larroca, 2009). Having been removed from heading up both the Avengers and SHIELD, Iron Man comes to realise where the logic of the civil war has led. He switches sides and tries to help out the resistance only to be hunted down by Osborn who very nearly kills him. Osborn proceeds to reinvent the discontinued SHIELD under the new name of HAMMER and takes over a new ‘Dark’ Avengers team made up of members of the Thunderbolts – Moonstone is presented as Ms Marvel, Bullseye plays the role of Hawkeye, and Venom tries to pass as Spider-Man – while the lunatic fringe of the Mighty Avengers, Ares, the God of War, and the utterly deranged Sentry, whose earlier manifestation will be discussed in Chapter 7, are also recruited. To finish the team, Osborn brings in the Kree, Noh-Varr and

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Wolverine’s criminal son, Daken. At the end of George W. Bush’s second term in office, Homeland Security in the Marvel universe is run by a schizophrenic psychopath, who heads a team of murderers, torturers, criminals and self-interested opportunists. With Captain America gone and having taken over almost all of Tony Stark’s technology, Norman Osborn announces his supremacy with the invention of a new identity: the Iron Patriot. Dressed in a patriotically painted Stark suit of armour, Osborn introduces this crew of villains and monsters to the people who have placed their faith in them: ‘It is my honour to introduce to you … your protectors … your warriors … your Avengers’ (Bendis and Deodato, 2009: n.p.). Here, the Iron Patriot, resplendent as the star-spangled embodiment of the military–industrial complex speaks volumes about the nature of the extra-legal and the logic of the state of emergency, and portrays a vision of sovereign power that dramatically contrasts with the rhetoric of justice, legitimacy, peace and democracy that accompanied the Bush doctrine throughout the years of the war on terror. Although by this time the US presidency had passed to Barak Obama, who discontinued the rhetoric of that war, Marvel still had one final instalment of the epic story to go and one last comment to make on the logic of pre-emption that defined it. This was also to be an important punctuation point for the Marvel universe. At the close of this final chapter of the Osborn epic Marvel would re-launch all its major titles under the banner of the ‘Heroic Age’. In brief Osborn’s rule comes to an end as the result of a deluded piece of over-reach played out in the Siege miniseries (Bendis and Coipel, 2010). In a parallel story arc, Asgard has been dislodged from its proper place in the nine realms and is now hovering just above the ground outside a small town called Broxton in Oklahoma. Osborn, now convinced he can and should be allowed to do anything he wants, and also seeing the presence of the home of the Norse gods as a threat to his total power decides Asgard is a security threat and declares the need for a pre-emptive strike against it. To give the attack some perceived legitimacy, he orchestrates an incident in which Asgardians are blamed for the deaths of thousands of people. Despite being unable to convince the new president of the need for a strike Osborn goes it alone with his new team of Avengers. The story sees the return of Captain America symbolically taking out Iron Patriot with his shield at the end of issue 2. In the battle that then rages over issues 3 and 4, Osborn sends in the Sentry, the most powerful and yet one of the most unstable superheroes in the Marvel universe, to destroy Asgard. As Asgard collapses Captain America, Iron Man and Thor re-assemble the old (and the Young) Avengers to finally take down Osborn, thereby bringing to a close Marvel’s treatment of the emergency powers and exceptional politics that defined the war on terror. On the way, these emergency powers and extraordinary measures that are supposedly necessary to defend against catastrophe are clearly shown to have potentially devastating

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consequences and as such this very long story arc does not fit easily into the American monomyth set out by Lawrence and Jewett (2002). It is also interesting to note that even when the heroes do return and take down the bad guy, the American monomyth still struggles to find a purchase as Captain America reminds us of the importance of social institutions, demanding that Norman Osborn be brought before the law and face justice in the courts rather than being killed on the spot. My aim, however, was not to disprove or even undermine the theory of the American monomyth which I believe is firmly established in both politics and popular culture, it was rather to show how the superhero version of this myth explores the threshold of the law itself and that through this superhero comics make a significant contribution to a critical engagement with sovereignty. Anomie and the sovereign ban For Agamben, the anomie characterized in the state of emergency is only the beginning of an engagement with the law that opens up his main themes in Homo Sacer, namely the relationship between the sovereign, sacrifice and banishment. As we have seen, the complexity of sovereignty lies in the fact that it is both inside and outside the juridical order as both its founding event and its suspension. It is, therefore, both a structure of inclusion and exclusion that necessarily has a spatial dimension. For Agamben, one of the primary socio-political effects of law’s violence is the creation of spaces in which the people from whom the law is withheld are stripped of all legal entitlement and reduced to a ‘bare life’ that permits anything being done to them. Within a sovereign territory, this can be seen in a range of categories, most readily described as criminal or alien, where the usual protections are suspended. These exclusions often take place in specific sites such as prisons, but increasingly include asylum centres and refugee camps. During the war on terror, of course, new types of prison emerged based on geographical locations that automatically set them outside US jurisdiction but remained open to US executive power. Guantanamo Bay became the most notorious of these, together with the practice of extraordinary rendition that linked together a network of ‘black sites’ around the world.14 For Agamben, this recasts the dark ambiguity of the sovereign’s rule over a territory into a ‘complex topological figure in which not only the exception and the rule but also the state of nature and law, outside and inside, pass through one another’ (1998: 37). The decision regarding friend and enemy and therefore whose life is protected and whose is radically unprotected is the permanent feature of a sovereign territory. In Agamben’s reading, it is the concentration camp that is the exemplary model of this inclusive exclusion and epitomises what he calls the ‘sovereign ban’ (1998:  67).15 Accompanying the decision on the exception is the capacity to banish or abandon, casting out beyond the city walls built to preserve and protect a way of life. This means that because sovereign power is fundamentally the

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power over life the distinction between friend and enemy that supposedly founds the political according to Schmitt is actually based on a more fundamental distinction between life and death. In the introduction to Homo Sacer, Agamben explains this in relation to Aristotle’s distinction between two types of life, zoē and bios, where zoē is ‘the simple fact of living common to all beings (animals, men, or gods), and bios [is] the form or way of living proper to an individual or a group’ (1). Only bios is protected. Politics within the West is based on this division and therefore on the exclusion of zoē from the polis. Here, bios is the good life into which bare life must transform itself meaning that ‘bare life has the peculiar privilege of being that whose exclusion founds the city of men’ (7). In a later work Agamben goes so far as to say that ‘the decisive political conflict, which governs every other conflict, is that between the animality and the humanity of man’ (2004: 80). Sovereign power, therefore, decides who qualifies for, or belongs to the political community with its protection under law, and those who can be reduced to the bare life of their animal existence and from whom the law withdraws. The implication is that this exclusionary practice that at best seeks to discipline and manage ‘lesser beings’ and at worst annihilate them is not an anomaly but is the normal proceedings of sovereign power. The figure of homo sacer that Agamben highlights is the entity that does not count and is held subject to the law by being set outside of it. Inside the spaces from which the law withdraws itself power confronts those placed there ‘without any mediation’ (1998: 171), they are subject to all the violence of the law but not its protection: homo sacer can be killed but not sacrificed or murdered. In this way, its death is set outside of any communal norm or rite, but the entity that is banned still defines and legitimises the law that has abandoned it. Returning to superhero comics, this point of ambiguity between inside and outside, protection and banishment is a persistent theme in numerous Hulk stories in which this epitome of strength is constantly banished or exiles himself to a space outside civilisation. The Hulk is always seeking refuge away from the society that views him as a monster.16 In fact, the monster as a category works very well as the liminal figure placed under the inclusive exclusion of the sovereign ban. It is well known that a society or community establishes its identity partly through the construction of what it regards as monstrous or taboo. Each society has its own monster, so to speak, included by being set apart. The nature of a monster sheds light on how a society sees itself, it shows us something about the community to which it is both tied and from which it is expelled. This is also the etymological root of the word. The monster is the entity that shows: the Latin monstrum means portent, omen, or sign. From one perspective, The Hulk epitomises our techno-anxiety and therefore the fears we have about our creativity and perceived mastery. As the monstrous result of a weapon supposedly designed to protect us, of technology deemed to give us control, The Hulk represents the return of the repressed. He is the

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violently destructive, irrational animal that lurks just beneath the surface of human civility and technological progress. This vision of The Hulk was brilliantly realised in the one-shot story entitled ‘The End’ (David and Keown, 2011), published in August 2002. Here, The Hulk/Bruce Banner is the last person alive in a world destroyed by a nuclear holocaust. As the story develops, Banner comes to understand his rejection and punishment in mythological terms likening himself to Prometheus who stole fire from the gods. Just as Prometheus was punished, artist Dale Keone skilfully renders The Hulk’s torment, portraying him forever chained to a rock with vultures tearing at his flesh. If Prometheus represents the sovereign ban of the gods, the exclusion that maintains the correct order of things and the law of the Greek pantheon, The Hulk represents our sovereign disavowal, the attempted exclusion of our primitive, destructive violence that enables us to see ourselves as civilised, peaceful and enlightened. In the 2006 event, Planet Hulk (Pak, Pagulayan and Lopresti, 2008), we are shown what happens after the superhero community attempts to banish the Hulk for good. The story starts in the four-part prelude entitled ‘Peace in Our Time’ (Way, Chu and Santacruz, 2006), where we find a repeat of the usual theme of self-exclusion. Bruce Banner has taken himself off to hide in Alaska only to be tracked down by Nick Fury who needs Banner/The Hulk for a special mission to destroy a Hydra space station operated by an artificial intelligence (AI) system designed to set off any and every nuclear warhead on the planet. The problem is the AI system has now become sentient and the space station is ready to take pre-emptive action against any intervention, which is why the indestructible Hulk is Nick Fury’s best weapon. Once the Hulk is fired into space and comes into proximity with the space station, he discovers it has nothing to do with Hydra and is in fact a SHIELD experiment gone wrong. Known as the ‘Godseye’, it was intended to be used to neutralise hostile nuclear weapons in the event of their launch, but it has now gone rogue. Over the course of two issues, we see The Hulk eventually destroy the space station only to find that when he gets into the shuttle to return home he is shot even deeper into space. In this scenario, we have a story that brings together the extra-legal black ops that exemplify the permanent emergency powers of the intelligence and security communities, which are in turn used as the means for the Hulk’s banishment. It is interesting to note that the Planet Hulk story continues with the theme of the sovereign ban. Landing on the planet Sakaar where the journey through a portal has temporarily weakened him, he has a restraining device inserted into his chest and is sold into slavery. The purchaser is someone looking to introduce a little novelty into his gladiatorial sporting arena. The Great Games are full of other foreign travellers sucked into Sakaar via the portal and also sold into slavery. Outside of the Games Sakaar society is dominated by the Imperials who subjugate the Natives, an evolved form of insect life; the Shadow People, a nomadic community living is Sarkaar’s vast desert; and the Spikes, an alien

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species subjugated while trying to invade. The imperials therefore rule over and define themselves against various forms of bare life:  the animal, the itinerant, and the foreign. Eventually The Hulk becomes their champion and Planet Hulk becomes the story of revolutionary struggle in which The Hulk makes the move from zoē to bios, ultimately becoming the sovereign of Sakaar himself. This was in part made possible by a central prophesy in Saka, the ancient religion of the Shadow People, of the World Breaker and the Sakaarson or Redeemer. Some interpretations have these as two opposing entities, others state they are two principles entwined in one being. Given that the Hulk’s strength enables him to unite all the subjected people behind his own struggle, many on Sakaar see him as the Redeemer. The Hulk’s transformation of his life and the lives of the subjected people’s on Sakaar from zoē to bios does fit with the Sakaarson story, and with all now well in the land of Sakaar the shuttle The Hulk arrived in has been brought into the city and displayed as a public memorial to the fulfilment of the prophesy. The problem is that to ensure The Hulk really had been banished, the superheroes that expelled him set the shuttle to self-destruct via a warp core failure. Despite the Hulk’s best efforts to prevent this happening, the city is destroyed in the explosion and the Redeemer is revealed to be the World Breaker. Turning to other comics, the X-Men have always been used to explore the violence supposedly made necessary by emergencies. From the outset, the X-Men have been seen as a threat to the majority human population. While their containment has been justified because their powers make them more than human their persecution is made possible by them being declared less than human. This is made explicit in the two-issue story entitled ‘Days of Future Past’ starting in Uncanny X-Men #141 (Claremont and Byrne, 1981). Set in an alternative future, the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly by the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants has led to a backlash against the mutant population and their imprisonment in internment camps. In the future the remaining X-Men are shown wearing the letter ‘M’ on their clothes, just as the yellow star signalled Jewish ethnicity during the holocaust. In a very effective image, telepaths like Rachel Summers have also been turned by their captors into ‘hounds’, and are tattooed and forced to use their powers to track down other mutants. When the story is returned to in later issues her reduction to bare life is made clear when she is shown tethered or on a leash (Claremont and Romita Jr., 1985). Within the X-Men franchise the story that explicitly and quite literally depicts the reduction of a person to their bare life is the Wolverine story written and drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith (2009). The story Wolverine: Weapon X recounts how James Howlett, aka Logan, a man already outcast by society owing to his mutant healing powers, is kidnapped by a secret Canadian government agency with a view to wiping his mind and transforming him into a weapon. Through a process of corporeal augmentation in which adamantium is grafted onto his bones, the aim is to render him virtually indestructible. Once again, we are

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offered a story deploying both elements of sovereign anomie. Howlett is subject to ‘unmediated’ executive power and held within an extra-legal space that effectively becomes a torture chamber. His loss of political protection is allegorically shown via his naked body that is permanently objectified in data readouts and scientific calculations. Reduced to ‘his most bestial needs’ (53) he becomes Wolverine: the perfect killing machine. Continually placed in proximity to animals, especially wolves, he is shown to be the most strong – the sovereign beast – and yet the name of the Wolf also indicates his outlaw status. As Agamben notes, under the laws of Edward the Confessor in the eleventh century bandits were described as having the head of a wolf (1998: 106), allowing them to be killed without the killer having to face legal redress. Although this Wolverine story recounts the gradual transition from man to animal, and graphically depicts the relationship between sovereign power and bare life, the story also shows us how bestial the sovereign can be. A fantasy of right-wing politics, Wolverine comes to epitomise sovereign anomie, the extra-legal sovereign who gets the job done by any means necessary. For those on the Left, he is a perpetual witness to the potential horrors of sovereign violence, whose path back to humanity lies only under the guidance of the liberally tolerant, democratically open, institutionally oriented Prof. Xavier. The story with which I would like to conclude this chapter, however, is one that links the production of bare life to the very founding of sovereign authority, namely the relatively recent Captain America story created by Robert Morales and Kyle Baker entitled Captain America: Truth. The main premise of the book is that despite the assassination of the serum’s inventor the super soldier programme continued and in an attempt to reproduce the serum that created Captain America, and echoing the real-life Tuskagee experiments that began in 1932, enlisted black men are used as guinea pigs for the new drug. This was also a theme referenced in an earlier title that announced the arrival of a new black superhero, Luke Cage, aka Power Man. The first issue (Goodwin and Tuska, 1972) of which tells the story of Carl Lucas, wrongfully convicted of a crime he did not commit and subjected to a regime of torture by a white, racist prison guard. In an attempt to aid his application for parole Lucas is reluctantly persuaded to take part in an experimental new drug treatment to be carried out in the prison only to have the treatment sabotaged by the racist guard. The process nearly kills Lucas but has unexpected side effects. He discovers he has super-strength and impenetrable skin, which he decides to put to good use by earning a living as a ‘hero for hire’. Despite the character’s connection to the Blaxploitation movement of the time, Adilifu Nama sees Luke Cage as ‘a radical signifier of the troubling intersection of racism, institutional authority, and broader themes associated with black political disenfranchisement’ (2011: 56). His reduction to bare life by the prison system and his ability to then take control of the outcomes of this abuse led Nama to conclude that Luke Cage is the ‘most inherently political and socially profound

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black superhero to ever emerge’ (55). Returning to the Captain America story, given the state of racial politics in 1940s America – a time when comics still ran jungle stories portraying infantile, backward and degenerate Africans – and the lack of proper legal recognition and protection for black people it makes perfect sense that black men would have been the test subjects before the successful chemical formula was tried on another white subject. Although these experiments are shown to go horribly wrong, there was one success, albeit temporary, and for a brief time in 1942 a black man named Isaiah Bradley took up the mantle of Captain America.17 The context of racial discrimination and violence is clearly set out in the first issue where Bradley and his wife visit the World Fair during the specially declared ‘negro week’ where ‘seventy-five cents admission could buy you the dream of equality for a whole day’ (Morales and Baker, 2009: n.p.; italics in original). In issue 2, the soldiers are also shown to be fully aware of the possible effect their fighting in the war might have on black politics as they discuss the idea that they are fighting for democracy at home as well as abroad. The opening to this issue, however, starkly portrays the contempt the army had for black soldiers. The first time we see them at Camp Cathcart they are shown returning from latrine duty, covered in human excrement and walking past the white soldiers who hold their noses as they pass. This proximity to human waste is then reinforced as the issue turns to a discussion between the camp’s commander and the scientists from the super soldier programme who are asking for two battalions of black soldiers, interested to see if their ‘methods apply to the inferior races’ (n.p.; italics in original). By the end of the issue, a major arrives from military intelligence who shuts down the camp and covertly moves out the black soldiers. The following issues then proceed to explicitly link the creation of Captain America, the ultimate symbol of both US power and legitimacy to slavery, eugenic experiments and Nazi death camps, thereby reminding us how the foundation of law and authority also includes the abandonment of those deemed unworthy of protection. This is shown in many different ways, not least through the regular references to racism and extra-legal spaces, some of which I have already mentioned. However, the depictions in ­chapters 3, 5 and 7 are especially significant. Chapter 3 is entitled ‘The Passage’ in which images of black men strapped to bunks in order to receive their injections directly reference the slavery ships in which so many African’s were killed. This chapter also shows the ghastly effects of the experiments as the test subjects are injected and turned into anabolic freaks, suffering mental or physical collapse at some future date, or even exploding on the spot. All the deaths are explained away as training accidents. In ­chapter 5, those who survive the experiments for long enough are sent on secret missions behind enemy lines, but when all the members of Bradley’s unit are killed he is sent in alone to intercept a shipment of the Nazi’s own super-soldier serum. On this mission, having stolen Captain America’s uniform he lands inside a Nazi medical facility that is

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also an extermination camp. While looking for the serum he is shown to be inside a warehouse-sized room full of dissected Jewish bodies, and while trying to escape he hides inside what he realises is a gas chamber full of Jewish women about to be gassed. Here, he is finally overcome and is presumed dead. In ­chapter 7, which is set in the present day, the original Captain America, Steve Rogers, has got wind of Bradley’s story and is seeking the truth from Colonel Price of military intelligence who oversaw the experiments. From the ensuing conversation we learn about the nature of Bradley’s mission in ­chapter 5, but also find out how close the German, UK and US eugenics programmes were in the mid-1930s and that Hitler’s scientists were in direct collaboration with privately funded eugenics programmes in the United States interested in an effective ‘racial hygiene programme’ (n.p.).18 These research collaborations, we are told, directly produced Captain America, the first super soldier. With the advent of war the race was on to beat the Germans in the construction of this new weapon. As the human embodiment of the US constitution it is a radical gesture to link that figure directly to genocide and extermination, and yet, as the reference to slavery clearly indicates, the institution of the United States was at the same time the instantiation of a sovereign ban as numerous peoples, African and Native Americans, were reduced to bare life and placed outside the law.19 This bare life is further revealed as we discover that Bradley did not die. His death was invented in order to cover up the story as well as the fact that he was court-martialled and imprisoned in solitary confinement for seventeen years for stealing Captain America’s costume. Although he was later pardoned we are also told that the effect of the experiment was to reduce his mental faculties to such an extent that he needs full-time care. One further significant element is offered here and that is the image of Isaiah Bradely’s wife, now full-time carer, wearing the niqab. Given that the comics were originally published in 2003 the Islamic identity of Bradley’s wife has heightened significance.20 Although the final meeting of the two Captain Americas and Steve Rogers’s reconciliation with Bradley’s wife does provide some redemption and the necessary ideological closure, the story remains a deeply troubling and powerful portrayal of the sovereign ban and exceptional executive powers. Notes  1 Here he couches this exceptionalism in terms of the on-going life of the state offering a cybernetic view of sovereignty almost 400 years before the ‘steersman’ was popularised by Norbert Wiener (1965). Of course, cybernetics in Wiener’s sense of the informational feedback that maintains the life of an organism has been an important feature of certain superheroes’ powers. Hank Pym’s cybernetic helmet first appeared in Tales to Astonish #35 (Lee and Kirby, 1962), enabling him to communicate with ants and function as an extended arthropodic organism. While the accident that took away Matt Murdock’s eyesight in Daredevil #1 (Lee and Everett, 1964) heightened

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his hearing, smell, touch and taste, whilst also providing him with an additional sense of built-in radar, allowing him to navigate with ease through any environment in his mission to uphold the law.  2 The permanent presence of this sovereign anomie in the life of everyday society is perhaps most clearly perceived in the language of ‘national security’ that enables all manner of things to remain immune from democratic scrutiny.  3 This spatial aspect of sovereignty had also been explored in the earlier DC story, Batman: No Man’s Land (Gale and Maleev, 1999).  4 In addition, we have The Nuclear Legion acting on behalf of a criminal organisation known as The Society operating inside the city walls with the intention of finding and stealing the radioactive source, plus the Atomic Knights who operate as an underground resistance team secretly helping survivors escape. Amidst all of this we have additional rogue elements in the shape of Firebrand, supposedly speaking on behalf of Blüdhaven citizens, and the crazy, right-wing Major Force, who is willing to do anything in the name of security.  5 The story is often read as anti-registration forces representing critics of the PATRIOT Act, but, as Jason Dittmer notes, Captain America’s actions can also be read as support for the US exceptionalism epitomised by the Bush Administration, who wished to break free of any and every international registration (2013:  14). That Captain America, admittedly in civilian mode, hands himself over to the police at the end of the story does problematise this reading to some extent.  6 Iron Man is the obvious choice here for this alignment given that the character has historically been the Marvel superhero most closely associated with the US government. Iron Man was regularly used in Commie-bashing stories in the 1960s and 1970s and Tony Stark has always had very close relations with the military–industrial complex. Over the decades, though, Iron Man has been aligned more often with the sovereign anomie of Captain America and in recent stories, most notably Matt Fraction’s brilliant run he was tied quite explicitly to a form of grassroots democracy in which he aims to develop a version of his technology that can be used as a cheap, renewable form of energy independence (Fraction and Larroca, 2010).  7 In another register, it is what Robert Cover called ‘nomian insularity’ defined as ‘the rejection of participation in the creation of a general and public nomos’ (1992a: 134).  8 This is also another example of the very problematic use of rape in superhero comics. Although the scene is no doubt intended to depict the complete absence of any moral code, and the nihilism of the war, the abuse of the Vietnamese people could have been shown in numerous other ways that didn’t deploy extreme violence against women as a motivation for the supposed hero.  9 An interpretation of Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces, from which Lawrence and Jewett (2002) adapt their version of the monomyth, is read by Amadeus Cho in The Incredible Hercules #132–7 (Pak et al., 2009), when he finds an abandoned copy of a book entitled Hero’s Journey on a bus. 10 Although Lawrence and Jewett analyse the American monomyth in relation to a variety of heroic stories in US popular culture, ranging from Star Wars to Rambo to The Matrix, they do argue that superhero comics hold a special place in the mythic construction of America’s mission. While the Lone Ranger’s mode of intervention and

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status as an isolated individual epitomises the American monomyth, it is the ‘sexual renunciation and segregation’ (2002: 43) of Superman and other comic book superheroes whose permanently blocked relationship to the opposite sex is a symptom of a deeper separation from (and disregard for) social institutions  – something Peter Coogan also refers to as a defining feature of the newly created superhero conventions established with the creation of Superman (2006: 184). This designation of the hetero-normative institution of marriage as the necessary marker of social inclusion, however, is very problematic. 11 For a discussion of the fantasy played out aboard the aircraft carrier, see Curtis (2009a), and for a view on the apocalyptic vision that underpinned the war on terror, see Curtis (2009b) 12 From SHIELD’s files, the rationale for team selection makes the important observation that Captain America is ‘the perfect decoy’ for such an operation, cloaking it in some sense of legitimacy. There is one other note on Captain America that is also revealing in this context and that is the claim ‘his patriotism is skewed and out of date’ (Bendis and Dell’Otto, 2009:  n.p.). The war on terror supposedly demands less idealism and more pragmatism, a sentiment that presages his assassination a few years later. 13 In issue 129 (Diggle and De La Torre, 2009), Norman Osborn makes someone impersonate the Green Goblin in an attack on Air Force One in which Osborn saves the day. This serves to both annul the rumours that spread after #121, saying Osborn was the Green Goblin and to ingratiate himself with the new president who is far from happy about Osborn holding such power. The ploy is successful. 14 See the Open Society report entitled Globalizing Torture: CIA Detention and Extra­ ordinary Rendition, www.opensocietyfoundations.org/reports/globalizing-torturecia-secret-detention-and-extraordinary-rendition (accessed 5 May 2015). One DC story that directly addressed the issue of secret prisons was Justice League of America: Sanctuary (Burnett et al., 2009). It is worth noting that in issue 3 Superman points out to Batman ‘as much as you take Amanda Waller [the woman deemed responsible for the prison] to task for her covert ways, she doesn’t hold a matchstick to you’ (56). 15 In a situation like the war on terror, which announced a permanent open-ended state of emergency, Agamben’s interpretation of the camp becomes especially resonant: ‘The camp is the space that is opened when the state of exception begins to become the rule. In the camp, the state of exception, which was essentially a temporary suspension of the rule of law on the basis of a factual state of danger, is now given a permanent spatial arrangement, which as such nevertheless remains outside the normal order’ (1998: 169; italics in original). 16 This issue is often played out around The Thing who belongs to a ‘family’ and yet always feels like an outsider, a theme brilliantly dealt with in the classic story ‘This Man … This Monster’ (Lee and Kirby, 1966c). 17 For some, this book makes Isaiah Bradley the first Captain America, but given this is set in 1942 and in ­chapter 4 Isaiah is shown reading a copy of Captain America #1 and talking about the imminent arrival of Steve Rogers to lead their mission, one must assume that Steve Rogers had already received the serum and the vita rays. Ora

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C. McWilliams, in her useful essay on race in Captain America comics, has noted that the story was billed as an account of the first Captain America (2009: 75), and even within the Marvel universe this ambiguity is played out. For example, in Young Avengers, volume 1, #3, Patriot tells Captain America he is the grandson of ‘the real Captain America’ (Heinberg and Cheung, 2005: p. 9), and yet in Captain America #600, in the section of the ‘One Year After’ story entitled ‘The Youth of Today’, Bradley is described as ‘the only survivor of the second batch of super-soldier formula experiments’ (Brubaker et al., 2009; italics in original). 18 For a very good account of the eugenics discourse that pervaded US culture at the time Simon and Kirby created the original Captain America see Brian E.  Hack (2009). 19 The subject of racism in the US appears in a conversation about Isaiah Bradley and Steve Rogers that Eli Bradley, aka Patriot, has with James ‘Bucky’ Barnes in Young Avengers Presents #1 (Brubaker and Medina, 2008). 20 This theme was picked up in a short series called The Crew (Priest and Bennett, 2003) that included Isaiah Bradley’s son Josiah Bradley, an Islamic Minister who had also taken the name ‘Josiah X’ and was also known as the superhero Justice.

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Symbolic authority and kinship

We have seen that the primary political act of the sovereign is to define who is friend and who is enemy; who is protected as part of the community and who is excluded or banished. This suggests that an understanding of kinship is also essential to any analysis of sovereignty. Understood from this perspective, the sovereign is a symbolic authority organising, regulating and policing the activities of those who live within a territory. The fact that the sovereign traditionally has his analogue in the despot (despotēs in Greek) or master of the house also tells us that gender and the organisation of family relations play an important part. It goes without saying that superhero comics reproduce the gender hierarchy and hetero-normativity that defines this patriarchal symbolic authority.1 As a phenomenon introduced just as the nascent consumer culture was emerging, it would be expected that superhero families modelled the nuclear family so integral to modern, capitalist relations of production, but quite often superhero families aren’t as normal as first appears. Perhaps the most famous of these is the Marvel Family that appeared in Fawcett comics from 1942. The family was made up of Captain Marvel (Billy Batson), his sister Mary Marvel (Mary Batson) and Billy’s school friend Freddy Freeman, who became Captain Marvel Jr. What is interesting about this family is that it models a nuclear family but one that is hardly conventional. With the transformation of Golden Age Mary and Freddy into teenagers, while Billy transformed into an adult, Captain Marvel effectively becomes a single parent. Alternately, when Mary’s character is revised and she, too, transforms into an adult, the parental couple are now siblings.2 I do not, however, wish to argue that the Marvel family promotes incest or even that such an interpretation would be justifiable, but I do wish to point out that while the trope of the family is central to superhero comics, it regularly goes through significant deformation. This can also be seen in the many characters that are orphans or adopted, as is the case with both Batman and Robin.3 Here the superhero takes on the parental role and yet these are curious parents who continually place their young charges in great danger – a potentially exploitative relationship that was wonderfully (and rather gruesomely) parodied by Rick Veitch in Brat Pack (2003). These ‘elective affinities’ (Beck-Gernsheim,

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1998) have also been subject to criticism from social conservatives for the potential homoeroticism suggested when a man and his younger male partner live in a house together. As some excellent research by Will Brooker has shown (2005), such readings were regularly taken by gay readers keen to see in their heroes the loving relationship between men that reflected their own desires and experiences that could otherwise find little or no expression. While an analysis of families in superhero comics throws up a surprising number of unconventional relationships, this chapter will begin the analysis of symbolic authority from a different direction. According to the ‘realism’ that underpins current international politics, the world in which we live is in a permanent state of conflict between competing communities (nomoi) and the sovereigns responsible for protecting them. Superhero comics regularly play out such conflict between different groups, but what is interesting is that superheroes are often themselves conflicted, having come to Earth or entered the wider human community from elsewhere. The most iconic is Superman, whose dual identity as a Kryptonian adopted by humans has enabled his development as a complex character.4 Another is Wonder Woman, who is split between her affiliation to the Amazonians of Paradise Island and those who live in the world of men, and, as the name of this world suggests, she also has to traverse the difference between her native matriarchy and the patriarchy in which she chooses to take up residency. Perhaps the story that most succinctly addresses this conflict is Wonder Woman:  The Hiketeia (Rucka and Jones, 2002), which has interesting echoes of Sophocles’s play Antigone  – especially as it is interpreted by Judith Butler (2000) – where the heroine is torn between the sovereign law of the state and the cultural obligations or law of the family that contravene them. After offering an interpretation of The Hiketeia and the conflict between symbolic and social kinship, the chapter returns to the question of families via an exploration of the totemic nature of superheroes and the many ways they draw out unconventional kinship and familial connections between humans, animals, machines, minerals, vegetation and the wider cosmos. Here, it will be argued that superheroes break out of the very limited, traditional view of kinship, suggesting a collectivity that exceeds notions of family based on genetic sameness. This will be done with the help of Donna Haraway to show how the primacy of couplings both ‘monstrous and illegitimate’ (Haraway, 1991: 154) in superhero comics open up a reconsideration of sovereignty beyond the ideology of the individual or the normativity of closely policed familial boundaries. Another law By way of introducing Greg Rucka’s Hiketeia and the other law to which Wonder Woman is bound as a member of the Amazonian community or sisterhood, it will be useful to say something about the origin of Wonder Woman as a character

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and the philosophy of her creator William Moulton Marston. In this regard, two writers stand out, Clare Pitkethly (2009) and Ben Saunders (2011), both of whom have tried to account for the radical gesture that was – and still should be  – Wonder Woman. She first appeared in All Star Comics #8 in December 1941 (Marston and Peter, 1942a), and then in Sensation Comics #1 in January 1942 (Marston and Peter, 1942b), which also marked her first appearance on a comic cover. This was followed five months later by the publication of her own title (Marston and Peter, 1942c). Marston lived in a polygamous relationship with two women he described as ‘liberated’ and who continued to live together after his death (Saunders, 2011). Together with his wife they believed in the need for strong female role models. In the first instance, the radical nature of Wonder Woman was, of course, her gender. Arguably the first female superhero – she is predated by Black Fury, later Miss Fury, by several months, although this character has no superpowers – she is also an Amazonian, a member of a matriarchal warrior tribe that have very little dealings with men. Not only this, her birth side-stepped the traditional heterosexual coupling when Marston wrote an origin story in which she was created from clay by her mother Queen Hippolyte without any intercession from a father, but with the blessing of Athena and Aphrodite. From the very beginning she is also a defiant woman. When the pilot Steve Trevor lands on the Amazonian home of Paradise Island, where Wonder Woman is known as Princess Diana, Queen Hippolyte announces a competition to see who will be the warrior tasked with returning him to Man’s World. Hippolyte expressly forbids Diana to enter, but she disguises herself and enters the competition, ultimately winning both it and the argument with her mother regarding her right to take part. Now convinced Diana is fit to visit Man’s World, Hippolyte creates her costume and Wonder Woman is born.5 Aside from her incredible strength, martial skills and virtual immortality, she also carries a magic lasso that compels anyone bound by it to tell the truth.6 For Clare Pitkethly, the fact that Wonder Woman is Amazonian is also a very powerful inversion of the usual sovereign trope. In an excellent essay, she explains the significance of characterising an Amazonian as a figure of truth and power: ‘Condemned to the far reaches of the known world, the mythological Amazon owes her existence to the antagonism of same and other, of hero and villain … She necessitates structures of dominance and submission and, as a female barbarian, compels conquest through marriage and war’ (Pitkethly, 2009: 164). The Amazon, then, has always traditionally been a figure that needed to be made subject to the civilising effects of white, male culture,7 so presenting an Amazon as a figure of truth and authority upset the usual representation of power and legitimacy. The home of the Amazons is Themyscira, a matriarchal society that has no dealing with men aside for periodic sexual relations – which mythology describes as yearly – for the purpose of procreation. Amazonians were said to only keep female children, killing male children or returning them to their fathers. In the

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Wonder Woman mythology Themyscira is Paradise Island. As Pitkethly notes, it is ‘an undiscovered utopia concealed within the Bermuda Triangle … Remaining outside the boundaries of the known world, Marston’s Amazons are isolated from “man’s world” and safe from male domination’ (169). This outsider status, understood in both geographic and patriarchal terms meant the Amazon was traditionally a hostile figure that served to represent Greek dominance, and as Pitkethly notes ‘the defeat of an Amazon was a means of restoring order’ (166).8 Versions of the Amazonian myth also include Heracles’s (Hercules) ‘sexual defeat of Hippolyte’, symbolised by his taking of her girdle, and Theseus’s rape of another Amazonian queen, Antiope. In this way, Pitkethly argues, the ‘unconquered Amazon embodies the threat that the unmarried woman posed to patriarchal rule in classical Greece. Existing outside male governance, both the unmarried woman and the Amazon must be subject to male domination and defeat’ (176). In opposition to the spirit of Marston’s character, and with a depressing inevitability, Wonder Woman eventually marries Steve Trevor (Conway and Heck, 1987) and traditional gender relations and patriarchal dominance are restored. In this poorly conceived story that says everything about the limits of our imagination when it comes to gender norms and symbolic kinship, she is compelled to relinquish her birthright (Pitkethly, 2009:  180).9 More recently, though, an even greater affront to this ethos has taken place with Brian Azzarello being given permission not only to rewrite completely Wonder Woman’s origin story, but actually overturn it (Azzarello and Chiang, 2012a). Here, Diana’s birth from clay is revealed to be a lie and is replaced by a story in which her conception is the result of a heterosexual coupling between Hippolyte and Zeus, which Hippolyte has always concealed. Immediately, Wonder Woman is subjected to patriarchal hetero-normativity and her mother is recast within those normative conventions as a deceiver. It is hard to know where to start with this other than saying this is important because it is symptomatic of a wider problem pertaining to women in superhero comics and women in the comics industry as a whole. One thing we can be sure of is that such a radical revision would not be allowed with regard to either Superman or Batman. Origin stories are always altered to enable new narrative possibilities, but such an overturning of Wonder Woman’s origin would be equivalent to revealing that it was Bruce Wayne himself that murdered his parents and that his crusade against crime has been so obsessive and so violent because he is motivated by some psychotic delusion. The ‘man’ in Bruce Wayne’s pseudonym would, of course, never allow it, the ‘Woman’ in Diana’s seemingly does. While Azzarello otherwise does a wonderful job with the title, writing Diana as an incredibly strong and independent woman, and importantly has her resist marriage to Hades (Azzarello and Chiang, 2012b), this overturning of her origin is deeply problematic, if not utterly wrong.10 Before turning to The Hiketeia, it is worth considering one other element of the radical gesture that is Wonder Woman. This is a subject touched on by Pitkethly

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but is central to Ben Saunders’s interpretation and involves the ever-present motif of submission and bondage especially in the comics that Marston himself wrote.11 For Saunders, Wonder Woman is deconstructive in the sense that the very positing of the idea of a powerful Amazon troubles ‘what might otherwise appear fundamental’ (2011: 38) She is a woman that refuses traditional notions of femininity, a barbarian more civilised than those claiming to be the civilisers, and, at a time in which men sought to dominate the world, she was an agent advocating her creators philosophical belief in the benefits of submission. Already a ‘volatile … sexually ambiguous … politically charged’ term (41), Saunders argues that Marston’s Amazon was tasked with ‘the founding of a more peaceful and just society through the reformation of heterosexuality’ (41). Returning to Marston’s academic writings in psychology, Saunders does us a great favour by showing how the images of bondage that are so replete within Marston’s stories, and which are so readily and often dismissed as mere titillation for male readers, are actually rooted in a philosophy regarding the potential role human desire plays in society and politics. Saunders informs us that ‘Marston’s central thesis, baldly stated, is that all human sexual, social and political interactions can be explained in terms of the opposition between the “primary emotions” of “dominance” and “submission” ’ (46). Having conducted research into sorority, and to a lesser extent fraternity initiation games at a local college, Marston organised his thinking around two terms:  ‘pleasant captivation emotion’ or pleasure in domination, and ‘passion emotion’, which is the pleasure attained from submission. At this point, Saunders notes Marston’s dramatic leaps in logic when he goes on to claim that although men can take pleasure from submission the social construction of their sexuality confuses love with appetite (49) compelling them to seek pleasure from domination, and given that male sexuality is privileged within patriarchy it is not hard to see how patriarchal society is premised on the pleasures of domination. To counter this, liberty is to be sought via pleasure in submission, and while men are unable to do this, women, who according to Marston are socially constructed to take pleasure from both submission and domination, have the capacity to act as agents of social change, becoming what Marston called ‘love leaders’ in ‘a utopian project of “Emotional Re-Education” ’ (Saunders, 2011: 50). While Marston’s psychological research might easily be criticised as a fantasy projection for his own possible predilection for masochistic sexual practices, this insight into his world view and the socio-political context for Diana’s emergence as the first female superhero does challenge us to be far less dismissive of Wonder Woman’s mission. In fact, the potential of this radical gesture has never been fully realised, and when understood in terms of sovereignty, this politics of masochism has revolutionary potential. As Gilles Deleuze famously argued, the hyphen in sado-masochism that appears to link the two should in fact be removed because the two practices are diametrically opposed.12 While sadism has a closer relation

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to absolute sovereignty in that it denies speech to the victim whom the sadist addresses (Deleuze, 1991: 19), masochism requires speech in order to educate the elected ‘torturer’ into a mutual contract of desire, in which the dominated person is ultimately in control of the exchange, but it would take a very brave writer – and a revolution at DC – to take Wonder Woman in this direction. Strangely, though, comics publishers in 1942 seemed much more open to such radical storytelling than they are now. As Saunders rightly points out, the complex nature of this process of education into the benefits of submission are evident in numerous Wonder Woman stories but the political implications as well as the difficult task Marston allotted to women can be most explicitly seen in Sensation Comics #11 (Marston and Peter, 1942d). The ‘Mission to Planet Eros’ story takes Wonder Woman, Etta Candy and Steve Trevor (via astral projection) to the planet of Eros, which is ruled by women and where every female from the age of fifteen is required to spend time in female-run prisons designed for the maximisation of happiness and creativity. Inside one such prison, the achievements of the most talented of Eros’s women, who is an accomplished athlete as well as a brilliant electrical engineer, come to the attention of Eros’ Queen. In light of her abilities this brilliant woman, named Rebla, is ‘condemned to freedom’ when the Queen asks her to leave the prison and take on a political role as ruler of one of Eros’s regions. Unfortunately, her love of submission means she fails to do the job responsibly and conscientiously. As a result Eros is plunged into war, with men eventually taking over as Rebla hands over her duties to a man who goes by the name of Dominus, whom she nominates as the new ruler. Feeling she is now free to go back to prison where she was happiest she finds that the prisons on a planet ruled by men are radically different. They are not organised to foster creativity but to enforce discipline. At this point Rebla learns two lessons. The first is that domination can be conceived differently – if we go back to Deleuze that would be the difference between sadistic and masochistic modes of domination with these characterised as male and female in this Wonder Woman story  – and, secondly, she learns that the preservation of this second form of submission paradoxically requires strength, activity and commitment; it was her refusal to be free that led to the rule of Dominus. In the end, of course, it is only Wonder Woman’s strength, ably supported by Etta and Steve that wins the day. With a very significant slap, Dominus is put in his place and Eros is returned to its more humane social order. A number of these themes are picked up in Greg Rucka’s story The Hiketeia, which brilliantly draws out contesting visions of the law, issues of gender, and the politics of submission. The story centres on a ritual of supplication and promise that carries the weight of law and punishment for any forfeit. The ritual/law of hiketeia takes place when in exchange for protection supplicants debase and prostrate themselves before someone. As Wonder Woman describes the process of submission, ‘the supplicant denies his own worth and

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honor in the face of your own’ (Rucka and Jones, 2002: 6; italics in original). The supplicant’s single power is that only they can end the obligation. The key moment of the story comes when a young woman, Danielle Wellys, who has been shown killing a man, is on the run from Batman, who informs us that this was the fourth man she killed. Unaware of this, when Danielle arrives at the Themiscyrean Embassy in New  York City and prostrates herself before Wonder Woman, who accepts the plea, the Amazonian is immediately placed in conflict with Batman. It is also interesting to note that the recitation of the hiketeia on the steps of the Embassy is eroticised, which I believe is a genuine attempt to conjure the politics of desire and sexual pleasure that was so central to Marston’s concept. After the prostration, Danielle touches Diana’s lips with her black leather-gloved hand and then proceeds to kiss her thigh as she claims ‘by your breath will I buh-breathe … by your words will I sp-speak’ (25; italics in original). While Wonder Woman’s acceptance of the plea attracts the attention of the Erinyes, three avenging goddesses who severely punish amongst other things failure to uphold the responsibility of protection demanded by the hiketeia, Wonder Woman’s main problem quickly becomes Batman who tracks down Wellys at the Embassy. With the Erinyes looking on, Batman arrives on the balcony of Diana’s Embassy office. As she opens the balcony door Batman tells Diana: ‘You’re harbouring a fugitive, Princess. I’m here to take her back to Gotham’ (Rucka and Jones, 2002: 49; italics in original). To which Diana replies, ‘No. I can-not allow it’ (51). This sets in place an irresolvable conflict between Batman who represents the executive function of the sovereign state, upholder of the law against murder, and Wonder Woman who in accordance within the ancient law of her people is supplicated to protect someone she has taken into her care. Also, given that Batman is pursuing ‘justice’ for four dead men, and Wonder Woman has taken in Danielle as a ‘sister’ (62) it is not difficult to read this as a very clear analogy for gender politics. For Batman, then, Danielle belongs to him or rather she is subject to a patriarchal state law, whereas both Wonder Woman and Danielle are beholden to another law, one that in this instance we find out is directly linked to justice for women. When Batman dismisses the vow and tries to go through Wonder Woman, she reminds him that going through her is not possible and promptly punches him with such force he falls from the balcony and lands in the street. After the fight, Danielle decides to tell Wonder Woman the reason why she is being chased by Batman, and binds herself with Wonder Woman’s lasso to prove she is telling the truth about her baby sister, who was lured to Gotham by the chance to star in movies, but was deceived, abused and ultimately killed by a man who promised to care for her. As Danielle tells her story she explains these are men who ‘shame you. They take your worth’ (italics in original), and with this Danielle evokes the worth that one freely gives in the hiketeia, but which in the abusive relationship – one based on sadistic domination – is

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taken without consent. Danielle is therefore pursuing ‘justice’ for her sister whose abuse and death can be read as an instance of a much wider patriarchal violence against women. With the Erinyes already having reminded Wonder Woman that she is subject to their judgement, and with Batman claiming Danielle is subject to the law he represents, the abusive relationship that Danielle’s sister was subjected to is just one more iteration of the domination/submission theme that runs through The Hiketeia and comes to a head with one more confrontation between Batman and Wonder Woman. After recounting her story, Danielle believes she has asked Wonder Woman to take on too much and leaves the Embassy. Sworn to protect her Wonder Woman sets out to bring her back only to have to face Batman who has once again tracked Danielle down to an industrial site along the Hudson River. With both heroes having no choice but to fight for Danielle, Wonder Woman once again takes down Batman, this time flooring him and in an especially iconic moment she is drawn standing over him, foot on his head, declaring ‘Don’t. Get. Up’ (82). At this point, once Wonder Woman releases him he is shown to climb to his knees and himself engage in the hiketeia. His black leather-gloved hand reaches up to touch Wonder Woman’s lips and, just as Danielle had done, he kisses her thigh. Wonder Woman knows, however, that this is simply a ruse to prevent Wonder Woman hurting him in his pursuit of Danielle. ‘You abuse the ritual’, she says, as she kicks him over once more (italics in original). As the two heroes fight Danielle runs away and throws herself from the building on to rocks below, and despite Wonder Woman’s best efforts Danielle dies, but not before releasing her from her obligations. Based in Greek myth it is unsurprising that such an irreconcilable conflict should find its only ‘solution’ in death. It is a tragic conclusion played out many times before, not least in Sophocles’s Antigone, a play that I believe has very strong resonances with The Hiketeia. For many commentators, Sophocles’s play acts out a conflict between sovereign or state law as represented by the king of Thebes, Creon, and an alternative and older understanding of commitment in relation to family bonds whereby Antigone demands a proper burial for her brother, Polynices, whom Creon has declared a traitor to Thebes after Polynices died in battle challenging Creon’s right to rule. For her refusal to obey his command, Antigone is buried alive in a cave and dies there despite Creon later deciding he should free her. The play is of interest in the context of kinship for one other reason, namely that Antigone is the female offspring of the incestuous marriage between Oedipus and his mother, Jocasta. Given that the taboo against incest is the primary principle that structures kinship (Lévi-Strauss, 1969) Antigone’s gesture of respect towards her brother and her declared love for him – going as far as to express a desire to have been his bride – is a double affront to sovereign authority. Antigone not only challenges the sovereign authority of the king, but in questioning the primary rule regarding exogamy that is supposed to govern all

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social and sexual relations she also challenges symbolic authority. As Judith Butler has argued, ‘Antigone’s power, to the extent that she still wields it for us, has to do not only with how kinship makes its claims within the language of the state but with the social deformation of both idealized kinship and political sovereignty that emerges as a consequence of her act’ (2000: 6; italics in original). Although in Greek myth incest is never too far away  – Ares, father of Hippolyta, for example is said to have taken his sister Enyo as his lover – the subject of incest is not especially important here. Reading Wonder Woman, the fact that she comes from a matriarchal society where erotic, rather than reproductive relations can be assumed to take place amongst women and that until very recently her birth took place without male intercession already suggests that the character represents a significant deformation of idealised, symbolic kinship structures. If we add to this the nature of the hiketeia, which puts her in direct conflict with the policing of state law by obliging her to protect a young woman now nominated as her sister, the resonance with Antigone is quite clear. That Antigone’s challenge to Creon is a deformation of kinship and masculine authority is registered by the fact that she is described as ‘manly’ in the play, a charge regularly laid against Amazons. The ‘manly’ nature of Wonder Woman was evident from her first appearance in Sensation Comics #1 where she is shown rescuing the prone, passive and incapacitated Steve Trevor, and depicted carrying him to hospital (Marston and Peter, 1942b:  2).13 This reversal of gender roles would have been so shocking to the comic’s contemporary readers that Marston felt the need to gratuitously ‘feminise’ her on the next page by having her delight in ‘window shopping’ (3) before his ‘brazen’ heroine leapt a car to halt a gang of gun wielding bank robbers. For Butler, such ‘manliness’ comes from Antigone’s ‘appropriation of the authoritative voice’ (2000: 11). She challenges Creon as to the legitimacy of his command by claiming the legitimacy of her own act. In The Hiketeia, this appropriation is especially pronounced not only in Danielle’s recitation of the rite which renders Batman impotent, but also in the numerous times Wonder Woman tells Batman that he cannot and will not do what he declares is required of him by law (Rucka and Jones, 2002: 51 and 82). Continuing this theme, it is possible to argue that Danielle’s claim, like Antigone’s is ‘an unanticipated appropriation and perversion of [the law’s] own mandate’ (54). Batman, the sovereign protector is undone by Danielle’s appeal to Wonder Woman as an alternative protector. Declared a sister by Wonder Woman, the mandate Batman has to defend the law and prosecute criminals is undermined by Danielle’s recitation of the hiketeia. We could go a little further and say the authority mandated to Batman as an agent of the law is switched for the authority (and greater strength) mandated to Wonder Woman when she names Danielle her sister and thereby accepts her as kin. In this sense, the parallels between Antigone and The Hiketeia are strong. The fact that the story ends in the tragic death of Danielle only adds

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to the complementarity because, just like Antigone, by invoking another law ‘she becomes one for whom the speech act is a fatal crime’ (Butler, 2000: 82). In other words, appeals to an alternative law are doomed. One further element of Butler’s approach that is relevant here and provides an important bridge to the following section is her argument that Antigone’s desire exposes the ‘socially contingent character of kinship’ (6). For Butler, Levi-Strauss’s symbolic account of kinship pertains to ‘the threshold rules that make culture possible and intelligible’ (16–17), and these rules are assumed to be natural and universal. Through the taboo on incest, and the exogamous exchange of women, kinship is symbolically organised as patriarchal and heterosexual, and in Antigone’s desire for Polynices she rejects the former and radically deforms the latter. In Butler’s reading of the play, ‘Antigone is one for whom symbolic positions have become incoherent’ (22) or one for whom symbolic kinship has become a ‘curse’ (66). Antigone is the ‘the scandalously impure’ (5), and although I don’t have the space to work through the various conceptual moves Butler makes in her three essays on the play her conclusion is that Antigone’s impurity is ultimately ‘fatal for heterosexuality’ (72) because she undermines the position of the patriarch that currently polices those relations. By appropriating the male voice, by rendering the agent of the law impotent and by giving precedence to her ‘sister’, it is not difficult to show how Wonder Woman and Danielle radically undermine the symbolic authority that claims a particular organisation of kinship relations is universal. In the next section I want to move on to explore how a genre of comics seemingly replete with law enforcing patriarchs and crude representations of hetero-normativity in fact offers an extremely challenging view of what does and does not qualify as kin by offering us all manner of perverse couplings that point to a radical reconception of sovereignty. Totemism One immediately obvious way in which superhero comics might be said to direct us towards alternative forms of kinship is through the overt totemism displayed when a character adopts a name. Superhero comics present universes in which humans as a matter of course take up kinship relations with aliens, animals, plants, minerals, energy forms, planets, machines and cosmic forces. A suited-up Batman immediately acknowledges the bat as his kindred spirit or totem, a word that comes from the Ojibwa language where ototeman means ‘relative of mine’ (Lévi-Strauss, 1962: 18).14 When superhero comics are denigrated as a form of para-literature dependent upon the wild imaginings of fantasy I would argue instead that they actually articulate an important intuition about connectivity and collectivity amongst divergent entities and objects that the supposed rational literature of the sciences regularly disavows. I will return to that specific topic in the next section, for now it is necessary only to register that for Emile Durkheim

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totemism is not a relation of blood but one of name: the clan or family is ‘collectively designated by the same word’ (1915, 102), usually ‘the name of a determined species of material things’ (102).15 This is the totem. The kinship provided by the name is specific to a clan but it equally applies to anyone sharing the name irrespective of the geographic position in a territory. As Durkheim goes on to note, by far the majority of totems in the clans he studied were animals, followed by forms of vegetation. Other totems included ‘clouds, rain, hail, frost, the moon, the sun, the wind, the autumn, the summer, the winter, certain stars, thunder, fire, smoke, water or the sea’ (103–4). The name is also an emblem, Durkheim likens this to ‘a veritable coat-of-arms’ (113), and is something that immediately evokes the insignia worn by superheroes, or something like the Bat signal that can be used to call all members of the Bat family together.16 As Durkheim points out, members of the clan will place the emblem on all kinds of objects, but they also mark themselves with it: ‘they imprint it upon their flesh, it becomes a part of them’ (115–16). The idea that clan members seek ‘to give themselves the external aspect of their totem’ (116) returns us to Coogan’s definition of the superhero whereby a costume and emblem should externalise some aspect of ‘inner character or biography’ (2006: 32). The name and the emblem then take on a sacred status and are related to a variety of rites, taboos and proscriptions, all of which suggests that totemism is ‘dominated by the idea of a quasi-religious principle’ (Durkheim, 1915: 205), but this is precisely what Durkheim wants us to see differently. Religion, he argues, is based on a sentiment of dependence: we owe our existence and continued life to God, for example, and yet ‘society also gives us the sensation of a perpetual dependence’ (206). For Durkheim, the worship of God or gods is therefore the sublimated expression of this fundamental sense of our dependence on society. ‘We speak a language we did not make’, he writes, ‘we use instruments that we did not invent; we invoke rights that we did not found; a treasury of knowledge is transmitted to each generation that it did not gather itself ’ (212). As a consequence it is impossible to escape the idea that there are ‘active causes’ (212) outside of us that determine who we are. Durkheim sees the same process in political sovereignty where a monarch comes to stand for and is singularly invested with this determining power.17 Totemism, as a form of religion, is thus the ability of a clan to recognise ‘the external forces which dominate them and at the same time sustain them’ (214). This recognition then takes the form of a totemic emblem that signifies their dependence on each other and their dependence on the wider environment. This is further in evidence by Durkheim’s claim that the ‘religious sentiments inspired by the [totemic] animal are communicated to the substances upon which it is nourished and which serve to make or remake its flesh and blood, to the things that resemble it, and to the different beings with which it has constant relations. Thus, little by little, sub-totems are attached to the totem and [form] the cosmological systems

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expressed by the primitive classifications’ (223). In order to add more to this claim regarding totemism as the worship of society, he argues that an animal was more often chosen as they ‘constituted an essential element of the [clan’s] economic environment’ (233), and that a specific animal was chosen quite often due to its abundance at the ‘place where [the clan] had the habit of meeting’ (234). While superheroes clearly represent the modern totem of god-like sovereignty in which social dependence is condensed in one name and one emblem – Superman as Hope, Batman as Order  – I  would also like to argue that the animals, plants, minerals and types of energy they adopt also speaks to a much more ‘primitive’ and potentially less ‘sovereign’ approach to social relations and to what is classified as belonging to our social environment. While Batman as sovereign might stand for our desire for social order, for the rigid maintenance of the difference between right and wrong, Batman’s totem animal speaks to something else, something that certainly hides away from the brilliant light of sovereignty. In Durkheim’s language there is a strong ‘sentiment’ that dependence extends beyond human society, and it is my argument that superheroes’ relations to animals, plants, minerals and the elements is an expression of our often disavowed dependence on them. Just as sub-totems evolve around all the things that sustain a totemic animal, superheroes might be said to represent and acknowledge our kinship with all those things that sustain us and upon which we are also dependent. Rather than providing a name or an emblem that unites us – which they do very well with Superman and Captain America – they also indicate a fundamental dispersal of our identity across a range of entities that support our lives. Just as the sun, the wind, the rain, the lizard, a particular rock, the caterpillar and the yam might be part of a clan’s cosmological order, the totemic nature of superhero affinities with animals, plants, machines and other entities sets out a cosmological order beyond the confines of the human or any national subset thereof. In this they offer themselves up to radically alternative readings of our kinship with things with which we don’t normally assume we have anything in common. This should be no surprise given that the ultimate totemic emblem signifying a unitary sovereignty already contained a hybridity that it sought to disavow. As Carl Schmitt noted in his treatise on Hobbes, the Leviathan, rather than being a symbol of political unity, was in fact ‘a mythical totality composed of god, man, animal, and machine’ (2008: 19). The fact that Schmitt goes on to talk about this as ‘a monstrosity’ and ‘a grotesque horror show’ (81) says more about his own politics than it does about a sovereignty that in truth can only ever be socially and environmentally dispersed as I will discuss. The sovereign already contains the ferocity of a beast, the divinity of a god, the social armature of institutions, laws and techniques, while also being personified in a particular monarch. Therefore, to start to speak of a sovereign identity that goes beyond a named collection of humans is consequently not quite so radical. And while superheroes tell us so much about the nature, characteristics and operations of a sovereign supposed

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to produce and secure a unitary identity they also offer us innumerable paths to the ‘monster’ that such a conception of sovereignty tries its best to disavow. This is another reason why superheroes are so important when analysing sovereignty. These supposed monsters are totems that signal a conception of society beyond the violence, domination, exclusion and persecution that comes with a vision of unitary sovereignty. I have argued that contrary to popular conceptions, superheroes constantly articulate the problematic nature of such sovereignty but I will also argue they offer us ways to move beyond it and radically rethink who and what is our kin. Although the list of superheroes and their totems would be very long, with Iron Man representing our dependency on technology, Aquaman our dependency on water and the oceans, or the Flash representing our dependency on time, there are two superheroes that explicitly deal with the theme of connectedness and dependency that totemism assumes. These two heroes are Animal Man and Swamp Thing. In the first issue of Grant Morrison’s run on Animal Man, we find him contemplating ‘going full time into the superhero business’ (Morrison, Truog and Hazelwood, 1991: 5; italics in original)18 with the hope of joining the Justice League International and having a proper career that pays (unlike his part time acting roles). A little later, we find that there’s also ‘something else … It’s like … I’m a fish on a line. I’ve been swimming for eight years without realizing I’m hooked’ (12; italics in original). There then begins a gradual unfolding of Buddy Baker’s quest to work out how he became Animal Man and what his purpose is. For those familiar with the run, you will know that Grant Morrison gradually writes himself into the comic as a postmodern creator God with a love for metafiction,19 but I wish to stick with Animal Man’s superhero origin story rather than his origin as a work of fiction. In the rest of volume 1, we find the rather flippant and superficial Baker becoming increasingly politicised. Becoming a vegetarian is only the beginning of a journey that takes him via ‘hunt sabbing’ to animal liberation.20 This politicisation of Buddy Baker around animal welfare is evidence he believes we have a responsibility to treat animals with the same care that we would other members of our community. In issue 11 (Morrison, Truog and Hazelwood, 2002), the aliens that gave Animal Man his powers return to Earth explaining they need to repair the ‘morphogenetic grafts’ (52) that allow him to assume animal powers, and that to run the repairs they need to place him in what they call the Template, a continuum out of which  – as we discover in issue 12  – all life forms emerge. Once he is brought back into the world, Baker’s powers are now changed in that he no longer needs to be in proximity to a particular animal to assume their abilities he can access any and all powers remotely via the ‘morphogenetic field’ (Morrison, Truog and Hazelwood, 2002: 22).21 It is here that we discover the aliens have themselves been visiting Earth in the guise of animals explaining how ‘in the form of Ananse, the spider god, we brought the tantu totem to mankind’ (2002: 92).

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It is not until issue 18, though, that we first see what Animal Man is connected to when inside the Template or has access to the morphogenetic field. When drinking a mescalin solution with James Highwater, a character whose search for identity has tied him to Animal Man throughout the story, they both begin to hallucinate and find themselves connected to the limitlessness of the cosmos.22 At this point, a fox describing himself as ‘the totem’ (20) announces himself to both of them, thereby also picking up the fox motif that has run throughout the story in relation to Baker’s hunt sabbing and his companion the Vixen who accompanies him in his encounter with the aliens.23 Here, we see Baker’s first vision of the Template, surrounded by the spirits of animals he describes as his totems (21) each of which is the ideal form of every species of which he is now part.24 As Highwater explains, ‘you’re connected to the essence of every creature that has ever existed’ (22). Although Morrison’s Platonic interpretation of the totem doesn’t fit easily with Durkheim’s, the totemic animal was never a specific creature. Any fox, for example, is representative of the totemic species of which it is part. I would contend, then, that while superheroes regularly take animals as their totems, Animal Man represents the totemic relation itself and articulates our deep kinship with and dependency on the animal kingdom. Aside from Animal Man, another character that clearly marks our connectedness and mutual dependency, this time to the realm of plants and vegetation, is Swamp Thing. In the first chapter of Book 1 of Alan Moore’s run (Moore, Bissette and Totleben, 1987), we find Swamp Thing, formerly the chemist Alec Holland, in a cryo-chamber, presumed dead after being shot. He is the ‘property’ of a company looking to exploit the ‘bio-restorative formula [that] turned Alec Holland into a plant’ (20).25 We are also introduced to Julian Woodrue, aka the Fluronic Man, who has been brought in to do the work. With Woodrue having explained that a plant cannot be killed by shooting it through the head, the opening chapter finishes with Swamp Thing coming back to life or regrowing as he thaws and escaping from the chamber to kill the person that had tried to imprison him. Woodrue has planned this so that he might track Swamp Thing and learn more about his own plant-based superpowers. We then learn in ­chapter 2 that while Woodrue can communicate with plants and even control them he doesn’t know what it is to be a plant. Unlike Swamp Thing, he is removed from that ‘viridian state of grace’ (50). Much like the totemic Animal Man, Swamp Thing is an Earth Elemental in direct contact with all plant life. We are then introduced to Moore’s great gift to the Swamp Thing mythos: that which connects all forms of vegetation, ‘the Green’ (53). When Woodrue meets up with Swamp Thing inside the Green he thanks him for providing the link to what he calls the ‘emerald throne’ (86) and explains his desire to see the Green rule and rid the world of the humans and animals that threaten it. At this stage, Swamp Thing points out the interconnectedness and mutual dependency of everything within an ecosystem and asks what will produce the gasses necessary for their survival when all animal

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life is dead (95). What is interesting to note in relation to sovereignty here is precisely how Swamp Thing opposes his view of a community without borders or limits in which all living things are seen as kindred with Woodrue’s much more traditional understanding of hierarchical rule based on a specific identity. Alongside Swamp Thing’s struggle with the Fluronic Man, we are also shown him gradually rekindling his relationship with friend and future wife, Abby Cable. It is here that the theme of our connectedness to and dependency on non-human entities takes us back to the explicit issue of symbolic kinship and normalised family relations, as well as the supposedly monstrous couplings that will be discussed in the next section. In Book 2 (Moore, Bisette and Totleben, 2009) the friends become lovers after a series of traumatic events.26 In a conversation between Abby and Swamp Thing at the start of issue 34, Abby asks permission to pick a flower growing from Swamp Thing’s chest and tells him he looks best in spring (202). She continues to explain that there was little love between her and her husband Matt (who, after an accident, now lies in a coma from which he is not expected to recover) and asks if it would be wrong to have strong feelings for someone else. When Swamp Thing realises she is talking about him, they kiss and such intimate contact leads on to a discussion about the possibility of a relationship that as far as Abby can tell could never be consummated: ‘but there … should be … some form … of communion’ (208; italics in original), Swamp Thing hesitatingly replies. He then takes an hallucinogenic tuber from his body, washes it in the river and asks Abby to eat it, after which follows six of the most extraordinary double pages in comics history as Abby and Swamp Thing quite clearly have some form of sex (219). The final page of this set portrays Abby and Swamp Thing achieving orgasm, mouths slightly parted, and connected via something that looks simultaneously like a heart, a uterus and a vulva. Their relationship eventually becomes a problem when intimate photos of Swamp Thing and Abby are circulated without their knowledge (Moore and Totleben, 1986). Abby is subsequently arrested for consorting with ‘a genuine non-human organism’ (Moore et al., 2002: 10) and charged with ‘crimes against nature’ (8). In the next issue, Swamp Thing goes berserk, having tracked her down in a Gotham courtroom where she is appearing after jumping bail. As people draw guns and threaten to take him down, he mocks human violence and the supposed sovereignty they claim over nature. Contemplating how much he has learned from ‘the parliament of trees’ (56) that gave him counsel inside the Green, he knows humans can do little if anything to stop him. Having entered Batman’s jurisdiction, we see the Dark Knight vainly try to spray Swamp Thing with defoliant. Realising the need to compromise, Batman visits the District Attorney to point out that the anti-miscegenation laws used to annul the marriage between Swamp Thing and Abby make no sense, and consistency would require him to arrest Hawkman and Metamorpho (76), Starfire, Martian Manhunter, Captain Atom and ‘What’s-his-name … the one who lives

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in metropolis’ (77; italics in original), who have all partaken in inter-species relationships. With Batman having come to an agreement with Swamp Thing and arranged Abby’s release, Swamp Thing is ambushed when he comes to meet her on the courtroom steps. A dart is shot into his head that disables his ability to move through vegetation and then he is napalmed. Swamp Thing does, however, survive the attack by casting his essence into the farthest reaches of the universe and taking root on some distant planet. In Book 6, he approaches divinity as he becomes connected to any and all plant life across the cosmos. With his journey back to Earth taking a considerable time, the Parliament of Trees assumes he is dead and a new Earth Elemental is created. Known only as the Sprout, Swamp Thing is asked to kill it on his eventual return, as there cannot be two Earth Elementals at the same time. There then begins a rather elaborate plan to save the Sprout by finding it a body. Abby and Swamp Thing decide to have a child that can be a vessel for the Sprout. In issue 76, and using John Constantine as a surrogate, Swamp Thing possesses him in order to have sex with Abby who becomes pregnant (Veitch, 1988). The child is born in issue 90 and is named Tefé after the river that runs beside the Parliament of Trees (Wheeler and Broderick, 1989). Although the story arc in Book 7 that introduces the Sprout is problematic in terms of gender politics, as Abby seems to be reduced to a state of almost passive domesticity and Swamp Thing is shown on one occasion to enter her in spirit form without consent, this coupling between plant and human does point to the very alternative kinship relations that thrive just beneath the surface of stories deemed to be conservative and brings us back to the more explicit issue about symbolic kinship and the nature of the family with which this chapter started. If we look at Tefé, she is certainly the product of an exogamous, heterosexual relationship and yet the ‘exo’ and the ‘hetero’ both gesture to something radically unconventional. Leaving aside the fact that her grandfather is a member of the undead, Tefé’s direct kin consist of a father who is a plant and a human mother, who used a surrogate father for conception. If we also add to this the fact that Constantine had the blood of the demon, Negral, running through him at the time it should also be noted that Tefé is part demon. Couplings and collectives While Animal Man and Swamp Thing exemplify the alternative kinship relations that are an integral part of numerous superhero comics, it is Swamp Thing that also epitomises the perverse couplings (Haraway, 1991) that make up our world and yet are disavowed by a rationality privileging rigid identities and discrete, impervious boundaries. One of the most ardent critiques of these supposedly impervious boundaries has been Donna Haraway whose work can be summed up in the statement ‘All that is unhuman is not un-kind’ (1997: 8). Working within the relatively new discipline of science and technology studies, she has regularly challenged claims to

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objectivity in science that separate the sovereign scientific subject from the disparate entities it is said to observe and manipulate. In contrast to this, Haraway offers a vision of the laboratory in which technologies, animals, plant life, discourses and social institutions all play their part in the production of truth. Likewise, Haraway’s social analysis highlights our dependencies on all kinds of entities that she draws into our community, asking us to contemplate the idea that the non-human is not ‘outside kinship’ (8). This is not simply an epistemological claim. It is an ethical and political one that asks us to change our stance towards non-humans and recognise their contribution to our community that is much more diverse than we are prepared to admit. In Haraway’s early work, the figure that stood for such affinities or couplings was the cyborg.27 Echoing Butler’s claims about social rather than symbolic kinship, Haraway described the cyborg as ‘a creature of social reality’, where social reality meant the heterogeneity of ‘lived social relations’ (1991: 149) within a diverse group of humans, animals, plants, and machines that does not comply with dominant symbolic norms.28 For Haraway, the figure of the cyborg was always ‘an argument for pleasure in the confusion of boundaries’ (1991: 150). On this issue, it is also interesting for the purposes of this chapter to see that Haraway notes how the Amazon’s ‘boundary pollutions’ (180) make her a good companion for the cyborg. The Amazon is both female and male, presumed to be bisexual, and refuses the symbolic norms of patriarchy. Importantly for Haraway, the figure of the cyborg also ‘skips the step of original unity’ (151), the illusion of the One (177), that she argues underpins all racist and chauvinistic discourse integral to a sovereign identity. The cyborg is always a composite of multiple identities that disturbs racist dreams of purity. In Haraway’s appropriation of the term the cyborg enacts three specific boundary breakdowns (151): the division between human and animal; the division between organic and inorganic, or the machine; and the division between the physical and the non-physical, which registers how the physical world is always already caught up in language and discourse.29 The cyborg, then, marks an ontology of joint kinship and partial, polymorphous identities. It is a ‘collective’ that is continually ‘disassembled and reassembled’ (163) depending on its relations with the diverse entities that sustain it.30 This is very much in keeping with Bruno Latour’s conception of truth as a social and political process (1999: 304) through which a ‘heterogeneous assembly’ of differentiated things becomes what he calls a ‘common collective’ (98). By this he means that any new fact, or what is newly deemed to be true or false, is newly assembled from numerous material, legal, economic and linguistic components. In other words, what we perceive to be a single thing, artefact or phenomenon is always a ‘body corporate’ (192). Understood in sovereign terms, Latour writes ‘there is no higher court that would be above the collective’ (162; italics in original). In other words, there is no position from which an individual or a specific institution could separate itself from its mutual dependence on others and claim

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supreme authority. This is because an understanding of collectives ‘signifies a cosmopolitics that collects us all’ (297).31 If we were to understand Batman in these ‘collective’ terms we would need to start with the totemism of the bat to show how the human and the animal – the human and the beast – are linked, but we would need to add the many machines and technologies upon which he is dependent, plus his surrogate son and father, Robin and Alfred. We would also need to add Joe Chill, an alleyway, a pistol, the night, a cave, computers, Wayne Enterprises, the military–industrial complex, Commissioner Gordon, the (former) Oracle, The Joker, Kate Kane, Catwoman, an asylum, Gotham, the discourse of law and order and a piece of communication called the Bat-signal. All of these become the collective that is Batman, and Batman is significantly diminished without these other things.32 This also brings us back to Durkheim’s important argument that totemism signifies kinship through name not blood. While it is possible to make collective analyses of all the supposedly individual superheroes, the heroes that are most explicitly amenable to a discussion of heterogeneous collectives are the Green Lantern Corps who made their first appearance in 1959. The Green Lantern Corps are specifically chosen by the Guardians to protect the 3600 sectors into which they have divided the universe. The most well-known Green Lantern of sector 2814 (the one that contains Earth) is Hal Jordan who replaced the Golden Age Alan Scott. As the Green Lantern mythos developed the Corps were made up of alien species from every sector, some of which are humanoid, some of which are reptilian, others might be described as arthropodic. What matters, however, is that once a Lantern takes up a ring that is the source of a Green Lantern’s power they are kindred, not just a team, but a clan or a family. Here, it is the name of the totemic object that signifies kinship. Over the years this name has enabled some rather interesting entities to join the Corps. Amongst these are Mogo, a sentient planet; Amanita, a giant mushroom; the blue whale known as Earth’s Green Lantern from the year 2029; a super-powerful box, appropriately called B’ox; Percival, a leprechaun; Olapet, a self-reproducing plant-like being; Chaselon, a sentient crystalline entity; a gaseous energy form called Flod Span; a super-intelligent small-pox virus called Leezle Pon; and Dkrtzy RRR, a sentient, abstract mathematical progression. What is interesting here is that the writers of this comic have no problem thinking about the kinship of Green Lanterns in ways that radically overturn the anthropocentrism of which Haraway and Latour are so critical. Why not include a mathematical progression, a planet, a crystal, a virus, or a gas given that these entities all form part of the complex cosmopolitics that mediate and connect our complex physical and social relations? With these connections in mind, Haraway is drawn to figures like the cyborg or the vampire because they epitomise the ‘category transformations [and] illegitimate passages’ (1997: 214) she seeks to affirm. From the perspective of the dominant, the vampire’s primary labour, she writes, ‘is the pollution of natural

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kinds’ (80), which is also why, she argues, it is not surprising that queer theorists find a certain kinship with them. Ultimately, for Haraway these transgressive flows, ‘not the blood ties … are the circulatory systems that constitute kinship’ (134). Although purists seek the ‘sterilization of category deviants’ (2003: 4) – the equivalent of the sovereign ban – it is imperative if we are to avoid violence, exclusion, and discrimination that we understand that what we call the family is in fact ‘a mess’ (1997: 121). To speak of cyborgs, Amazons, and vampires is therefore a kinship claim for a ‘queer family’ (11) in which queer stands for the social reality of diverse, complex and often disavowed relationships between a variety of ethnic, sexual and gender identifying humans, as well as animals, machines, objects and discourses. In her most recent book, When Species Meet, Haraway’s understanding of kinship is registered in the phrase ‘companion species’, which ‘designates webbed bio-social-technical apparatuses of humans, animals, artefacts and institutions in which particular ways of being emerge and are sustained’ (2008: 134). These, she says, are ‘relationships-in-progress … of kin and kind’ (134). They are ‘emergent and unsettled … in a force field subject to “torque” ’ (134). Kinship, then, is not some permanent quality (blood) to be repeated over and over again, but a modulating, flexible and transforming name for set of relationships resistant to sovereign policing. It should be added, of course, that this view of kinship is not just ‘unsettled’, it is also unsettling, and yet as I have argued so far this radically alternative view of kinship between humans, animals, plants, machines, minerals, elements, planets, language and information is not at all troubling for readers and writers of superhero comics. To return to the specific issue of the family, aside from Swamp Thing and Abby, the most famous couple that pollutes ‘natural kinds’ is Scarlet Witch and The Vision. Unlike another interesting couple, Quasar and Moondragon – a lesbian couple, in which Quasar is also happy with the idea that Moondragon is actually or can morph into a dragon (Gage and Lily, 2007)33 – which might be argued to be less central to the Marvel universe, Scarlet Witch and The Vision are two of the most well-known characters, with Scarlet Witch having been an Avenger since 1965. Her real name is Wanda Maximoff and she is a mutant with incredible magical (known as ‘hex’) powers. She was a member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants but abandoned what she was told was her kind to join the Avengers. In the first volume of the Vision and the Scarlet Witch miniseries (Mantlo and Leonardi, 1983), she discovers that the leader of the Brotherhood, Max Eisenhardt, aka Magneto, is her father.34 Although Scarlet Witch’s heritage is complicated it is nothing compared to The Vision’s. He first appeared in The Avengers as an enemy (Thomas and Buscema, 1968). He is referred to as an android or synthezoid created by Ultron, a robot that was in turn created by the Avenger Hank Pym. In a peculiar Oedipal turn, Ultron becomes evil and creates the The Vision in order to kill his ‘father’. After The Vision turns out to be a good guy and helps the Avengers defeat Ultron we discover in issue 67 (Thomas

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and Windsor-Smith, 1969) that Ultron has programmed The Vision to recreate Ultron should he be destroyed. Here the ‘son’ assumes the role of the ‘father’. If this family is already a mess, it should be noted that Ultron created The Vision’s mind from the brain patterns of the dead Wonder Man stored in suspended animation (whose own super-powered heritage is the work of Heinrich Zemo and the Enchantress) and his body from the original Human Torch. With such troubled family life it is hardly surprising The Vision and Scarlet Witch see themselves as kindred spirits. In The Avengers #109, Scarlet Witch declares to the other Avengers that she and The Vision are in love. Tony Stark offers his support, but is worried: ‘I’ll say a little prayer, too, because society isn’t going to go for this once the news gets out … I hope you know what you’re letting yourselves in for’ (Englehart and Heck, 1973a: 8; italics in original). In the following issue, Quicksilver, who has just announced his own engagement to the Inhuman, Crystal, declares himself to be ‘head of the family’ (Englehart and Heck, 1973b: 5) and proclaims in true despotic style that the relationship is wrong and forbids it. Once the news gets out, a fundamentalist Christian group is shown to protest against the idea that a marriage between the two implicitly recognises the rights of robots and seeks to prevent this happening by arming themselves as suicide bombers. One detonates herself next to The Vision and almost ‘kills’ him (Englehart and Brown, 1973). Despite continued opposition they get married and move to the west coast. In issue 4 of volume 2 of the Vision and the Scarlet Witch miniseries (Englehart and Howell, 1986a) Wanda becomes pregnant and in issue 12 she gives birth to two boys with Dr Strange (Englehart and Howell, 1986b) playing midwife. The obvious question is how this was possible, given that The Vision is a robot. As might be imagined, the answer reveals a problem that in true superhero style threatens to undermine the very fabric of reality itself. In Avengers:  West Coast #51 Agatha Harkness, a very powerful witch who has given guidance to Wanda, pays a visit because she is concerned about her children (Byrne, 1989). Harkness asks if Scarlet Witch has noticed how her children, Thomas and William, disappear when she is not thinking about them, a fact that she refuses to accept. It then transpires that the children are projections created by the Scarlet Witch, using her ‘hex’ powers, and animated by fragments of Master Pandemonium’s soul. At the end of issue 51, he steals them back and in an image of utter horror is shown wearing the children in place of his arms. After Mephisto has revealed himself as the true owner of the soul fragments and the real villain behind Master Pandemonium’s appearance, Agatha Harkness erases the children from Scarlet Witch’s memory, which also disrupts Mephisto’s attempt to claim back the soul fragments and he in turn disappears. Harkness goes on to explain that this was the only way to defeat Mephisto and also preserve Wanda’s sanity as her continued efforts to maintain the existence of her imaginary children was also causing a potentially

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catastrophic strain on her own psyche. When Wanda’s memory of the children is re-awoken after a careless remark made by The Wasp, Wanda attacks the Avengers, whom she blames for stealing her children. Using her reality-altering powers, she proceeds to disassemble the world (Bendis and Finch, 2009). For some commentators, the destruction that follows is evidence of the inherent sexism of these stories where powerful heroines, like Jean Grey becoming Dark Phoenix, ultimately become a threat, but the comics suggest otherwise. Just as Judith Butler argued when writing about the tragedy of Antigone, it is more a story about how a break with symbolic kinship equals the ‘immanent threat of psychosis’ (2000:  70). In order to hold back such a breakdown, the Scarlet Witch created children in order to fit in with the symbolic norms that had always situated her as an outsider and a freak. As Dr Strange explained:  ‘here’s a woman for whom, by the nature of her upbringing and chosen occupation  …  every day is stressful, chaotic  …  and after a life lived with lost love, violence and drama, what does she do? She says to herself: “I deserve happiness. I want to bring something into this world that is good. That I can love” … She played Mommy to make herself feel like someone she thinks is normal’ (Bendis and Finch, 2009: n.p.; italics in original). This story, then, rather than being another expression of lazy sexism is actually a very serious engagement with the violence inherent in the social normativity around kinship and the despotic sovereignty that polices it. Notes  1 Although still at the margins, hetero-normativity is slowly being challenged with DC and Marvel increasingly addressing their woeful record on diversity. Despite Marvel’s questionable early attempts to include gay characters, such as Northstar’s coming-out story (Lobdell and Pacella, 1992), his recent marriage to his long-time partner (Liu and Perkins, 2012) indicates that things are improving, as does the unsensational and straightforward way in which diversity has been presented in the recent Young Avengers (Gillen and McKelvie, 2013) run in which there is much greater equality in terms of ethnicity, gender and sexuality. DC has also done some great work in this area with the character of Renee Montoya (Rucka, Brubaker and Lark, 2011) being a brilliant example, as was the relaunch of Batwoman, where Kate Kane was an openly gay character (Johns et  al., 2006). Although DC have gone on to introduce their first transgender character, Batgirl’s room-mate Alysia (Simone and Sampere, 2013), DC did cause some controversy when long-time artist and later writer of Batwoman, J. H. Williams III, resigned from the title because DC refused to endorse a story arc in which Kate Kane married her partner Maggie Sawyer.  2 The importance of the family is also evidenced by the fact that the modern Marvel universe was launched with the dysfunctional, surrogate family, the Fantastic Four. Here, Reed Richards and Sue Storm (later Sue Richards) play the role of parents to the boisterous, grumpy and often irresponsible Human Torch (Johnny Storm) and The

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Thing (Ben Grimm). That the mother and son relation is played out between brother and sister adds an extra layer of abnormality to this curious nuclear family.  3 Not only is the orphan a central signifier of superhero identity, it also sets the scene for the playing out of the Oedipus complex, another recurring motif in many biographies, as heroes and heroines alike have to wrestle with unresolved parental issues, such as Jor-El’s constant haunting of Superman (Coogan, 2006: 100).  4 This duality in Superman’s biography has also been used to very good dramatic effect, most recently in the New Krypton story arc (Johns et al., 2009) in which Superman’s loyalties were put to the test after he rescued the bottled city of Kandor from Brainiac’s ship and it, together with all its Kryptonian inhabitants, returned to their proper size in an area of the Arctic near his Fortress of Solitude. Such conflicts are also central to other major superheroes including the Green Lanterns who are regularly troubled by the need to observe the rule of the Guardians and the obligations they feel to those who inhabit the sector of the universe they defend (O’Neil and Adams, 1970), or characters like Thor whose loyalty to Asgard and the customs of the Norse gods is constantly problematised by his identification with the humans he has befriended (Lee and Kirby, 1964a). This conflict is especially tragic in the case of the Silver Surfer, who sacrificed his freedom to save his own world, but as Galactus’s herald struggles with the consequences of his decision to serve the needs of this world destroyer (Lee and Buscema, 1968a).  5 This resistance to patriarchal order is evident in Hippolyte’s name, which literally means ‘untamed horse’ or ‘untamed mare’ and is a clear marker of the nature of the Amazonian threat to patriarchal civilisation.  6 This is widely understood to be a reference to Marston’s own involvement in the development of the polygraph or lie detector.  7 After 1492, the Amazons were said to reside in the New World and were to be tamed and civilised by Christian colonisers. In the seventeenth century, the Amazon became a figure of the newly tamed and submissive American continent.  8 In December 1941, the same month that Pearl Harbour was attacked, Wonder Woman ‘inverted the hierarchy of dominance and submission’ (Pitkethly, 2009: 164). Wonder Woman takes ‘enlightened Amazonian culture’ (177) to ‘man’s world’.  9 Fortunately, post-crisis this marriage is written out of continuity and Diana Trevor, Steve’s mother, is shown to have first discovered Paradise Island. In this story she is recognised for her heroic contribution to Amazonian society in a time of great need when the Cottus threatened to destroy them (Wein and Pérez, 1987), and in many ways this is a positive recuperation of Marston’s ethos. 10 I have written about this specific issue in more detail at https://multiframe. wordpress.com where I have also written about the dreadful follow up story to Azzarello’s run written by Meredith Finch and drawn by David Finch. 11 For an excellent new book-length study in this area see Berlatsky, 2015. 12 The work of Masoch, Deleuze writes, ‘is all persuasion and education. We are no longer in the presence of a torturer seizing upon a victim and enjoying her all the more because she is unconsenting and unpersuaded. We are dealing instead with a victim who is in search of a torturer and needs to educate, persuade and conclude an alliance with the torturer in order to realise the strangest of schemes. This is why

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advertisements are part of the language of masochism while they have no place in true sadism, and why the masochist draws up contracts while the sadist abominates and destroys them’ (1991: 20). This is also the point at which I would have to take my leave from Saunders’ analysis that draws out religious or spiritual allegory in superhero comics. Having noted Deleuze’s reading of masochism, I do not believe this education into its socio-political benefits could be taken to be equivalent to ‘surrender to the loving authority of divinity’ (Saunders, 2011: 64), a relation that stays to close to the traditional structure of sovereign authority that masochism inverts. 13 Wonder Woman is shown to carry Steve Trevor another two times in this first comic. 14 This was something directly referenced by Rick Veitch when he took over the writing of Swamp Thing from Alan Moore. As we watch another intervention by Batman he has the fictional academic Dr Robert Huntoon lament how we isolate ‘ourselves within outmoded belief systems as we cry out in terror to our modern totems’ (Veitch and Alcala, 2004: 31). Although it would have to be noted here that Batman as a powerful cure all is much more a fetish than a totem. 15 Lévi-Strauss is critical of Dukheim’s work concluding that totemism is nothing other than one way of thinking through relations between continuity and discontinuity, opposition and integration (1962: 99) that are central to every culture irrespective of its supposed rational enlightenment. However, given that Lévi-Strauss’s form of structural anthropology reduces all of the diverse, differentiated and particular ‘totemisms’ (45) to the universal oppositions set out above, it is not consistent with an argument seeking to articulate the specificities and peculiarities of social rather than symbolic kinship. 16 The fact that Bruce Wayne/Batman is ‘adopted’ by Alfred and himself adopts Dick Grayson/Robin already indicates how the Bat family comprises ‘elective affinities’ (Beck-Gernscheim, 1998), accidental companionship and voluntary decisions about kin. This is in keeping with the particular formations of social kinship that Butler argues regularly challenge the supposed universality of symbolic kinship. Such voluntary decisions about kin or the creation of relations via accident or fate are exemplified in the totemic nature of superhero identities. 17 Durkheim notes that ‘terrible and jealous gods appear but slowly in the religious evolution. This is because primitive societies are not those huge Leviathans which overwhelm a man by the enormity of their power and place him under a severe discipline’ (1915: 224). 18 Page numbers are by issue as continuous pagination did not start until volume 2. 19 In this regard I would recommend anyone who hasn’t read all three volumes to do so, but if you only read one issue you ought to look at his brilliant take on Wylie Coyote, cartooning, violence and authorial power in issue 5 (Morrison, Truog and Hazelwood, 1991). 20 His awareness of animal suffering is developed from an encounter with The Beast or White God, a superhero from Africa who comes to America to rescue an ape that is his friend who has been captured and taken to a vivisection laboratory.

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This already sets up an interesting challenge to strictly human forms of kinship, but The Beast is also an interesting foil for Animal Man. Where he represents the connection of all animal life that preserves the integrity of each, The Beast has a power that is much more like traditional sovereignty in that he has the ability to take different organisms and fuse them into one. 21 In Jeff Lemire’s run, the aliens reappear and describe his connection to ‘the Red’ (Lemire et al., 2012), a reconception of the continuum that comes to replace the morphogenetic field and lines him up with Swamp Thing’s connection to ‘the Green’. 22 Regular references to the connectedness of all things recur throughout the story. See for example the discussion of plankton and oxygen (Morrison, Truog and Hazelwood, 2002: 158) and his discussion of vegetarianism (209). 23 Under Lemire’s stewardship it is interesting to note the first time Buddy Baker’s daughter, Maxine, displays her own abilities to connect with animals she morphs into a fox (Lemire et al., 2012). 24 In Lemire’s retelling the totems are presented as guardians of the red (Lemire et al., 2012) and are conceived much more in the guise of traditional sovereign protectors. 25 Another story that beautifully portrays a superhero in perfect communion with all plant life is Black Orchid (Gaiman and McKean, 2012). This story is also noteworthy for the victory of passive resistance over the gratuitous violence of the men that killed Emma Halliwell. 26 In one of these events, her then-husband Matt Cable entered into a coma after a car accident, but not before her Uncle, Anton Arcane, possessed his body to take control of Matt’s reality-altering superpowers. When Abby comes to understand what has happened after ‘Matt’ takes her on a tour of their new house and his new job which both reek of the death and decay associated with Arcane’s creation of the Un-Men, Arcane reveals himself to Abby and together with some of the ghouls at his command he kills her. Swamp Thing then has to rescue Abby’s soul from Hell with the help of Deadman, the Stranger and the Spectre. 27 Haraway notes that the cyborg can still be used for ‘informatics of domination’ (1991: 161), but breakdowns are also ‘cracks in the matrices of domination’ (174). Superhero comics represent this conflict between a kinship of unity and hierarchy that supports domination and the breakdowns that produce the illegitimate and the monstrous, promoting alternative couplings that are potentially utopian in their equality. This is another version of a contradictory sovereignty that pervades superhero comics. Haraway also notes that cyborgs seize ‘the tools to mark the world that marked them as other’ (175). Such tools are stories, origin stories in particular. 28 While superhero comics have always had their odd couples such as Booster Gold and Skeets, Blue Beetle and his scarab or The Falcon and Redwing, a superhero that beautifully defines the couplings and elective affinities of the more diverse contemporary comics is Karma, who came out as gay in 2003, but who also now has a prosthetic limb after suffering an injury in Uncanny X-Men #524 (Fraction and Dodson, 2010). She is therefore a cyborg in the literal sense, while her decisions about her sexuality also represent the transgressions of Haraway’s more figurative use of the term.

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29 In Modest_Witness, Haraway recasts the physical/non-physical as the ‘material-semiotic’ (1997: 2). In a later work, she argues that ‘the machinic and the textual are internal to the organic’ (2003: 15). 30 To guard against the fetishism that sees only single entities, she writes that ‘a seed contains inside its coat the history of practices such as collecting, breeding … taxonomizing, patenting, biochemically analysing. Advertising, eating, cultivating, harvesting, celebrating, and starving. A  seed produced in the biotechnological institutions now spread around the world contains the specifications for labor systems, planting calendars, pest-control procedures, marketing, land holding, and beliefs about hunger and well-being’ (Haraway, 1997: 129). 31 Latour uses very prosaic examples to make his point: ‘The speed bump is ultimately not made of matter; it is full of engineers and chancellors and lawmakers, commingling their wills and their storylines with those of gravel, concrete, paint and standard calculations’ (1999: 109; italics in original). 32 For an excellent reading of the queer Batman family, see c­ hapter 2 of Will Brooker’s Batman Unmasked (2005). 33 Moon dragon is, in fact, bisexual. 34 Max Eisenhardt was a Jew who was interned in Auschwitz. His wife and Scarlet Witch’s mother was a gypsy and imprisoned in both Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

7

Sovereignty at the limit

Having addressed how sovereignty seeks to secure an identity by policing its kinship structure, in this chapter I would like to return to the spectre that haunts sovereignty, and has done so in this study since the opening chapter, namely the ‘nothingness’ out of which Carl Schmitt (2005: 32) claimed the sovereign’s legitimacy arises. Although Schmitt tried to fill this void with the divine presence of God, the Father, this only masked the fact that something limitless and potentially abyssal lies at the foundation of sovereignty. What if, rather than supporting a defined political identity and its symbolic authority, this limitlessness is at odds with the limits it supposedly supports? Perhaps it is even antithetical to entities and things, a nothingness that threatens to disestablish them. To make sense of this, writers like Schmitt split this nothingness into a good limitlessness – God’s grace – and an evil limitlessness – the threat of chaos. Both are then necessary to secure what Jean-Luc Nancy called the ‘sovereign finish’ (2000: 118): an identity based on legitimacy and goodness defined in opposition to the dissolute foreigners and forces of darkness that threaten annihilation. In superhero comics, this version of the abyss can be seen in an array of villains, monsters and entropic forces that continually threaten to destroy worlds. Annihilation may be temporarily held back but it cannot be stopped forever. Even where death itself is defeated life becomes an all-consuming force, such as the tumorous Cancerverse that emerges at the end of Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning’s (2010) War of Kings story. Given that Hobbes (1994: 235) defined the sovereign in terms of the inability to resist its power, we are entitled to see these ultimately irresistible forces in sovereign terms. However, while superhero comics reproduce Schmitt’s division they are also much more open to the idea that this is a contradiction inherent to sovereignty itself and not the sign of two distinct ontological principles. In superhero comics, this means sovereignty is shared out between the necessity to create, preserve and protect a finite, limited world, and the limitless, negating forces that threaten to lay everything to waste; a contradiction that receives especially concise treatment in Paul Jenkins’s story The Sentry where the most powerful superhero is at the same time a totally annihilating entity called The Void. After briefly introducing this story, the chapter will give a little more consideration to the nothingness that

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accompanies sovereignty before showing how superhero comics are aware of both the dangers and creative possibilities inherent in our engagement with nothingness. The contradiction of sovereignty The Sentry (Jenkins and Lee, 2005) opens with Bob Reynolds being woken by a storm. He has a vague yet dreadful sense that something he once knew as the Void has returned and he is the only superhero able to defeat it. Unable to sleep, he goes down to the cellar and drinks from the bottle containing what is left of a secret formula that supposedly gives him the power of a million exploding suns. But is this real? Does the Void exist? All he knows is that ‘something’s happening … something indecipherable’ (2005: n.p.; italics in original). He shouts at the Void, who shouts back: ‘I am the face of your soul’ (n.p.). As it becomes clear he really was/is a superhero, what is believed to be a massive storm emerges off the eastern seaboard of the United States. It cannot be a natural occurrence, says the TV weatherman, because the storm is rotating in a clockwise direction. Gradually, the Sentry remembers the Void as the ‘monster of antithesis’ (n.p.), an absolutely negating force that wants to devour everything, including the Sentry. Slowly, with the help of Reed Richards he remembers his ‘sordid little secret’ (n.p.). The Sentry is not only intimately related to the Void, the Sentry is the Void. The most powerful superhero in the universe is at the same time an all-consuming nothingness. This idea that what is sovereign – the most powerful and the most high – is at the same time nothing is an intuition essential to the superhero genre and speaks to a basic aspect of the human condition: the realisation that while the worlds we have created are all we have they are subject to entropy, decay and the existential anomie in which the ultimately groundless nature of our world-building is revealed. A philosophical argument regarding this contradiction can be found in Nancy’s essay ‘Ex Nihilo Summum (Of Sovereignty)’. The essay begins with the statement that sovereignty designates the summit, and that the summit towers and dominates. This is in keeping with Schmitt’s analysis of sovereignty as pertaining to the outermost realm as well as the conventional understanding of sovereignty as absolute and all-powerful, where a sovereign’s majesty also suggests her elevation. For Nancy, then, there is a direct link between height and power. Height is not something the sovereign has along, perhaps, with strength; the sovereign is height – Nancy in fact capitalises the word: the sovereign ‘is Height itself ’ (2007: 97).1 Height is very important in superhero stories. Physical height is both an index of a hero’s strength and a demonstration of their legitimacy, which is why it was interesting to see Darwyn Cooke (2004) draw Wonder Woman as taller than Superman in The New Frontier. Height can often be a superpower itself, most notably in the character of Giant Man, aka Goliath, while towers are also a superhero staple. Those regularly featured are the Avengers Tower and the Baxter Building that houses the Fantastic Four. Superman’s Fortress of Solitude

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is built into a mountain and positioned in the Arctic, and therefore placed at the ‘top’ of the world. Likewise, the Justice League’s own watchtower is an orbiting satellite from which they can observe all activity on Earth. Other variations on the theme include cosmic entities such as the 2,000-feet-tall Celestials that occasionally visit to check on their genetic experimentation known as humanity.2 Other beings, such as the Guardians who monitor the universe are regularly seen observing from on high, while mythological deities such as the Norse and Greek gods have their homes above the clouds in Asgaard and Olympus. The question remains, however: why must the sovereign be understood in this way? In keeping with Schmitt’s critique of modern conceptions of sovereignty, where height would preserve the distinction necessary for hierarchy and the sacred character of command, Nancy argues that extension holds everything at the same level and makes them equal, a condition that ultimately brings about the weakening, if not the death of sovereignty. The distinction of sovereignty therefore requires detachment. In superhero stories, this detachment is most readily seen in the heroes’ capacity to fly. The flyers, no matter how they fly (invisible plane, cosmic ring, mutation, alien ability) all have a special place in their relative universes, and it has become a standard image for flyers, especially Superman, to be represented as hovering just above the ground when speaking to mere mortals or those differently abled – this is something used to good effect when Superman wishes to talk down to Batman. Where this detachment is not possible, buildings are again used to signify this capacity for separation. Both Batman and Spiderman, together with numerous other heroes, demonstrate their distinction through the capacity to scale buildings inaccessible to everyone else. Even where a hero’s ability is little more than agility and athleticism, heroes are regularly represented in mid-jump, or somersaulting and therefore off the ground. The superlative nature of sovereignty means it cannot be measured or compared. Understood as the summit, the Most High or the ‘Inequivalent’ (Nancy: 2007: 97) means nothing transcends it. Sovereignty constitutes itself (100). It is what Schmitt called ‘underived power’ (2005: 17). To find a sovereignty that is given means there is something that precedes or is more foundational than sovereignty, thus rendering the notion an absurdity. This is also why the sovereign, understood as the summit, must be a detached summit. The sovereign as absolute must not be founded on anything else. It remains separated from the relativity of things. This means if a sovereign’s supremacy is ultimately defined by its lack of relation to entities, beings or things, properly understood the highest and most powerful is no thing: nothing.3 Enter The Sentry/Void. Limits and limitlessness In order to understand the potential dangers of our relationship with this nothingness (miracle, void, abyss) that always accompanies sovereignty, it is helpful

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to start with the work of Georges Bataille, who explicitly declared at the end of The Accursed Share that ‘sovereignty is NOTHING’ (1993:  430). Bataille’s work, which deeply influenced Nancy’s analysis, was highly critical of instrumental societies, in which humans were reduced to functional components, serving the reproduction of a system. ‘The world of things’, he wrote ‘is the world in which … Man is alienated therein, he is himself a thing … to the extent that he serves’ (214). Sovereignty, which he equated with a freedom that placed humans at the summit of life, would therefore need to be a renunciation of things or the attainment of consciousness in which one is no thing. Instead of the ‘restricted economy’ of instrumentality and utility he proposed a ‘general economy’ (1988) in keeping with the movement of excess that for him was a cosmological principle. In this, the sun is taken to be the perfect analogy. According to Bataille, it gives off energy in such abundance that it exceeds any other entity’s capacity to absorb it, and will eventually burn itself out. The Accursed Share takes its name from this excessive energy that outstrips all limits, and partaking in it is what distinguishes humans from animals. Although the natural world appears to contain all manner of extravagant displays, they remain tied to the utility of reproduction and the limitations of biology. There is a direct correlation, then, between excess, freedom and sovereignty. Such excess is certainly not alien to the superhero genre and is a key marker of their sovereignty. Their capacities generally include an ability to consume or emit extraordinary levels of energy and they operate within an economy of such profligacy that any sense of utility or restraint seems entirely alien. This excess or abundance is often seen in a hero’s origin story. This can either manifest at the moment where the character recognises the change, such as the moment in Miracleman #1 when Michael Moran rediscovers his powers. At the moment Moran re-emerges as Miracleman, he is depicted shooting off into space in a moment of exuberant celebration (Moore and Leach, 1985). A variation on this is the abundance of energy so clearly presented in the creation of the new Ms Marvel. In issue 2 (Wilson and Alphona, 2014), she is shown as unable to control her newly acquired powers. Their excessive nature is evident in the way her body morphs, folds, droops, grows and extends; all without her control and all indicating the superabundance of energy at play within Kamala Khan. Notable here is the fact that when she is shown developing some control over her new abilities on the final page of the issue she stands with her enlarged and open hand bathed in the golden light of the early evening sun.4 For Bataille, though, this was not simply a necessary alignment with a cosmic principle that only humans are capable of recognising he also argued that escaping the limitations of existence was something we actively desired. For Bataille, the origin of religious experience lies precisely in the desire to touch limitlessness, to encounter and lose oneself in the infinite; something clearly evident in the writings of Carl Schmitt. In this scenario, religious consciousness reflects our

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desire to be ‘in the world like water in water’ (Bataille, 1989: 24). As individual, discontinuous beings that have emerged out of cosmological continuity we desire to retouch this continuity through practices in which we might be said to lose ourselves. That superheroes already have a relation to such limitlessness is clear in the exercise of unlimited power, but, as we have seen, it also takes the more specific forms of Swamp Thing’s ‘verdant grace’ and Animal Man’s immersion in the Template. For Bataille, to touch limitlessness invariably involves a brush with death because death alone, he writes, can reveal the ‘invisible brilliance of life that is not a thing’ (47; italics in original). The caveat, of course, is that this needs to be an encounter with death in which death is not the victor. What we desire, then, is not to die but through an encounter with death, to ‘bring into a world founded on discontinuity all the continuity such a world can sustain’ (2001: 19),5 and in this we approach the limitlessness of sovereign freedom. Of all the superhero stories that might pertain to such an analysis of intimacy, limitlessness and sovereign consciousness none is more compelling than Jim Starlin’s masterful telling of the events leading up to Captain Marvel’s death. The story starts on the paradise home of the Titans, ruled by Mentor and his sons Eros and Thanos. Thanos usurps his father’s power and gathers together a ‘raging horde of interstellar malcontents’ (2002: 14; italics in original) in order to extend his tyrannical control to Earth and the universe beyond, only to be confronted by Captain Marvel, a Kree warrior who during the Kree–Skrull war became a friend to humans and a defender of Earth. Despite Captain Marvel’s great strength and courage, we discover that being a supreme warrior is not sufficient and he must go through a transformation in order to become sovereign in his conflict with Thanos. This transformation takes places in chapter V, when Captain Marvel is taken off to some dark region of the universe in order for him to fulfil his destiny. There, he is shown what true freedom is. In the process he is told that the warrior part of Captain Marvel must die because in war there is only one victor, death (111). He is told the warrior represents ‘your hostility, your battle lust, the side of you which loves destruction, perpetuates hate and seeks death. He is your personal Thanos’ (118; italics in original). It is his ‘inner demon, [his] cancerous other self’ (118) and it must be destroyed. This is the demon tied to his desire to preserve limited existence and fight for ‘a limited cause’ (192), the demon that clings to life at all costs out of fear of death. In order to overcome this, Captain Marvel goes through a metamorphosis whereby he becomes cosmically aware (131). Only at this point, having been shown to have destroyed his own warrior avatar  – a clay figure that Captain Marvel shatters – does he learn that the only thing worth striving for is the one thing that gives life meaning, namely universal freedom (119).6 To capture this moment when Captain Marvel’s consciousness morphs from one based on his limited, discontinuous being to one based on limitless continuity Starlin draws him with the infinite expanse of the cosmos appearing in his face (120). That

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this is a moment when Captain Marvel overcomes his residual alienation and discovers the intimacy of freedom can be seen in the explanation of what being cosmically aware means: ‘No movement too slight to see, no sound too low to hear, no smell too faint to detect. For all things in the universe are now one with you’ (116; italics in original). While the metamorphosis experienced by Captain Marvel shares a certain kinship with Bataille’s analysis of sovereign consciousness, Jim Starlin’s story raises a major problem with Bataille’s one-eyed view of it. Starlin, by contrast, is only too aware that cosmic awareness per se is not the answer to violence and war as he shows through Thanos’s own encounter with limitlessness. If anything, Captain Marvel becomes cosmically aware of the fullness of freedom at play in an infinite creativity while Thanos’s encounter with limitlessness is truly an encounter with and desire for Nothing. In c­ hapter 7, we find Thanos talking to Death and explaining that his actions were never down to greed or a search for power, but down to his love for the nihilating power of universal Death (164). Later in the chapter, having gained control of the cosmic cube, a piece of technology that allows any desired alteration of reality to take place, Thanos becomes a god and in the process becomes ‘all things in the universe’ (178; italics in original). At this point, the universe is presented as a gift to the nihilating void that is Death. Only by destroying the cosmic cube is Captain Marvel able to defeat Thanos and with that his ‘conception’ (210) of limitlessness. Once again, we return to the fundamental intuition that runs through so many superhero stories regarding the contradictory nature of sovereignty, here rendered as a confrontation between the sovereign power of free, limitless creativity, and the sovereign power of unlimited destruction and decay. This is superhero metaphysics; a struggle without end as neither can put a stop to the other. The writer most sensitive to this problem in Bataille’s work is François Flahault, whose book Malice sets out the dangers of our desire to touch limitlessness.7 For Flahault, the problem is not Bataille’s conception of a link between sovereignty and limitlessness but the fact that our conceptualisation of limitlessness has been split between the ideal and the demonic. Flahault argues that we differentiate between ‘an infinite which is tamed, harnessed and made palatable’ (2003:  7), the good infinite, ordinarily understood as the face of God that we know and who loves us, while what he calls the bad infinite is a ‘radical limitlessness … made manifest … in the void of a bottomless well and the nightmare of destruction’ (7). This division emerged, according to Flahault, with the dismantling of the old creation myths, which were ambivalent with regard to creation. It was destructive because ‘there was nothing to limit it’ and at yet it was also the ‘source of life inasmuch as it entered into a process of differentiation’ (25). This duality, whereby creation was both productive and destructive, only later became a dualism that separated creation from destruction, being from non-being.8 For Flahault, however, it is essential to understand that because being is associated

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with the discontinuity and finitude of individual beings ‘it is only non-being which exists absolutely or infinitely’ (22; italics in original). In other words, the tamed or good infinite that supposedly supports life does not satisfy our desire for an encounter with limitlessness, only Satan who represents the fall from order and the wild, destructive bad infinite that threatens everything can satisfy now. That our desire for intimacy and our search for completion sets us against all kinds of radically unbounded monsters is evident in the monthly plotlines of every single superhero comic. Whether they are a cosmic entity such as Amatus-Mikaboshi, the Japanese god of evil, who became the Chaos King at the end of Fred Van Lente’s and Greg Pak’s run on The Incredible Hercules, or the alien infected serial killer, Cletus Cassidy, who becomes the vile and chaotic monster known as Carnage, these figures of destruction always represent the radical limitlessness of an evil that threatens absolute destruction. With Mikaboshi, the threat is a total collapse of the orderly and differentiated universe into the blank nothingness over which the Chaos King once presided, while Carnage represents a more earth-bound, physical sense of meaningless violence. A long-time favourite for Marvel readers, and perhaps exemplary of the radical limitlessness that continually threatens the worlds of our heroes has been Galactus the World Eater. His first appearance is in Fantastic Four #48 where he is described as a monster that ‘drains entire planets of their elements, and then leaves them dry, unable to support life’ (Lee and Kirby, 1966c:  n.p.). What is most frightening about Galactus, however, is not simply his appetite for devouring ‘all elemental life’ it is the fact he does not recognise humanity as having any value or of being significant in any way: ‘see how he ignores us’ complains Reed Richards, ‘as though we’re of no consequence’ (Lee and Kirby, 1966b: n.p.). This means he not only threatens physical annihilation but perhaps more importantly he practises a form of existential negation that is equally annihilating. Without needing to destroy the Earth physically, his affront to our narcissism is enough to make Galactus a being of radical limitlessness, against which we must reassert our own sense of value and worth; our own sovereignty. It is also important to stress that this desire is dangerous not because we wish to ‘defeat’ the bad infinite and be done with it, but because Flahault argues that we desire to remain alongside it and continue to touch its limitlessness. There is, then, something thrilling in our projection of devouring, world-destroying monsters. In Malice, Flahault documents his own childhood flirtation with one. He remembers going into the cellar of his family home only to become aware of some lurking malevolence in the looming darkness, but rather than taking this dark presence to be the manifestation of some independent and evil force, he came to understand that the monster ‘owed its presence to [his] imagination’ (2003: 40), and that it appeared only because ‘a whiff of non-being … had spurted out of [him]’ (40): the monster thus represented his own desire to face the bad infinite. It is, then, our compulsion to conjure monsters that becomes Flahault’s ultimate

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concern. Not simply physical threats, those whose difference threatens to destabilise the ‘truth’ of our world often become the focus for our fantasy of absolute malevolence, something very clearly presented in the Chris Claremont story God Loves, Man Kills, already discussed in Chapter 2. Reading this story in the company of Flahault, Stryker’s violent hatred would be understood as an expression of his ‘abyssal narcissism’ (8) While love might represent our desire for completion, it leaves us incredibly vulnerable. As long as I love, I am dependent upon the other to love me back. By comparison, hating allows me to ‘enjoy the power of affirming myself absolutely and unconditionally’ (71). As long as I continue to hate, I can find my completion in a confrontation with the malevolence I have conjured up. Stryker’s hatred of mutants is nothing but an expression of his own dangerous desire for sovereign completeness. We have already seen in the work of Giorgio Agamben how the creation of a sovereign identity is based on the exclusion or banishment of that which does not belong. In that analysis the entity that is abandoned becomes the figure of a contradictory inclusive exclusion. The casting out is a projection of power, and as such it is integral to the expression of sovereign authority. In keeping with Agamben’s analysis, Flahault argues our claim to sovereignty is achieved ‘through the exhilarating sense of attaining a superior finality, which derives from the felt need to compete with the limitlessness which has been projected on to the other’ (2003: 50; italics in original). We can see this in the philosophy of sovereignty going all the way back to Hobbes, whose vision of the destructive, devouring state of nature was the annihilating monster the sovereign could test himself against by all means necessary. However, the fact that this test supposedly justifies the use of extreme violence, even terror, raises one further troubling issue. As Falhault puts it, ‘the need to struggle against Chaos, far from being expressed in the building of some fundamental barrier capable of resisting it, is presented as the need to confront it, to enter into a relation with it in order to counter it with a remedy comparable with the evil, a means of pacification which responds to its voracity’ (132). Our desire to achieve a ‘superior finality’, or sovereign completion in the face of apocalypse is precisely what threatens to bring the apocalypse about. Although superhero comics regularly partake in this projection of the bad infinite there are plenty of stories that explicitly treat the threat of apocalypse and the ‘necessary’ violence it supposedly demands as an explicit theme. This can be seen in Mark Waid’s Kingdom Come, discussed in the introduction, but Alan Moore’s Watchmen is perhaps exemplary in this regard.9 This subject is primarily addressed through the male characters, all of whom can be read as superhero archetypes in some sense. In the character of Rorschach, we are offered a vigilante who will stop at nothing to fight evil, and, as he says in the first chapter, will not compromise ‘even in the face of Armageddon’ (Moore and Gibbons, 1987: 24).10 For Rorschach, violence will be met with violence, no matter where that might lead. He has no qualms about the number of innocent

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people he needs to brutalise in order to get to the person he is seeking, thereby committing the very crime he seeks to stop.11 When Rorschach is arrested and placed in psychiatric care, Rorschach’s violent biography leads even the psychiatrist to realise that in the end there is nothing but ‘empty meaningless blackness’ (28). Then there is the Comedian, a soldier and veteran of Vietnam where he is shown cold-bloodedly shooting a Vietnamese woman, who is heavily pregnant with the Comedian’s child. Where Rorschach is a fanatic, the Comedian is a nihilist. In chapter IV, we are shown a man whose understanding of the human condition has made him ‘deliberately amoral’ (19). Life is a joke, not one he necessarily finds funny, but it has no meaning, only ‘madness’ and ‘pointless butchery’ (19), to which he freely abandons himself. It is his death at the start of the story that Rorschach investigates in the belief it is the sign of a campaign against masked heroes. These are the only two masked heroes still operating after the Keene Act that banned their activities. In retirement is the Night Owl, who is shown to be impotent when he begins a relationship with Laurie Juspeczyk (the Silk Spectre), only to recover his ability to have sex once he reassumes his role as a masked hero. Most important, however, is that all this is set against the backdrop of a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and later military incursion into Pakistan that sets in place the countdown for what seems like an end of the world scenario and a global nuclear conflagration. This is the Cold War turning hot, itself precipitated by each side projecting malevolent evil onto the other. Central to this crisis are two other superheroes Dr Jon Osterman, aka Dr Manhattan, and Adrian Veidt, aka Ozymandias, both of whom have attained sovereignty in Bataille’s sense. In chapter IV Jon Osterman is introduced as an atomic scientist who became omnipotent and omniscient in an accident during experiments to ‘separate objects from their intrinsic fields’ (4). He has total awareness of past and future events, and is able to construct whatever he wants, wherever he wants, at the atomic level. He, like the Comedian, is also a nihilist. His ability to see everything has shown him that nothing matters. He passes his time observing ‘interesting’ phenomena in the behaviour of quarks – his interest in humanity is only fleetingly rekindled when we are shown him, in chapter IX, imagining the appearance of each singular human as a ‘thermo-dynamic miracle’ (26). Owing to his amazing abilities, Dr Manhattan is quickly recruited by the US government as a weapon. In chapter IV, we are informed he is given his new name in honour of The Manhattan Project and the ‘ominous associations it will raise in America’s enemies’ (12). His existence is directly related to the weapons race and the reader is led to believe that Dr Manhattan’s presence is at least in part responsible for Soviet advances into Afghanistan. In the effort to restrain the destruction threatened by the evil Soviet empire, a weapons race was set in place that in Watchmen directly brings about the kind of violence that the increase in armaments was supposed to ward off.

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Throughout the book, the one character that remains something of a mystery until the closing two chapters is Ozymandias. We have been told that in his retirement he has put to work his inherited wealth running various companies. In chapter XI, however, we are introduced to Ozymandias as a boy genius, whose lack of peers seems to have developed in him certain dissociative traits. We find him confiding in the robots he has built to keep him company. He explains that the only human he could identify with was Alexander the Great, who died at the age of thirty-three, ‘ruling most of the civilized world’ (8) but with a vision for unifying the rest of it. Having followed in Alexander’s footsteps, a journey that took him across continents, Adrian Veidt returned home determined to do what Alexander couldn’t and create a unified world that outlived him. Returning to America, he walked into the desert, ‘ate a ball of hashich’ (10), and was transformed by the ensuing vision: ‘I heard dead kings walking underground; heard fanfares sound through human skulls’ (10). In this panel, Ozymandias, just like Starlin’s depiction of Captain Marvel, is shown to be at one with the heavens. It is his Bataillean moment when Veidt loses himself in cosmic continuity and is reborn as the sovereign Ozymandias prepared to do whatever it takes to conquer the ‘evils that beset’ men (11; italics in original). Dressed like an ancient deity and in a headquarters reminiscent of classical Greek and Egyptian architecture, Ozymandias gradually reveals to Rorschach and Night Owl his plan to put an end to war. The only problem is that he has already put in action the event he believes will do this and Rorschach and Night Owl can do nothing about it. Through his use of genetics and teleportation technology, he had delivered an alien sentient bomb into the heart of New York. The immediate explosion killed three million people, while the resulting shockwave caused hallucinations in the remainder of the world’s population, convincing them of the need to unite to face an impending alien invasion. Again, Ozymandias, now drawn meditating in chapter XII, recounts how he struggled with the amount of innocent people he needed to murder, ‘but someone had to take the weight of that awful, necessary crime’ (27). Faced with the threat of global chaos, Ozymandias was prepared to enact his own brand of sovereign destruction to ward it off. On hearing of a peace accord set up between the United States and the Soviet Union, Ozymandias is delighted to see that ‘it all worked out in the end’ (27), only to have his bubble burst by the arrival of Dr Manhattan, who reminds him that ‘nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends’ (27; italics in original). Our desire for sovereign finality unfortunately demands the continual projection of new monsters with ever-greater powers of annihilation. All this is tied together by a curious story within a story given to us by a young man reading a pirate comic next to the news stand from which the daily reports of impending nuclear war are delivered. To some extent, this story is a supplement to the main story arc, but it also acts as the code enabling us to read Watchmen as a meditation on the ‘bad infinite’. Our entry into this story starts with a sailor

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recounting an attack on his ship by an especially bloodthirsty group of pirates, the killing of his crew, and him eventually being washed up on an atoll. His torment on this place is profound. Traumatised and starving, he eventually manages to build himself a raft, which he floats using the gas-bloated, rotting corpses of his shipmates. Gradually, the specific act of violence against his ship and crew grows to become an all-consuming evil that threatens to destroy his world. This is shown by his conviction that the pirate ship is on its way to Davidstown, where his family lives, and his determination to get back and warn them of the impending apocalypse. We are given more and more snippets of this man’s terrible journey, macabre actions, and gradually diminishing sense of reality. All he knows is that he must get home before the murderous pirates arrive. Becoming ever more desperate and projecting an ever-increasing malevolent intent upon the pirates who he remains convinced are set to destroy Davidstown, he finally comes ashore. Driven by what are now clearly delusions of manifest evil, he sets about murdering anyone he sees, taking them for the pirates he has imagined to be already there. In chapter XI, he finally arrives at his house at night and, ‘being careful not to rouse the butchers occupying it from their debauched slumber’ (6; italics in original), he proceeds to start killing the occupants only to be disturbed by his children. What appeared to him then were not pirates, ‘but something worse’, the realisation that he had just stabbed to death his own wife. His projections of evil had been so all-consuming he was driven to act out the very thing he feared, perfectly encapsulating Flahault’s concerns regarding our desire to touch radical limitlessness and our constructions of the bad infinite. Rather than protecting us, our desire for sovereign completeness in the fight against evil regularly threatens to plunge us into the chaos we wish to hold at bay. In the end, the sailor swims into the sea, towards the pirate ship that had not landed, saying ‘I was a horror: amongst horrors I must dwell’ (23; italics in original). Meaningful worlds So far, we have seen how the nothingness that lies at the foundation of sovereignty is dealt with by being tamed and claimed as our own, legitimating everything we do, including whatever violence we might use when we radicalise it and project it outwards as some all-consuming, malevolent evil. While stories such as Kingdom Come and Watchmen explicitly interrogate the dangers of such projections, there are also stories in which this proximity between sovereignty and nothingness, order and chaos, completion and abyss is turned to a more productive, yet equally radical, end. In order to approach such a creative apocalypse (we will have to accept this oxymoron for the moment), it is necessary to move our focus away from the threat of physical destruction and focus on the threat of existential anomie, that moment where the meanings, ideals and values on which we base our sovereign identities seem to slip away.

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In The Sentry, the Void certainly threatened physical annihilation but its first manifestation as something ‘indecipherable’ (Jenkins and Lee, 2005:  n.p.) heralded a lack of sense, a hole in our meaning making. Often this threat is met in traditional sovereign terms and yet, as I have shown throughout this book, superhero comics are anything but certain about the fundamental goodness of a protector and their use of force. Instead, I would like to argue that superhero comics are much more sensitive to the fragility of the worlds we build, knowing they are interpretations in response to questions about how we should live that can easily be shaken and often require rebuilding, reworking if not reimagining. In these stories, the waning of the world is as irresistible and hence sovereign as the building of a world, and nowhere is this contradictory process more clearly presented than in the character of Captain America. As discussed in Chapter 2, this hero that most clearly bears the patronym of the sovereign regularly finds himself hanging over the abyss into which every meaningful world has a tendency to fall. With Captain America guiding us we might then be brave enough to accept the apocalypse of another great Alan Moore creation, Promethea, who destabilizes any sovereign finish by revealing the nothingness at the heart of sovereignty as the source of potentially infinite, radically diverse world-making. In order to approach this alternative apocalypse, it will be helpful to briefly turn to the work of the philosopher who understood our interpretive confrontations over the nature of the world in sovereign terms. Martin Heidegger argued the primary characteristic of human beings is to construct meaningful stories through which we make sense of ourselves and the world we live in, noting, however, that we don’t live in the world like water in a glass, the meaningful world is who we are (1962:  79). From this perspective, truth is not the correspondence between a concept and pre-existing object, but the bringing of something into being. He uses the Greek word for truth, aletheia, which literally means to bring something out of oblivion or out of hiding. The Greek word for oblivion, lethe, will be familiar to readers of superhero comics via the figure of Hercules, whose father Zeus, is thrown into the river Lethe by Pluto (Hades) in Incredible Hercules: Dark Riegn (Van Lente et al., 2009) as payback for Zeus’s ancient deception. To register the fact that humans can’t be thought of without the worlds they create, Heidegger also preferred the term dasein to human. In German, dasein literally means ‘being-there’, and registers that humans are not subjects separated from objects but are beings always already living in worlds they have created, and they cannot be thought independently of them. Dasein is also the being whose being-in-the-world is an open question.12 In other words, dasein’s existence is an issue for it, and what is important for the argument pertaining to the contradiction of sovereignty set out so far is that Heidegger explicitly describes dasein’s freedom as ‘being held out into the nothing’ (1998: 91). Who am I? Why am I here? Why is here here? What should I do?

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These are all questions motivated by the lack of a sovereign guarantee. There is no firm foundation determined either by God, nature or science. In response, humans answer with an indefinite and continually changing set of interpretative answers.13 The world and the things that populate it are therefore always taken as something – Heidegger’s famous example is of the river that the poet sees as a metaphor for human journeying, while the engineer takes it as a potential source of energy – and these ‘as’-structures (1962: 190) lay multiple claims to things and are the source of innumerable conflicts. This is explicitly tied to the issue of sovereignty when Heidegger names this conflict or struggle using the Greek word for war, polemos, which Heraclitus in fragment 53 described as ‘father of all, and king of all’ (1987: 37).14 What is sovereign here – what is irresistible – is precisely the continual arrival of sense and the unending conflict over the meaning of things. But this leads to a further problem. When worlds (interpretations) confront each other, they show the relative nature of each construction and expose the fact that there is no ultimate ground underpinning them. In such circumstances, we become acutely aware of the void beneath us as well as the danger of falling into it. The solution very often is an attempt to violently negate the other world whose infringement upon ours has compromised our supposedly sovereign identity. The threat of meaninglessness has a long tradition in superhero comics and nowhere is this more in evidence than the strange mirror image of Superman known as Bizarro, discussed in Chapter 1. His inversion of language introduces a dangerous level of absurdity in which good is bad, love is hate and up is down.15 One other such figure in the DCU is Mr Mxyzptlk, a magical imp from the fifth dimension, who continually threatens to destabilise the meaningful order of the world and regularly forces Superman to question what he does and who he is. Sometimes, however, this threat shifts from the bizarre to the devastating as in Alan Moore’s story ‘Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow’ (Moore et al., 2006) where Mr Mxyzptlk is playing with the world to such an extent that Superman is left with no choice but to kill him, an act that destroys Superman in turn, as everything he believed himself to be is destroyed in that one moment. Worlds are meaningful, then, but that meaning is easily shaken, and this is something quite brilliantly set out in Marvels (Busiek and Ross, 2004), where we are given a sense of what it must be like to suddenly find superheroes all over New York. In ­chapter 1 of this story, we find the photographer Phil Sheldon responding to the appearance of the original Human Torch and the threat of Prince Namor, the Submariner. There had been mystery men before, he notes, but this was different: ‘Marvels, that’s what I called them … and that’s what they were. Next to that … what were we? Before they came, we were so big, so grand. We were Americans … Young. Strong. Vital! We were the ones who got things done. But we’d gotten smaller … We weren’t the players anymore. We were spectators’ (n.p.; italics in original). A little later, after the Human Torch and Namor have

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demolished part of the city during a fight he comments: ‘and this is our city! Our world! Who gave them the right to just come in and take it away from us’ (n.p.)? Here, of course, as the earlier quote indicates, Sheldon is not just concerned about their physical presence, the greater damage has already been this devastating loss to what he and others had understood themselves to be because ‘a man’s nothing next to those things’ (n.p.). This is a view beautifully realised in a panel from ­chapter 2, showing Sheldon photographing Giant Man who towers over him as he straddles the buildings of downtown Manhattan. In the story, we are also introduced to the effect the mutant X-Men had on the human population. They were death, Sheldon explains: ‘They didn’t even have to do anything. They were our replacements, scientists said. The next evolutionary step. We  …  homo sapiens … were obsolete’ (n.p.). Again, this might be a genuine sense of existential threat, but it is also the realisation that humans aren’t the be-all and end-all of evolution as had been believed. Humans have far less significance and are devalued by the mutants’ existence. The profound anxiety produced by this destruction of humans’ sense of self-worth turns into the violence that Heidegger (1996) argues always follows any such disturbance.16 As has been a regular theme in X-Men stories, the mutants are vilified, hounded and attacked as humans try to drive out the entity that has upset the ‘truth’ of their world view. In the end, the story sets out Sheldon’s own path of personal re-imagining, as he and those around him try to make sense of their place in this new world.17 This relationship between the worlds we create and the violence that transpires, if these structures are challenged, is most succinctly presented by Elaine Scarry in her exceptional study of torture and war, entitled The Body in Pain, first mentioned in Chapter 3. She writes as follows: In the dispute that leads to war, a belief on each side that has ‘cultural reality’ for that side’s population is exposed as a ‘cultural fiction’ … Although at a distance human beings take pride in being the single species that relentlessly recreates the world, generates fictions, and builds culture, to arrive at the recognition that one has been unselfconsciously dwelling in the midst of one’s own creation by witnessing the derealization of the made thing is a terrifying and self-repudiating process. (1985: 128)

Scarry makes two further general points in relation to this. The first is that a war will only end when this ‘crisis of substantiation’ (127) is complete for one side. In other words, when the fiction they were fighting for is completely discredited. Until that point, each side will continue to sacrifice more and more resources, including more and more people in an attempt to make real, or substantiate the fiction they are fighting for. In terms of superhero stories, almost every story arc and plot line will incorporate superheroes and super-villains fighting for something. Very rarely is any action staged where some conception of the world or way of life is not clearly at

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stake.18 However, a story that most clearly illustrates Scarry’s thesis is J. Michael Straczynski’s Silver Surface:  Requiem (Straczynski and Ribic, 2008). Here, the Surfer is returning home to die when he is called upon to intervene in a ‘sacred war’ between the Linneas and the Rumati that has been raging for ‘fifty generations’ (n.p.). The reasons for the war relate to two planets orbiting the same star whose people tell of the time when they first communicated with one another. ‘We expected’, they recall, ‘they would believe as we believed, would know The Maker of All Things as we did’ (n.p.). They then explain how they discovered the other’s ‘gods were not our gods’ and ‘their shrines were not our shrines’ (n.p.; italics in original). The narrator continues: ‘So it was quite obvious you see. We could not allow this blasphemy to continue’ (n.p.). Year on year, more resources were committed to creating greater weapons and more members of each civilisation were sacrificed. In this battle, their religions were seen to be of upmost importance: ‘With each year of the war, the holy temple on our world grew even greater, as we expanded it to demonstrate our superiority. The maker of all things would never allow the temple to be damaged, proving beyond question that we were the most holy in this war. That the other side made the same claim only added to their blasphemy, and made us more determined to see this war through to its conclusion. No matter the cost’ (n.p.). In order to put an end to the war, the Surfer uses his immense power to destroy the means with which the two sides wage war, but knowing this to be only the secondary problem he then destroys every temple and holy site that each side believed was protected by The Maker of All Things. With the temples destroyed, so was the idea that God was on their side and that the truth of their way of life was somehow guaranteed. With this, the Surfer ‘proved that there was no greater hand at work than our own’ (n.p.). As the Surfer journeys on we see both sides rebuilding their worlds.19 Unfortunately, however, this episode of iconoclasm has resulted in a new round of idolatry as the Linneas and Rumati build a statue of the Surfer to remind them of their saviour in whose name they will no doubt fight another interpretive community in the future. The statue is erected precisely because of the looming void that appears in the wake of the Surfer’s iconoclasm. The threatened loss of meaning is, of course, immediately countered by this new symbol that guards against the threat of dissolution. This is the tragic cycle of world building. The fullness of the saviour will be associated with the newly united Linneas and Rumati and the sign of the Surfer will provide the requisite sovereign finish. At the same time this new round of idolatry casts out the nothing, ready for it to be projected onto any community that doesn’t kneel before the Surfer. Thus, when people read superhero comics as a vulgar valediction of our belligerence, what is missed are the countless stories in which superhero comics actively challenge the certainties upon which that belligerence rests. To recover this often overlooked aspect of superhero storytelling, I would like to say a little bit more about the polemical nature of our world-building as it is presented in Captain America comics.

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I have already said I agree with White’s analysis (2014) that Captain America is a hero prone to doubt and uncertainty. In a relatively early issue (Lee and Colan, 1970a) we find him roaming the streets, asking, in the face of the nothing, what the point of it all is. His world is crumbling, however, not because he is challenged by another alien or evil enemy, but simply because he is faced with a different interpretation of what ‘America’ is. In the opening pages he laments the fact that today’s generation ‘scorn love of flag’ and see him as a ‘square’ (2). ‘I’m like a dinosaur in the Cro-magnon Age! An anachronism who’s outlived his time’ (3), he continues. In the uncertain age of Vietnam, the certainty of the Second World War veteran makes little sense. ‘This is the age of the anti-hero’, he observes, ‘the age of the rebel – and the dissenter! It isn’t hip – to defend the establishment – only to tear it down! And, in a world rife with injustice, greed, and endless war – who’s to say the rebels are wrong?’ (3; italics in original). As he returns to his hotel Stan Lee has him thinking the following couplet: ‘I’ve spent a lifetime defending the flag – and the law! Perhaps – I should have battled less – and questioned more!’ (3). Captain America’s angst-ridden roaming in this issue epitomises Heidegger’s argument that dasein always finds itself homeless – being held out into the nothing, dasein continually questions itself and its world. Four years later, the nothing was to loom so large that all Captain America could do was kill himself, or rather Steve Rogers is compelled to end the ‘life’ of Captain America following the revelation that the search for the mastermind behind the Secret Empire takes him inside the Whitehouse. Published in 1974 against the backdrop of the Watergate scandal  – an event directly descried in issue 174 (Engelheart and Buscema, 1974a) as something that made the Secret Empire’s takeover of America easier – the story arc begins back in issue 163 (Engelheart and Buscema, 1973) with a plot by the Viper to recruit Quentin Harderman to frame Captain America. He does so in issue 169 (Engelheart, Friedrich and Buscema, 1974) by using his Committee to Regain America’s Principles (CRAP) to launch a smear campaign casting Captain America as a dangerous and lawless vigilante. Once the public have been turned against Captain America Harderman sets up a fight between Cap and his own ‘hero’, Moonstone, who Harderman claims will purge America of this dangerous evil through ‘time-honoured American competition’ (Friedrich and Buscema, 1974: n.p.). The story culminates in issue 175 (Engelheart and Buscema, 1974b) with the Secret Empire’s arrival in the Whitehouse gardens. Moonstone, the new US hero, then acts out his preplanned submission to the Empire in an attempt to convince the people watching that they have already been beaten, but a fight ensues in which Captain America takes out the Secret Empire’s ‘No. 1’ and Moonstone. Although Moonstone is arrested, No. 1 runs off into the Whitehouse where Cap eventually catches up with him and pulls off his hood. To his horror, Captain America sees the face of what is described as a

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government official of high political office, although at the time the consensus was that this would easily be read as the President himself.20 Completely broken, ‘his trust mocked’ (n.p.; italics in original), Captain America walks away. In the immediate aftermath, dealt with in issue 176 (Engelheart and Buscema, 1974c), Steve Rogers announces to the Avengers that it is the end of Captain America. What is interesting here, however, is that the retirement of Captain America is not simply because his belief in the United States has been shattered, but because of the recurring problem he has with being a man out of time, a man never entirely comfortable with the world he was once again thrown into. He points out that he belongs to a time (the Second World War), when he felt there was a unified vision regarding what the United States stood for, but now, in the wake of Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement, he finds himself in the midst of an interpretive confrontation over the character and purpose of the country he is supposed to symbolise. There are ‘a great many different versions of what America is’, he observes, and ‘that’s as it should be’ (n.p.; italics in original), but in such a situation the meaning of the symbol becomes opaque, if not lost altogether, and with America’s symbolic authority also lost following the Secret Empire affair Captain America finds himself staring into the abyss. This anxiety then starts to spread out in concentric circles. After the news breaks that Captain America is no more, the anxiety generated in some quarters turns into hatred for the former Captain America. With the government discredited and their symbol gone, the world that the United States supposedly represented becomes ever more unstable: ‘I kicked a hole in their reality’, Steve Rogers tells Sharon Carter, ‘I’m a stable concept that suddenly became unpredictable. That confuses people  – bothers them’ (Engelheart and Buscema, 1974d:  n.p.; italics in original). While we ordinarily deal with the world in an unreflective, habitual manner, in times of crisis the world is suddenly presented to us as an issue, as something at stake and precarious. The hatred directed at Captain America emerges out of the profound anxiety that the destabilisation of the world sets in place. As was noted above, because our essence is to be held out into the nothing, the homes we secure for ourselves are always susceptible to this sort of instability. By the time we get to issue 180 (Engelheart and Buscema, 1974e), we find that Steve Rogers adopts the only superhero identity he feels he now can. He embraces his homelessness and becomes Nomad, the man without a country. For Cunningham, this issue represents the completion of a ‘depoliticization process’ (2009: 185) for Captain America, but I would argue this search for meaning, this process of world breaking and the renewed sense making that comes with it is the very kernel of the political. The adoption of Steve Rogers’s new identity is therefore important not only because he accepts his essential homelessness, but because this acceptance is already a means of rebuilding his world in the wake of its collapse. He does

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not stop his struggle against the bad guy, but throws himself back into it with renewed vigour. At the same time – the beginning of issue 180 – his enemy has now shifted from a specific group of bad guys to the general nihilism represented by the arch-terrorist Madame Hydra. This is the point where the nothingness exposed when the meaning of America is undermined is projected outwards. As the bad infinite, Hydra’s reappearance enables the necessary reorientation. What we have in this story, then, is a very illuminating representation of the contradiction of sovereignty where the revelation of the essential groundlessness of the world is brought to light in the very grounds of the White House that defines the sovereign finish, and yet this challenge to our sovereignty is quickly and conservatively reconfigured as the more abstract fight for a system of values against the scourge of nihilism through which Steve Rogers’s sense of purpose is recuperated. To hold open this groundlessness for a little longer it is necessary to turn to Promethea’s revelation. The sovereign imagination While Promethea is a rather heavy-handed piece of didacticism as Moore sets out his vision of magic based on a Westernised version of Kabbalah, its brilliance lies in the approach he takes to the primary role of the imagination in the construction of worlds. Promethea is the female version of Prometheus, the light-bringer, whose ultimate function is to illuminate humankind by showing them there is no greater power than their own imagination. This illumination is apocalyptic because it reveals how the seemingly substantial worlds people live in are nothing but stories we have created. As a threat to the ‘truth’ of the established order she is hunted down by the FBI, dark magicians, and different groups of superheroes, including the Five Swell Guys and America’s Best, headed by Tom Strong. The story begins with a young woman named Sophie Bangs researching her dissertation on the supposedly fictional character of Promethea. Her writing serves to summon Promethea from what Moore calls the ‘immateria’, making Sophie the latest host for this ‘living story’ (Moore and Williams III, 2000: n.p.). These hosts can be male or female and Moore offers a fairly fluid sense of gender here especially when Sophie is introduced to the Promethea who calls herself Bill.21 In keeping with the concept that ideas give shape to the material world, the different attitudes and means of expression of the previous hosts have all brought into being different Prometheas, who still reside in the ‘immateria’ after their physical life comes to an end. The story runs over thirty-two issues because the thirty-second path on the Kabbalah is the one that connects matter and the imagination, and is given the name ‘the world’ (Moore and Williams III, 2001: n.p.), which Promethea informs us is not to be confused with the planet: ‘ “The world” isn’t the planet, or the life and people on it. The world is our systems, our ­politics, our economies … our ideas of the world. It’s our flags and our banknotes

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and our border wars’ (Moore and Williams III, 2000: n.p.; italics in original). As a ‘living story’ and the embodiment of ‘the Holy Splendour of the Imagination’, Promethea announces that she ‘cannot be destroyed’ (n.p.).22 She symbolizes an indestructible, infinitely fertile and sovereign imagination that is the source of the worlds in which humans reside. In philosophy, the concept of a sovereign imagination has received its most sustained treatment in Cornelius Castoriadis’s book The Imaginary Institution of Society. In this study, he speaks of society as a tension between the instituted and the instituting imagination: a polemos between what has already been created and what is yet to come. The instituted imagination is the world of meaningful practice that a given society has established. This will include its laws, social customs, rules for artistic expression, regimes of taste, political organisation, religion, and general etiquette. The instituted therefore includes the ‘highest’ processes and procedures, as well as the ‘humblest’ everyday rituals that are replete with meaning. For Castoriadis, this intimacy between life and the meaning we give to it means that ‘existence is signification’ (1997: 11). As a consequence, a given society will perceive ‘as a mortal threat any attack upon this system of interpretation: it perceives such an attack as an attack upon its identity’ (9). In a beautifully succinct formula, Castoriadis writes: ‘The throne of the Lord of signification stands above the throne of the Lord of violence’ (1991: 155). In other words, violence is subservient to the system of meaning it is regularly called upon to defend. This is a problem encapsulated in superhero stories such as Silver Surfer: Requiem discussed above, but it is also brilliantly presented in the Incredible Hercules volume collected under the title Secret Invasion (Pak, Van Lente and Sandoval, 2008). The invasion, also mentioned in earlier chapters, refers to the take-over of Earth by the shape-shifting Skrull, and as would be assumed in a comic dealing with the activities of gods, in this particular part of the story Hercules’ half-sister, Athena, is leading the Council Elite of Earth’s divine pantheons against the Skrull pantheon for, as Athena points out, ‘dead gods cannot command their followers to conquer this planet’ (n.p.). Here, Athena is completely aware of the command structure, as she calls it, between signification and violence. In the next issue, we are then introduced to the primary Skrull gods responsible for the invasion who also clearly understand the relationship between what is meaningful and war: ‘If you wish to completely destroy a people  – you must also destroy their dreams’ (n.p.; italics in original), they proclaim, before going on to note in issue 118 how in every chapel and every shrine on every ship and every slave world ‘the superiority of [the Skrull] faith is displayed in an endless row of vanquished idols’ (n.p.). The Skrull know that total victory comes when that command structure between signification and violence is broken and what once were gods are displayed as ‘cultural carcasses’ (n.p.). This issue is also directly addressed in volume four of Promethea where, having left the material realm to explore the immateria, Sophie leaves her friend Stacia to

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deputise for her. Stacia is possessed by a previous incarnation of Promethea that goes by the name of Grace, the host at the time of that manifestation. The Stacia/ Grace version of Promethea takes a much more direct approach to dealing with the super-villains, superheroes and dark magicians that want to see her presence extinguished, and deploys a good deal of violence to protect herself. When Sophie returns to reclaim the role of Promethea in the material realm Stacia refuses to give way and a struggle ensues over the right to be Promethea. Here, Moore takes the opportunity to represent the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington as a clash of two imaginary institutions. Having based the Promethea character in events that took place in Alexandria in A D 411, Moore uses issue 24 to introduce a story in which ‘the spirit of Promethea was divided in herself, and did not know it’ (Moore and Williams III, 2003: n.p.). One converts to Islam (the Sophie version), the other ‘enters into Christ’ (the Stacia version). With neither woman wishing to stand down, they both call upon the spirit of Promethea and a hugely destructive clash takes place in New York, which becomes known as the Promethea terror attack. Here the two Prometheas take on the role of the Lords of violence and fight to protect the two interpretations and the two instituted societies they have come to represent.23 As the battle between Sophie and Stacia is played out, Moore intersperses the panels with images from the earlier clash when the imagination was split. Here, in images that evoke the crusades, Moore draws the two Prometheas ‘locked in a death-grip’ as they come to recognise themselves in each other. They ‘knew then’, he writes, ‘that both were halves of what had been one holy, undivided source … And the Promethea spirit, reunited with herself, held in her scream of horror, wiped the schism from her mind’ (n.p.). While it is easy to see how the Lords of signification and violence relate to sovereignty (especially the sovereign finish) it remains to be shown how this instituting creativity might be said to be sovereign. In the work of Castoriadis, the radical imaginary is comprised of individual and social-historical elements, but it is the socio-historical that most clearly relates to Promethea’s power. Beneath the system of meaning that has been instituted lies what he calls the ‘magma’ of possible significations. This is ‘a mode of being that gives itself ’ (1987: 343) before any identity can be imposed. Although this is part of a complex ontological argument about how and from where things arise, magmas might be said to be the chaotic, abyssal realm of primal indetermination out of which all determinations (images, concepts, entities) emerge.24 Why this is important for our discussion here is that creativity, for Castoriadis can only be said to be truly creative if it is ‘invented, imagined, posited out of nothing’ (197).25 The magmas, then, and the magma of social imaginary significations in particular, are the excessive source, the generative folds out of which all social-historical ideas come into being, and one could imagine them fitting in quite well as one of Marvel’s ambiguous ‘high abstracts’, one going by the name The Magmamorph, perhaps.26 A little earlier and writing in a mode perfectly in

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keeping with an analysis of sovereignty, Castoriadis states: ‘Social imaginary significations place us in the presence of a mode of being which is primary, originary, irreducible … and cannot be thought of on the basis of an alleged relation to a ‘subject’ which would ‘carry’ them or ‘intend’ them’ (364). This is a revelation that is maddening because we are at once in charge, but not in charge. The magmas are an enigma testifying to something irreducible and more originary than the subject. This is also what he calls ‘the representative flux’, which he describes as ‘the incessant emergence of the other in and through the positing … of images’ (329). Here, the (groundless) ground of all things is an irresistible creative flux, the nothing out of which all distinct, determinate things emerge. In contrast to Nancy’s conception of sovereignty in terms of Height, we might posit this as Depth, a foundation beneath which there can be no other foundation. Returning to Promethea, in issue 12 the snakes wrapped around Hermes’s Caduceus that Promethea carries explain where stories and the worlds they construct come from: ‘These are the minds high halls, dear child, with golden information tiled. Here is revealed, for all to see, the magic of reality. Conversely, we may also view reality in magic, too. The universe’s starry rash that burst from nowhere in a flash, the magic of this earthly ball, the wonder that we’re here at all! The blazing miracle of thought! That all of this emerged from naught!’ (Moore and Williams III, 2001: n.p.; italics in original). The apocalypse or revelation she precipitates at the end of the story, then, is precisely the revelation of the intimacy between the imagined and the real. As Sean Carney (2006) has argued, it is also the collapsing of a supposedly linear and progressive history into the ‘simultaneity’ of ‘everything happening at once’ (41).27 This results in a mass psychosis as the solid ground that supposedly undergirds the world we live in is shown to be nothing but a flux of representations brought into being by the fact that humans are free to create. Having gone into hiding because she is hunted as a terrorist after the Promethea attack, Sophie is finally smoked out and through her only mode of defence is forced to fulfil her destiny and bring about the end of the world. Following the apocalypse in issue 27, the remaining five issues, brilliantly realised by artist J. H. Williams III, present the manifestation of the ‘representative flux’ and the madness this brings on. The form of the comic becomes competing strips as the diegesis is gradually taken over by colours and entities from the flux that has manifested in the sky above New York. The world effectively becomes flooded by a chaotic array of visions, images and concepts as different people make manifest their own worldview. At the height of the apocalypse one of the agents who has been tracking Promethea reminds his partner that ‘people’s perception of the world is the world’, adding, ‘how could any human culture survive if this madness became universal?’ (Moore and Williams III, 2005: n.p.; italics in original). In the final issue, Alan Moore has Promethea remind the reader: ‘Imagination – tumbling, spinning – is the light that guides humanity to its future’ (issue 32,

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n.p; italics in original). This is the ‘pro’ in her name – promethes meaning ‘foresight’ in Greek. Ultimately, Promethea’s revelation is not one particular and final interpretation of the Word that is supposedly guaranteed by God. The revelation is nothing but the word freed from any guarantee, foundation or sovereign finish – simply the word emanating out of a sovereign nothing that creates a multiplicity of interconnected worlds. Post-apocalypse, however, the revelation doesn’t tear down the religions that had previously secured the world that God had supposedly created, it doesn’t do away with the religious drive for intimacy and continuity, but people are shown to be comfortable with the idea that there are many gods. It is also left to Sophie to explain that the apocalypse has not put an end to war and violence. The world may be more open to plurality and difference than it has ever been, but the revelation has also made people incredibly anxious, eager to resurrect the old ‘certainties’. In effect, the revelation ushers in a new era of openness, but the manifestation of the nothing has also driven people into a form of denial and the need to physically counter those who have adopted and are spreading the new Word that anything goes. The apocalypse it seems is fragile because the desire to find a home has people franticly world building, so they might hold back the yawning abyss that has opened up above them. Issue 31 then ends with the previous Prometheas discussing the possibility that a new Promethea might yet be needed. The apocalypse might have been a great gift, but it is one that humans find it hard to accept. As liberating as Promethea’s apocalypse might be, it is one in which the nothing is made manifest and the future looms up in all its uncertainty. In the face of such an abyss, we are ontologically predisposed to start world building as quickly as possible. Although Moore’s message is one of hope, it remains tinged with tragedy. To some extent it might be said we have departed from any workable definition of sovereignty, but that is precisely the point. The concept of sovereignty is riven by a profound contradiction that it must disavow to remain workable. The sovereign is the highest and most powerful, the protector of all things and yet such distinction and elevation makes it something different altogether: a void, an abyss, Nothing. We can tame this void by painting the face of God on it or we can project it outwards as the untameable monster that threatens us, and whose defeat secures our sovereign finish. Superhero comics regularly do both, but they are also much more content to hold this contradiction open, and by doing this all manner of creative and politically progressive possibilities begin to emerge. Notes  1 In a similar vein, Derrida argues that sovereignty is ‘an excess insatiable for the passing of every determinable limit:  higher than height, grander than grandeur, etc.’ (2009: 257). He goes on to say that sovereignty is the absolute maximum that might also be figured as the smallest possible, the power of ‘arch-smallness, the absolute

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diminution of the smallest. Of the microscopic, and thus the almost invisible, the minus, the minuscule reduced to its smallest diminutive’, adding that ‘the smallest can [still] be found very high’ (257). Superheroes like Wasp, Ant-Man or The Atom have always expressed their power through a capacity to shrink. There is also ‘The Shrinking Superman’ story in Action Comics #245 (Binder and Boring, 1958), but perhaps the most intriguing is ‘Superman’s New Power’ from Superman #125 (Coleman and Boring, 1958), where he is suddenly able to shoot rainbows from his fingertips, only to discover they contain a miniature version of himself, who is able to access powers he thought he had lost.  2 The height of one Celestial is expressly used by Neil Gaiman in The Eternals (Gaiman and Romita Jr., 2008) to make a mockery of Iron Man’s ‘sovereign’ demand that the Celestial signs up to the Superhuman Registration Act during the Civil War arc.  3 Derrida also supports this argument suggesting that sovereignty is a ‘hyberbolic excess beyond everything – and so it is nothing’ (2009: 290).  4 This superabundance of energy can be seen in innumerable other instances such as the point where the former Ms Marvel, Carol Danvers assumed the power of a star and became Binary (Claremont and Cockrum, 1982b), or in the following issue where Storm summons the power of the galactic core, the point where ‘millions of suns [are] crammed into a relatively tiny volume of space’ (Claremont and Smith, 1983) and briefly shines like a new star in the firmament.  5 Sovereign practices thus include potlatch; sacrifice; ecstatic mysticism; and eroticism, in which we experience le petit mort of orgasm.  6 He is taught this by Eon, a collective being that resembles a cosmic tumour (a giant being, part eye, part hair). At this point in the story the cosmically aware Captain Marvel is also depicted floating in space next to a giant eye that is also a sun. These images perfectly fit Bataille’s iconography of sovereign practice.  7 In keeping with Bataille’s argument regarding our desire for intimacy, Flahault (2005) argues we are split between an ‘inborn boundlessness’ (42), ‘a kind of non-bounded, non-differentiated proto-subjectivity’ (41), and the limited, bounded requirements of social existence, and yet we always desire to return to the original state of being without limits.  8 Early creators like Jack Kirby, who co-created the Galactus story in 1966, were well aware that creation is a duality rather than a dualism. The duality of a character like the Sentry compared to the clearly distinct dualism of good guys versus bad guys has a history that dates back at least to Kirby’s creation the New Gods (1971), where the two planets of New Genesis, an idyllic planet ruled by the Highfather, and Apokolips ruled by the evil tyrant Darkseid, were written as having emerged from the break-up of the older planet, Urgrund. As the name of this planet suggests, Kirby is clearly open to the idea that the original ground (Urgrund) or primeval origin contains both destructive and creative elements, and that there was a time when these were joined rather than separated.  9 Another story that explicitly relates to the dangerous desire for limitlessness is the emergence of Phoenix in X-Men #101. This is the story of how Jean Grey, formerly Marvel Girl, is able to tap into her full telepathic and telekinetic powers in an event that supposedly killed her. Saving her teammates from certain death in issue 100

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she pilots the plane they were travelling in through a solar flare. The energy kills her physical form and transforms her into pure energy. Later able to reconstitute herself, but now with greatly enhanced powers she names herself Phoenix. In issue 105 and another encounter with the Silver Surfer she confronts him with the words: ‘Death doesn’t frighten me, herald! You see, my friend, I’ve been there’ (Claremont and Cockrum, 1977: n.p.; italics in original). In later issues, beginning with X-Men #129, she is taken over by Mastermind who convinces her she is a former Black Queen of the Hellfire Club (issue 132) and teaches her to relish her new powers and explore them to the full. As the story develops, she takes on the identity of the Dark Phoenix and herself becomes a world destroyer. 10 The collected edition isn’t numbered consecutively so the page numbers here refer to the pages of the relevant chapters. 11 For Moore, this was a critique of Steve Ditko’s hero, The Question, who would mete out justice according to Ditko’s adoption of Ayn Rand’s right-wing pseudo-philosophy that one must always judge and condemn others who do not operate according to one’s own sense of rationality and virtue. 12 Within this analysis, we also don’t have to worry about whether or not The Vision is human. That is an irrelevant question. The fact that his existence is an issue for him the moment he begins to interrogate his purpose in The Avengers #57 (Thomas and Buscema, 1968) is enough for him to be dasein. 13 In a famous passage in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, Heidegger posits what he calls ‘three theses: [1.] the stone (material object) is worldless; [2.] the animal is poor in world; [3.] man is world-forming’ (1995: 177; italics in original). 14 Gregory Fried has noted this word should not be taken to designate the primacy of physical struggle but the irresistible fact that what he calls an ‘interpretive confrontation’ (2000: 31) is essential to dasein. 15 In a recent three-part story entitled ‘Flowers for Bizarro’, which began in Adventures of Superman #25 (Gage and Francisco, 2013), Bizarro is fitted with neuro-transmitters in order that Superman might be able to communicate with him and put a halt to his senseless rampages. In the process, we learn that Bizarro does not share our ability for sense making. The world is a chaotic jumble of impressions and stimuli that he arranges into some order only by doing the opposite of Superman. As the story progresses, the treatment works and while Superman can now communicate with Bizarro he struggles to fit into this new world and in the most bizarre of Bizarro lines he tells Superman that he is scared because the meaningful world of communicable order makes no sense to him. The only solution is to send him into space destined for a new planet that will become the Bizarro home world and which he can form in his own image. 16 In his lecture series on Hölderlin, Heidegger argues that if dasein does not understand the uncanny (unheimlich) nature of its existence the fragility of the world can turn into what he calls ‘predatory uncanniness’ (1996: 90) whereby dasein attempts to destroy anything that threatens the world it builds. For a fuller discussion of this, see my ‘Tragedy and Politics’ (Curtis, 2007). 17 In the story arc that followed the Scarlet Witch’s breakdown over the loss of her children, the capacity for world building and the threat of the nothing is clearly set out. In House of M (Bendis and Coipel, 2006), she is shown literally rebuilding the world

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that has crumbled around her. In issue 7, Dr  Strange once again has to reveal the truth. He explains that her former friends and her family are at war outside because of her actions. At this point, the walls of her bedroom where she is playing with her children open up and the brick-like structure of this reality is carefully dismantled to offer a window onto the fighting. At the top of page 7, when she laments that ‘no one should be fighting’, the next panel shows the bricks being reassembled, but the gap in the structure is enough to suggest the abyss that has once again opened up inside her world. In the end, she blames her father for the violence between humans and mutants and in one final wilful attempt to create the world she wants she alters reality once more and wipes out the mutant gene. 18 This theme has been used to good effect in recent titles focusing on female superheroes such as Carol Danvers, the new Captain Marvel. In part this is because the use of women as cheap plot devices and bit players in the storylines of their male counterparts means their biographies lend themselves to narratives where they try to bring coherence to their scattered and stuttering attempts to gain recognition. Carol Danvers was originally an air force pilot who was severely injured but ultimately transformed when she was caught in an explosion that melded her DNA with that of Marvel’s orginal Captain Marvel. In the 1970s she re-emerged with superpowers, her own title and the name Ms Marvel. She briefly became Binary in the 1980s, only to assume another identity in the 1990s as she reverted back to her old(ish) powers and was given the name Warbird. She finally reverted to Ms Marvel and her own title in 2006 only to take up the mantle of Captain Marvel six years later (DeConnick and Soy, 2012). In the the first collected volume, writer Kelly Sue DeConnick portrays a woman confused and scarred by the events in her former life, while still struggling with the accident that threw her into a new one she did not want, one that took away her life as an aviator that had been her world up to that point. Caught between a past that she must let go of and a future she has yet to seize, this story very nicely sets out another key component in Heidegger’s anaysis of dasein, which must always project a future for itself. Dasein is split between the world it inherited and the world it must create. As a consequence, dasein is thought in terms of potentiality, as always having something outstanding. DeConnick writes Danvers as a woman whose former life has been taken away. She has the ability to fly without a plane but her flight lacks the excitement and risk involved when pushing a plane to its limits. DeConnick has her recall her childhood hero, a female pilot named Helen Cobb. ‘I know that Helen would have given her entire world … to be able to reach out … and touch the edge of space’ (n.p.; italics in original). Although her superpowers effectively remove all risk she comes to understand that risk is still entailed in grasping her new name and role as Captain Marvel. ‘Helen’, she continues, ‘damn sure wouldn’t stare into the face of etermity and think about what she’d lost. Helen would punch holes in the sky … Decision made … I’m taking the damn name’ (n.p.). The collected first volume is therefore aptly titled ‘In Pursuit of Flight’ not just because it harks back to her lost life as an aviator, but primarily because she must learn to ‘fly’ as Captian Marvel. The first issue ends with a clear statement of intent by a heroine determined to project a future for herself.

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19 As the Surfer leaves, the site of the rebiulding is drawn to resemble Calvary. The Silver Surfer is a tragic figure, an agent of peace doomed to become Galactus’s herald. His pacificsim plus the torment he suffers both at the hands of Galactus and at humans who do not understand him readily permit his representation as a Christ-like figure, even going so far as to portray him resisting the tempations of Mephisto in one of the earliest stories entitled ‘The Power and the Prize’ (Lee and Buscema, 1968b). 20 For a very good discussion of this, see Costello (2009: 108–14). 21 Although the project is hampered by Moore’s magical system, which remains locked in the traditional metaphysical binaries that have served patriarchy so well, it is also at times noteworthy for its progressive approach to gender and sexual politics. 22 This concept of the indestructibility of ideas is something that has received attention in a number of other superhero comics, too. In J.  Michael Straczynski’s Thor (Straczynski and Coipel, 2008), for example, Donald Blake is able to summon Thor back from the dead because, as an idea, ‘it is for man to decide whether or not the gods exist’ (n.p.). Although this may be a convenience it nevertheless speaks to the idea that it is the imagination that creates worlds and the entities that come to populate them. The gods did not create us without us first creating them. 23 For Castoriadis, the role of religion relates to ‘the denial and the covering up of the instituting dimension of society through the imputation of the origin of the institution and of its social significations to an extrasocial source’ (1991: 153). Religion is therefore intimately associated with the ‘closure of meaning’ (151), and what the Promethea attack represents is the attempt by religion to execute this function in the face of a counter-interpretation that has opened up the meaning of the world. 24 Here, Castoriadis is working in a similar vein to Ernst Cassirer, who in Language and Myth wrote:  ‘Instead of measuring the content, meaning, and truth of intellectual forms by something extraneous which is supposed to be reproduced in them, we must find in these forms themselves the measure and criterion for their truth and intrinsic meaning. Instead of taking them as mere copies of something else, we must see in each of these spiritual forms a spontaneous law of generation; an original way and tendency of expression which is more than a mere record of something initially given in fixed categories of real existence’ (1953: 8). 25 Castoriadis’s attempt to formulate the problem can be found in his essay ‘The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy’ (1994). 26 I came across this term in a thesis by Mats Rosengren (2008). 27 Carney argues: ‘The reader of Promethea is being offered the vision of potential totality from whence meaning emerges, in an aesthetic apocalypse wherein the artist, the reader, and the characters are all consumed and redeemed by Promethea’s story, and will live together in a city of the imagination where all of history simultaneously exists in miniature’ (2006: 41).

Postscript

Previously … The sovereign, an entity of immense height and power that stood as the protector of the world and guarantee of all that is good, had provided a secure identity for a people and defended the sanctity of their way of life. The sovereign controlled time, linking the origin of all things to a future of peace and unity. Occasionally, villains and monsters would emerge that the sovereign would need to imprison, banish or kill. Violence existed, but the sovereign incorporated it all and used it with judicious, decisive and righteous force. All was well in the land of the sovereign. Unbeknownst to the people of the territory, however, the sovereign is revealed to be a dual entity, and appears to be possessed by something alien. As the sovereign ages, cracks begin to appear in its perfectly smooth, granite like skin. As the fissures open up the sovereign uses excessive force to maintain its finish, and begins to find it hard to differentiate itself from the villains and monsters it chases down. The friend that the people had always seen in the benign face of the sovereign started to resemble the enemy. The people then discover they are defined as much by the beasts they banish outside their community as they are by the brilliant light that shines from the sovereign. With this realisation the symbolic authority that polices their behaviour starts to loosen and the people discover they can be a far more differentiated community than they had previously been told. As the new ways of being together grow, and with its authority increasingly undermined, the sovereign declares an emergency and suspends the very protections it is supposed to ensure. Now suspicious that the sovereign is in fact a false idol the people themselves begin to work on the cracks of its armoured skin in order to bring it down. Sufficiently weakened, the sovereign collapses under its own weight and disappears into the abyss it had been constructed to hide. Over the course of this book, a variety of problems relating to the concept of sovereignty have been worked through. It has been shown that the concept is also an especially fruitful way for thinking about the complex nature of the superhero, and that superhero comics in turn are especially good vehicles for addressing these issues. While the received view is that superheroes are ideological defenders of a specific way or life and legitimate a great deal of violence

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in the defence of those worlds – an interpretation that is valid when seen in relation to the work of some writers – I have shown they can also offer explicit meditations on the problem of sovereign violence and its dangers. Because they operate precisely on this threshold between the legal and the extra-legal in defence of worlds in permanent states of emergency their milieu is that of the sovereign. In highlighting the intimacy between the law and violence, inclusion and exclusion, friend and enemy, and civility and bestiality, superheroes can occasion some very important questions about who we are and how we maintain the worlds in which we live. In this, I have proposed they can open up all kinds of politically progressive possibilities as the purity – sovereignty, even – of our categories are contaminated by what we supposedly deem to be ‘other’. I have argued that the two most authoritative figures in the Marvel and DC universes take the legitimacy from the demand for change. Yes, they can be written to support the sovereign finish, but they also call on us to go beyond what is given and reach for something else. This is because the sovereign doesn’t represent something substantial that it must preserve, but rather hides an abyss into which everything falls, but out of which all things arise. This nothingness that accompanies the sovereign is too readily projected outwards against all manner of evil monsters, but I have ended the book with Promethea’s revelation precisely because superhero comics are themselves testimony to the limitless creativity that Promethea represents. In closing, I  should mention Grant Morrison’s Multiversity (Morrison and Reis, 2014), which is another radical take on the idea that the fabric of reality is a set of interlinked stories. This is a development of an earlier idea found in his Final Crisis storyline (Morrison, Jones and Mahnke, 2009), briefly discussed in Chapter 1 that brilliantly encapsulates the centrality of the imagination to the worlds we live in, and is another version of the contradiction of sovereignty at play in superhero universes. Developing the cosmology articulated in the earlier Crisis on Infinite Earths and Infinite Crisis, written by Marv Wolfman and Geoff Johns respectively, in which the DCU of fifty-two worlds is the site of a struggle between the Monitor and the Anti-Monitor, or matter and anti-matter, Morrison assigns these attributes not to primary and independent forces or entities but to a rupture that came into being out of a much earlier crisis. During the part of the story published initially as the two-issue miniseries Superman Beyond, Morrison offers us a picture of ‘God’ as the Overmonitor protecting what is known as the Overvoid, presented in the comics as an infinite, pristine, sheet of blank white paper. The crisis begins only when the Overmonitor discovers a minute mark or stain on the sheet of paper, which when he investigates the blemish it turns out to be a tiny universe, or rather multiverse of stories. The messy, chaotic stain of myriad stories, which have inhabited the void all the time, requires investigation by the Monitor – which is the start of the original Crisis. Ultimately, the dangers that lie within the stain need to be contained in

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what the Monitors call the Orrery of Worlds. Morrison narrates the encounter as follows: Previously! There was Monitor only! And then! Then is a flaw found at the heart of monitor perfection! Monitor makes a concept to contain the flaw! Monitor examination reveals within terrifying, unforeseen complexities and contradictions! Magnification reveals a structure of infinitesimal rippling manifolds upon whose surface intricate germ-like processes thrive and multiply! Monitor extends a probe! Designed to blend with its surroundings, the probe secures contact! With something monitor has never encountered before! Inside the flaw – a chaotic froth of events! Lives. Deaths. Heroes. Villains. Lovers. Stories! With no precedent for the concept ‘story’! No understanding of the damage ‘story’ might do to an immense awareness without limits or definition! Monitor has zero defences! Blinded, split in two, the probe withdraws! The flaw is sealed, scabbed over. With divine metals! Made safe. (Morrison and Mahnke, 2008, n.p.; italics in original)

While this is clearly another metafictional trope for which Morrison is well known, as an image of the origin it shows the foundation of everything to be a void paradoxically already populated by the fifty-two worlds of the DCU, while also showing those worlds existing first and foremost as stories. Here, the Overmonitor can in no way be seen as a sovereign creator-God, in the sense of having produced or fabricated these worlds because they have happened without his notice or intervention. The Overmonitor is the protector of the Overvoid and is sovereign in that role, and yet he is completely undone by this flaw in the heart of his realm, a flaw that is later described as the ‘ultimate secret of being’ (n.p.). This is a secret very much in keeping with Promethea’s revelation. The idea of the multiverse has been around since Barry Allen, The Flash, discovered Earth 2 (Fox and Infantino, 1961). Morrison has simply drawn out the logic of a narrative device that has enabled all kinds of stories to run up against each other and encouraged all kinds of permutations to a character’s biography, but it also reflects a basic intuition regarding the plural and contradictory interpretations that we call our worlds, or that what lies at the bottom of everything is an infinitely creative imagination that gives form to the flux. Truth thought in these terms can never be unitary of the kind demanded by the sovereign finish, it can only be the site of a conflict between being and nothing, form and chaos, presence and absence, creation and destruction, and ultimately the movement of history proves this conflict to be sovereign. In the end, the dark negating force turns out to be nothing but our own imagination – our own capacity to freely create – rendered dark precisely because, as Castoriadis notes, it is the ‘enemy against which the defences of society are feeblest’ (1991: 153), and this contradiction of sovereignty, this conflict between the waxing and waning of worlds gets us to the heart of the superhero mythos.

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This prompts one final thought. If stories are essential to both the creation and preservation of worlds as well as their overturning and reimagining this also means it is of the utmost importance how these superhero characters are written because they help direct and shape the ‘real world’ in which readers live. While superhero stories clearly reflect the time and culture of their production they also make a direct contribution to that culture. Stories about Superman and Spider-Woman, Swamp Thing and She-Hulk are constitutive of the world in which we live and breathe. To this effect, I hope that executives, editors, writers and artists remember that stories and the world operate in a permanent feedback loop, and that what appears in the pages of superhero comics regularly validates and therefore continues practices that take place beyond the page. Some great, though still rather limited, strides have been taken in the area of ethnic diversity, gender and sexuality, but let us hope that superheroes can continue to defend those who need defending and advocate for those who cannot yet be heard. The world needs to become a whole lot freakier, and who better to take us there than superheroes? To be continued …

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Index

Abnett, D. 153 Adams, N. 31, 32, 149 Agamben, G. 59, 64, 105, 107, 118, 119, 122, 126, 160 Albright, D. L. 44 Alphona, A. 156 Amazons 5, 129–31, 136, 144, 146, 149 Andrae, T. 16, 31 Animal Man 140–1, 150, 157 anomie 105, 107–11, 112, 118, 122, 125, 154, 163 Anti-Cap 35, 55 Antigone 135–7 Appiah, K. A. 52 Aquaman 4, 69, 140 Arendt, H. 34, 39, 44–6, 48–9, 51–2, 55 Aristotle 57, 75, 119 Arkham Asylum 74–8 authority 2, 5, 6, 14–15, 22, 59, 68, 98, 111, 122, 123, 128, 133, 135–7, 145, 150, 160, 179 The Authority 32 autoimmunity 82, 88–92, 94, 95, 99, 102, 103, 107 Avengers 41, 47, 50, 55, 61, 83, 89–90, 98, 114, 115, 116–17, 146–8, 169, 176 Dark Avengers 116–17 Mighty Avengers 115, 116 Young Avengers 127 Azzarello, B. 15, 19, 21, 23, 25, 26, 32, 131 Bad Cap 35, 50, 51, 92 bad infinite 158–9, 160, 162, 163, 170 Baker, K. 122, 123

banishment 118–24, 146, 160, 179 bare life 118–19, 121–2, 124 Barrows, E. 17 Bataille, G. 156–8, 161, 162, 175 Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) 37, 65, 79, 148 Batman 3, 6, 9, 10, 15, 28, 31, 57, 62–6, 70–9, 80, 81, 86–8, 94, 102, 106, 125, 126, 128, 131, 134–5, 136, 137, 139, 142–3, 145, 145, 150, 152, 155 beast 67–70, 72–3, 74–5, 76, 77, 79, 80, 96, 111, 122, 139, 179 in Nietzsche (beast of burden) 17 Beck-Gernsheim, E. 128, 150 Bendis, B. M. 61, 113, 116, 117, 126, 148 Binder, O. 19, 33, 175 Bizarro 29–30, 33, 165, 176 Black Bolt 5, 68 Black Lightning 25 Black Orchid 151 Black Panther (T’Challa) 5 Bloch, E. 32 Blumberg, A. T. 93 Bodin, J. 3, 4, 67, 82, 104, 105 body 59, 64 Bolland, B. 66 Boring, W. 175 Borradori, G. 102 Breyfogle, N. 64, 78 Broderick, P. 143 Brooker, W. 1, 9, 15, 58, 62, 78, 79, 80, 94, 95, 129, 152 Broome, J. 5 Brubaker, E. 57, 91–2, 116, 127, 148

198 Bucky (James Buchanan Barnes) 40, 43, 49–50, 91–2, 127 BUCkys (bold Urban Commandos) 48, 49 Burnham, C. 79, 80 Buscema, J. 176, 178 Buscema, S. 50, 51, 57, 61, 69, 91, 146, 168, 169 Busiek, K. 17, 19, 114, 165 Butler, J. 129, 136–7, 144, 148, 150 Byrne, J. 18, 44, 51, 121, 147 Captain America 4, 10, 13, 14, 34–57, 60, 69, 84, 90–2, 94, 95, 99, 100, 102, 108–11, 114, 116–18, 122–4, 125, 126, 127, 168–9 Captain Atom 106–7 Captain Marvel (Billy Batson) 7, 8, 128 Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers) 177 Captain Marvel (Mar-vell) 157–8, 162, 175 Capwolf 69 Carney, S. 173, 178 Cassaday, J. 37 Cassirer, E. 178 Castoriadis, C. 171–3, 178, 181 Checkmate 105–6 Cheung, J. 127 Civil War 46, 91, 93, 108, 110, 112, 114–16, 175 Claremont, C. 55, 57, 86, 121, 160, 175, 176 Coipel, O. 90, 117, 176, 178 Colan, G. 47, 168 Coleman, J. 175 Colon, E. 93 constitution 13, 14, 34, 43, 44, 46, 52, 54, 89, 124 constitutional patriot 52 threat to 89 Conway, G. 93, 110, 111, 131 Coogan, P. 3, 12, 82, 83, 84, 90, 97, 103, 110, 126, 138, 149 Cooke, D. 154 Costello, M. J. 1, 5, 71, 82, 102, 178 Cover, R. 27, 59, 60, 62–3, 77, 78, 81, 108, 125 crisis 36, 39, 56, 104, 166, 169 of substantiation 166 Crisis on Infinite Earths 19, 24, 180 Cunningham, P. L. 39, 169 cyborg 144–6, 151

Index Daredevil 44, 83, 124 Dark Knight Returns 67, 70–3 Darkseid 25, 175 David, P. 120 death 3, 62, 119, 153, 157 and autoimmunity 103 of Gwen Stacey 93, 114 power over life and death 3, 119 of sovereignty 155 of Steve Rogers 49, 55 and tragedy 135, 136 DeConnick, K. S. 177 DeFalco, T. 96, 97 Deleuze, G. 132–3, 149, 150 Derrida, J. 67–70, 72, 75, 82, 88–9, 93–4, 102, 174, 175 Diggle, A. 126 Ditko, S. 114, 176 Dittmer, J. 1, 5, 34, 37, 41, 43, 47, 52, 53, 54, 57, 125 Dixon, C. 78 Dr Doom 5, 84, 85, 90, 97, 100–1, 113 DuBose, M. S. 38 Durkheim, E. 138–9, 141, 145, 150 Dwyer, K. 44, 48, 49, 102 Eco, U. 26–8 Elias, L. 101 Ellis, W. 32, 115, 116 emergency 39, 104–7, 108, 109, 117, 118, 120, 126, 179, 180 enforcement 24, 43, 59, 133 Englehart, S. 49, 50, 147 Ennis, G. 58, 111 equality 4, 32, 45, 52, 55, 123, 148, 151 Eternals 70, 175 eugenics 16, 91, 124, 127 Everett, B. 124 evil 8, 14, 24–5, 32, 34, 37–8, 50, 65, 76, 84, 85, 98, 100, 101, 111, 132, 153, 159, 161, 162, 163 and Captain America 37, 50 in Carl Schmitt 85, 98 and claim to sovereignty 101 and limitlessness 159, 161, 163 and ontology 84 and US war machine 111, 132 exception 104–7, 109, 118, 124, 126 exceptionalism 113, 125

Index Falcon 49, 50, 53, 54, 57, 92, 151 Falk, P. 60 Fantastic Four 83–4, 94, 96, 97, 100, 114, 148, 154, 159 Femme Force 53 Finch, D. 148 Finger, B. 62, 80 Fingeroth, D. 11 Flag Smasher 40–3, 45 Flahault, F. 158–60, 163, 175 Flanagan, W. 64 force 5, 6, 7, 24, 39, 42, 47, 50, 56, 63, 70, 72–3, 91, 153, 154, 164, 179, 181 and power 46, 91 and US in Nicaragua 56 Fox, G. 181 Fraction, M. 116, 125, 151 Frank, G. 21, 32 freedom 11, 17, 22, 23, 25, 26, 34, 38, 39, 44–6, 52, 54, 98, 133, 156–8, 164 Arendt 34, 39, 44–6, 54 auto-immunity 89 Bataille 156–8 collective 44, 51 contradictory 38 fear 90 Heidegger 164 nature 69 Nietzsche 17 Patočka 23 Twain 46 Wonder Woman 133 Free Spirit 53 Fried, G. 176 friend 38, 82, 83, 87, 88, 90, 92, 95, 98, 100, 103, 179 and enemy distinction 82–5, 87–92, 94–7, 98, 102, 118–19 Gage, C. 146, 176 Gaiman, N. 70, 151, 175 Gale, B. 125 Gavaler, C. 6, 108 gay 58, 79, 129, 148, 151 characters 148, 151 readings 58, 79, 129 Gay, J. 105, 107 gender 52–3, 61, 128, 130, 131, 133, 134, 136, 143, 148, 170, 178, 182

199 Gibbons, D. 28, 160 Gillen, K. 148 Goodwin, A. 61, 122 Grant, A. 64, 78 Grant, J. 20 Green Goblin 93, 109, 114, 116, 126 (see also Norman Osborne) Green Lantern 10, 40, 61, 80, 87, 88, 102, 145, 149 Green Lantern Corps 145 Gruenwald, M. 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 48, 49, 53, 57, 69, 91, 102 Guggenheim, M. 93 Hack, B. 16, 36, 127 Hal Jordan (Green Lantern) 87–8 Hamilton, E. 20, 31, 79 Haney, B. 101 Haraway, D. 129, 143–6, 151, 152 Harvey Dent (Two-Face) 65, 71, 72 Hayton, C. J. 44 Hazelwood, D. 140, 150, 151 Heck, D. 47, 131, 147 Heidegger, M. 164–5, 166, 168, 176, 177 height 154–5, 173, 174, 175 Heinberg, A. 127 Henry Pym 94 Heraclitus 165 Hiketeia 129, 133–6 history 11, 13, 15, 26, 28, 41, 151, 173, 178, 181 end of 26, 27 of genre 11, 93, 142 as struggle 26, 29 Hitch, B. 32, 98, 99, 110 Hobbes, T. 58, 67–8, 69–70, 73, 75, 79, 85, 100, 101, 139, 153, 160 hope 24, 32, 33, 79, 139 Hope (character) 23, 32 Hughes, J. 79 Hulk 94, 98, 99, 119–21 imagination 159, 170, 171–3, 178, 180, 181 national 35 Infantino, C. 5, 181 Irredeemable 3, 4 Iron Man 3, 95, 96, 103, 110, 115, 116, 117, 125, 140, 175

200 Iron Patriot 117 Isaiah Bradley 123–4, 126, 127 Jenkins, H. 11 Jenkins, P. 56, 68, 102, 115, 153, 154 Jewett, R. 6, 37, 38–9, 41, 82, 112–13, 118, 125 Jimenez, P. 15, 24, 105 Johns, G. 15, 21, 24, 32, 87, 89–90, 102, 105, 148, 149, 180 John Stewart (Green Lantern) 87 Joker 65–6, 71–2, 74–8, 84, 145 Jones, J. G. 25, 129, 134, 136, 180 Jones, K. 78 Jurgens, D. 105, 106 jurisdiction 10, 58, 59, 118 jurispathic 77, 81 Justice League of America 7, 47, 87, 102, 126, 155 Kane, B. 62, 80 katechon 8 Kelly, J. 32 Kershnar, S. 63 Kingdom Come 6–8, 160 kinship 2, 20, 68, 128–52 alternative 143, 146 between beast and sovereign 68 social deformation of 136 symbolic kinship 131, 135, 136, 137, 142, 143, 144 Kirby, J. 35, 36, 41, 43, 47, 56, 70, 84, 101, 124, 126, 127, 149, 159, 175 Kristiansen, T. 16 Ku Klux Klan 6 Kyle Rayner (Green Lantern) 61 Lacan, J. 75, 80, 81 Lanning, A. 153 Latour, B. 144, 145, 152 law 2, 4, 6, 14, 24, 27, 40, 58–67, 68, 72, 77, 94, 104–5, 107, 110, 112, 118, 119–20, 122, 123, 124, 126, 129, 133, 135–7, 168 against murder 134 anti-miscegenation 142 and the body 60–1 and democracy 13, 14, 44, 112 international 41, 56, 113, 114 and lawlessness 107, 108

Index martial 50 and narrative 27, 59–60, 112 in opposition to liberation 23 as restrainer 8 suspension of 104–5, 110 Lawrence, J. 6, 37, 38–9, 41, 82, 112–13, 118, 125 Leach, G. 156 Lee, J. 15, 19, 21, 26, 68, 154, 164 Lee, S. 36, 39, 43, 47, 83, 84, 85, 91, 93, 101, 114, 124, 126, 149, 159, 168, 178 legitimacy 4, 9, 11–15, 19, 21–3, 27, 29, 31, 32, 34–5, 37, 44, 46, 51–5, 65, 69, 99, 107–8, 111, 123, 130, 136, 153 Lemire, J. 151 Leviathan 67–70, 79, 80, 101, 139 Levins, R. 53, 69 Lévi-Strauss, C. 135, 137, 150 Lex Luthor 7, 20, 21, 23–4, 29–31, 32, 103 limitlessness 141, 153, 155–60, 163, 175 Liu, M. 148 Lobdell, S. 148 Luke Cage 122 Machiavelli, N. 72, 75, 80 Magneto 38–9, 55, 84, 86, 100, 146 Mahnke, D. 25, 32, 180, 181 Mantlo, B. 146 Marston, W. M. 130–3, 134, 136, 149 Martyr 63 Marz, R. 61 Mazzucchelli, D. 44, 63 McKean, D. 76, 78, 151 McKelvie, J. 148 McKenzie, R. 57 McNiven, S. 93, 109 McWilliams, O. 127 Meier, H. 8, 98 Meltzer, B. 62, 72 Michelinie, D. 95, 96 Millar, M. 31, 61, 92, 93, 98, 99, 108, 109, 110 Miller, F. 11, 44, 63, 67, 70–2, 74 Moench, D. 78 Mongul 28 monomyth 112, 114, 118, 125, 126 Moore, A. 28, 65–6, 74, 77, 80, 141–2, 150, 156, 160, 165, 170–4, 176, 178 Morales, Robert 122, 123

201

Index Morrison, G. 16, 20–1, 22, 25, 29–31, 33, 74–8, 79, 80, 103, 140–1, 150, 151, 180–1 Ms Marvel (Carol Danvers) 61, 116, 175 Ms Marvel (Kamala Khan) 156 Müller, J-W. 52 Murray, C. 20, 22, 23, 24 MyDearPeabody 79

pharmakon 82, 94–7 Pindar 64 Pitkethly, C. 42, 130, 131 Plastino, A. 19, 20 Plato 15–16, 18–19, 21, 22–4, 29–30, 33 polemos 165, 171 Prof. Xavier 37, 86, 88, 122 Punisher 39, 58, 108–11

Nama, A. 1, 5, 122 Namor, the Submariner 83 Nancy, J-L. 153, 154, 155, 156, 173 narrative 26–7, 32, 52, 59–60, 112–13, 177 Ndalianis, A. 1 Neary, P. 40, 41, 42, 43, 57 Nguyen, D. 79 Nicieza, F. 17, 19, 21 Nick Fury 57, 89, 113–14, 120 Nietzsche, F. 16–18, 31, 32 Nighthawk 40 Nolan, G. 78 nomos 59–60, 62, 63, 64, 77, 79, 105, 107, 108, 110, 125 Norman Osborn 109, 112, 113, 114–18, 126 (see also Green Goblin) nothing 2, 14, 153–4, 155, 156, 158, 163–4, 166, 167–8, 169, 170, 172–4, 175, 176, 180 Novick, I. 56 Nuke 35, 44 Nye, J. S. 84

Quesada, J. 103 Quitely, F. 16, 20, 21, 29, 30, 31, 33, 103

Odin 5, 68, 80 O’Neil, D. 31, 32, 149 Open Society 126 Pacheco, C. 54, 57 Pak, G. 38, 120, 125, 159, 171 Palmiotti, J. 105, 106 Paquette, Y. 79 Patočka, J. 22–3 Patriot 126, 127 patriotism 34, 35, 38, 46, 48–52, 55, 56, 85, 102, 117, 126 constitutional 52 cosmopolitan 52 and partisan 57 PATRIOT Act 125 Pérez, G. 19, 24, 149 Peter, H. G. 130, 133, 136

race 32, 52, 53–5, 57, 101, 122–4, 127 Ra’s Al Ghul 87 Red Skull 49, 54, 90–1, 92, 102 Reichstein, A. 80 Reis, I. 180 Remender, R. 54, 57 Reynolds, R. 63 Ribic, E. 167 Rieber, J. N. 37 Riesman, A. 61 Robertson, D. 58, 111 Romita, J. 54, 83 Romita Jr, J. 61, 70, 121, 175 Rosengren, M. 178 Ross, A. 6, 7, 10, 165 Rucka, G. 105, 129, 133–6, 148 Sampere, D. 148 Saunders, B. 1, 12, 93, 114, 130, 132, 133, 149–50 Scarlet Witch 47, 146–8, 152, 176 Scarry, E. 62, 166, 167 Scheppele, K. L. 52 Schmitt, C. 8, 13–14, 59, 82, 85–6, 88, 98, 100, 102, 104–5, 108, 109, 119, 139, 153, 154, 155, 156 Seagle, S. 16 Secret Wars 100–1 Sentry 116, 117, 154–5, 164, 175 S.H.I.E.L.D. 49, 53, 89, 91, 109, 115, 116, 120, 126 Shooter, J. 61, 100, 101 Shorten, H. 56 Shuster, J. 12, 16, 17, 18, 31, 35 Siegel, J. 12, 16, 17, 18, 31, 35 Silver Surfer 149, 167, 171, 178 Simon, J. 35, 36, 43, 56, 127 Simone, G. 61, 79, 148

Index

202 Simonson, W. 80 Singer, M. 26, 27 Smith, K. 64 Smith, V. 46 social change 4, 22–9, 32, 132 Spanakos, T. 58 Spectre 7, 8 Spider-Man 55, 56, 57, 83, 93–4, 96–7, 114 Spider-Woman 61 Stabile, C. 79 Starlin, J. 157–8, 162 Steinmetz, C. 34, 35, 102 Stern, R. 44, 51 Stewart, C. 80 Straczynski, J. M. 17, 33, 57, 167, 178 Strauss, L. 57, 98 Strickland, C. 61 Superman 2, 4, 6–8, 11–33, 44, 55, 71, 72, 73, 80, 103, 106, 126, 129, 131, 139, 149, 154, 155, 165, 175, 176, 180 Super-Patriot 35, 48, 49, 57 Sutliff, J. 56 Swamp Thing 141–3 Talbot, B. 62 Tattooed Man 79 Thor 47, 90, 100 Thunderbolts 114–17 Tondro, J. 79 totemism 137–3, 145, 150 Totleben, J. 141, 142 Trimpe, H. 57 Truog. C. 140, 150, 151 Übermensch 16–17 Ultimates 98–100 Van Lente, F. 159, 164, 171 Van Sciver, E. 87 Veitch, R. 80, 128, 143, 150 Venom 96–7, 115 Victor Zsasz 64 vigilante 1, 6, 24, 71, 86, 95, 104, 108, 160, 168

violence 4, 6, 7, 8, 32, 58–66, 67–71, 73, 75, 77–9, 81, 94, 103, 104, 118–19, 122–4, 146, 150, 158, 159, 160, 163, 171–2 against women 61, 79, 125, 135, 148, 151 and the American monomyth 38, 112, 113 and the body 60–1 and deviance 146, 166 and power 39 and race 122–4 and space 118–19 Vision 146–8 Waid, M. 3, 6, 7, 8, 19, 32, 33, 87, 102, 160 Watchmen 160–3 Weber, M. 4, 58, 64, 65, 67 Wein, L. 80, 149 Weiner, R. 43, 57 Wheeler, D. 143 White, M. 35, 52, 55, 56 White House 100, 106, 113, 116, 170 Wiener, N. 124 William Burnside 49( see also Bad Cap) Williams, O. 127 Williams III, J. H. 148, 170, 171, 172, 173 Wilson, G. W. 156 Windsor-Smith, B. 95, 121, 147 Winter Soldier 91–2 Witek, J. 2 Wolfman, M. 19, 24, 180 Wolverine 58, 93, 121–2 Wonder Woman 5, 7, 28, 102, 106, 129–37, 149, 150, 154 X-Men 38, 55, 86, 100, 121, 151, 166, 175, 176 Yost, C. 79 Yu, L. 19, 33, 116 Zibarro 29–30 zoē 119, 121