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- Mehrstam, Christian, 1973
(författare)
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Silver Lining: The Emblematic Exemplum of Silver Surfer #40–43 (1990).
- 2020
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Ingår i: The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship. - : Open Library of the Humanities. - 2048-0792. ; 10:1, s. 1-29
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article examines how the Silver Surfer issues #40–43 relate to the American recession in 1990 and discusses the result with regard to the superhero genre and the medieval emblematic exemplum. Similar to Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986), the Surfer issues are a critical commentary on capitalism and American society. However, where Miller’s work delivers a clear message about how ordinary people can resist an unjust regime, in the Surfer issues there is no victory for the ordinary citizen. Instead, the reader is consoled in a cathartic way in identifying with a superhero stripped of his powers by the system. In a historical analysis of the comic story’s response-inviting devices, structure and techniques, the article demonstrates that while the issues feature traits typical of the superhero genre, they are also instances of the medieval genre of the emblematic exemplum. When read through this lens, the issues gain explanatory power in addition to their ability to move the readers. They explain what happens to society when bureaucrats take over, foreground the relation between comics and their readers and problematize the issue of what it means to be human.
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| 2. |
- Jahlmar, Joakim
(författare)
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Dystopian Chaos, Dystopian Order : Differing Ideological Reinterpretations of the Masked Vigiliante in Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Moore and Lloyd's V for Vendetta
- 2017
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Ingår i: Visions of the Future in Comics. - Jefferson, North Carolina, USA : McFarland. - 9781476668017 - 9781476629360 ; , s. 136-151
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In the 1980s, the comics’ field in the US, and in particular the superhero genre, was revolutionised by among others Frank Miller and Alan Moore. Jahlmar investigates how Miller, on the one hand, and Moore, in collaboration with David Lloyd, on the other, offer radically different, yet equally ideological reinterpretations of the masked vigilante archetype in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986) and V for Vendetta (1990) respectively. The underlying components in these analyses are dystopian chaos and dystopian order, and the assumption that these categories play into generic expectations in the dystopian genre. Miller’s, and Moore and Lloyd’s reinterpretations of the masked vigilante are diametrically opposed, and Jahlmar argues that this opposition is made possible by the two storyworlds evoked in the respective texts, set in fundamentally different futures.In Miller’s text, dystopian chaos, in the form of rampant criminality, the culture of fear, and the looming threat of nuclear Armageddon, breeds an inherent narrative need for order and consequently allows Batman/Bruce Wayne to become an extreme version of the conservative superhero, at the very least, a figure with crypto-fascist leanings. On the other hand, in Moore and Lloyd’s text, dystopian order, in the form of a de facto fascist government in England, allows for a traditional villain – in structural and ideological terms – like V, to become a hero, and for his acts of terrorism to be understood on some levels through the generic expectations on any opposition to totalitarianism in dystopian fiction in general.
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