Comic Book Crime

Truth, Justice, and the American Way

Nickie D. Phillips, Staci Strobl

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780814767887
• eBook ISBN:
  9780814764527
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Criminologia

Superman, Batman, Daredevil, and Wonder Woman are iconic cultural figures that embody values of order, fairness, justice, and retribution. Comic Book Crime digs deep into these and other celebrated characters, providing a comprehensive understanding of crime and justice in contemporary American comic books. This is a world where justice is delivered, where heroes save ordinary citizens from certain doom, where evil is easily identified and thwarted by powers far greater than mere mortals could possess. Nickie Phillips and Staci Strobl explore these representations and show that comic books, as a historically important American cultural medium, participate in both reflecting and shaping an American ideological identity that is often focused on ideas of the apocalypse, utopia, retribution, and nationalism.





Through an analysis of approximately 200 comic books sold from 2002 to 2010, as well as several years of immersion in comic book fan culture, Phillips and Strobl reveal the kinds of themes and plots popular comics feature in a post-9/11 context. They discuss heroes’ calculations of “deathworthiness,” or who should be killed in meting out justice, and how these judgments have as much to do with the hero’s character as they do with the actions of the villains. This fascinating volume also analyzes how class, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation are used to construct difference for both the heroes and the villains in ways that are both conservative and progressive. Engaging, sharp, and insightful, Comic Book Crime is a fresh take on the very meaning of truth, justice, and the American way.

1

HOLY CRIMINOLOGY, BATMAN!

COMICS AND CONSTRUCTIONS
OF CRIME AND JUSTICE

Comic book readers around the world know that the medium’s unforgettable heroes and villains are capable of leaping out of their pages and into our lives. Upholding “truth, justice, and the American way” with super-powered strength and agility that is “faster than a speeding bullet,” Superman emerged from his Kryptonian rocket ship and onto the American cultural landscape, an origin story told and retold countless times to no less fanfare. Iconic Spider-Man inspired a generation of youths who related to his soft-spoken geekiness, yet reveled in the “great power” he gained from a spider bite—also saddling him with the proverbial “great responsibility.” Wonder Woman’s golden “lasso of truth,” originally forged from the magic girdle of Aphrodite, gave the world a woman super-empowered to squeeze the truth out of even the toughest villain. Captain America, Batman, and Green Lantern: the list goes on, and yet so many have become mainstays in American popular culture, nearly universally recognizable and often deeply loved.

Comic book lore inspired generations of readers—even members of the criminal justice community who work with real-life criminal offenders. Such was the case with Judge Jack Love of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Judge Love sentenced the very first offender to electronic monitoring after reading a Spider-Man story in which the superhero is tagged with a device that tracks his movements. Judge Love saw the potential for such a device to keep tabs on probationers and developed electronic monitoring, now commonly used in community corrections across the country.¹

Although comic books are far from manuals for how to run the criminal justice system, we can learn much about American society by interrogating the ways in which cultural meanings about crime and justice are negotiated and contested within them. In this context, comic books offer expressions of contemporary life that tap into our hopes, fears, personal insecurities, and uncertainties about the future, as do popular media in general. Comic books, particularly those of the superhero genre, are replete with themes of crime and justice, yet are frequently ignored by criminologists.² We explore the ways in which meanings about crime and justice are negotiated and contested in comic books and the way these imaginings form part of a broader cultural context in which readers absorb, reproduce, and resist notions of justice.

We examine comic books in terms of what criminologist Stephanie Kane described as an “experimental ethnographic space,” a place occupied by characters as its virtual inhabitants.³ Indeed, the world of Superman drops the reader into a kind of alternate America, where Smallville and Metropolis act as proxies for real American towns and cities. Batman invites us into a dark and dystopic Gotham where we meet the Riddler and the Penguin and get lost in the dark passageways of Wayne Manor or vicariously play with the technological gadgetry of a reclusive and crime-obsessed millionaire. Through extended virtual visits to these imaginary worlds, we paid attention to both the visuals and the text—the juxtaposition of which provides a wealth of opportunities for interpretation.

“[C]omics are more flexible than theater, deeper than cinema,” explains Pulitzer Prize–winning comic creator Art Spiegelman in a 1991 New York Times interview.⁴ Comic creator Scott McCloud states that the “heart of comics lies in the space between the panels—where the reader’s imagination makes still pictures come alive!”⁵ Unlike other mediums such as film or television, comic books rely much more heavily on the reader as participant—to use his or her imagination to fill in “the gutter,” or space between the panels. McCloud further explains that the more abstract the artistic rendering, the more the reader fills in, or creates his or her own level of detail. Comic books then provide a means for exploring images of villains, heroes, and notions of justice in a participatory and fluid medium.⁶

Like other scholars who have investigated the relationship between cultural artifacts and fandom, our approach also considers the plurality of the audience and explores the ways in which devoted readers, sometimes colloquially referred to as “fanboys,” not only absorb comic book narratives but also may actively negotiate and shape the narratives themselves.⁷ At times, readers have directly influenced plot lines, such as in DC Comics’ decision to let voters decide whether the second Batman sidekick Robin (a.k.a. Jason Todd) lives or dies at the hand of the Joker in A Death in the Family (1988). Invited to call a hotline, over ten thousand readers voted by a narrow margin for Robin to meet his demise.⁸ Readers may also influence the storylines in a more subtle process, by using their economic power to purchase one comic book over another.

As anthropologist Matthew Wolf-Meyer points out, fans communicate through specific language and inside knowledge that is indicative of cultural importance while serving to distinguish them from outsiders.⁹ More casual readers are easily recognized by their inability to communicate this insider knowledge. Fans, on the other hand, submerge themselves in the minutiae. There are voluminous weekly podcasts available online, many with related forums drawing thousands of members, devoted to discussion and commentary on each week’s comic book releases. At a New York City–based comic book and graphic novel meet-up, group members described their consumption of comic books and graphic novels in an indulgent, pleasure-oriented way, planning their next purchase and reveling in the “first time” they read a certain comic book or graphic novel.

The format of the comic books, the seductive illustrations coupled with captivating dialogue boxes, draws in readers, who then encounter the medium’s dominant themes and messages. We suggest that the repetition of cultural meanings in comic book narratives often reinforces particular notions of justice, especially the punishment philosophies of retributive justice and incapacitation. Further, we argue that these types of punishments are meted out by crime-fighting heroes and superheroes who are depicted as predominantly white males defending a nostalgic American way of life. These particularities of the comic book formula, which we describe in this book, are important to explore and interrogate. Like most other popular culture artifacts, they contribute to the retributive discourse that legal studies scholar David Garland points out dominates our social responses to crime.¹⁰

To bolster our analysis of crime-and-justice content, we conducted focus groups with a purposive sample of comic readers in order to understand the intensity of the connection between the readers and their participation in the world of comic books, both inside and outside the text. By “outside the text,” we mean that we will situate comic books within the larger environment of popular cultural fandom. As participant observers over a period of several years, we spent hours in comic books stores, attended comic book conventions, conferences, reading groups, and book signings, monitored relevant online discussion boards and Twitter feeds, and listened to weekly comic book–focused podcasts.

Realizing that comic books continue to reflect the social environment from which they emerge, we began our sampling after the terrorist events of September 11, 2001.¹¹ In particular, themes related to global terrorist threats have proliferated, and the “death” of Captain America has been analyzed as commentary on the ineffectiveness of patriotic American superheroes to fight for justice in our multicultural and morally vague postmodern world.¹² Over the past several years, more diverse, complex characters have appeared. For example, in pre-9/11 comic books, whenever Arabs and Muslims were depicted, they were almost always villains, whereas since 2001, heroic Arabs and Muslims have been depicted in such best-selling books as X-Men: Messiah Complex and The Losers.¹³ Notably, after 9/11 comic books created a space for a new characterization of Arabs, possibly as a counter-reaction to more stereotypical constructions in media discourse. Although the fundamental formula in many comic books, which we will discuss in the following chapters, remains identifiable, we believe that contemporary comic books are best understood in terms of this post-9/11 shift in plots and characters.

Throughout the book, we will refer to a cross-section of two hundred contemporary American comic books, published from 2001 until 2010, which includes icons such as Batman, Captain America, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, and Superman (see appendix A).¹⁴ The vast majority of the comic books we consider were published by DC or Marvel, which together comprise approximately 70 percent of the annual market share (see table 1.1).¹⁵ Most of the books in our sample belong to the superhero genre. Unlike other mediums such as movies, television, and video games, the superhero genre dominates the landscape of comic books, perhaps because it is the originator of most of the superhero characters that remain influential today. Yet, this has occurred despite many examples of notable non-superhero comics (e.g., Maus, Persepolis, Optic Nerve, etc.) that have achieved critical acclaim. Regardless, non-superhero titles are poor sellers relative to the superhero genre and do not drive monthly sales, according to the comic book distributors’ monthly sales data.

We allowed the lived experience to dictate our methods and subject material by tapping into both best-selling comic books and those that have achieved critical acclaim or are considered important by readers themselves. Based on our ethnographic engagement with the world of comics, we paid particular attention to the books that bloggers, message boards, forums, focus groups, and members of the comic book community identified as important, controversial, popular, influential, or otherwise interesting.

Next, we ensured that our sample is representative of what sells best, making the assumption that popularity is a reasonable proxy for cultural influence. We based our sample on the monthly comic books distribution rankings using the ICv2 (Internal Correspondence version 2), which provides a ranking of direct market sales to comic book stores although it does not compile data on sales from “big box” stores like Barnes & Noble. Using their website, we accessed sales data for the time period between March 2003 and August 2009. Our sample included dozens of the one hundred most popular comic book series and many of the one hundred most popular graphic novels based on a popularity index (see appendix A for more information about our popularity index).¹⁶ Through our popularity index we confirmed that our purposive sample tapped into the content that an allegedly objective measure of popularity—sales—would have also suggested. In addition, we read several more titles, bringing our total sample to nearly two hundred.

Cultural Criminology and Comic Books

In analyzing contemporary comic books, we employ a cultural criminological framework, suggesting that the cultural meaning and symbolic importance of comic books represents a viable area of exploration for criminologists. Cultural criminology is an evolving theoretical perspective influenced by various critical approaches such as labeling theory, postmodernist analysis, social constructionism, and critical criminology, among others.¹⁷ Cultural criminologists describe the contemporary media environment as “an infinite hall of mediated mirrors” in which fast-paced packages of information and entertainment are constantly produced and reproduced, resulting in “a circulating cultural fluidity that overwhelms any certain distinction between an event and its representation.”¹⁸ This connects to notions described by theorists as “postmodern” or “late modern,” in which “popular cultural signs and media images increasingly dominate our sense of reality and the way we define ourselves and the world around us.”¹⁹ In postmodern thought, images of reality increasingly constitute reality itself. Or, as Jean Baudrillard theorized, society exists in the hyperreal; images of images of images begin to replace the original until all that resonates and contains cultural meaning is the facsimile.²⁰

Accordingly, there is an increasing convergence of fiction and nonfiction in our everyday lives. For example, entertainment is fused with news, news commentary is often indistinguishable from news reporting, and prime-time entertainment has increasingly turned to crime-related “reality” shows packaged and sold as raw and unfiltered reality (e.g. COPS and the SWAT franchises).²¹ Here, we are not suggesting that one is unable to distinguish between fiction and reality, but rather recognizing that, as cultural studies scholar John Storey points out, “the distinction between the two has become less and less important.”²² In this context of the blurring between fact and fiction and the increasing significance of popular culture on public discourse, it is no longer advisable for criminologists to ignore what Nicole Rafter calls “popular criminology,” or the criminological imaginings that lie at the intersection of academic criminology and popular culture.²³

Our interest lies in exploring how the portrayal of crime and justice in comic books contributes to conceptions of when, where, and against whom violence is appropriate and to the intensity with which readers connect to the reading experience portraying that violence. As criminologist Jock Young states, the mass media “does not cause aggression so much as provide a script or narrative which suggests when violence is appropriate, against whom, for what reasons and with what effects, together with images of those against whom violence is permitted and prohibited.”²⁴

Consumption of comic books is a rich and meaningful experience for readers. Comic books (the most impactful, at least) connect with readers at a visceral level—evoking emotional responses that we link to criminologist Jack Katz’s concept of engagement in a “ritual mor...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Holy Criminology, Batman!
• 2 “Crime Doesn’t Pay”
• 3 The World Is Shifting
• 4 A Better Tomorrow
• 5 “That’s the Trouble with a Bad Seed”
• 6 “Aren’t We Supposed to Be the Good Guys?”
• 7 “Take Down the Bad Guys, Save the Girl”
• 8 “Aren’t There Any Brown People in This World?”
• 9 Apocalyptic Incapacitation
• 10 Conclusion
• Appendix: Sample and Methodology
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Authors