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2015-11-03 In a Panel, Darkley: Reflections and Refractions of Gendered Trauma in Marvel's and DC Comics' : Elegy

Beatty, Garrett

Beatty, G. (2015). In a Panel, Darkley: Reflections and Refractions of Gendered Trauma in Marvel's Alias and DC Comics' Batwoman: Elegy (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/26498 http://hdl.handle.net/11023/2627 master thesis

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In a Panel, Darkly:

Reflections and Refractions of Gendered Trauma in Marvel's Alias and DC Comics'

Batwoman: Elegy

by

Garrett Beatty

A THESIS

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ENGLISH

CALGARY, ALBERTA

OCTOBER, 2015

© Garrett Beatty 2015 ii

Abstract

This thesis seeks to address a crucial gap in Academic criticism that overlooks the depiction of violence and trauma against female characters who populate the predominantly male space of the genre. Guided through the trauma theory lens of Cathy Caruth, my analysis will consider how the female superheroic identity forms after a traumatic event. I examine two case studies, Marvel's Alias (2001) and DC

Comics' Batwoman: Elegy (2010), which emerge out of a trend in contemporary comics culture that resists the depiction of female characters as either victim or supporting player in their own traumatic narrative. I connect this contemporary trend to fan culture, which in recent years has demanded greater creative responsibility in the treatment of female characters. Through these case studies, this thesis therefore examines the evolution of the female superhero as well as the ethical relationship between creator, character, and fan.

iii

Acknowledgements

I offer my sincerest gratitude to the following people and organizations, without whom this thesis would not have come to be:

1. My supervisor Dr. B. Beaty, as well my committee members, Dr. A. Srivastava, and Prof. R. Harrison.

2. The University of Calgary’s Faculty of Graduate Studies and the Department of English for providing generous scholarship support

3. Bridget Moynihan, Rachel Braeuer, and Pippa Ruddy, for being my support system all through grad school. I would not be here if not for the Calgary 4

4. To my family, for always supporting me

iv

Dedication

In dedication to:

The wonder women in my life.

To my nanny and to my grandma. I lost you both before I had a chance to say this, but thank you for always believing in me.

To my mom. You taught me what it means to be strong.

I wrote this for each of you.

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Acknowledgements ...... iii

Dedication ...... iv

Table of Contents ...... v

List of Figures ...... vi

Introduction: Secret Origins and the Traumatized Superhero ...... 1 The Growing-up of Superhero Comics ...... 3 Female Superheroes and Dark Origins ...... 10 Comic Books and the Search for Cultural Legitimacy ...... 15

Chapter 1: Don't Underestimate the Importance of Body Language: Unknowability,

Witnessing, and the Traumatized Body ...... 23 Cathy Caruth, Unknowability, and the Traumatized Body ...... 23 Allen Meek, 9/11, and the Witnessing of Trauma ...... 36

Chapter 2: Violence, Gender, and Awakening in Marvel's Alias ...... 45 The Freedom of Marvel MAX ...... 47 and the Death Drive ...... 56 All Good Things... After Alias ...... 66

Chapter 3: How We Ended Up in Southern Misunderstandistan: Trauma, Sexuality, and

9/11 in DC Comics' Batwoman: Elegy ...... 70 Superheroes, During and After 9/11 ...... 74 Flashbacks: Visualizing Recollection and Memory ...... 80 The Queering of Batwoman ...... 85

Reflections, Forward and Back: Concluding Remarks ...... 96

Works Cited and Consulted ...... 102

vi

List of Figures

Fig. 1: Page 13 from : The Killing Joke...... 5

Fig. 2: Page 25 of Batman: The Killing Joke, comparison between published version (L) and unpublished version (R)...... 6 Fig. 3: Fig 3: for #41 ...... 20

Fig. 4: Page 88 from Alias vol. 4...... 55

Fig. 5: Page 122 from Alias vol. 4...... 62

Fig. 6: Page 110 from Batwoman: Elegy...... 79

Fig. 7: Pages 40-1 from Batwoman: Elegy...... 83

Fig. 8: Page 125 from Batwoman: Elegy...... 87

Fig. 9: Page 119 from Batwoman: Elegy...... 89

1

Introduction: Secret Origins and the Traumatized Superhero

Since the early 2000's, there has been a marked rise in interest in the

genre, both within popular culture, as blockbuster movies such as The Dark Knight

(2008), Marvel's The (2012), and The Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) continue

to generate millions in revenue and increasingly comic book-related media, but also within academic circles, which have started to pay more attention to features, such as the unique interplay between text and image inherent to the comic book format that make the comic book a complex visual and literary form. While most academic discussion in the comics field has centered on graphic novels, including works such as Art

Speigelman's (1980-91), Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis (2000), and 's

Fun Home (2006), many works within the superhero genre continue to be overlooked, and even denigrated as the most juvenile offering in the comic book genre1. I will

elaborate further on the importance of studying the comics genre later in my introduction,

but for now I wish to address why I believe it is important that more critical attention be

paid to superhero comics in particular. More specifically, I will discuss my decision to

focus my attention in this thesis on several female superheroes who populate the

predominantly male space of both Marvel and DC Comics.

My thesis seeks to address a crucial gap in criticism that overlooks the depiction

of violence and trauma against female characters in superhero narratives. In particular,

my analysis will consider how the female superheroic identity forms after a traumatic

1 The obvious exception to this claim is and Dave Gibbon's (1986), which has been the subject of a lot of scholarly attention to date (Blake 2010; Berlatsky 2013); however, this scholarship tends to focus on the meta-structure of the text or on Watchmen as a deconstruction of the superhero genre. 2

event and thus how these superheroes exist in a post-traumatic state. As Susan J. Brison observes, "survivors of trauma frequently remark that they are not the same people they were before they were traumatized" (38). While certainly not her intention, Brison is speaking directly of a cardinal trope in the superhero genre, that of the individual, changed through circumstance, and who then adopts a new (often secret) identity so that they may try to re-enter the world. While some work has been done in the field of trauma and superheroes (Blake 2010; Goodrum 2011; Krueger 2008; Malcolm 2008; Sandifer

2008), the focus of this research has been almost exclusively on male characters. In direct opposition to this trajectory, I wish to focus on two traumatized female protagonists:

Jessica Jones (a.k.a. Jewel) from and Michael Gaydos' Alias and

Kate Kane (a.k.a. Batwoman), from and J. H. Williams III's Batwoman:

Elegy. I seek to address the alarmingly disproportionate use of violence against female characters in superhero comics through an analysis of the ways in which both Alias and

Batwoman: Elegy simultaneously reinforce and rebuke this trend, as well as the ways in which the implications of trauma can be represented through the comics medium. While comics scholars have paid little attention to this trend of violence against female characters in superhero comics, this has been a decades-long concern within the fan community (Abad-Santos 2014; Hickey 2014; Hudson 2011). Fan-turned-writer Gail

Simone's website Women in Refrigerators outlines Simone's documentation of how

"being a girl superhero meant inevitably being killed, maimed, or depowered" (n.p.).

Simone's title Women in Refrigerators is a reference to a storyline from the early 1990s in which then-Green Lantern Kyle Rayner's girlfriend Alex DeWitt is dismembered and placed inside his refrigerator. Simone's website compiles a list of 111 3

female characters that have been killed, raped, depowered, mutilated, tortured, crippled,

or otherwise traumatized. My thesis therefore continues the necessary efforts of Simone,

and its implications are both far-reaching and crucial as I seek to address the gendered

violence that has become an inherent narrative device within the superhero comics

industry. In recognizing the dominance of this disturbing trend, however, my research

will also draw attention to those more inclusive and alternate spaces within popular

culture, and within superhero comics specifically, that allow for nonnormative expression

and work to break these cycles of trauma from within.

The Growing-up of Superhero Comics

The mid to late 1980s saw a major shift in the way trauma was depicted in

superhero comics, and one of the most influencial comics was, and still remains, prolific

comic book writer Alan Moore2 and artist Brian Bolland's Batman: The Killing Joke

(1988). The series, often lauded as one of Batman's finest stories, is also one of the most

tragic, though not for Batman himself, but rather, for Barbara Gordon (a.k.a. Batgirl). For

many fans, The Killing Joke represents the last Batman/Joker story, culminating in the

moment when Batman breaks his most sacred tenant not to kill, and murders the Joker for

his crimes3. This supposed act occurs off-panel, so there is much fan debate over whether

Batman does, in fact, kill the Joker. This final scene between Batman and the Joker, and indeed the entire comic, relies on ambiguity, although not all of the events that take place in the comic were initially depicted so ambiguously. What I am alluding to is the original

2 Author of such titles as: (1984), Watchmen (1986), (1988), (1989). 3 has a particularly interesting interpretation of the final sequence depicted in The Killing Joke, which can be heard in his interview with on Smith's podcast, Fatman on Batman. 4

version of the scene depicting the Joker when he shoots Barbara in her apartment. The

famous scene, a scene that has since been recreated and referenced over and over again,

is that of the Joker, dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and a large, purple-brimmed hat, pointing a gun at Barbara, followed by a panel where he shoots her through the lower back and she falls on top of her glass coffee table, shattering it (see Fig. 1). In the version that went to print, it is suggested that the Joker rapes Barbara, but in the original version this claim is made explicit. In fact, the inclusion of Barbara's rape nearly made it to print as an unedited version of Bolland's final page was leaked in 2013, depicting Barbara lying in a pool of blood and broken glass, stripped naked, and with a look of agony on her face that suggests that she has been raped. The debate over the instance of rape is another point of

contention in the fan community, but the 2013 leak of this original panel seems to put this

debate to rest (see Fig. 2). This is how trauma, and indeed violence against women was

depicted in superhero comics during the mid to late 1980s, but it is particularly alarming

that many of the same conversations and criticisms about these depictions of violence are

still taking place to this day. Up until the 1980s, female superheroes tended to just

materialize with little to no back story. Unlike their male counterparts, , Batgirl,

and many others, just appeared out of thin , ready to fight crime. While stories such as

The Killing Joke may be viewed as an attempt to give Barbara her own trauma and her

own motivation, the problem becomes that this motivation is exceptionally violent and

highly sexualized, and even more problematically, The Killing Joke is never a Barbara

Gordon story, it is and always will be a Batman story. The trauma, while enacted upon

Barbara, is not Barbara's, instead, it becomes a part of Batman's trauma and his

5

Fig. 1: Page 13 from Batman: The Killing Joke.

Barbara Gordon in The Killing Joke, by Alan Moore & Brian Bolland.

Digital image. Women Write About Comics. N.p., 27 Mar. 2015. Web. 27 July 2015. 6

Fig. 2: Page 25 of Batman: The Killing Joke, comparison between published

version (L) and unpublished version (R).

killing-joke-gordon2. Digital image. killing-joke-gordon. Digital image. Comic Book

Comic Book Resources. N.p., 2 Dec. Resources. N.p., 2 Dec. 2013. Web 27 July, 2015.

2013. Web 27 July, 2015.

7

motivation for revenge. In fact, like the casual plot device Barbara's character becomes,

after she is attacked she does not appear again for the rest of the comic.

In an interview conducted in 2006, Moore was asked to reflect on the influence of

his decades-long career. While Moore's disdain for the two mainstream superhero comics

publishers DC Comics and Marvel is legendary, he relates a story about his time working

on Batman: The Killing Joke. Interestingly, Moore's regret is not situated in the fact that

he was working for a company that he (now) despises, but more so in his treatment of

Barbara. Moore states: "I asked DC if they had any problem with me crippling Barbara

Gordon - who was Batgirl at the time - and if I remember, I spoke to , who was

our editor on the project...[He] said, 'Yeah, okay, cripple the bitch'" (qtd. in Cotton n.p.).

With the benefit of hindsight, Moore goes on to say that this was one of the instances

where he wished he would have been prevented from making this decision, but I think

DC's willingness to publish such a story speaks to a major issue in the mainstream

superhero genre that has been an unacknowledged problem for decades: the casual

attitude towards committing acts of traumatic violence against female characters. I do not

mean to suggest that female characters are the sole recipients of violence and trauma in

superhero comic books. We have, after all, a young Bruce Wayne who witnesses the

murder of his parents, the destruction of the planet Krypton and the death of Kal-El's birth parents, the murder of Peter Parker's beloved Uncle Ben, to name only a few examples of men who are killed and men who are traumatized. However, the heart of the problem becomes the fact that a majority of harm done to female characters tends not to come with an end-goal of developing their own character but rather as a means to further the narrative of a male character. There are many examples of this, but some of the more 8

prominent ones include the death of in Amazing Spider-Man; Karen Page's tragic fate in Daredevil in which she becomes a drug addict, is diagnosed with AIDS, and is later murdered by Bullseye; the kidnapping, torture, and depowering of Black Canary in : The Longbow Hunters; the murder and dismemberment of Green

Lantern's girlfriend Alex DeWitt (an event that would promulgate the creation of Women

in Refrigerators); the rape and, later, the murder of the Elongated Man's wife Sue Dibny;

and the crippling of Barbara Gordon. What these women share is that the trauma of their

experience is not for them to know or to overcome; rather, their traumatic experience is

appropriated by a male character who then incorporates their trauma into his narrative.

Gwen Stacy's life, and most certainly her death, has become an integral part of Spider-

Man's narrative. In truth, Spider-Man's feeling of guilt over her death is one of the most

long-lasting and frequently-surfacing traumas faced by the character; a trauma that I

argue eclipses even his guilt over the death of Uncle Ben. Thus, the story was never a

Gwen Stacy story—it was never about the life she led, or the life she could have had were

she still alive, nor was it even about the traumatic experience of her being kidnapped by

the and the moments leading up to her death. The story was always a

Spider-Man story in which Gwen became a casualty. And perhaps that is the inherent

tragedy of the superhero genre, that it is often these support characters who are forced to

pay the price for the inflicted on our protagonists, thus they are characters who

are always available to death regardless of their gender, and whether they live or die, are

there to be part of the hero's story and never their own. This notion is further complicated

by characters such as Batgirl, who, in some instances are treated as a supporting character

and in others as the protagonist. What is of further concern is that this casual attitude 9

toward violence enacted against female characters is built into the very foundation of the

mainstream superhero publishers and DC. It seems to me that "cripple the

bitch" has been a long-standing industry standard, modified in the case of Gwen Stacy to

"kill the bitch" and, in Sue Dibny's case to "rape the bitch and then kill the bitch", but

these are decisions that have been made casually, and on an alarmingly frequent basis.

With this horrific standard in the comics industry in mind, my thesis will shine the

light on several prominent female superheroes in an effort to see the kinds of trauma to which female characters are subjected. Further, I work to see if the implications and lasting effects of trauma and traumatic experience are the same for male and female superheroes. To date, there has been some minimal critical attention paid to the superhero genre that focuses on trauma (Brody 1995; Williams 2012), and the character that has benefited the most from this attention is perhaps the most traumatized superhero of all,

Batman. Since the 1980s there have been repeated efforts to shift the depiction of Batman away from the campier aesthetic that had become indelibly linked with the character in the years following the 1966 television series, starring and Burt Ward, to a more serious, grounded, and dark sensibility. While the work of Denny O'Neil and Neil

Adams on titles including and The Brave and the Bold, published throughout the 1970s, did much to return the character to his classic 1940's-era vigilante crime fighting roots, it would not be until 's Batman: The Dark Knight

Returns (1986) and Batman: Year One (1987) that Batman would solidify himself as the example par excellence of the dark and brooding superhero. Batman's contemporary movie and television aesthetic owes much to these darker interpretations of the character.

Tim Burton's films Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992) follow the aesthetic 10 trajectory established in Miller's and Moore's works, similarly, so does Batman: The

Animated Series (1992), though with a (slightly) more kid-friendly sensibility. But, perhaps, the contemporary franchise that owes the most to the late 1980's Batman is

Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, which not only lifts the aesthetic but also adapts and reinterprets several of the prominent storylines in a more contemporary way.

I dwell on this evolution in Batman's character for several reasons, not the least of which being that stories like Batman: Year One and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, while certainly adding more depth and nuance to Batman's character, also sought to retraumatize him by revisiting the death of his parents in a more violent and graphic way.

This increased violence would become a defining characteristic of the superhero comics of the late 1980s and majority of the 1990s, a trend that many scholars and fans attribute to works such as The Dark Knight Returns. That said, more importantly, I want to draw attention to a tradition in the superhero comics genre that relies on trauma and traumatic experience as a catalyst for a character to adopt a superheroic identity. Originally, the

Waynes' death was presented as a brief moment of tragedy in Bruce's life rather than as a trauma that would constantly resurface throughout his narrative4; however, in these contemporary retellings, the tragedy of the death of the Waynes becomes a far more powerful motivating force on Batman's war on crime.

Female Superheroes and Dark Origins

In stark contrast to Batman's well-known history, Batwoman: Elegy has received minimal attention, and the critical attention it has garnered is due largely to the fact that it

4 This is based on the depiction of the death of Thomas and Martha Wayne as depicted in Batman's in Detective Comics #27 (1939). 11 is one of the first high-profile superhero titles to feature a protagonist who is openly a lesbian. The contemporary version of Batwoman made her first appearance in the DC

Comics series 52 (2006), in a series that would mark DC's first effort to publish a comics series that would be released on a weekly basis. This new Batwoman, Kate Kane, is a modernized version of the golden age Batwoman who had originally been introduced during the 1950s in an effort to try and combat the then-held perception that Batman and

Robin were in a homosexual relationship5. The irony should be lost on no one when considering the fact that this new version of Batwoman, a character originally created out of a desire to combat homosexuality in superhero comics, has been reimagined as a lesbian. While Batwoman: Elegy may be influenced by a socially-progressive attitude it is, at its core, a very traditional superhero story that is elevated through the way in which

Rucka and Williams III push the comics medium to its full potential. Critical attention on this work has focused almost exclusively on queer representation which is unquestionably one of the most important aspects of Elegy; however, several critics have failed to address the incredible power, particularly of Williams III's pencils, and the ways in which the visual and structural elements of the text not only highlight but elevate the narrative power of the comic book form and the way in which trauma can be represented in a visual way.

Batwoman: Elegy is birthed out of a contemporary movement by publishers such as Marvel Comics and DC Comics that seeks to elevate the superhero genre in order to appeal both to a long-time, aging demographic as well as to a newer audience of comics readers who have been introduced to the genre through the adult sensibilities of graphic

5 See Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent. 12

novels. Like many contemporary superhero comics, Batwoman: Elegy takes itself very

seriously, precisely because it is seeking to cultivate an adult audience. The character of

Batwoman comes out of a trend in the superhero genre in which a female character

patterns her own superheroic identity on that of a male, a male character to whom she

often becomes subordinate. This trope is otherwise known as a distaff hero, and there are

so many examples of these types of characters that generating a list has the potential to

become a thesis unto itself. That said, the most notable examples of these derivative

female characters are Supergirl and Batgirl6, but the list goes on to include such characters as Spider-Woman, She-, and . While the original Batwoman of

the 1950's perfectly fits the bill of distaff hero, the contemporary version of Batwoman

elides many of the distaff tropes. First, while Batwoman patterns her appearance on that

of Batman, her war on crime is significantly different. Unlike the most prominent Batman

distaff, Batgirl, who is welcomed into the Batman Family (which includes characters

such as , , and Oracle, each of whom serve under Batman's command),

Batwoman runs her own separate mission that draws on her military training and the

direction and support of her father, who is himself an ex-colonel in the U.S. military.

Because Batwoman runs her mission like a military operation and has a take-no-prisoners

attitude, Batman does not condone her actions, thus she operates in direct defiance of

him. Second, Batwoman's adoption of Batman's aesthetic does not come from her desire

6 Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are almost no examples of male characters patterning their identities off of a female character (there may be some argument for Catman in this category, but I am not entirely convinced that he was ever meant to be a derivative of ); however, there are a few instances of female characters patterning their identities off of other female characters. Characters of note in this category include Wonder Girl (who takes her inspiration from ) and Black Canary (who takes her inspiration from her mother, the original Black Canary). 13 to emulate him out of respect for his mission, rather, she seeks to capitalize on the fear that the image of Batman has instilled in Gotham criminals. Since Batwoman's excessively violent methods are not condoned by most of 's most prominent superheroes, her allies tend to be other characters who exist in the same liminal space, characters such as former Gotham detective Renee Montoya (a.k.a. the Question) and

Helena Bertinelli (a.k.a. ). Furthermore, Batwoman and her allies are far more morally ambiguous than many of their contemporaries, and so are able to occupy a space in the DC universe that allows writers and artists the freedom to explore more mature themes. As such, Batwoman: Elegy offers a unique look at the liminal space between traditional superhero comics and adult-oriented graphic novels.

Similar to Batwoman: Elegy, Marvel's Alias represents a profound aesthetic and narrative transformation in the superhero genre; however, despite its importance, it has remained an entirely unstudied work. Thus, I seek to turn a critical eye on a work that I argue is central to a better understanding of the depiction of violence and trauma against women in the comics medium. Alias is the first title to debut in the Marvel MAX line, which seeks to recombine the trappings of the superhero-populated Marvel universe and the adult sensibilities of graphic novels such as 's Sandman (1989), Garth

Ennis's Preacher (1995), and 's 100 Bullets (1999). MAX therefore targets a mature readership, while still attracting a traditional Marvel fanbase. While

Alias will be the primary focus of the second chapter of my thesis, I will also work to situate this comic series within the MAX imprint more broadly. Marvel's attempts to inject mature content into the MAX line most often manifests as gendered violence, making Jessica Jones an exception rather than a rule. 14

Like many of her male contemporaries, Jessica's superheroic alter ego is linked to

a survivor identity formed through the traumatic loss of her parents in a car accident

when Jessica is a child; however, unlike her male counterparts, Jessica proves unable to

either escape from or cope with a second trauma she experiences during her time as a

superhero. She therefore retires from the life. Jessica's second trauma becomes a mystery

woven throughout the narrative that when revealed embodies the stark difference

between the world of Alias and the Marvel universe, proper. While on a mission as her superheroic identity, Jewel, Jessica is captured by the , a super-villain with the ability to control the mind of anyone with whom he makes eye-contact. When Jessica reveals that she was held captive by the Purple Man for eight months, the first question her boyfriend asks her is “Did he-- did he make you--?" (Bendis vol. 4 100), placing the responsibility on Jessica (and the reader) to finish his question: did he rape you? Jessica responds simply, "No," in an attempt to end a conversation that needs to take place. Cage's failure to ask the question, let alone the right question, echoes a linguistic inability to deal with the nuances of sexual violence against women. Although

Alias does not represent a solution to these complex issues, it does shine a light on these problems. Rather than normalizing violence against women then, Alias urges its readership to acknowledge their willingness to ignore the horror of such violence.

My analysis of both Batwoman: Elegy and Alias leads me to challenge the widely-spread assumption that superhero narratives are necessarily male power fantasies

(Brown 2001; Eco 1972; McCloud 2000 ). This assumption, which dates back to anti- comics rhetoric of the 1950s (Wertham 1953), suggests that the superhero is a power fantasy for a reader who is "no helpless victim, as he is in life. While he reads, he is the 15

hero" (Legman 11). I argue that Batwoman: Elegy challenges these assumptions through

the way in which Kate's narrative resists the traditionally heteronormative attitudes of the

superhero genre and creates a space for alternative representations of strength and

heroism. With regard to Alias, I argue that Alias immediately problematizes these assumptions of the male power fantasy by highlighting the fact that the Purple Man's control over Jessica is a dark fantasy that represents the threat of the abuse of power, an

abuse that becomes the very source of her trauma.

Comic Books and the Search for Cultural Legitimacy

While my thesis will maintain a focus on the superhero genre, I wish to briefly

address some of the criticisms about the comics genre and art form at large. As Thierry

Groensteen correctly asserts in his essay, "Why Are Comics Still in Search of Cultural

Legitimization", the comic book medium continues to be looked-down upon by

institutions such as universities, museums, and the media, who "still regularly charge it

with being infantile, vulgar, or insignificant" (3). Despite the fact that the comics medium

has been in existence for over a century-and-a-half and that more and more scholars are beginning to see the value in studying the genre, comic books continue to be looked down upon both as an artistic and as a literary form. One of the frequently-criticized elements of the comics medium is that the mixing of image and text dilute these two separate narrative forms. W. J. T. Mitchell's essay, "Beyond Comparison" rightly challenges this criticism. Mitchell argues that:

Perhaps the best answer to the purist who wants images that are only

images and texts that are only texts is to turn the tables and examine the

rhetoric of purity itself. In painting... the notion of purity is invariably 16

explicated as a purgation of the visual image from contamination by

language and cognate or conventionally associated media: words, sounds,

time, narrativity, and arbitrary "allegorical" signification are the

"linguistic" or "textual" element that must be repressed or eliminated in

order for the pure, silent, illegible visuality of the visual arts to be

achieved. This sort of purity, often associated with modernism and

abstract painting, is both impossible and utopian, which isn't to dismiss it,

but to identify it as an ideology, a complex of desire and fear, power and

interest. It is also to recognize the project of the "pure image," the

unmixed medium, as a radical deviation from a norm understood to be

impure, mixed, and composite. The purist's objection to the image/text,

and to the heterogeneous picture of representation and discourse it

suggests, turns out to be a moral imperative, not an empirical description.

It's not that the claim that all media are mixed media is empirically wrong,

but that these mixtures are bad for us and must be resisted in the name of

higher aesthetic values (119).

There are several components in this passage that I argue are central to the comic book genre's ability to create meaning both visually and linguistically. As Mitchell argues earlier in his essay, even the most "pure" visual representations frequently incorporate literal depictions of text "insofar as writing and other arbitrary marks enter into the field of visual representation" (118). For example, there are countless instances of medieval paintings in which text, most often a biblical passage, is directly incorporated into the painting. Engraved drawings made by the ancient Egyptians featured depictions of 17 ancient Gods and pharaohs accompanied by hieroglyphics, a highly symbolic language system that is a combination of image and text. What I argue, and what many comics scholars have argued before me, is that the relationship between image and text has existed for centuries, and so the question becomes, why are comic books viewed as a threat to the "purity" of either of these highly symbolic forms when they come out of a trajectory of union between image and text that has spanned millennia? As Mitchell further posits:

"[P]ure" texts incorporate visuality quite literally the moment they are

written or printed in visible form. Viewed from either side, from the

standpoint of the visual or the verbal, the medium of writing deconstructs

the possibility of a pure image or pure text, along with the opposition

between the "literal" (letters) and the "figurative" (pictures) on which it

depends (118).

So, if we are to accept Mitchell's argument that the relationship between image and text is quite often indistinguishable and that comic books come out of this tradition, why then have comics been held in such low regard? To answer this question I turn to Fredric

Wertham, a psychiatrist who in the 1950s spoke against the comic book industry in the hopes of restricting the sale of comics to young children. Wertham's criticisms of the comics genre center on what he views as their potential to corrupt young and impressionable children and draw them into lives of crime and moral depravity.

Wertham's major concerns are around what he views to be the violent nature of comics and the overtly sexual nature of comics. I will elaborate more on Wertham's criticisms of the sexual nature of comics in chapter three, but for now I wish to focus on how Wertham 18 conceptualizes the power of influence of the comic book medium. When considering superheroes, he states that:

Superman (with the big S on his uniform—we should, I suppose, be

thankful that it is not an S.S.) needs an endless stream of ever new

submen, criminals and "foreign-looking" people not only to justify his

existence but even to make it possible. It is this feature that engenders in

children either one or the other of two attitudes: either they fantasy

themselves as supermen, with the attendant prejudices against the submen,

or it makes them submissive and receptive to the blandishments of strong

men who will solve all their social problems for them—by force (54).

Wertham quite clearly links the superhero genre to fascism and to the Nazi rhetoric of racial superiority and, while some scholars have made the argument that superheroes are symbols of a fascist ideology, I wish to focus my attention on the latter half of the quotation in which Wertham gestures to what he sees as the incredibly persuasive and influencial power of the comic book medium. Wertham states, with regard to the superhero genre, that this "group is a special form of crime comics... In one story a foreign-looking scientist starts a green shirt movement. Several boys told me that they thought he looked like Einstein. No person and no democratic agency can stop him" (53).

As Wertham goes on to suggest, because these superhero narratives present our world in a Fascist setting, violence appears to be the only possible solution. Thus, superhero comics represent a threat to young and impressionable minds because they tend to simplify complex concepts by casting them in black and white terms. Considering that

Wertham published Seduction of the Innocent only a mere eight years after the end of the 19

Second World War, it is unsurprising that his warnings of perceived fascist leanings in

superhero comics did not fall on deaf ears. And it was not just the superhero comics that

met with Wertham's wrath, his scorn extended to all genres of comic books including

crime comics, romance comics, and jungle comics (the worst genre in Wertham's

estimation). While I do not wish to oversimplify the reasons why comics continue to hold

such a low place in cultural studies, Wertham's early attacks on the comics genre did

much to its reputation and that the genre has been trying to find a way to recover

from his criticism ever since.

I close this introduction with a brief discussion of a recent story in the superhero

comics community that drew a lot of negative attention. For the month of June 2015, DC

Comics announced that they would be offering a series of Joker variant covers as a way

of celebrating the clown prince of crime's 75th anniversary. The variant cover for Batgirl

#41, drawn by artist Rafael Albuquerque, elicited massive amounts of criticism from the fan community for its homage to Moore's The Killing Joke. In the cover, the Joker is depicted as devilishly smiling while holding a clearly terrified Barbara Gordon hostage at gunpoint (see Fig. 3). The image drew criticism for the way in which it depicted the threat of violence and harassment, as well as the way in which this cover celebrated one of the darkest times in Batgirl's history. The cover seemed to ignore the current depiction of Barbara Gordon, a young woman who had been shot and confined to a wheelchair for years but who was now recovering. Barbara had worked hard to move beyond the trauma enacted upon her in The Killing Joke and yet here she was being retraumatized. I wish to

push this final criticism further, as it speaks directly to my thesis. I argue that not only is

Barbara Gordon retraumatized through her depiction on this cover, but she is being 20

Fig 3: Joker variant cover for Batgirl #41

BG-Cv41-Joker-variant-solicitation. Digital image. News. N.p., 14 Mar.

2015. Web. 27 July 2015. 21 retraumatized for the sake of a celebration of the same male character who traumatized her; this cover is not an acknowledgement of Barbara's trauma but a celebration of the

Joker's crime in which Barbara becomes nothing more than a prop. This speaks to the very heart of my thesis and to my concern for the casual attitude toward traumatizing female characters for the sake of male characters. To both Albuquerque and DC's credit, the variant cover was cancelled and apologies were issued, but to my mind much of the damage had been done. DC's official response to the cancellation of the cover reads that

"threats of violence and harassment are wrong and have no place in comics or society"

(Ching n.p.). While a nice sentiment, threats of violence and harassment (and actual acts of violence and harassment) are central to the superhero genre. I argue that Batwoman:

Elegy and Alias, though not without their faults, are two comic books that use violence against women far more responsibly than most superhero comics. What I seek to show in my thesis is that, despite the necessity of violence to the superhero genre, comics writers and artists, as well as publishers, have a responsibility to be more conscientious about the way in which they depict violence against women. With this goal in mind, the following chapters will work to unpack my case studies and to show the gender disparity that exists within representations of trauma and violence in the superhero genre. My first chapter will set up my theoretical apparatus, while specifically defining the terms that I will use to analyze my case studies. My second chapter will turn to Marvel Comics' Alias and a discussion of superhero comics published by a mainstream comics publisher that are removed from their main continuity and allowed to exist within a space that offers writers and artists more freedom in terms of depictions of violence and the use of explicit language and whether this freedom becomes a positive or a negative change for their 22 female characters. My third chapter will examine DC Comics' Batwoman: Elegy, looking specifically at the distaff hero, queer identity in mainstream superhero comics, and the role of the artist in depicting Batwoman's queerness and her trauma. Finally, my conclusion will situate each of my case studies back in the world of contemporary superhero comics publishing. I will briefly discuss the power of fan reaction to bring about change and motivate the major comics publishers to produce content that seeks to be more inclusive and representative of the diverse and varied fans who are drawn to the superhero genre.

23

Chapter 1: Don't Underestimate the Importance of Body Language: Unknowability,

Witnessing, and the Traumatized Body

In order to establish an understanding of the ways in which trauma has been represented in the comics medium, I situate my discussion of trauma through the lens of several prominent trauma theorists, including Cathy Caruth and Alan Meek.

While Caruth is concerned with the psychological scarring of trauma, and with the trauma of an event that is not experienced at the time, and becomes knowable only through its incomprehensibility, Meek is concerned with the way in which trauma is mediated through images and videos of traumatic events and offers an explication of trauma that I argue works very effectively when considering the comics medium and the act of witnessing. I will first address Caruth's seminal understandings of trauma, which specifically focuses on trauma through a literary lens, before then turning to a detailed discussion of Meek and visual trauma and the trauma of witnessing.

Cathy Caruth, Unknowability, and the Traumatized Body

In her seminal work, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History

(1996), Caruth defines trauma in the first chapter of her book as " an overwhelming experience of sudden or catastrophic events in which the response to the event occurs in the often delayed, uncontrolled repetitive appearance of hallucinations and other intrusive phenomena" (11). Following this definition, Caruth then poses the question: "[i]s the trauma the encounter with death, or the outgoing experience of having survived it?" (7).

This question cuts to the heart of the nature of trauma by attempting to move beyond the assumption that only the event is traumatic and that the act of surviving is a miracle, and shifts the conversation to an acknowledgment that the act of surviving can be just as 24 traumatic as the inciting event, largely because the implications of surviving are so long- lasting for the survivor and often become violently intrusive. By Caruth's estimation, the experience of trauma is more about the survivor's reaction to an event than to his or her experience of the event itself. Caruth's answer to her own question is that trauma is "the oscillation between a crisis of death and the correlative crisis of life: between the story of the unbearable nature of an event and the story of the unbearable nature of survival" (7).

This definition fits well with her notion of the oscillation between life and death where thoughts and visions of the traumatic experience infringe on the survivor's everyday thoughts in ways that often impact the survivor's ability to function normally.

Though not a word Caruth incorporates into her definition of trauma, the word

'survivor' captures what the victim of a traumatic experience becomes; they are the survivor of a near-death experience, an experience in which they believe that they are going to die, but then unexpectedly survive. Caruth's understanding of trauma further rests on the unknowable nature of trauma and the delayed reaction to a traumatic experience; as I will discuss in more detail later in this chapter, she posits that the diagnosis of PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder is an acknowledgment of this aspect of trauma by gesturing to "[t]he experience of the soldier faced with sudden and massive death around him... who suffers this sight in a numbed state, only to relive it later on in repeated nightmares" (11). The image of the traumatized soldier, she argues, has become a central image of the trauma of the modern world. There is an argument to be made that the traumatized soldier is a defining image of most ages in human history, but the diagnosis of soldiers who experienced shell shock during the first World War marks the earliest medical attempt to acknowledge and treat the symptoms of traumatized soldiers. 25

Shell shock, a precursor to what is now referred to as PTSD, is a central concern raised by Sigmund Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), a work to which

Caruth owes much of her understanding of trauma. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle,

Freud is troubled by "the emergence of a pathological condition – the repetitive intrusion of nightmares and reliving of battlefield events – that is experienced like a neurotic pathology but whose symptoms seem to reflect... nothing but the unmediated occurrence of violent events"(qtd. in Caruth 59), a condition that Freud observes as he interacts with soldiers who have returned from the war. To better explain the implication of such a condition, Caruth unpacks Freud's observations by elucidating that:

Unlike the symptoms of a normal neurosis, whose painful manifestations

can be understood ultimately in terms of the attempted avoidance of

unpleasurable conflict, the painful repetition of the flashback can only be

understood as the absolute inability of the mind to avoid an unpleasurable

event that has not been given psychic meaning in any way. In trauma... the

outside has gone inside without mediation (59).

This is central to Caruth's view of trauma and in the unknowable nature of a traumatic experience as an experience which is so overwhelming that it moves past the mind before it can examine, understand, or fully grasp the experience, but I believe that Caruth's observations in this area could benefit from more nuance. As such, I turn to Freud by way of Neil J. Smelser's chapter in Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity as a way of explicating the complexities of the unknowability of trauma.

Smelser, like Caruth, emphasizes the work of Freud, although focuses more on

Freud's early work in the 1890's, which centered around what Freud then termed 26

"hysteria", a medical condition (predominantly diagnosed in women, at the time) and a precursor to his work dealing with shell shocked soldiers nearly two decades later during the Great War. Freud believed that hysteria in women had "a definite cause, course of development, outcome, and cure" (qtd. in Alexander 32), with a cause that Freud identified as "a passive sexual experience before puberty... The memory and affect associated with the event are subsequently repressed from consciousness and consigned to a status of prolonged latency or incubation" (qtd. in Alexander 32). Freud's early work focused on instances of trauma connected to the rape or molestation of young girls and women, and it is this trajectory of the unknowability of the traumatic experience that influenced Freud's corpus of work, including his later discussion of shell shock, a discussion which came to greatly influence Caruth's views of trauma. That said, one of

Caruth's more problematic claims centers around the struggle of the victim to heal from a trauma. Caruth, summarizing Freud, states that:

[T]he wound of the mind – the breach in the mind's experience of time,

self, and the world – is not, like the wound of the body, a simple and

healable event, but rather an event that... is experienced too soon, too

unexpectedly, to be fully known and is therefore not available to

consciousness until it imposes itself again, repeatedly, in the nightmares

and repetitive actions of the survivor ... so trauma is not locatable in the

simple violent or original event in an individual's past, but rather in the

way that its very unassimilated nature – the way it was precisely not

known in the first instance – returns to the survivor later on (3,

emphasis in original). 27

My concerns with this claim are twofold. First, I am concerned with Caruth's disinterest

in discussing the process of healing, but I will unpack this concern later in this chapter.

Second, I am concerned with Caruth's tendency to universalize traumatic experience.

Certainly, not all individuals who experience a traumatic event experience that event or

the repercussions of that event in the same way. As such, I argue that traumatic

experience must be regarded more relatively. As Smelser states, when considering the

subjectivity of the traumatic experience, we must consider "the severity of the trauma, the

helplessness of the victim, and whether the traumatic event is experienced as one of

"human design"" (qtd. in Alexander 41). The only symptom that may be regarded as

universal, at least insofar as clinical literature on the subject is concerned, are the long- lasting, although widely varied, effects of trauma.

Repetition, says Caruth, is one of the most complex but integral symptoms of trauma as it relates both to the incomprehensibility of trauma, to the survivor who is forced to relive intrusive memories of the same trauma over and over again, but also because this repetition is a way of connecting to one's past, a connection to a personal history not fully understood. As Caruth states, "[f]or history to be a history of trauma means that it is referential precisely to the extent that it is not fully perceived as it occurs... that a history can be grasped only in the very inaccessibility of its occurrence"

(18). It is in this repetition, says Caruth, that the greatest threat to the survivor of a trauma exists: "the survival of trauma is not the fortunate passage beyond a violent event, a passage that is accidentally interrupted by reminders of it, but rather the endless inherent necessity of repetition, which ultimately may lead to destruction" (62, emphasis in original). It is in this repetition that Caruth sees trauma and history as indelibly linked, 28 and it is in the chapter in which she discusses the 1959 French film, Hiroshima mon amour, that we find the most useful examples of her theory.

Caruth's interest in the film is couched in her belief that Hiroshima mon amour offers us a “new mode of seeing and of listening… from the site of trauma” (56, emphasis in original), which I find particularly relevant when considering the visual nature of comic books. The film centers on a French woman and a Japanese man who meet in Japan shortly after the end of World War II. A romance begins between the two protagonists despite the fact that they do not share a common language or culture, rather, they share the experience of trauma that occurred during the war; events which neither of them are able to move beyond. Trauma, therefore, becomes a link that repudiates culture and language, instead replacing it with a shared language of trauma communicable only between those who have experienced a traumatic event. These events do not necessarily have to be the same or even be historically linked; the only criteria they must fill is that they can be defined as traumatic. As Caruth suggests, it is the “enigmatic language of untold stories–of experiences not yet completely grasped” (56) that connects the Japanese man and the French woman in the film. This language, however, as Caruth herself asserts, is a language based on a narrativizing of historical trauma, a “fiction that inherently erases the reality of the past it conveys” (49). By suggesting this, Caruth gestures to the narrativizing of historical trauma as a process of erasure; as a process of reimagining a traumatic event in a fictionalized way in order to try and understand the traumatic experience. Caruth locates her understanding of trauma by situating it in the body, through the visual representation of the actions and interactions between the

Japanese man and the French woman. In the third chapter of this thesis, I will argue that 29

this same process is at work in Batwoman: Elegy, when Kate is forced to create a

narrative around the death of her mother and sister, and even when Kate tells the story of

her first encounter with Batman.

Caruth is further challenged with a concern of the telling of a trauma. Truly, how

does one tell the story of their trauma? By telling the story of her dead German lover, the

French woman in Hiroshima mon amour has committed an act of "betrayal precisely in the act of telling, in the very transmission of an understanding that erases the specificity of death" (27). What Caruth seems to suggest is that simply in the act of telling, of creating a narrative to try and comprehend a past trauma, the French woman has erased the possibility of a historical truth of the German soldier with whom she fell in love and whose death has left her traumatized. The ethical dilemma becomes a question of what should and should not be spoken; the French woman, the survivor, in an attempt to understand her own trauma, betrays her dead lover in the telling of her story. It is interesting that the 'betrayal' of her German lover is the aspect that Caruth chooses to emphasize and not the woman's attempt to come to terms with her own psychological wound. Caruth sees this betrayal as the French woman's appropriation of the German soldier's trauma, a threat that Caruth notes as an "emphasis on the inevitable inscription of the event of a catastrophe in the generality of another's history" (30). It is here that

Caruth removes the possibility of witnessing as its own distinct type of trauma, rather, she argues, the French woman's appropriation of the trauma of her dead German lover suggests that the French woman has not experienced a trauma of her own. I agree with

Caruth in this instance as I recognize that trauma can be appropriative; however, where I diverge from Caruth is that I argue there is a distinct experience inherent to witness 30

trauma that Caruth fails to acknowledge in this instance and something that is a central

component to the trauma depicted in superhero comics. Caruth goes on to state that

"Hiroshima mon amour would thus seem to reveal the necessity of betrayal in the

ineluctability of sight" (30). While Caruth does recognize that the French woman must

try and speak even though, in so doing, she is betraying her deceased lover, Caruth is

unconcerned with any kind of healing for the survivor (As previously mentioned,

Caruth's lack of interest in the healing process is something I will return to later in this

chapter). Further, by referring to the French woman's actions as a betrayal, Caruth

implies that, in order for the past trauma to come to light, the survivor ( in the case of

Hiroshima mon amour, the French woman) must enact a further trauma to the memory of

the deceased thereby creating a cycle of trauma that can never truly end.

Caruth attempts to explain how the eventual telling of a trauma can lead to a "full,

truer knowledge that forgetting is indeed a necessary part of understanding" (32). As I

suggested earlier, Caruth is not concerned with how a victim may come to an

understanding of a traumatic event. Instead, she argues, there is a freedom in the act of

forgetting (we see an attempt to forget in Alias), and, while there may be a certain inherent truth to such a statement, it becomes a much more challenging claim when positioned against any historical traumatic events. The Holocaust must be remembered;

Rwanda must be remembered; 9/11 must be remembered; all of these horrific events must be remembered. And the very act of remembering is problematized in Hiroshima mon amour by the Japanese man's refusal, not only to allow himself to remember, but also in his refusal to allow the French woman to claim that she understands the tragedy of the Hiroshima bombing, "You saw nothing in Hiroshima. Nothing" (qtd. in Caruth 28) he 31 repeats to her. This is, perhaps, where the link between cultures exists for Caruth—in the unknowable space of trauma.

While the Japanese man seeks to deny the French woman the power of knowing, it is the French woman's insistence on inserting her own narrative into the tragedy of

Hiroshima that, as Caruth suggests, "erases not only her own past but that of other nations... it is through precisely this erasure of her past that she can see and 'know' the past of others as well" (33). For Caruth, this kind of traumatic 'knowing', the link between the disparate cultures of the French woman and the Japanese man, is situated in the body.

While the Japanese man and the French woman do not share the same language or culture, they are linked through their physicality, through their bodies, bodies which have both moved through a traumatic experience and are able to find a common language with which to communicate their traumatic stories. As Caruth puts it, "Hiroshima and Nevers are linked, in their very forgetting, through the ceaseless betrayal of bodily sight" (33).

The French woman cannot help but fixate on the Japanese man's hands while he sleeps, but her gaze is interrupted by flashes of the memory of the death of her German lover, of the way his hands twitched as he lay dying. Caruth suggests this is where "the sight of the living body represents and replaces the body of the dead" (36), and it is with this merging of physical sight and remembered sight that the French woman continues to insist that she can see the tragedy of Hiroshima.

The Japanese man's continued refusal to allow the French woman the claim that she has seen Hiroshima is complicated yet again by the revelation that the Japanese man himself was not present during the bombing; he himself did not see. Caruth suggests that

"[t]hrough its very missing, his story, like hers, bears the impact of a trauma" (40). This 32 act of missing becomes central to Caruth's notion that a link between cultures can be established through trauma. The Japanese man is able to see the French woman's trauma

"[n]ot because he knows her truth but because he does not know his own" (40). Caruth emphasizes that in the unknowability of trauma, a shared language, culture, or even knowledge of a similar event is unnecessary to understand someone else's trauma, or even one's own. It is perhaps in this moment that the Japanese man begins to understand his own trauma, and his violent slap of the French woman's face signifies his resistance to and refusal of such an understanding. The physicality of the slap resituates the unknowable trauma back in the body. The French woman sees her own trauma through the Japanese man's body, and the Japanese man sees the French woman's trauma through the absence she has experienced in her own trauma, an absence that echoes the Japanese man's absence during the Hiroshima bombings. As I suggested earlier, trauma repudiates language and supersedes culture, instead creating its own language, communicable only between those who have suffered a traumatic event. This is where Caruth situates her new mode of seeing and of listening: in the physicality of the body and in the unknowable and unseeable nature of trauma. The French woman and the Japanese man are connected through their bodies, through sex. The French woman sees, in the Japanese man's body, images of her dead German lover. The Japanese man sees, in the French woman's insistence on knowing and seeing Hiroshima, his own trauma of not having been in Hiroshima when the bombs were dropped. Trauma creates its own language through the erasure of the past, an erasure that can only be seen and heard by those who have experienced a trauma that continues to haunt them. 33

Caruth's engagement with Freud's work centers on one of Freud's major contributions to the field of psychology: that of the death drive. Freud's conception of the death drive, as detailed in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, is, simply put, one's drive towards self-destruction. For Freud, "[t]he problem of survival, in trauma, thus emerges specifically as the question: what does it mean for consciousness to survive?" (qtd. in

Caruth 61, emphasis in original). As Freud argues, the death drive is instinctual, but moments of significant trauma have the potential to alert the conscious mind to the existence of this drive and the way in which this drive control our behavior. As Caruth argues, "[i]t is this incomprehensibility of survival... that is at the heart of Freud's formulation of the death drive. Freud describes the origin of the drive as a response to an awakening not unlike the awakening from a nightmare" (64).

In many ways, I argue that the superhero genre depends on the existence of the death drive. These superheroes are, after all, dressing up in skin-hugging costumes and traipsing out into the night to confront dangerous criminals. The superheroic origin is itself a kind of awakening into a dream world of the impossible:

At the beginning of the drive, Freud suggests, is not traumatic imposition

of death but rather the traumatic "awakening" to life. Life itself, Freud

says, is awakening out of a 'death' for which there was no preparation. The

origin of the drive is thus precisely the experience of having passed

beyond death without knowing it (65).

This quotation holds particular significance when considering Jessica Jones, the protagonist of Alias, and something I will examine in detail throughout my second chapter. What I want to draw out from this passage is that the death drive is situated in 34 the shock of the reminder of our mortality. Once again, central to the superhero genre is the notion of the invulnerable hero. While long time readers may not be surprised when another superhero dies in the line of duty (likely in the most recent summer event), each time it happens those who are left behind are shocked and heartbroken to see that one of their comrades has fallen–they are often incapable of seeing that their world is governed by different laws of mortality.

Caruth becomes useful in an analysis of the depiction of trauma in superhero comics when considering the visual way in which much trauma is represented in comic narratives. Because Caruth situates her understanding of the manifestation of trauma in a physical space and through images of the body, the visual elements of the comics form become central to depicting the trauma of the narrative. One of the most common tools for depicting trauma in the superhero narrative is the use of flashbacks. Flashbacks are unique in comic books for one distinct reason; while most comics are depicted in a way where the reader is omniscient/omnipresent throughout the narrative (meaning the reader's view is not first person and filtered through the eyes/perspective of a specific character), flashbacks are moments that are assumed to be viewed and experienced by the reader and by the character experiencing the flashback, simultaneously. Simply put, flashbacks are the one part of a comic narrative in which both the reader and the protagonist are viewing the same scene in the same way. Flashbacks are the traumatic manifestations of the superhero narrative in the way that they intrude into and interrupt the flow of the primary narrative. Flashbacks are a central element to both Batwoman:

Elegy and Alias and something I will be elaborating on in further detail both in chapters two and three. 35

While Caruth is attributed with founding the trauma theory movement in the early

1990s, as I suggested earlier, she is uninterested in any kind of healing for the survivor of a trauma. This is a highly problematic issue with Caruth's theory for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that part of any kind of healing process during the survivor's journey would be the necessity of coming to terms with what they have been through.

Simply put, understanding is an integral component of healing, and considering that

Caruth is so interested in understanding trauma it seems surprising that she is uninterested in talking about healing these wounds. There are certainly a number of theorists who come out of Caruth's school of thought who are concerned with healing.

Dori Laub, an early supporter of Caruth's work and a theorist who shares many of the same positions on the implications of trauma diverges from Caruth in his interest in the survivor's healing process. While much of Laub's work centers on collecting the testimony of Holocaust survivors and is therefore not particularly relevant to the topic of my thesis, it is important to note his work in developing a healing-through-testimony methodology as a significant divergence from Caruth's studies in trauma. While I have mentioned him several times before, it is worth noting that Smelser is also interested in the healing process, though much of his research centers on the healing of a culture that has been traumatized by first making a claim that the same culture has been wounded.

While Caruth is an excellent foundation upon which to begin discussing the psychological toll and the implications of trauma, this oversight in her theoretical focus draws me to incorporate the voice of Allen Meek, a trauma theorist who writes in the wake of 9/11. 36

Allen Meek, 9/11, and the Trauma of Witnessing

Meek, like most contemporary trauma theorists, is very concerned with the healing process. Questions on how to heal both as an individual and as a culture that has been damaged have become a central concern in American cultural discourse following the terrorist attacks. The healing process is important to both of my case studies, both in the way that healing may be avoided, such as in the case of Alias' Jessica Jones and the abandonment of her superheroic identity following her abuse at the hands of the Purple

Man, which I will discuss in chapter two, and in the way that healing may be embraced, such as through Kate's adoption of the Batwoman persona as a way of taking control of her own future, something that I will explore in chapter three. Meek further introduces the concept of the trauma of witnessing, something about which I will further elaborate later in this chapter and a notion that will become central to my discussion of Alias in chapter two. While Meek's discussion of witnessing focuses on the act of witnessing as mediated through television screens and in photographs, I argue that these visual forms are useful for situating my critical intervention into how trauma can be represented through the unique power of the comic book medium. As such, I argue that Meek will offer nuance to some of the elements of trauma that Caruth overlooks.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the attack on the

Pentagon, as well as the destruction of Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, which resulted in the death of 2,977 American citizens, the American, and indeed, the Western psyche was forever altered. In his book, Trauma and Media: Theories, Histories, and Images

(2010), written nearly a decade after the attacks, Meek explores the ramifications of the media coverage during and after the events of 9/11. Meek suggests that "[a]fter 9/11 37

media images of the catastrophe played a central role in attempts to redefine American

identity" (171). And the events of 9/11 shattered the long-held American belief that

America was an untouchable bastion of democratic sovereignty. Within the very bedrock of American culture was the belief that the American people were the heroes of democracy and the liberators of the oppressed. Further to this, not only was the American populace unable to imagine themselves as victims, but they were also unable to view themselves as the perpetrators of trauma. As such, Meek correctly asserts that the narrative of the American interventions in Korea, Vietnam, the first Gulf war, etc. disappeared from US historical discourse. But unlike Korea or Vietnam, "images of 9/11 were viewed 'live' by American and international audiences [and] there was an immediacy to the events which was replicated in public discourse about them. The events were immediately 'traumatic'" (172, emphasis in original). Because of this immediacy,

Meek observes a different conversation around trauma emerging out of 9/11 than the kind of conversations about trauma that arose from the Holocaust, a trauma that had

"sometimes taken decades for the trauma suffered by survivors and their communities to be publicly acknowledged" (172). Because of such an immediate reaction to 9/11, Meek challenges Caruth's definition of trauma as a delayed reaction to traumatic experience.

While Caruth frequently makes reference to the "unknowable" traumatic experience throughout, Unclaimed Experience, the media's decision to suggest very early on that the act of witnessing the attack on the World Trade Center, even as it was mediated through television screens, was traumatic for the American psyche. This seems to suggest not only the immediate acknowledgement of witnessing as a distinctly traumatic experience, 38

but also the incredible sway that the media has over public perception and collective

memory.

Meek argues that the "corporate media do not respond to public trauma as much

as they define public trauma" (180). In the wake of 9/11 and the culture of fear that grew

as a result, it becomes difficult to refute the legitimacy of such a claim. While these

concepts address cultural experiences of trauma, I want to suggest that they are equally as

relevant when considering individual experience. The faint line between witnessing

trauma and being a victim of trauma is challenged in Bendis's Alias, something I will

discuss in further detail in chapter two. As well, Meek's assessment of the trauma of 9/11

rests on the power of images, whether mediated through a television screen or a camera

lens. Viewing these images is what allows millions of people who were not present at

ground zero during the attacks to claim 9/11 as their trauma. Because comic books

depend on images to convey narrative, an interrogation of the power of images in the wake of 9/11 is useful in understanding the power that images contain. As Meek deals exclusively with photographic images and does not address illustrations, my thesis will work to expand his theories into the comics field.

In an effort to explore the power of the image, Meek turns to the image of the

Falling Man, a photograph of one of the estimated two hundred men and women who,

trapped on the upper floors of the two World Trade Center buildings, made the choice to

jump to their deaths rather than succumb to the smoke and fumes of the burning

buildings. During the coverage of the attacks the media did not broadcast images of the

bodies jumping from the buildings. If we are to accept Meek's premise that the media

defines public trauma, it seems problematic that such a significant omission of coverage 39 was made, especially considering that most witnesses experienced the tragedy of 9/11 through the (literal and figurative) lens of the media, coverage that instead "reproduced images of firefighters and rescuers as heroes of the day, allowing for feelings of positive identification and national pride" (181). This kind of media coverage instead emphasizes the collective memory of witnessing by entering into the realm of stories, stories of heroism and survival in the face of evil and adversity; it makes for nice political rhetoric by completely removing the lived experience of the victims of 9/11. As with all of the jumpers, it is impossible to tell the identity of the Falling Man. Although attempts have been made to ascertain his identity, Meek suggests that "[his] actual identity... is less important than his iconic significance for collective memory: the national trauma of 9/11"

(181). As Meek points out:

Because the photograph of the Falling Man fails to affix the image to the

death of a recognizable individual, it makes the image available to be

fixed to a narrative of national trauma. The suffering of this one individual

is thereby subsumed into a telos of collective mourning and, potentially,

healing (184, emphasis in original).

The importance of the image of the Falling Man becomes not about an image of individual suffering, but rather, it acts as an image connected to a narrative of national tragedy. I connect Meek's discussion of the image of the Falling Man to W. J. T.

Mitchell's discussion of the 'imagetext'. In his essay "Beyond Comparison", Mitchell argues that:

The starting point is with language's entry into (or exit from) the pictorial

field itself, a field understood as a complex medium that is always already 40

mixed and heterogeneous, situated within institutions, histories, and

discourses: the image understood... as an imagetext. The appropriate texts

for "comparison" with the image need not be fetched from afar with

historical or systemic analogies. They are already inside the image,

perhaps most deeply when they seem to be most completely absent,

invisible, and inaudible" (120).

In the case of the image of the Falling Man, the absent language of that image becomes one of the trauma of witnessing, made all the more powerful by the inability to identify the Falling Man. Mitchell's notion of the imagetext is connected to Meek's discussion of the image of the Falling Man precisely because his argument centers on the viewer's ability to create a personal narrative around the image, the image of an unidentifiable man, that allows the witness to feel that they, too, personally lost something and/or someone on 9/11. Because Meek is concerned with the way in which images aid in the establishment of group identity during a crisis, in order to maintain its iconic status, the identity of the Falling Man must forever remain a mystery. Meek's notion here is similar to Caruth, especially when she argues that we are implicated in each other's traumas. In this way, Caruth is very concerned with how the self experiences the trauma of the other as an unknowable, and yet repeatedly relived, experience. That would change if the other becomes known, just like it would change if the Falling Man becomes known. In fact, any attempt to identify the Falling Man erodes the symbolic meaning of the image by turning it from a symbol of national trauma into a photograph of individual suffering.

Meek speaks to what he sees as the failure of photography and suggests that

"[p]hotography, no better than verbal language, can convey the reality of bodies in 41

motion in terms of the perceptual experience of that body itself" (185, emphasis in

original). The failure of the photograph to capture the physical motion of the Falling Man

as he plummets towards his death is further echoed in the failure of the "[j]ournalists...

[who] attempted to situate the Falling Man in a narrative about individual identity and

about the events of 9/11. In doing so they drew further attention to the inadequacy of

these narratives" (190). In this way, the Falling Man resists the narrative of trauma

presented in this image because, as Meek suggests, the photograph is limited in its ability

to accurately communicate meaning. One significant omission from Meek's analysis is that he does not acknowledge that the image of the Falling Man is one in a sequence of twelve photographed by Richard Drew, with each photograph depicting the same man plummeting through space as he falls to his death. Meek's consideration of the singular image encourages me to turn to David Carrier's essay, "Caricature", in which he discusses the way a viewer may "envisage earlier and later moments of an ongoing visual narrative" (107). I argue that in Meek's eyes, this is a power possessed by the singular

image, but a power that the sequence of images elides. Here, I disagree with Meek; I

argue that this power can and does exist within the sequence of images. Take, for

example, the protagonist of Jonathan Safran Foer's novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly

Close, Oskar Schell. Oskar's father dies in the attack on the World Trade Center. Oskar

struggles with trying to understand his father's death and constantly searches for answers

about specifically how and where his father died during the attack. Oskar collects the

twelve images of the Falling Man in a flip book and convinces himself that the Falling

Man is his father. It is significant to note that Oskar collects this series of images but

binds them together in reverse order. Rather than images of a Falling Man, Oskar turns 42

his 'father' into a Rising Man. While this may seem a minor elision of the power of these

images, in the world that Oskar creates with these images he has unwritten the law of

gravity. When the image of the Falling Man is considered in relation to the eleven other

images in the same sequence, the image changes from a , singular image that, as

Meek argues, fails to fully capture the physical motion of falling, to a series of images

that create a narrative depicting a man as he moves through both time and space. In the

narrative created by Oskar's flip book, a man can fly.

In her essay, "Comics and the Chronotope: Time-Space Relationships in

Traumatic Sequential Art", Harriet Earle elaborates further on the image of the Falling

Man; however, her discussion involves an illustrative depiction from Alissa Torres and

Sungyoon Choi's American Widow (2008). There is significance to the illustration of the Falling Man in American Widow in that Choi chooses to depict the

Falling Man not against the building, but against the open sky. As stated by Earle:

The lack of visual information on the page draws the eye to the figure,

despite its size, as it appears at first to be a smudge on the page. It is only

on realisation of what the mark represents that we understand that this is a

rendering of Drew's photograph (7).

One of the most powerful aspects of the photograph of the Falling Man is that, despite much speculation, his identity has never been officially confirmed, thus, he has the power to become a symbol for all of those who lost their lives on that horrific day. Choi's decision to depict the man falling against an open sky adds yet another layer of signification to the Falling Man's legacy as she chooses to remove him from the other major symbol of the 9/11 attacks: the black and white horizontal-striped edifice of the 43

World Trade Center building. Earle argues that the photograph of the Falling Man

"pauses the moment and elongates the traumatic event, making it appear endless" (7), but the photograph still remains the symbol of a national tragedy and the collective trauma of

9/11. By separating the Falling Man from the World Trade Center, the illustration shifts from being an image of national tragedy to an image of individual suffering, further removing the Falling Man from 9/11 discourse. The power of the illustration then becomes the narrative of the survivor of 9/11, of Alissa Torres who now lives in a world without her husband. For Torres, 9/11 is not about a loss of confidence in national security and the erosion of civil liberty, or the destruction of American wealth and prosperity, nor is it even about the loss of over two thousand innocent lives. The illustration of the Falling Man in American Widow is an image divorced from all cultural meaning and distanced from the discourse of national tragedy; it is an image of individual loss and the ripples caused by that death and that is the power of this illustration.

I conclude this chapter with a consideration of the implications of depicting trauma in comic books. While many scholars dismiss the superhero genre as a valuable area of study, I argue that the superhero narrative is built on the foundation of trauma, thus, it is critical that we pay attention to the way in which we craft these inherently traumatic narratives. It is difficult to name a superhero that has not been shaped by a traumatic event, so what does that suggest about the way in which we mythologize our superheroes? Through Caruth, we see the psychological implications of trauma, particularly through the way in which trauma can be difficult to fully comprehend and even more challenging to attempt to articulate. Through Meek, we see the possibility of healing, but also the lasting impact of the act of witnessing a trauma. We also see the 44 symbolic power of an image—a feature that is central to the comic book medium's ability to communicate meaning and thus central to my analysis of Batwoman: Elegy and Alias.

While these many be stories about men and women (and aliens, and robots, and sentient plants, etc.) who are lifted beyond the mundanity of normal existence into a brighter world of spandex and superpowers, they are still stories that feature characters who, at their very core, are deeply human and just as susceptible to the trauma of human existence.

45

Chapter 2: Violence, Gender, and Awakening in Marvel's Alias

You've got blood coming out of her mouth. -- Senator Kefauver

A little. -- William Gaines

Excerpt from a hearing conducted by the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency investigating practices of the comics publishing industry, April 21, 1954.

In 2001, Marvel Comics broke with the , instead opting to institute their own rating system similar to that of the television model, which denotes the age appropriateness of content. Marvel's break from marked a massive shift in the industry, as they were the first major publisher to abandon a governing body that had the power to both control and approve comics content since

1954. In a press release issued by then-Marvel president , he states that:

Marvel's decided that we are going to go ahead and institute new content

guidelines and a parental advisory system for our comic books. Let me

start by saying that most Marvel comic books will continue to be suitable

for readers of all ages, but we have been expanding and diversifying the

line, and in the future, books that are specifically targeted for teens and

adults will be labeled accordingly (Marvel n.p.).

Birthed out of a desire to diversify their line and produce more adult-oriented content,

Marvel created the MAX line, a series of superhero comics marketed toward an adult audience that were still set within the Marvel universe but did not adhere to previous standards of violence or language. The first title to be published in this line was Brian 46

Michael Bendis and Alex Gaydos's Alias, a gritty crime comic that features a brand-new

character called Jessica Jones, a former superhero-turned private eye. Jessica's former

superheroic identity, Jewel, possessed the generic superhero power set: flight, super strength, invulnerability. Although Jessica maintained the powers, she also mysteriously retired the identity. I argue that it is not therefore her power set that makes her an interesting character; rather, it is that she seems to quite clearly be suffering from PTSD.

As we are told by Caruth:

[P]ost-traumatic stress disorder reflects the direct imposition on the mind

of the unavoidable reality of horrific events, the taking over of the mind,

psychically and neurobiologically, by an event that it cannot control....

PTSD seems to provide the most direct link between the psyche and

external violence and to be the most destructive psychic disorder (58).

Jessica's PTSD manifests in several ways, most distinctively in her tendency toward self- destructive behavior, something I will elaborate on later in this chapter. It is interesting to note that in Bendis's original pitch for the series he asked Marvel editorial if he could use the character of Jessica Drew, who was the original Spider-Woman and a character that had long fallen into disrepair and disuse. Because Marvel had future plans to include her in the New Avengers, a relaunch of the Avengers line that would not take place until

2004, Bendis's request to use the character was denied and he was forced to create his own protagonist. Thus, Jessica Jones was born. The "explicit content" label on the cover of the first issue is the first indicator that Alias is a different kind of Marvel comic, but it

is the comic's first panel that we are shown how truly different this comic would be. In

this first panel the reader is shown the closed door of an office. This door (for me, 47

reminiscent of the door belonging to Captain Picard's holodeck persona and to private

investigator, Dixon Hill) looks exactly like the stereotypical office door of most private investigators on film and television: a large pane of frosted glass covering the upper half

of the door and a wood bottom. On the glass is printed 'Alias Investigations' and a word

balloon projects from within the office. The word balloon has jagged edges suggesting that the voice is shouting this word and although the source of the voice is not clearly

attributed, presumably it is Jessica herself. The word shouted is "FUCK" and this is the

moment that most readers realize that this comic is governed by a very different

sensibility than any other in the Marvel canon.

The Freedom of Marvel MAX

Bendis takes full advantage of the freedom that the MAX line offers and creates a

protagonist who does not mince words ('fuck' is certainly one of her favorites), but further

to this, he creates a space in the Marvel universe that, while still existing within the

Marvel universe proper, adheres to a different set of rules governing language and

content. Simply put, the first indicator that MAX is unique is its abandonment of the

comics trope referred to as grawlix (replacing profanities with typographical symbols)

which grants the new Marvel characters the freedom to use language that is indicative of

the way in which real people speak. I think that the most interesting impact of this change

is that it places the responsibility of profanity back on the writer rather than the reader.

What I mean by this is simply that when readers read a panel in a comic in which a

character says '%$&@ you' or 'you're a piece of $#!*' they are all still able to recognize

that those typographical symbols stand in place of the words 'fuck' and 'shit', respectively.

For most readers, replacing a profanity with a grawlix does not remove their ability to fill 48 in the word that the writer intends to use, they may just need to slow down a bit to think about what word is supposed to be there. Thus, the writer places the responsibility on the reader to fill in the profanity. This is the inherently contradictory nature of grawlixes; from a censorship perspective they only serve to remove the physical presence of the profanity but do nothing to change the meaning of the phrase. Jessica Jones has a reputation for possessing a foul mouth, and the MAX line allows her the freedom to express this foulness to its maximum potential, which humanizes her and makes her character far more relatable to her readership than characters such as or

Superman, who tend to serve as moral paragons.

The use of uncensored language is certainly not the only freedom offered by the

MAX line. As the line continued to expand over the next few years and continued to welcome more familiar Marvel characters into its world, these characters tended to be ones who already existed on the periphery of the Marvel universe. With series such as

Fury (2001), (2002), Cage (2002), Black Widow: Pale Little Spider (2002), and

The : Born (2003), all of which feature some of Marvel's more morally ambiguous characters (Nick , Blade, Luke Cage, a new Black Widow, and the

Punisher, respectively), graphic depictions of violence became a defining characteristic of the MAX line. That said, unlike the majority of other MAX titles which frequently depict mutilation, murder, and various other forms of grisly death, the level of violence in Alias is more akin to the type of violence depicted in contemporary superhero comics in that it is often very sterilized. This is certainly not to say that there is no horrific violence in

Alias, as it is the violence depicted in this comic that is central to my discussion. Rather, my attention rests on the violence that exists on the periphery of the narrative of Alias 49

throughout the first twenty-five issues; a suggested violence that only becomes fully

realized in the final three issues of the series.

As I stated in my introduction, Jessica's trauma and resulting PTSD are inflicted upon her during her pervious life as the costumed superhero Jewel. In the process of trying to break up an altercation between two men in a New York restaurant, Jewel's mind is controlled by a former Daredevil villain named Zebediah Killgrave, otherwise known as the Purple Man. While the character of the Purple Man has existed since the mid-, traditionally the character has occupied a space wherein he is most frequently used as a plot device to forward the machinations of other, supervillains, or, more commonly, as a running joke7. In a move that precedes DC's decision to turn the

long-time laughed-at Teen ' villain Dr. Light into a true menace in the pages of

Identity Crisis (2004), Alias introduces Marvel readers to the full and horrific

implications of the Purple Man's mind control abilities by turning the Purple Man into a

true sociopath. This reinvigorated Purple Man is psychologically unhinged, and inflicts

his anger on others, particularly on women. He is an abuser, both physically and

psychologically, a rapist, and a murderer, but we are never told why, likely due to the fact

that we are never meant to sympathize with the character. When the Purple Man takes

Jessica captive, he does none of these terrible things to her, at least, not directly. Instead,

he forces her to watch helplessly as he mind-controls other men and women into raping

and torturing one another. Jessica's escape from the Purple Man's control is initially

incomprehensible to her, thus paralleling Caruth's assertion that:

7 Although never reaching the same height as the ongoing Stilt-Man joke. 50

[T]rauma is not simply an effect of destruction but also, fundamentally, an

enigma of survival. It is only by recognizing traumatic experience as a

paradoxical relation between destructiveness and survival that we can also

recognize the legacy of incomprehensibility at the heart of catastrophic

experience (58).

With this parallel in mind, Alias becomes an exceptional example in popular culture of both victim and witness trauma, and it is for precisely this reason that I argue it demands the type of critical attention that I will model throughout this chapter.

As I posit in chapter one, Caruth's interest in trauma is not couched in a desire to see the victim of trauma cope with and move on from the trauma that they have experienced. Instead, Caruth makes the argument that the telling of a trauma may lead into a "full, truer knowledge that forgetting is indeed a necessary part of understanding"

(32). I turned to this quote earlier in my thesis because I believe that it sums up Caruth's conception of trauma quite well, and, when taken into consideration with Alias, seems to align with Jessica's own efforts to try to forget the trauma that she has faced. However, for me, the problem with Caruth's notion here, and certainly something that manifests throughout Alias, is that forgetting a trauma is not the same thing as healing from a trauma, and it is Jessica's failure to confront her traumatic past that motivates her retirement from the life of a superhero, as well as her tendency to push away many of the people in her life. To Caruth, Jessica's motivation to ignore her trauma and forget her traumatic past is freeing; however, it is clear throughout Alias that despite her many attempts to avoid her past, Jessica has anything but forgotten. While I will focus my analysis of Alias on its depictions of trauma, I argue that it is integral to my discussion of 51

trauma in this narrative to also talk, specifically, about the way in which violence against

women is depicted in this comic book.

As I argue in my introduction, violence against women has been a long-standing

criticism of the superhero genre, but Alias complicates this assertion in several important

ways. First, I believe that Alias seeks to resist the stereotype that imagines superhero

comics as heroic male power fantasies through the Purple Man's villainy, wherein he

represents the abuse of power and the consequences of such an abuse. Second, I argue

that Alias is far more honest than most superhero comics when depicting violence against

women, particularly in the way its female protagonists, specifically Jessica, cope with

trauma. Whether or not Bendis succeeds in his attempt to challenge this particular

superhero comics trope is something I will debate later in this chapter, but it is important

to acknowledge that Alias occupies a space within the Marvel universe that at least

attempts to resist several of these traditional superhero modes. While Jessica's secret

trauma remains a mystery until the last five issues of the twenty-eight-issue-long series, I first discuss the Purple Man's mind control powers as a rape metaphor. Jessica is approached by a group of individuals who seek to hire her because of her rumored history with the Purple Man. The group, led by a woman named Kim Rourke, is comprised of people who have lost loved ones to the Purple Man, although he has refused to admit his culpability in any of the incidents. Rourke, not ever having experienced the Purple Man's powers herself, attempts to explain how she imagines the Purple Man's powers to work, likening them to hypnosis. She states that "with hypnosis—they say that the hypnotist can't make you do anything you don't already want to do... My sister—she did not want

to kill herself!" (Bendis vol. 4 66, emphasis in original). Jessica's correction of Rourke's 52 assumption is significant, particularly in the way in which she uses terms most frequently associated with being drugged and being raped to speak to her experience of his powers.

She states that:

It isn't hypnosis. Killgrave... has the power to overpower people's wills.

He can make people do whatever he wants. His power originates from his

skin cells. The pheromones and-- and other secretions in his skin produce

a combination of these psychoactive chemicals... which are inhaled by

people without them knowing-- against their will-- or absorbed from the

air through their skin. And supposedly the chemicals induce a

monomania-- an overwhelming... mania. It isn't hypnosis... the victim

cannot be blamed for... anything they do when they are under that

asshole's control (Bendis vol.4 66, emphasis in original).

The way in which Jessica describes being under the influence of the Purple Man's powers conveys the invasiveness of his influence. It is not simply that he invades his victim's mind and overrides their will; it is that in order to do so, his pheromones must first violate the victim's body and override the victim's control of themselves. While it is certainly true that many of the Purple Man's victims are male, they are exclusively shown being manipulated towards physical violence, such as being forced into fist fights, whereas female victims are almost exclusively depicted as victims of sexual assault.

In a decision that I find equal parts baffling and disturbing, artist is brought in to draw the series of flashbacks occurring over the final three issues of Alias, the series of flashbacks that depict Jessica's life as the costumed superhero Jewel, as well as her capture and captivity at the hands of the Purple Man. While the majority of Alias is 53

drawn by Michael Gaydos, whose gritty, sketch-like style works well in conjunction with the real world, modern-day noir feel of the series, Bagley is the poster child for traditional superhero art and an odd choice for this MAX title. This is not Bendis and

Bagley's first collaboration together, nor is it their only collaboration at the time that

Alias is being published, as they were both working together on one of Marvel's best- selling and most revered books, Ultimate Spider-Man, a reimagining of Peter Parker's origin set in the Ultimate universe8. Although it may seem like a lengthy tangent, I am

going to outline briefly the trajectory of Ultimate Spider-Man, as I argue that it is vital to establishing Bagley's style and pedigree, as well as illustrating an important mandate set for the Ultimate universe, namely, for it to de-age the majority of Marvel's characters.

While the Ultimate universe shares some similarities with the MAX line, the

main difference is that the Ultimate line still targeted a younger and more general

audience. Ultimate Spider-Man is one of the titles that put Marvel Comics back on the

8 The Ultimate universe is a parallel universe and one created with the notion that the regular Marvel universe had become too mired in decades of continuity, making it intimidating for new fans to start reading comics. Thus, the Ultimate universe was born with two mandates: first, to jettison decades of continuity with the aim of attracting new readers who had thus far been intimidated by Marvel's complex and convoluted history, and second, creators working in the Ultimate universe were tasked with updating and modernizing Marvel's superheroes for a new, younger audience. Both the Ultimate versions of the X-Men and the were made significantly younger than their regular Marvel universe counterparts; and Sue are in their early twenties and are not married, nor have they had children; the X-Men are in their late teens with the exception of who looks suspiciously similar to Hugh Jackman. The Ultimate version of the Avengers, the , are the excessively violent, extreme to the max, "do you think this 'A' stand for France" government-sanctioned team of assholes who are unafraid to torture, maim, and murder in order to accomplish their mission. It is a universe that is founded on the assumption that making superheroes younger and sexier would be more appealing to a mass audience. It is Brian Hitch's penchant for drawing characters in The Ultimates who looked like real-life celebrities that led to the casting of Samuel L. Jackson in the role of , a character that had traditionally been depicted as Caucasian since his creation in 1963. 54

map after the company's near-bankruptcy at the end of the 1990s, and its premise is

simple: this is the story of 15-year-old Peter Parker as he deals with life as a high school

student, with girls, homework, family, the occasional super villain, and becoming Spider-

Man. In many ways, Ultimate Spider-Man is the exception to the extremeness of the

Ultimate universe as it simultaneously embraces everything that Marvel Comics is and was, while also breathing new life into their most successful character. Ultimate Spider-

Man was an overnight hit and remained one of the top-selling books at Marvel for years,

and much of this is attributed to Bendis's ability to capture the voice of Peter Parker and

his largely-teenage supporting cast believably, as well as Bagley's ability to draw

dynamic and action-packed scenes of superheroic antics, while also being able to capture

the innocence, frustration, heartbreak, and joy of being a teenager. Because of Ultimate

Spider-Man, Bagley's style has become synonymous with teenage superheroes for many

readers.

Given this history, the decision to enlist Bagley to illustrate Jessica's flashbacks

initially make sense, due to the fact that the flashbacks are set during Marvel's Bronze

Age (roughly the late 1970s and very early 1980s) and in a world that appears, on its

surface, to be a far brighter and more positive place that is indicative of superhero comics

during this period. When this decision begins to strike me as alarming, however, is

immediately after the Purple Man's capture of Jessica. Jessica is depicted wearing a

school girl's uniform with an open shirt; her eyes are glazed over in a state of

entrancement while the Purple Man, fully clothed, verbally abuses her. On the bed are

two girls, both naked, wrapped in each other's arms and in the midst of having sex on top

of stacks of money (see Fig. 4). While Jessica's narration reminds us several times that 55

Fig. 4: Page 88 from Alias vol. 4

Alias25-1844bcw. Digital image. Scans_daily. N.p., 31 Dec. 2013.

Web. 27 July 2015.

56

the girls the Purple Man would pick up are college students (in this particular instance, it

is these two girls who we are reminded are in college), it becomes difficult to accept this

claim when both Jessica and the two women in the scene are depicted with juvenile

bodies as if straight out of Peter Parker's high school in Ultimate Spider-Man. Many artists make an effort to alter their style depending on the content of the story they are drawing. In fact, a perfect example of this is J. H. Williams III, who makes a conscious decision to illustrate Kate's life and Batwoman's life with significantly different styles in

Batwoman: Elegy. Yet, Bagley does not make this same choice. This is perhaps my biggest criticism of Alias: the decision to use Bagley as artist for Jessica's violent past is highly problematic. While I appreciate that his art is meant to convey a time in Jessica's life when she was a superhero, and Bagley was, at the time, the go-to superhero artist, it is difficult to separate his depictions of young women being mind controlled and sexually abused with his depictions of teenage girls in high school, especially considering he was working on both series simultaneously. Because this rape is already a highly fraught and violent scene, Bagley has added an unnecessary further dimension by infantilizing the women. While I do not mean to suggest that the scene is only problematic because

Bagley infantilizes the women involved and that, had he made a different artistic decision the scene would no longer be problematic, it is this added dimension, introduced by an artist whose work is traditionally associated with comics aimed at a younger audience, that makes the rape even more jarring than it already is.

Jessica Jones and the Death Drive

While I have spent a lot of time talking about the visual representation of Jessica's captivity, I wish to further discuss her trauma through Freud's conception of the death 57 drive as well as the way in which Caruth posits that a trauma victim experiences his or her trauma over and over again, as if in a dream-like trance. In chapter one I alluded to

Freud's conception of the death drive, the traumatic awakening to life where, as Freud suggests, "life itself... is an awakening out of a 'death' for which there was no preparation" (qtd. in Caruth 65). While Jessica's dreams are never represented in Alias, I argue that Freud's conception of the death drive is central to what I argue is the waking dream (or, more truthfully, nightmare) in which Jessica finds herself after breaking free from the Purple Man's control. The Purple Man allows Jessica to leave after he becomes outraged at a newspaper headline praising Daredevil for (once again) saving the city. In his rage, the Purple Man orders Jessica to find Daredevil and beat him to death. Jessica describes her escape from the Purple Man as follows:

[T]he second I'm out of range of Killgrave's chemical bombardment of my

brain... the second I get the hell away from him, I start coming out of it.

Finally. The brainwashing, or whatever the fuck it is, starts wearing off.

And it wasn't a pleasant experience. I mean, this mind control shit he's

been pumping into me has been there for eight months. Every day. Every

night: eight months. And so as soon as Killgrave wasn't there, my body,

my brain-- it had no fucking idea what to do!! I was having some kind of a

nervous breakdown. I found myself still determined to do what he told me

to do, but now I could feel my body trying to stop. But I'm still going

ahead with my mission. I knew what I was doing was fucked up, but I

couldn't--stop-- doing-- it... I can't stop doing what Killgrave told me to

do. I can't stop. I can't stop (Bendis vol. 4 89, emphasis in original). 58

Jessica does not encounter Daredevil, but she does run into the Scarlet Witch and in her

confused state mistakes her for Daredevil and attacks. After Jessica punches her, she

describes her sensation of an immediate awakening and the realization of what she has

done. Jessica's description of the Purple Man's control in its waning moments gestures to

the sensation of a gradual awakening from a dream, something that Caruth views as

central to her conception of the experience and aftermath of trauma. Caruth's

interpretation of the dream rests on her reading of both Freud and Lacan, where Freud

suggests that the dream acts as a way for the victim of a trauma to avoid the death outside

of themselves (a component of Freud's death drive). Lacan pushes this argument further

by suggesting that the dream plays an integral role in traumatic repetition, and that, as

posited by Caruth, "the shock of traumatic sight reveals at the heart of human subjectivity

not so much an epistemological, but rather what can be defined as an ethical relation to

the real" (92, emphasis in original). While Caruth, through Lacan and Freud, is talking

about the intrusiveness of trauma in a victim's sleep and in their dreams, I extend this

discussion to the notion of the waking nightmare, one of the most intrusive symptoms

suffered by survivors of trauma. What I view as the waking nightmare in Jessica's case is

not so much that she experiences hallucinations or intrusive memory flashbacks, instead,

Jessica's waking nightmare is her inability to find a sense of happiness, satisfaction, or

pride in her own life; she has become a -like entity moving through her own life as if on autopilot. The ethical dilemma Jessica faces is a choice between remaining in her state of a waking nightmare, a nightmare that has driven her to self-destructive behaviors, such as smoking, drinking, engaging in casual sex, and pushing away her friends and family, all while denying the truth of her traumatic past. She likewise proves unwilling to 59

face her captor, the man who robbed her of her freedom and dignity, and acknowledge

the validity of the horror she has experienced and the violence that has been committed

against her. In Lacan's estimation, the call to awaken must come from within the dream

itself, but this awakening is not a "simple movement of knowledge of perception but

rather... a paradoxical attempt to respond, in awakening, to a call that can only be heard

within sleep" (qtd. in Caruth 99, emphasis in original). In Jessica's case, her call to awaken comes from Kim Rourke and the group of people who have lost loved ones to the

Purple Man. After a lengthy discussion of the Purple Man's activities, Rourke pleads her case to Jessica: "[i]n doing my internet research on Killgrave, your name-- you came up a

couple of times. It said you were involved in one of his captures... It was unclear how

though. It was unclear what your relationship to the event was. Can you help us?"

(Bendis vol. 4 68, emphasis in original). In a moment of contemplation similar to Kate's

in Batwoman: Elegy when she considers the consequences of revealing her sexuality to

her commanding officer, the private moment of Jessica's contemplation is laid bare as she

is forced to experience it with a group of onlookers, each silently pleading for her help.

Her realization that she must finally confront the Purple Man is as much for the other

victims and their desire for closure as it is for her own sense of closure and this becomes

Jessica's first step of once again taking an active role in her own life. As Caruth argues:

I would propose that it is in this paradoxical awakening by the dream itself

that Lacan discovers and extends the specific meaning of the confrontation

with death that is contained within Freud's notion of trauma. For if the

dreamer's awakening can be seen as a response to the words... within the

dream, then the awakening represents a paradox about the necessity and 60

impossibility of confronting death... To awaken is thus precisely to

awaken only to one's repetition of a previous failure to see in time...

Awakening, in Lacan's reading of the dream, is itself the site of trauma, the

trauma of the necessity and impossibility of responding to... death” (100,

emphasis in original).

Jessica's awakening to reality and inevitable confrontation with the Purple Man is arguably the most important sequence in the entire series, and it is a confrontation that is uncomfortably self-aware.

Up until this moment of confrontation between Jessica and the Purple Man, he has been portrayed as a raving psychopath and a monster, drunk on his own power and craving all things in excess. However, the Purple Man who Jessica confronts, a man who has now been held in custody for an unspecified amount of time, is anything but raving.

In fact, the Purple Man is so self-aware that he is even aware of the fact that he is a character in a comic book, although from Jessica's perspective the Purple Man's self- awareness is a continued example of his insanity. Jessica is not permitted to conduct her visitation with the Purple Man face-to-face, due to the prison's fear that his visitors may become influenced by his mind-control pheromones; instead, she confronts him through a two-way television screen, a feature that alludes to my discussion of 9/11 in my previous chapter, and the mediated nature of some confrontations and experiences of trauma.

Several panels of silence elapse as Jessica first stares at her captor. When he finally speaks, he speaks not only to Jessica but also to the reader: "Jessica Jones. If it isn't my favorite comic book character" (Bendis vol. 4 117). In a conversation that becomes more meta the more it progresses, Jessica persists in her mission to help bring closure to the 61

Purple Man's grieving victims, as well as to herself, but while Jessica attempts to steer the conversation in the hopes that she will be able to elicit a confession, the Purple Man responds to her with what she believes to be insane babbling: "[i]nterior shot. Jail. Day.

Jessica Jones... the ex-costumed superhero, now private eye, comes face-to-face with her greatest foe, her worst nightmare... the enigmatic Killgrave, the Purple Man... tight shot on Jessica. She stares ahead blankly" (Bendis vol. 4 120). What is clear to the reader is that this is not the insane ravings of a lunatic but rather a panel-by-panel description of the conversation that is physically represented on the page. It is as if the Purple Man is reading the script Bendis would have set to artist Michael Gaydos directing him on how to illustrate the scene. While Jessica believes that the Purple Man has gone insane, and while I will not go so far as to say that he is sane, it is clear that the Purple Man is able to see the truth of his reality far more clearly than Jessica. This scene is the culmination of

Bendis's goal to turn the Purple Man into a credible threat, and to his credit this scene works quite well. While Jessica tries to maintain focus in the conversation, the Purple

Man continues to reference the fact that he believes they exist in a comic book. Jessica eventually challenges this claim by stating: "Killgrave, if this is just a comic book... and we're all just characters in the comic book if that's your thing here... why don't you just walk out of here? Just get up and walk out" (Bendis vol. 4 122, emphasis in original), and in arguably to most meta moment in the entire conversation, the following panel offers a close-up of the Purple Man's face staring straight ahead and directly into the reader's gaze and responds, "I'm not the writer" (Bendis vol.4 122. See Fig. 5). While this kind of self- awareness has been used before in the comics medium9, it becomes clear as the

9 See Grant Morrison's , for example. 62

Fig. 5: Page 122 from Alias vol. 4

alias27-04ldvhu. Digital image. Scans_daily. N.p., 31 Dec. 2013.

Web. 27 July 2015.

63 conversation between Jessica and the Purple Man progresses that the Purple Man's responses are directed equally toward the readership as they are toward Jessica. The conversation becomes an admonishment of fan culture as the Purple Man derides Jessica for being a "whore" for her readers and cautions her multiple times not to "contradict the continuity" (Bendis vol. 4 124), a criticism that long-time fans often laud against Marvel and DC whenever either company relaunches or reboots a title, series, or, in the most extreme cases, their entire publishing line. For many long-time fans who had come to love Jessica Jones over the last two years, this scene was likely met with a lot of confusion. While the Purple Man is clearly the villain of the story, his self-awareness forces the reader to confront the reality that they are reading a comic book and that the now-unveiled history of violence and trauma that Jessica has been subjected to has become so encoded within the DNA of the superhero comics genre that many fans have become accustomed to it and do not view it as problematic. In this instance it is the villain who awakens the reader to the tragedy of the genre as he draws our attention to the fact that the crimes he has committed are not of his own choosing, rather, these crimes are the result of a writer with a choice and a readership with an assumed expectation of violence. It strikes me that the meta structure of this confrontation and the fact that the villain sees more than Jessica works to keep her powerless. Once again, the Purple Man knows more than her, once again he understands that which she does not. While Jessica has come with an agenda, to confront a villain that is in her narrative reality and gain a sense of closure, it seems to me that the Purple Man's agenda of pointing out the metastructures that control both him and her overrides that. Certainly, Bendis is the real

Purple Man, controlling both Jessica and the Purple Man, but this seems to leave Jessica 64

victimized again in this moment. Thus, I argue that Alias' function is not to correct

portrayals of violence against women, but rather to point out the damaging effects of

them.

As I suggested earlier in my thesis, Alias presents a complication of the way in

which trauma can be represented and this complication comes with the juxtaposition of

Jessica's experience as a victim of the Purple Man, but also as witness to the victimization of others (mostly women) who are also subjected to the Purple Man's abuse. As Meek argues in his article, the connection between trauma and witnessing had been acknowledged as early as Caruth's work, and is a feature of her research that becomes quite prevalent during her discussion of Hiroshima mon amour. That said, in the wake of 9/11, Meek argues, the trauma of witnessing takes on a new and problematic inflection, "becoming more directly imbricated with mass media representations and exposing with a new clarity the ways in which the claim of witnessing already constitutes, as much as the term 'trauma,' a specific kind of interpretation of events"

(Meek 172). While only a small portion of the population witnessed 9/11 firsthand, because so many people all across the nation, and indeed the world, viewed the events as they unfolded live on television, the trauma of 9/11 has became a collective, national trauma. In addition to the collective claim of trauma, there is also an immediacy to this claim which, as Meek argues, collapses Caruth's notion of the latency of trauma; in the case of 9/11 it was immediately recognized as a traumatic event and thus claimed as such.

Caruth's conception of the latency of trauma is bound up in her reading of Freud's discussion of the victims of a train collision: 65

[W]hat is truly striking about the accident victim's experience of the event,

and what in fact constitutes the central enigma revealed by Freud's

example, is not so much the period of forgetting that occurs after the

accident, but rather the fact that the victim of the crash was never fully

conscious during the accident itself: the person gets away, Freud says,

"apparently unharmed."The experience of trauma, the fact of latency,

would thus seem to consist, not in the forgetting of a reality that can hence

never be fully known, but in an inherent latency within the experience

itself. The historical power of the trauma is not just that the experience is

repeated long after its forgetting, but that it is only in and through its

inherent forgetting that it is first experienced at all (17).

This is interesting with regard to Alias for several reasons. First, the trauma Jessica experiences at the hands of the Purple Man is depicted almost exclusively as the violence being done solely to her, despite her acknowledgement that others were manipulated by the Purple Man during her confinement. Second, latency comes into play when considering that the first time Jessica reveals the story of her violent past takes place several years after the events have occurred. While she does acknowledge the other people whom she was forced to watch engage in violent and/or sexual acts while under the Purple Man's control, she is simultaneously unable to recognize the violence that is being done to them and is unable to comprehend the violence that is being done to her through the act of being forced to watch. This is quite evidently bound up in the unknowability of trauma, that Jessica is not able to understand her own trauma let alone comprehend the trauma being done to others right in front of her and that it has taken 66 years for her to even speak about it. I find this notion to be particularly prevalent when considering her willingness to open up to Rourke and empathize with her group of Purple

Man victims; I argue that Jessica is first able to acknowledge her trauma and claim her status as victim precisely because she is able to empathize with these other victims. It is in this moment where I depart from Caruth, who is uninterested in healing, as Jessica becomes able to see a part of herself in these other victims and finally know that she is not alone, thus taking her first step toward a fuller knowledge of her trauma as well as opening herself up to the possibility of healing.

All Good Things... After Alias

The story arc dealing with the Purple Man and Jessica's past becomes the last of the series and Alias ends with issue #28. While the end of Alias marks the end of Jessica's presence in the MAX part of the Marvel universe, her character had proven so popular that a new series called , set in the Marvel universe proper, is written as the direct sequel to Alias, though notably without the same freedom of language as well as an even more sanitized level of violence, which is common to the mainstream superhero genre. While Jessica loses the freedom to express herself using the same kind of explicit language that had become a central component of her character, the trauma she experienced at the hands of the Purple Man is also largely ignored. While Jessica's traumatic past is not abandoned insofar as her origin is completely reimagined and retold, it is interesting that this particular type of trauma, a trauma that in many ways critiques the type of violence that is frequently inflicted on female characters in the superhero genre, seems not to be welcome in the Marvel universe proper. At no point does The

Pulse allude to her experiences with the Purple Man nor does it gesture to a continuation 67 of Jessica's recovery, a journey she begins in the final issues of Alias. The unspoken fear that Jessica has about her time as a superhero, a fear that permeates throughout the entirety of Alias, is nowhere evidenced in The Pulse nor when Jessica later becomes a supporting character in Bendis's New Avengers. Interestingly, during that run Jessica even makes the decision to return to a life of superheroics alongside her husband, Luke Cage, the father of the child she conceives in Alias. Cage is the only other man in addition to the Purple Man who knows the truth about Jessica's past yet he also makes no reference to this knowledge. The moniker Jessica assumes when she returns to a life of superheroics as an Avenger is Jewel, the name she had during her time as the Purple

Man's captive. There is an argument to be made that this is Jessica's way of taking her power back and reclaiming a name that for years only brought her memories of pain and fear. Certainly, this could be an indicator of the very recovery in which Caruth is so uninterested, and some of the 'I Am a New Avenger' marketing material surrounding the

2010 announcement that Jessica would be joining the New Avengers lineup could be interpreted as Jessica's efforts to move on from her traumatic past. Nonetheless, I maintain that, by and large, Jessica is absorbed back into a world in which trauma is an everyday occurrence, but the ramifications of trauma, particularly for female characters, are largely ignored. While Jessica operates as Jewel for the first eight issues of New

Avengers, she eventually abandons this name for the moniker Power Woman, an homage to her husband who was formerly known as Power Man. This is, perhaps, the superhero equivalent of a wife taking her husband's surname but it is particularly disappointing because Jessica abandons an identity that she has established for herself through her own acts of heroism; an identity that is closely connected to who she is and where she has 68

come from, both good and bad, in favor of a name derivative of her husband's. This, in

many ways, is the final step in the complete sanitization of Jessica's past and the

mainstreaming of her character. For fans who had fallen in love with a character whose

sharp tongue, rapacious wit, and tragic past defined but did not limit her, the Marvel

universe equivalent of the character proved to be just another generic female superhero.

In 2013 it was reported that Marvel Studios, the film division of Marvel Comics

that had produced box office smash hits such as (2008), (2010),

Captain America: The First Avenger, and The Avengers (2012), signed a deal with

Netflix to produce an original, serialized content set in the Marvel cinematic universe and that it, like most of Netflix's original properties, would be marketed toward an adult audience. When the deal was signed it was also announced that each of the series would focus on some of Marvel's street-level characters including, Daredevil, , Luke

Cage, and, surprisingly, Jessica Jones. Originally titled AKA Jessica Jones, now simply

Jessica Jones, the series, which will be released in November 2015, is rumored to take inspiration from Alias, even featuring the Purple Man, played by Doctor Who alum David

Tenant. While the first series released, Daredevil (2015), has met with largely positive critical and fan praise, it remains to be seen what audiences will think of Jessica Jones.

Certainly, readers who may only be familiar with Jessica after she was taken out of the

MAX universe and moved over to the Marvel universe may not be prepared to witness the truth of Jessica's traumatic past, largely due to the fact that this traumatic past has been ignored and swept under the rug. It is interesting to note that the trade paperbacks collecting Alias are notoriously difficult to track down, in part due to their low original print run as well as to the fact that they are now long out of print. As a result, many 69

readers likely have not had the opportunity to go back and read Alias and the original

adventures of Jessica Jones, stories that depict a more violent past than Jessica's fanbase

may fully be aware. My hope is that Jessica Jones will embrace Jessica's past, both the

tragedy and her strength to persevere and to overcome this tragedy, but I also hope that

the show will possess the comic's sense of self-awareness about the problematic nature of the depiction of violence toward women in the superhero genre and that it will work to break these many of these often unacknowledged traditions.

70

Chapter 3: How We Ended Up in Southern Misunderstandistan: Trauma, Sexuality, and

9/11 in DC Comics' Batwoman: Elegy

I confess to once giving a copy of Greg Rucka's Queen and Country: Operation Broken Ground to a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, because I thought it might be helpful to the Senator

-- Rachel Maddow

"Foreword to Batwoman: Elegy"

In the wake of the terrorist attacks on 9/11, some scholars argued that a

massive shift took place in the American cultural discourse. This shift was identified

predominantly in media coverage that took place in the weeks and months following 9/11

and seemed to represent a resurgence of, and a return to, traditional gender role

representations. As Susan Faludi puts it in her book, The Terror Dream: Myth and

Misogyny in an Insecure America, "[i]n the aftermath of the attacks, the cultural troika of

media, entertainment, and advertising declared the post-9/11 age an era of neofifties nuclear family 'togetherness,' redomesticated femininity, and reconstituted Cold Warrior manhood" (4), or, perhaps to put a finer point on it, "a new John Wayne masculinity was ascendant" (5). Marita Sturken suggests that there is an "emphasis on traditional working- class masculinity and wives holding down the home front" (444), while Faludi further argues that, post-9/11, "women figured largely as vulnerable maidens" (5). These observations grew, primarily, out of the videos and images that were broadcast of ground zero which often depicted male firefighters rescuing the helpless female victims of the terror attacks, or the tireless policemen protecting the wives of the victims of 9/11 in the aftermath of chaos. Across these media depictions, women are repeatedly framed as 71 being helpless and in need of rescue. In direct opposition to this type of media portrayal,

Faludi in fact reports that "the fatalities that day were three-to-one male-to-female and that most of the female office workers at the World Trade Center (like their male counterparts) rescued themselves by walking down the stairs on their own two feet" (6).

Although I believe that Faludi’s position holds a certain degree of merit, her reliance on these kinds of generalizations frequently elides her own position. While Faludi focuses on the way in which media portrayals of women as victims in the wake of 9/11 are fast becoming perpetual and inescapable, I recognize Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams III's

Batwoman: Elegy, published by DC Comics in 2010, as a site of post-9/11 resistance to gendered depictions of victimization and heroism. I assert that this comic therefore challenges some of the dominant trends within superhero comics that victimize women, as discussed in the introduction to this thesis, while also challenging the post-9/11 trends that Faludi identifies. I seek to elucidate not only the way in which Rucka and Williams reappropriate and readapt the traditionally masculine representation of the traumatized soldier through the eyes of a female protagonist, but also the way in which they challenge traditional depictions of masculine heroism by featuring a strong and independent female protagonist who also happens to be a lesbian. Rucka and Williams further eschew this depiction in the visual representation of the character, both in her civilian identity as Kate

Kane, and in the otherworldly representation of Kate in her guise as Batwoman. As Paul

Petrovic observes in his cleverly-titled article, "Queer Resistance, Gender Performance, and 'Coming Out' of the Panel Borders in Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams III's Batwoman:

Elegy", Williams’s use of non-traditional and often experimental panels and borders allows him to queer Kate's character visually (69), thereby allowing Rucka and Williams 72

to utilize her character both as a site of resistance to the post-9/11 resurgence of the traditional depiction of masculine heroism as well as to the heteronormative space of superhero comics. While Petrovic's analysis is concerned with an interrogation of heteronormativity in superhero comics, specifically the way in which "Elegy offers a queering of the traditional comics form and radically challenges earlier incarnations of the character's heteronormativity" (67), my analysis extends Petrovic’s argument to acknowledge the integral and lasting impact that 9/11 has had on discussions surrounding gender in American culture. Moreover, I assert that Batwoman: Elegy has implications

for the "Don't ask don't tell" policy instituted from 1993-2011 by the US government, the

very policy which leads to Kate's separation from the military. My inclusion of a post-

9/11 trauma lens is integral to a discussion of Batwoman: Elegy not only because of

Elegy’s connection to the post-9/11 American military mindset, but also because an

inclusive discussion of the impact of this culturally traumatic event, an event that forced

the American people to question, doubt, and reassess their own identity, parallels Kate’s

struggle to come to terms with her identity as a daughter, as a soldier, as a lesbian, and as

a hero. I further seek to elucidate the ways in which the character of Batwoman explores

female power and agency in a post-9/11 world, as well as the ways in which her character addresses the critiques of scholars, such as Sturken and Faludi. As such, I will show the way in which Batwoman: Elegy prompts its readers to re-evaluate cultural assumptions about sexuality and gender, and how placing Batwoman in a post-9/11 context enables an understanding of how 9/11 as a culturally traumatic event has caused the mythologization of our female superheroes in new ways that resist traditional gender roles. 73

While Faludi's book and her observations of the remasculinization of a post-9/11

America are an important precursor to my argument, it is important for me to acknowledge one of Faludi's most troubling and unsophisticated discussions, specifically, her view on comic books and their audiences. In the second chapter of her book titled

"The Return of Superman," Faludi discusses the ways in which the media sought to cast the New York first-responders as larger-than-life heroes, risking their lives to save the innocent (or, more specifically, to save the lives of the innocent and helpless women).

Faludi's discussion extends to the Bush administration's attempt to cast George W. Bush as the rough-and-tough commander-in-chief who was equal parts Rambo and Dirty

Harry; a man who would not only save and protect helpless girls but also hunt down the villainous Osama Bin Laden and bring him to justice. Faludi weighs these larger-than-life characterizations against the comic industry's response to 9/11, although her focus is exclusively on interviews conducted with then-Marvel editor-in-chief , and then DC editor-in-chief , both of whom are quoted as spouting the same kinds of rhetorical jingoism about what it means to be a real hero in the face of adversity, which is precisely the same kind of rhetoric extolled by the mainstream media following 9/11.

Faludi's analyses of the comics produced during this period amount to nothing more than a passing mention of a panel from Amazing Spider-Man #36, though she does not directly quote the comic or cite it in her bibliography as a source, likely due to the fact that she has not herself read the comic. This panel depicts two firefighters asking Spider-Man where he was when the planes flew into the World Trade Center and why he did nothing to stop this attack. 74

Superheroes, During and After 9/11

At the time, the comic book industry reacted to the tragedy by forcing their superheroes to confront their own limitations as characters who previously existed in a world where the evil supervillain's plot was always foiled in time to save innocent lives.

The cover to the DC Comics 9/11 special, in which Superman states "Wow" as he stares at an image of firefighters, police officers, pilots, construction workers, and doctors, tells us who we are meant to identify as the real heroes. Faludi posits a question that I believe bears some consideration, as it gestures to an important and problematic issue that arises out of the post-9/11 rhetoric: "[t]he reversal of hero worship in the comic books underscored a troubling question in real life: why were our serious media insisting on portraying us and our leaders with such comic hyperbole?" (Faludi 66). This question, to me, strikes at the very heart of the problem surrounding the discussion of 9/11 in that, for years, 9/11 was spoken of as unimaginable in its scope, and was thus explained away as impossible to comprehend and even more challenging to discuss in a constructive way.

While later in her book Faludi does make room for some meaningful discussions of 9/11, it is clear that she does not see comic books as a viable format through which to explore the complex and variegated emotions of the post-9/11 American mentality. Faludi's response to her own question is as follows:

The implications of that heightening were a bit unnerving. Superheroes are

fantasies for a particular type of reader: someone, typically a prepubescent

boy, who feels weak in the world and insufficient to the demands of the

day and who needs a Walter Mitty bellows to pump up his sense of self-

worth (66). 75

This understanding of comic books and their readers subscribes to the kind of anti-comics rhetoric of the 1950's used as a fear-mongering tactic to scare parents into preventing their children from succumbing to a life of delinquency and crime, a life they could only learn about through the morally corrupting force of comic books (see my previous discussion of Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent). As posited earlier, Faludi's observations about the remasculinization of American culture rests on her assumption that this remasculinization is marked by a return to a 1950's understanding of gender roles. The irony is not lost on me that Faludi's own understanding of comic books and comic book culture relies on now debunked misconceptions from the very same decade to which she argues gender discourse in America has returned. Faludi’s failure to recognize comic books as a viable place in which to discuss and explore the complexities of 9/11is just another example of her reliance on the generalization of an entire artistic and literary form to further an argument that is reductive of the comics genre's power to reflect and refract the culture in which it is produced.

For many Americans, 9/11 was an unfathomable trauma, a trauma that they could not fully grasp or comprehend, but this notion of the unfathomable traumatic experience was not unique to 9/11, rather, in Caruth's framework, 9/11 should have been traumatic because it was "unknowable". What becomes unique about the claim of 9/11 as a culturally traumatic event is how quickly this claim of trauma was made after the initial attacks. The modern scholarly discussion of trauma and the traumatic experience emerged in response to a surge of interest in Holocaust narratives during the 1980’s. For decades, the Holocaust had remained largely unspoken both by the victims and by its perpetrators, thus, discussions of trauma have tended to focus around the decades-long 76 delayed reaction to one of the most horrific events in human history. This seems to align with Caruth's argument of the unknowable nature of trauma; part of the reason why it took so long for survivors to start talking about the Holocaust, she would argue, is precisely because the immensity of the tragedy and the horror each survivor encountered during the Holocaust was so difficult to fully understand. Caruth frequently gestures to the unknowable nature of trauma throughout Unclaimed Experience, but it is important to note that the characterization of 9/11 crafted by the American media in the moments following the second plane hitting the south tower of the World Trade Center was that of an immediate need to claim 9/11 as a culturally traumatic event, traumatic even for those who were not present and/or were not directly affected. This claim speaks to the power of witnessing trauma, as many people who experienced 9/11 experienced it exclusively through news broadcasts mediated through a television screen.

As discussed in chapter one, Allen Meek is interested in the implications of media coverage during and after the events of 9/11. Meek argues that, because images of 9/11 were broadcast and witnessed 'live' by American and international audiences, there came an immediate need for the public, via the American media outlets, to claim 9/11 as culturally traumatic (172). As Meek argues, this immediacy speaks to the emergence of a conversation about trauma that was different than the conversation that came out of the

Holocaust, a traumatic event that had not been discussed until decades later. That said, the problem with this desire to claim a trauma immediately is that such a desire is frequently bound up in political or economic forces that seek to use the tragedy for their own purposes. As such, central to this immediacy is an acknowledgment of the way in which the media politicized 9/11 as a cultural trauma. To unpack this notion I turn to Neil 77

J. Smelser's book, Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity. In his second chapter,

"Psychological Trauma and Cultural Trauma," Smelser asserts that "[n]o discrete

historical event or situation automatically or necessarily qualifies in itself as a cultural

trauma" (qtd. in Alexander 35). Smelser's definition of cultural trauma rests on the

supposition that a membership group must first step forward and make a claim that an

event or situation is a cultural trauma (qtd. in Alexander 44). His definition of cultural trauma has three main features: the event or situation is laden with negative affect; the event or situation is represented as indelible; and the event or situation threatens a society's existence or violates "one or more of its fundamental cultural presuppositions"

(qtd. in Alexander 44). In the instance of 9/11, the membership group that made the claim that 9/11 was a culturally traumatic event was the American media and it is here where things become problematic. As Meek puts it, "[t]he media apparatus, aligned with interests of dominant economic and political power, assigns significance to 'events'" (189,

emphasis added). As I argued earlier, the American media has played a central role in

defining public trauma, and they do so through what they choose to include and what

they choose to omit in their coverage of an event. For example, I spent a lot of time

discussing the image of the Falling Man in chapter one; despite the fact that an estimated

two hundred people jumped to their deaths prior to the collapse of the World Trade

Center buildings, images of people jumping where not broadcast in an effort to shift the

narrative of the tragedy away from one of despair to one of resilience. That said, the

decision not to broadcast images of men and women jumping to their deaths was made at

least in part due to an acknowledgement of the fraught ethical implications of showing

someone's death on TV. While 9/11 was not initially politicized as a conflict between the 78

right wing and the left wing, it was beholden to other binaries that were absorbed into the

post-9/11 narrative: good vs. evil; us vs. them; U.S. democracy vs. Taliban totalitarianism.

Whatever narrative was internalized either individually or collectively, 9/11

undoubtedly entered the cultural unconscious as a traumatic event (thus possibly

fulfilling the indelible condition for cultural trauma), and its ripple effects can be seen

across myriad cultural artifacts, including Batwoman: Elegy. Trauma and the reaction to

traumatic experience manifest in several ways throughout Batwoman: Elegy, both in the

immediate effects of trauma, as well as through the delayed implications of a traumatic

experience that continue to resurface throughout Kate's life. Kate's own story is one filled

with trauma. At a young age, Kate, her twin sister, and her mother, are taken hostage by a

group of political extremists. Both Kate's sister and her mother are executed by the

extremists during a covert operation conducted by the US military to save the hostages

(seemingly, of course. This is a superhero comic, after all, and Kate's twin sister

eventually returns in a deranged state with a plot to destroy Kate). As Kate is rescued

from the political extremists, the G.I.'s repeated refrain as he carries her away, "You don't

want to see... you don't want to see" (Rucka 110. See fig. 6) serves a double purpose,

directed both at Kate, who he wishes to protect from the truth of what has just happened,

and at the reader who is forced to bear witness to her trauma silently due to the way that

the panel is framed. Just as Kate (and we as the reader) are directed not to look, the final

panel shifts our perspective so that we are forced to stare into Kate's haunted eyes; we

have borne witness both to the traumatic event and to the impact of the traumatic event

through Kate's disturbed gaze. Further, the gestalt of the page encourages the reader to 79

Fig. 6: Page 110 from Batwoman: Elegy

My photo. Taken Dec. 15, 2014. Rucka, Greg and J.H. Williams III.

Batwoman: Elegy. Ed. Anton Kawasaki. New York: DC Comics, 2010. Print.

80

acknowledge unconsciously that the traumatic event and its aftermath exist in the same

physical space on the page in a way that emphasizes the emotional toll and the sense of

inescapability that permeates Kate’s traumatized narrative. Kate, just like the reader, is

unable to look away, and the haunted face drawn by Williams’s pencils carries the full

weight of emotional baggage that will permeate Kate's life.

This flashback sequence is unique for several reasons, but the most important, I argue, is that it is one of the few instances in this comic that Williams employs a more traditional panel layout, complete with a simple and clean use of gutter space. As Kate's life progresses following this traumatic event, the panels Williams employs become more and more untraditional, ultimately culminating in a total disregard for more formal and/or traditional panel borders and a disregard for the gutter as a space meant to separate panels. By the time Kate assumes the Batwoman persona, the pages become visually chaotic and fluid; they are filled with a sense of movement and urgency. This type of experience of trauma, a trauma that instigates itself into a person's life in an insidious way, is much more aligned with an earlier pre-9/11 acknowledgement of the impact of trauma.

Flashbacks: Visualizing Recollection and Memory

A central element in Caruth's conception of trauma is the survivor's experience of repetitive and intrusive memories of the traumatic event. As Caruth posits, the trauma survivor must endure a "breach in the mind's experience of time, self, and the world"

(Caruth 4), but it is this breach in their experience of time that I argue is the most interesting when considering the comics medium, particularly in the way in which comics artists utilize and depict flashbacks. The use of flashbacks is certainly not unique to the 81

comics medium as flashbacks have become a trope frequently employed in film and

television (shows such as Arrow rely on a weekly use of flashbacks to connect Oliver

Queen's time on the deserted island with his inevitable decision to become the vigilante

of Starling City, (Green) Arrow). However, as Harriet Earle correctly asserts in her

article, "Comics and the Chronotope: Time-Space Relationships in Traumatic Sequential

Art", a fundamental difference between comics and film is that, in film, "all information is presented in the same space – we watch the entire sequence of events unfolding on one screen" (2), while through comics, this is a drastically different experience. When considering the physical space of the comics page, each panel on a page depicts a narrative of people and events that are moving through time, but because these panels also occupy the same physical space of the page, their spacial-temporal relationship becomes far more complex than that of a film.

There are a number of useful examples of this treatment of flashbacks throughout

Batwoman: Elegy, and while several of them are more traditional in the way the flashback happens (meaning that the sequences are breaks in the overarching narrative that flashback to moments in Kate's past that influenced her present attitude and behavior), one in particular elicits the intrusive haunting of memory that Caruth argues is characteristic of a survivor of trauma. Early in the narrative, Batwoman confronts a villain named Alice, a deranged woman who professes to be Kate's dead sister. Alice cuts

Batwoman with a knife tipped with poison and Batwoman begins to hallucinate. The panels follow Batwoman as she runs into a forest and hazy images start to form around her, seemingly out of fog. At first, on page 38, we see what looks to be a car accident but the visual shifts and suddenly on page 39, that car accident turns into what looks to be a 82 violent assault of carjackers shooting a man as he exits his vehicle. What is fascinating about these two panels is that Batwoman remains clear and fully rendered, the vibrant red accents of her costume in full contrast with the black, but these images from Kate's memory remain brown, foggy, and ephemeral, even though they occupy the same panels as Batwoman. The scene culminates in the following two-page spread, in which one half of the spread is occupied by a full body illustration of Batwoman, her cape flowing in the wind, while the other half of the image and all around her are memories of people and scenes from her past (Rucka 40-1, see fig. 7). This panel represents the full and unique ability of the comics medium to represent the intrusive nature of traumatic memory and further complicates this representation through the way in which the panel allows the reader to view simultaneously the external scene depicting the physical world of the forest inhabited by Batwoman in juxtaposition with the images inside of Kate's mind.

While we know that the image over Batwoman's right shoulder is a memory of Kate's first meeting with Renee Montoya and occupies a different temporal period, this past moment and present moment inhabit the same physical space on the page. At first glance, these memories and the image of Batwoman do not physically interact, their connection appears to be limited to the fact that they share the same physical space. However, upon closer consideration, the image of a young Kate appears to be reaching out to Batwoman

(her future self), as if begging for her help. This further complicates the physical relationship between these images when considering that it no longer appears as if

Batwoman's cape is being blown by the wind; instead, it appears as if her cape is being pulled by young Kate in an effort to draw Batwoman's attention to her plea for help.

These images represent the unique power of the comics medium to communicate the 83

Fig. 7: Pages 40-1 from Batwoman: Elegy

My photo. Taken July 28, 2015. Rucka, Greg and J.H. Williams III.

Batwoman: Elegy. Ed. Anton Kawasaki. New York: DC Comics, 2010. Print. 84 intrusive nature of traumatic breaches in memory as described by Caruth through their ability to show the way in which the memory of the moment of trauma can exist within the same space as the survivor's physical reality.

While the delayed reaction to a traumatic experience is more prevalent throughout

Kate's narrative, primarily through her childhood reaction to the death of her mother and sister, I argue that Kate also experiences a trauma that manifests in her life very rapidly, a trauma of which she is far more aware. This moment of traumatic awareness comes during Kate's first encounter with Batman, an encounter that becomes the catalyst that pushes her to adopt the Batwoman mantle and begin her own vigilante war on crime. She is targeted by an unknown assailant on the streets, and she successfully fends him off while at the same time stating: "[you] think... I'm some victim... you don't know... I'm a soldier" (Rucka 130, emphasis in original). This page also represents another example of the disordering of Kate's orderly world, signified by the panels that overlap and tumble out of place. For the entirety of Batwoman: Elegy, Williams employs two distinct styles: one, the more photo-realistic style used to depict flashbacks, and two, the more surreal and painted panels depicting Kate's escapades as Batwoman. As Petrovic observes:

This fractured togetherness is further compounded by the fact that Kate

dedicates herself to a concentrated imitation of her father's military service

as a way to psychologically work through the traumas that took so much

from her. This childhood incident sparks her intense commitment to serve

(70).

Importantly, Kate's self-identification as a soldier occurs on one of the few pages where these two distinct styles intersect. As the surreal figure of Batman breaks into Kate's 85 world, a world that is already coming apart, and despite her obvious shock in this scene,

Kate sees Batman more clearly than she is able to see her own life. It is in this moment of clarity that she finds the answer she has been searching for ever since the death of her mother and sister and her separation from the military. This is the catalyst that helps her to realize how she can finally fulfill her intense desire to serve in a world where the military denies her that opportunity because of her sexual orientation. This is further complicated by the fact that, in order to fulfill her desire, Kate must adopt the life of a vigilante, a life that is viewed as deviant in the eyes of the law. This parallel between the deviance of her sexuality and of her vigilantism makes her adoption of the Batwoman persona ever more powerful as this persona becomes a visual embodiment of her alternative lifestyle.

The Queering of Batwoman

As observed by Rachel Maddow in her introduction to Batwoman: Elegy, the parallel between Kate's sexual identity and her persona as Batwoman recurs elsewhere in the comic. For example, a single panel depicts Kate's father when she tells him she's been separated from the army for violating the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy captures not only a

"turning point between characters, [but also] a nation's point of decision" (Rucka n.p.); thus, Kate's traumatic experience as a solider stems not from the battlefield, but from the army's refusal to allow her to serve her country. The moment between Kate and her father is incredibly intimate, turning the readers into voyeurs who are inserted into a conversation that does not concern them. This panel therefore becomes a parallel to the invasion of politics into the bedrooms of gay and lesbian individuals all across America, who are constantly denied the right of privacy as their personal lives are dissected by the 86 media and debated in the Court. Kate's dad identifies Article 125, the article concerned with homosexual conduct, as the reason she has been separated from the military. He asks, "Why couldn't you tell him what he needed to hear?" (Rucka 125. See fig. 8) meaning, why could you not just deny the truth of your identity and tell your commanding officer the lie he needed to hear. In the fourth panel, depicting Kate as she lifts her sunglasses to look into her father's eyes the panel is framed so that Kate stares directly into the reader's eye when she answers, "I'd have been lying" (Rucka 125). This panel, small in size, carries with it the weight of the entire exchange as it is Kate who directly challenges the reader to deny her the right to live her life honestly. The following panel, a wide panel and the one referenced by Maddow in her introduction does indeed represent an opportunity for a change in the conversation about gay and lesbian rights in

America. Williams’s depiction of Kate's father's expressionless face allows the panel to act as a mirror to the reader's own response to Kate's confession. Is he feeling disappointment? Shock? Anger? Sadness? Whatever he feels in this moment becomes a reflection of the reader and it is in this long panel, stretched across the page and representative of a moment of contemplation, that all of these emotional possibilities exist, until her father's response in the last panel, "Then you kept you honor and your integrity. I'm proud of you. Your mother would've been too" (Rucka 125, emphasis in original). While the moment of personal reflection exists and the reader may see in

Kate’s father what they want to see or what they want to believe is his reaction to Kate's shocking reveal, his final response removes the possibility that there is any other reasonable reaction to Kate’s confession than unquestioning support. By extension, the politics of the comic seem to take the position that there is no other reasonable response 87

Fig. 8: Page 125 from Batwoman: Elegy

Detective_Comics_859cbr-Page12. Digital image. Scans_daily. N.p.,

31 Dec. 2013. Web. 27 July 2015.

88 to matters of equality than support further, regardless of whether or not you identify as a queer individual.

As Petrovic argues in his article, "the key motivation for Kate's adoption of her

Batwoman persona is predicated on the military's opposition and dismissal of her due to

Article 125 (Sodomy) of the US military regulation when they learn of her transgressive queer sexuality" (Petrovic 68). I argue that in this moment of receiving her father's acceptance, a man whom, to Kate, represents her own desire to serve her country (being that he, too, served in the military), she realizes that she can find another way to fulfill her dream (although, at this point in her life, she has yet to have her formative encounter with the Batman). Kate's father's acceptance of her sexuality, the acceptance of a highly decorated officer in the US military, further represents the failure of the US military brass to operate under a principle of tolerance, as well as the military's failure to extend the same kinds of freedom to their own soldiers that they seek to extend to those who are denied basic human rights under oppressive foreign regimes. With this in mind,

"Batwoman: Elegy becomes a cultural document... indicting the governmental and administrative treatment of queerness" (Petrovic 68). Kate's identity as a soldier is complicated despite the fact that she is held in high regard by her superiors; however, her expulsion from the military suggests that her sexuality overrules her military service and her value as a soldier. Kate's only possibility of remaining in the military and continuing to fulfill her dream of serving is predicated on the rejection of her sexual orientation.

When Kate is offered this alternative, she responds by quoting the honour code of her academy, "[a] cadet shall not lie, cheat or steal, nor suffer others to do so" (Rucka 119, emphasis in original. See fig. 9). The inherent hypocrisy of the 'don't ask don't tell' policy, 89

Fig. 9: Page 119 from Batwoman: Elegy

tec_859_001. Digital image. Babbling about DC Comics 2. N.p., 23 Feb. 2015.

Web. 28 July 2015. 90 especially when placed in conversation with the academy motto, is an uncomfortable moment of stark realization for Kate, for her superior, as well as for the reader as each is forced to confront the reality that the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy operates in direct conflict with the tenants on which the American military was founded. That said, as

Petrovic points out:

[I]t is significant that during Colonel Reyes's entire reproach, Kate never

objects to the oppression that gays face in the military. Such an absence of

language affirms that she has, during her collegiate years, internalized the

mandates of a patriarchal culture that rejects such behaviour... despite the

anachronistic treatment of gay minorities in comparison to all other ethnic

minorities, the naturalization of a heteronormative ideology leads in turn

to a national ideology that is upheld and legitimized by mainstream

society. The dependency on tradition allows for the continued exclusion of

sexual minorities through the misappropriation of military jurisdiction...

Kate's dedication to the honour code, however, signals the declaratory

moment where she first prizes her subjectivity over that of her country's

and announces 'I'm gay' (71).

What I take away from Petrovic's observations is two-fold: first, that Petrovic is arguing that Kate has internalized the army's reasons for kicking her out and that, while she is upset that she is forced to leave, she still refuses to lie in order to be able to stay, but that in some sense she feels like she is something deviant. Second, while Kate's admission is a moment of personal triumph, both for her character and for gay and lesbian individuals dismissed from duty as a result of the 'don't ask don't tell' policy, that same policy still 91 haunts the narrative, imbuing it with a sense that while Kate is triumphant in her own personal convictions, she has still lost that which she most loves and desires: her right to serve her country. As such, Batwoman: Elegy is able to highlight the damage inflicted on individuals who were impacted by the exclusionary practices of the military, thereby politicizing this comic and proving the power that the comics genre can and does wield, despite the dismissal of this genre by individuals such as Faludi.

The impact of Kate's refusal to serve under the pretense of a lie is emphasized further by the relationship between image and text in the depiction of this scene. There is the look of realization on Kate's face as the perspective zooms in from panels three to five right before her verbal admission that she is, in fact, a gay woman (Rucka 119), as well as the silent removal of the ring in the final panel mirrors the first panel of the same issue in which Kate receives this ring for her graduation from the academy (Rucka 113). The placing of the ring and the eventual removal of the ring signify the beginning and the end of Kate's relationship with the military. While Williams once again utilizes a more traditional page layout, Kate's recitation of the honour code spills out of the borders and into the gutter, filling the extradiegetic space of the comic with words that infuse the narrative of the entire comic; as Kate, she will not lie, cheat, nor steal, and as Batwoman she certainly will not suffer others to do so. As Petrovic argues, "no person or, more importantly, no political administration here wields the power to subordinate or close down her queer identity" (73), but Petrovic fails to acknowledge that the same notion also extends to the formal elements of the comic itself, as the strength of Kate's resolve to live her life honestly break the confines of the panel and spill into the surrounding gutter space. As such, Rucka and Williams seek to present to their readership a new kind of 92

female superhero, one that is unrestricted by the traditionally heteronormative depiction

of female superheroes. I therefore agree with Petrovic:

This scene allows the text to deliberate on the intentionality behind such a

transgression... Rather than subscribe to such a constriction on her queer

identity, Kate Kane openly cites her gender identification. She asserts

herself as queer, manifesting the visibility of oppositional difference and

consequently affirming its centrality to her personage. She cannot be read

as woman without the foregrounding that she is a gay woman (73).

I nonetheless add to Petrovic's assessment by asserting that Kate's codification as a gay

woman rests on Williams’s ability to illustrate her in a way that makes her sexuality a

component of her physical appearance. While Williams’s depiction of Kate embraces

some of the traditions of the superhero genre, I argue that in so doing, Williams also

disrupts the heteronormative tradition of the mainstream comics publishing industry;

"[n]o longer are queer women the censored material of heteronormative comics; instead,

they too gain an epistemological space with which to be viewed and read" (74).

LGBTQ characters have featured in various superhero titled throughout the past several decades, but Batwoman: Elegy marks the first major effort undertaken by either of the big two superhero comics publishers to offer a title featuring a lead character who is also openly gay. It is therefore necessary to outline briefly the long tradition of 'hiding the gay' in superhero comics in order to adequately emphasize the importance of the modern Batwoman's sexuality, not only through Rucka's dialogue, but particularly through Williams's illustrations, which represents a drastic break from this tradition. For decades there was a tradition in the mainstream superhero comics genre that sought to 93

close down the possibility of same-sex attraction, with the most famous example of this

being Wertham's claim that Batman and Robin were in a homosexual relationship, a

claim that ultimately led to the introduction of the original Batwoman and Bat-Girl in the

mid-nineteen fifties as romantic foils for the dynamic duo. Although the original

Batwoman disappeared into obscurity relatively soon after her introduction, DC's

decision exactly fifty years after her first appearance to reintroduce and reimagine the

character, who was originally meant to play the role of Batman's beard as a lesbian is one

of the most absurd, ironic, and utterly necessary moments in comics history.

Wertham's fear of homosexual themes in comics extended beyond his fear that the

corrupting influence of Batman and Robin could lead young boys into sexual depravity,

he also felt that "antimasculine" attitudes in Wonder Woman meant that her character was

a thinly-veiled lesbian crusader. The most notable coming out story in mainstream

superhero comics is the Marvel Comics character, Northstar. Northstar originally

appeared as a member of the Canadian superhero team Alpha Flight in Uncanny X-Men

#120, published in 1979, and eventually went on to co-star in an Alpha Flight spin-off title written and illustrated by . In an effort to turn two-dimensional characters into more compelling protagonists, Byrne made the decision early on to make Northstar gay, but he was prevented from explicitly stating Northstar's sexuality by then editor-in- chief who had maintained a policy that prohibited the use of openly gay characters. Byrne was further restricted by the Comics Code Authority, which had maintained a strong influence on the kinds of stories that mainstream comics publishers were allowed to tell. The code, first adopted in 1954 in response to Wertham's fear of the corruptive power of the comic book, had two clauses that, while not explicitly 94 mentioning same-sex relations, quite clearly acted to preclude these types of relationships. The 1954 Comics Code Authority reads as follows: "[i]llicit sex relations are neither to be hinted at or portrayed. Violent love scenes as well as sexual abnormalities are unacceptable" ("Comics Code Authority", emphasis added), further,

"[s]ex perversion or any inference to same is strictly forbidden" ("Comics Code

Authority"). With these formal measures established to block the representation of

LGBTQ characters in mainstream comics, Byrne was unable to do anything more with

Northstar's sexuality than to subtly hint at it. Northstar would finally be allowed to come out, but it would take thirteen years after his creation to allow him to do so. Northstar's proclamation that he is a gay man in Alpha Flight #106 was met with a lot of media attention and moved a poorly-selling title into a best-selling spot (at least briefly). While

Northstar was the first mainstream superhero to come out as gay, his continued characterization as an angry and bitter gay man left a lot to be desired for LGBTQ fans looking for a more well-rounded gay or lesbian character with whom they could identify.

In light of this history, it is difficult to make the argument that Greg Rucka and

J.H. Williams III's Batwoman: Elegy is not an important comic. Considering the time in which it was produced, a time characterized by a fearful American populace wary of the unknown, Elegy embraces and celebrates that which has remained unknown and unspoken for so long in the mainstream comic book industry. As Petrovic puts it:

Through the adoption of a queer aesthetic and an ostentatious visual

design, Williams... [is] able to combat the material fixity of such codified

female representation in comics. Kate's fluidity of gender, in conjunction

with her willingness to out herself rather than be contained within a 95

heteronormative administrative bureaucracy, reveals her resistance to

heterosexual and assimilationist hegemony (75).

Batwoman: Elegy acts as a meditation on gender and on sexuality in a genre that privileges representations of masculine, heteronormative heroism. Kate is not the silent female victim awaiting the rescue of a man, rather, she is a hero with agency, capable of protecting herself but also motivated by an overwhelming need to help others. The ethical dimension of Elegy extends beyond issues of gender to include a confrontation with the hypocrisy of the legal prevention of gay and lesbian individuals from serving in the military and protecting their home country. For those who exist outside of the persecution of the gay and lesbian community, it is often difficult to imagine what it is like to live in a world that governed by laws such as 'don't ask don't tell,' nonetheless, that particular law was in place for nearly twenty years and to make the assumption that it left no casualties in its wake would be hopelessly naive. Batwoman: Elegy tells the story of one of these casualties, but more importantly, it also shows its readers the story of one of those individuals who was able to rise above persecution and adversity to become a true hero.

96

Reflections, Forward and Back: Concluding Remarks

The sky's the limit. -- Captain Jean Luc Picard

The final line of dialogue from the : The Next Generation series finale, "All Good Things..."

Barbara Gordon's trauma as depicted in The Killing Joke was not her

trauma so much as it became a part of Batman's inevitable revenge fantasy, a fantasy he

fulfills in the final moments of the comic when he (possibly) murders the Joker. But

while The Killing Joke was never a Barbara Gordon story interested in dealing with her

trauma or her recovery; rather, in the aftermath of this devastating story Barbara's

character became something new. Though she was now confined to a wheelchair,

Barbara, still longing to fight crime, began to utilize her superior computer skills and her exceptional detective training by adopting the identity of Oracle, a mysterious character who made her first appearance in and then inevitably returned to Batman's side as one of his most trusted allies and greatest resources. As Oracle, Barbara became

one of the most prominent characters in the superhero genre who was living with a

disability but who did not allow her disability to stop her from being strong, confident,

and powerful. Oracle would go on to become a founding member of the first all-female

superhero team called the , a series first written by and later

inherited by as her first work for DC Comics. Simone's 52-issue-long run on

Birds of Prey is often considered to be the crown jewel of the entire series as she carved out a section of the DC universe that celebrated DC's female superheroes. While the

events of The Killing Joke took away Barbara's strength and dignity, comics creators such 97

as Simone worked to restore her character and, many fans would agree, develop Oracle

into a character who is far superior to Batgirl. Barbara Gordon's story began as a tragedy,

but through the work of responsible creators her character was given new life.

What I have argued throughout this thesis is that Alias and Batwoman: Elegy seek

to do similar work in the superhero genre. While many comics creators are content with

the status quo which tends to sexualize female characters as well as enact violence upon

them not for their own sake, but for the sake of other male characters, there are creators such as Bendis, Rucka, Simone, and others, who recognize that they have a responsibility both to these female characters but also to an audience that cries out for inclusivity and creative responsibility when it comes to the treatment of these female characters. In the wake of the Batgirl variant cover debacle, it was just as much fan protest as it was

Albuquerue's request to pull the cover that drove DC to cancel the retraumatizing variant.

In recent years, as fans have become more vocal, both DC and Marvel have had to respond directly to many of the criticisms launched against their company about their treatment of their female characters. In 2011, Marvel cancelled X-23, which was their only female-led title published at the time. Over the years, Marvel has made various attempts at female-focused titles, including characters such as She-Hulk (1979; 1994;

2004), Spider-Girl (1999), and Elektra (1986; 1996; 2014), but many of these books were cancelled early on after low sales. Similarly, DC has struggled with releasing series that featured a female lead, with Wonder Woman being the long-standing exception. Other attempts on DC's behalf included numerous iterations of Supergirl and Batgirl, but neither has enjoyed the same longevity as that of their male counterparts. The last several years have seen considerable improvements in the offerings of both companies as fan 98

demand has started to drive publication mandate. The Marvel NOW! initiative, which

saw the launch of dozens of titles between November of 2012 until mid-2014 included:

Fearless (2013), Captain Marvel (2013), Red She-Hulk (2012), Black Widow

(2014), Elektra (2014), Ms. Marvel (2014), She-Hulk (2014), Storm (2014), and even a

new female (2014), marking a dramatic increase in female-centric titles. DC's 2011

universe-wide reboot also saw new female-led additions to their stable of titles including:

Catwoman (2011), Wonder Woman (2011), Batgirl (2011), Batwoman (2011), Supergirl

(2011), Voodoo (2011), and Birds of Prey (2011). Conversely, while many of these titles represent progress in the industry, several other titles have come under fire for their treatment of female characters10. For many fans, a large part of the problem has been the

lack of female creators working for Marvel or DC. In recent years both companies have

made progress in hiring talented female creators such as: Kelly Sue Deconnick, Gail

Simone, Margaurite Bennett, Stephanie Hans, G. Willow Wilson, Babs Tarr, Amanda

Conner, and , each of whom have made massive contributions not only to

female-centric titles published by Marvel and DC, but to the Marvel and DC universes at large. As many of these female creators' stars continue to rise, they prove to long-time disbelievers that the superhero genre need not be a male-power fantasy that appeals only to young men, but that the superhero genre can and should be for anyone, regardless of gender, sexuality, or race.

10 Early criticisms were directed at titles such as Catwoman (2011), which drew criticism for Guillem March's extremely sexualized illustrations, as well as for the final scene in issue #1 which depicts Batman and Catwoman, in full costume, having sex on a Gotham rooftop. Additionally, Red Hood and the Outlaws (2011) received criticism for the exploitative way in which is depicted as a sexually promiscuous willing to have sex with any man at the drop of a hat. 99

With more emphasis on the responsible portrayal of female characters, many of

these female characters are beginning to experience the life of a superhero in the way that

male superheroes have been enjoying since the inception of the superhero genre. While

female characters are not immune to violence or trauma, violence and trauma instead

becomes a part of their narrative, their past, their story and not someone else's. Female

characters in ensemble casts are also starting to take center stage, most notably Rogue's

increased importance in the X-Men franchise and her starring role in X-Men: Legacy

(2008), and recent interviews with writer , whose love for

Wonder Woman has led him to position her as the most important member of the Justice

League, ahead of Superman and Batman. While all of these things represent progress in a

traditionally unprogressive industry, as the song goes, 'we've come so far but we've got so

far to go'. Many of the concerns aimed at comics publishers are also launched at the

superhero movie franchises. Why has it taken this long to make a Wonder Woman

movie? Where is the Black Widow solo film? Do we really have to wait until Marvel

Studios releases Captain Marvel in 2019 for the debut of its first female-centric movie?

Marvel Studios has a lot of work to do on its female characters and DC's films to this date

deserve even more criticism on this front.

While the number of comics series that celebrate female superheroes continues to

increase, I chose to focus my discussion on gender and trauma on Marvel's Alias and DC

Comics' Batwoman: Elegy for several significant reasons. Alias marks one of the earliest

attempts made by either of the mainstream superhero comics publishers to address the

problems inherent to the depiction of violence towards women in the superhero genre.

While Alias does not offer a solution to this problem, it does take the important first step 100 of shining a light. As well, Bendis has a substantial track record of speaking in support of gender equality in superhero comics, and his creation of the incredibly strong and powerful character of Jessica Jones carries on in this trajectory. Similarly, Rucka is a notorious proponent of gender equality in comic books, and is often cited as one of the writers in the industry who writes the best, strong female characters. Batwoman: Elegy offers me access to one of Rucka's most distinguished female protagonists, Kate Kane.

Elegy acts as both a celebration, but also an acknowledgment, of the trials of being a gay person in the American military during the years of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.' Elegy is further impacted by the aftermath of 9/11, and the trauma that was done to the American psyche in the wake of such tragedy. Because both comics are infused with trauma, my reading of both Alias and Batwoman: Elegy has depended on a theoretical framework that has allowed me to talk about the unknowable and incomprehensible nature of trauma and traumatic experience. Because I argue that superheroes exist in a post-traumatic state, this reading has allowed me to explore the superhero as a reflection of ourselves in popular culture, through the distorted funhouse mirror of the superhero genre. Certainly, I could have approached this topic through any number of lenses including, gender theory, performance theory, or queer theory, as a way of talking about violence against women in the superhero genre, but I chose a trauma theory approach that allowed me to engage with the inherently traumatic nature of superhero comics because it also allowed me access to a discussion of the psychological implications of trauma. Superheroes are, after all, deeply traumatized individuals who seek, and often times fail, to move beyond their formative traumas and it is these kinds of psychic scars that become an important element to their character and especially to their superheroic identity. 101

Even though the superhero genre continues its victory lap in the hearts and minds of fans all over the world, fans who are clamouring for more content, more movies and

TV shows and video games and action figures, it is useful to remind ourselves where these characters started, and why we have an obligation to ensure that they reflect our society in a responsible way. If the fans have the power to motivate the superhero publishing industry to move toward more responsible representations of women, LGBTQ characters, and people of colour, then both fans and comics scholars must continue to shine a light on industry practices that seek to return superheroes to the exclusionary practices of the comic book dark ages.

102

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