ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I focus on graphic and verbal constructions of the concepts of justice and governance in two mainstream comics series, published by DC: Ross‡s Justice 1 and Jurgens‡s Justice League International. 2 If it is true that comics hold a special appeal for scholars working in the field of law and the humanities – as they remind the reader, who is also something akin to a viewer/watcher, of the manifold (and sometimes diametrically opposed) ways of perceiving, constructing and knowing (social) reality, thereby overtly or implicitly challenging a predominantly logo-centric approach to and positivistic understanding of law – it must also be true that this appeal to more than one of the reader‡s senses and (cognitive) faculties can be misused. Put simply, comics can serve as carriers of ideology, and it is my impression that the superhero genre – which, historically, is distinctly American – is ideally suited for the task. When superhero comic books are well-crafted, aesthetically pleasing, and appealing to moral intuitions without offering metafictional commentary, means of self-deconstruction or self-reflexivity this becomes especially problematic, as I intend to show. I further believe that it is impossible to understand how superhero narratives construct the notions of justice and governance without learning more about American history first. A full explanation of this fact, which I cannot give here, entails my conviction that the United States is the only nation in the world that, through aggressive foreign/neo-colonial policies and sophisticated marketing of cultural exports, on the whole has succeeded in being perceived as not being the white postcolonial settler society that it clearly is. 3
