ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the historical basis for the legal concept and its role in American due process, as a means of focusing more intently on deathworthiness. It then explores the theme in two recent comics books, a mainstream superhero title Cry for Justice and a non-superhero title Red Team. Comic books, along with other mass media entertainment, serve as an internalised cultural landscape that individuals may draw upon in their own lived experience as it intersects with crime and justice. Finally, the chapter concludes by offering an illustration of how popular culture discourse, like those in comic books, mirrors ways in which members of the public process and confront real-life incidents of vigilante justice, such as the public discourse around the Christopher Dorner killing spree that resulted in the deaths of four civilians during the winter of 2013.
