Graphic Novels: The New Diamond of International Studies

Terrorism is a phenomenon that has gripped the world for the last forty years beginning with the murders at the Munich Olympic games in 1972. This culminated with the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City in 2001. As a result terrorism has been a part of the study of international relations for the better part of the 21st century. As terrorism has gripped the view of millions of people worldwide, so too have graphic novels. Graphic novels have depicted terrorism in a number of different ways but to this point the two have not been studied in conjunction with one another. This paper argues that graphic novels and the way that they have depicted terrorists and terrorism have led to a ÒnormalizationÓ of such acts, to the extent that they are coming to be viewed in the same light as other crimes against humanity. This is accomplished by examining four different graphic novels and the way that each one portrays terrorists and the attacks they commit. The paper concludes by stating comparing each of these comparisons to one another to arrive at the conclusion that the purpose of graphic novels is to normalize terrorist attacks and the way that this is accomplished is through the illustrations and comic strip style text as opposed to traditional paragraph style text that lacks any sort of illustration