Super Terror: The Complex Relationship Between Sequential Art and Real World Political Violence

While scholars have recognized that the media plays a very important role in the understanding of terrorism and other forms of political violence, alternative and popular forms of media (such as the Comic Strip, Graphic Novel, Cartoon, etc.) have not been examined as closely by social scientists. This research is concerned with the reaction by graphic narratives to events of terror and the graphic work as a way of influencing the public in its opinion of terror. The main piece examined is Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta which was made as a discussion of the justification of terror witch specific historical examples such as Guy Fawkes and political violence in Ireland. Another text that this paper explores is The 9/11 Report Graphic Adaptation that is a graphic work that was made in response to the September 11th terrorist attacks in an attempt to better educate the masses about the events leading up to the attack. In contrast to this, I will examine Paul Jenkin’s Marvel Civil War: Front Line, a superhero narrative which actively criticizes United States governmental policy post 9-11. This research also starts a discussion of visual codes in Geoff John’s Green Lantern series that shows and then counters different stereotypes of Arab Americans that resulted from the aftermath of September eleventh and the War on Terror