Reframing the Perpetrator in Contemporary Comics

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

   PDF

2. Introduction: Perpetration, Estrangement, and Historical Debt

   • Dragoș Manea

   Pages 1-20

3. “Nothing was spared”: Monstrosity and the Sympathetic Perpetrator in Manifest Destiny (Chris Dingess and Matthew Roberts, 2013–)

   • Dragoș Manea

   Pages 21-50

4. “Divine the future, but beware of ghosts”: Romanticism, Satire, and Perpetration in The New Adventures of Hitler (Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell, 1989)

   • Dragoș Manea

   Pages 51-78

5. “May they never get their hands on a monster like that”: Perpetration and Moral Ambiguity in Kieron Gillen’s Über (2013–)

   • Dragoș Manea

   Pages 79-108

6. Who are you crying for?: Perpetration and Punishment in Nina Bunjevac’s Bezimena (2019)

   • Dragoș Manea

   Pages 109-142

7. “Unable to protect anyone”: Terrorism, Salvation, and Cultural Intelligibility in Gene Luen Yang’s Boxers & Saints (2013)

   • Dragoș Manea

   Pages 143-189

8. Conclusion

   • Dragoș Manea

   Pages 191-194

9. Back Matter

   Pages 195-204

   PDF

This book foregrounds the figure of the perpetrator in a selection of British, American, and Canadian comics and explores questions related to remembrance, justice, and historical debt. Its primary focus is on works that deliberately estrange the figure of the perpetrator—through fantasy, absurdism, formal ambiguity, or provocative rewriting—and thus allow readers to engage anew with the history of genocide, mass murder, and sexual violence. This book is particularly interested in the ethical space such an engagement calls into being: in its ability to allow us to ponder the privilege many of us now enjoy, the gross historical injustices that have secured it, and the debt we owe to people long dead. 

• Comics studies
• Perpetrator studies
• Memory studies
• Manifest Destiny
• The New Adventures of Hitler
• Boxers & Saints
• Bezimena
• Über

“Dragoș Manea offers illuminating readings of five comics texts that challenge simplistic categories of good and evil, declining to pathologise individuals or to depoliticise context. The author engages with recent comics scholarship that has drawn on memory studies and trauma theory, adding layers of complexity with a detailed analysis of the figure of the perpetrator. A lucidly written, insightful book.” (Dr Ann Miller, University of Leicester, UK)

“Manea takes a fascinating look at how comics can enable readers to engage ethically with the figure of the perpetrator and their terrible actions, using them as tools for reflection. The analysis of titles, largely from the 2010s, explores how comics can reframe perpetrators through engaging with fantasy, horror and the superhero, amongst other genres, to make the familiar events of history strange and challenging again.” (Mel Gibson, Associate Professor, Northumbria University, UK)

• English Department, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

  Dragoș Manea

Dragoș Manea is a Lecturer in the American Studies Program at the University of Bucharest, Romania, where he teaches contemporary American literature, media studies, cultural memory studies, and perpetrator studies.

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