Spider-man, The Question and the meta-zone: exception, objectivism and the comics of Steve Ditko
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2012
Authors
Bainbridge, J.
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Law Text Culture, 2012; 16:217-242
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Abstract
The idea of the superhero as justice figure has been well rehearsed in the literature around the intersections between superheroes and the law. This relationship has also informed superhero comics themselves - going all the way back to Superman's debut in Action Comics 1 (June 1938). As DC President Paul Levitz says of the development of the superhero: 'There was an enormous desire to see social justice, a rectifying of corruption. Superman was a fulfillment of a pent-up passion for the heroic solution' (quoted in Poniewozik 2002: 57).
The superhero is particularly well suited to exploring the relationship between law and justice because, as I have argued previously: Superheroes alone can personify the tension between a modern adherence to the rule of law and pre- (or even post-) modern explorations of Derrida's aporia in different personae: the modern secret identity on the one hand (eg. Bruce Wayne) and the premodern superhero on the other (eg. Batman) (with a postmodern exploration coming from an oscillation between the two).
The superhero should therefore be treated as a separate category demanding of academic attention because they alone can personify the inherent tensions in law in a way that other crimefighters, be they Harry Potter or Harry Callaghan, cannot (Bainbridge 2007: 457).
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Copyright 2012 University of Wollongong, Legal Intersections Research Centre