![]() ![]() In order to do this, the article will draw a red line between the different kinds of vigilantism detectable in Miller and Moore’s graphic novels, and it will also try to identify contemporary manifestation of the disciplinary subjectification we are enclosing under the broad definition of “vigilantism”. This article will try to answer the question “who are the watchmen today?”. ![]() Frank Miller’s Batman: the Dark Night Returns and Alan Moore’s Watchmen were the first two manifestations of a superhero narrative which problematised the concept of vigilantism in the second part of the 1980s. ![]() In the realm of popular culture, the “revisionist superhero comics” provide an appropriate model for our discussion of vigilantism. Conversely, Anders Behring Breivik - who in July 2011 killed some ninety people in Norway - is only the most recent example of an introjected conduct which suddenly becomes ‘visible’ and crystallises in violent outbursts. In the regimes of liberal and neoliberal securitization, the vigilante/overseer also takes the form of a set of dispositifs of security - as part of a broader discursive apparatus - which can control and influence the alleged natural movements of the market. As a hybrid at the intersection of governmental police and civilians, the vigilante floats between forces which constantly redefine its position within the body of the Leviathan. "In the composition of a bestiary of contemporary capitalism, the figure of the vigilante should be given particular attention. However, despite the differences between these authors and their characters' moral values, the superhero model that results from their work is very similar and becomes the postmodern superhero model. For Miller is a question of returning the superhero to his old status of superiority whilst Moore keeps on trying to get away from any conventionalism all through the genre's history. Two of the most important pieces of work included in this genre review are Watchmen and Batman: Dark knight Returns. Society does not accept them, they are often seen as fascists and therefore they are forced to radicalize their methods. On the contrary, they are normally antiheroes, outlaws that use violence and sometimes overdo it, driven by obsessive personalities. For that reason superheroes in postmodernity have nothing in common with those brave supermen that belonged to The Golden Age of Comic Books who had an extraordinary strong sense of citizen duty that people cheered. Survival of superheroes genre is possible thanks to the work produced mainly addressed to the adult population where that inadequacy becomes very apparent. In the eighties, the superhero model enters profound crisis due to the lack of cohesion in postmodern society unable to decide which values should possess the superhero in order to represent that society. However, their very unreliability and discordance reinstates the fact that whatever meaning is distilled from the novel, needs to be personal. This suggests that the epigraphs that Moore chooses are unreliable as essentialisations or even as crutches for interpretation of the novel. Therefore, Shelley’s poem comes off to the reader as misplaced and discordant. Through the analysis of the two poems’ (Smith’s and Shelley’s Ozymandias) relation to the novel, this essay elucidates the deconstructive nature of Watchmen and of Smith’s poem: they alienate the reader from the world of the novel and defy the reader’s attempt to engage with their characters. Horace Smith has stronger similarities to The Watchmen due to its enmeshed structure, the relation between the characters and their diegesis, the treatment of time and space and the style. Shelley’s work does not connect well to the novel due to its relative clarity in structure. Narrowing down on the poem ‘Ozymandias’ by Percy Shelley (referenced in the novel) and its lesser known counterpart by Horace Smith, also named ‘Ozymandias’, I will study mutual aspects of both the poems and the novel and explore their relations. This essay explores how these references and epigraphs affect the reader’s interpretation of the text, besides merely enriching their literary experience. Watchmen is a comic book series that contains a vast number of cultural references from a plethora of sources.
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