"The Four Horseman of the Late Capitalist Apocalypse": US Comic Books, Ideology, and Trauma in ...

141 Pages·2016·3.49 MB·English

University of New Mexico
UNM Digital Repository
Art & Art History ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations
7-1-2015
"The Four Horseman of the Late Capitalist
Apocalypse": U.S. Comic Books, Ideology, and
Trauma in Post-9/11 Society
Kathryn Manis
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Manis, Kathryn. ""The Four Horseman of the Late Capitalist Apocalypse": U.S. Comic Books, Ideology, and Trauma in Post-9/11
Society." (2015).https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/arth_etds/31
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Kathryn Manis
Candidate

Art and Art History
Department

This thesis is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication:

Approved by the Thesis Committee:

Dr. Kirsten Buick , Chairperson

Dr. Ray Hernandez-Duran

Dr. Daniel Worden

Dr. Tim Van Ginkel
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“THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE LATE CAPITALIST APOCALYPSE:”
U.S COMIC BOOKS, IDEOLOGY, AND TRAUMA IN POST 9/11 SOCIETY

by

KATHRYN MANIS

B.A. ART HISTORY
B.A. ENGLISH

THESIS

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

Art History

The University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, New Mexico

July 2015
iii

Dedication
For my beautiful, strong, brilliant, crazy, and incredibly lovable younger siblings,
who inspire me every single day.
iv

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Dr. Kirsten Buick, my advisor and chair, for all of the
support and encouragement she has given me over the course of my studies. Without Dr.
Buick’s constant and unfailing belief in me, this thesis never would have come to
fruition. Her frank and rigorous scholarship, inspiring teaching, and passionate support
and care for her students continue to serve as examples of the type of person and scholar I
hope to be.
I am also deeply grateful to Dr. Ray Hernandez-Duran, Dr. Daniel Worden, and
Dr. Tim Van Ginkel for their invaluable feedback, advice, and patience, as teachers as
well as members of my thesis committee. Without this amazing group of scholars, the
final version of this thesis would not have been the document about which I am so
excited and proud.
To Mariah Carrillo for the late night conversations which inspired many of the
best parts of this thesis and for reading drafts and listening to preliminary presentations.
To my best friend, Paul for endlessly humoring my obsession with apocalypse,
encouraging my comic book fanaticism, and administering perfectly timed hugs. And to
my fellow graduate students in the Department of Art and Art History for the comradery
and friendship that helped make this experience so memorable.
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“The Four Horsemen of the Late Capitalist Apocalypse:”
U.S. Comic Books, Ideology, and Trauma in Post-9/11 Society

by
Kathryn Manis
B.A., Appalachian State University, 2012
M.A., University of New Mexico, 2015

ABSTRACT

In the contemporary United States apocalypse, dystopia, and catastrophe are
commonplace. Indeed, both the increasing presence of fictional apocalypse in art and
popular culture and the tone of apocalypticism in U.S. political, environmental, and social
rhetorics, have been noted by writers and thinkers from a wide range of fields. Scholars
of neoliberalism in particular have traced this popularity to the economic and political
realities of late-capitalism and the ideological contradictions embedded in the evolution
of capitalism to its current, immersive iteration. What has gone undiscussed, however, is
the relationship of this anxious preoccupation to a prevailing, national condition; a
condition that responds to the traumatic reality of existence under “American”
neoliberalism.
Using the framework of the apocalyptic riders and the medium of contemporary
comics, this thesis demonstrates the legacy of sacred apocalypse in contemporary
versions and explicates the ways in which neoliberal economic and political policy have
led us back around to apocalyptic ground zero.
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Table of Contents

List of figures………………………………………………………………………........vii
Chapter 1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………1
Chapter 2. Literature Review……………………………………………………….....12
Chapter 3. Pestilence, or, “the consequences of biogenetic revolution”…………….17
Chapter 4. War, or, “the explosive growth of social divisions and exclusions”…….44
Chapter 5. Famine, or, “imbalances within the system itself”……………………….67
Chapter 6. Death, or, “ecological crisis”………………………………………………92
Chapter 7. Conclusion………………………………………………………………...110
Figures………………………………………………………………………………….115
Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………...123
vii

List of Figures
Figure 1. Albrecht Dürer, The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse. ………………........114
Figure 2. Ben Templesmith, from Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse (Vol. 2)……..……114
Figure 3. Pia Guerra and Brian K. Vaughan, From Y The Last Man (Vol. 1)………….114
Figure 4. Pia Guerra. Cover Art. Y The Last Man (Vol. 1, no. 11)……..………………114
Figure 5. Pia Guerra. Cover Art. Y The Last Man (Vol. 1, no. 1)………………………115
Figure 6. Pia Guerra. From Y The Last Man (Vol. 4, no. 19)..........................................115
Figure 7. Riccardo Burchielli, Brian Wood. Cover Art. DMZ (Vol. 1, no. 1)………….115
Figure 8. Riccardo Burchielli, Brian Wood. From DMZ (Vol. 1, no. 1)……………….116
Figure 9. Riccardo Burchielli, Brian Wood. From DMZ (Vol. 5, no. 3)……………….116
Figure 10. Riccardo Burchielli, Brian Wood. Cover Art. From DMZ (Vol. 5, no. 5)….117
Figure 11. Riccardo Burchielli, Brian Wood. Cover Art. From DMZ (Vol. 5, no. 6)….117
Figure 12. Marcos Martin, Brian K. Vaughan, and Munsta Vicente. From The Private
Eye (No. 1)……………………………………………………………………………...117
Figure 13. Marcos Martin, Brian K. Vaughan, and Munsta Vicente. From The Private
Eye (No. 1)……………………………………………………………………………...118
Figure 14. Marcos Martin, Brian K. Vaughan, and Munsta Vicente. From The Private
Eye (No. 1)……………………………………………………………………………...118
Figure 15. Marcos Martin, Brian K. Vaughan, and Munsta Vicente. From The Private
Eye (No. 8)……………………………………………………………………………...119
Figure 16. Captain Callum Israel. Brian Wood, Gary Brown, Dave Stewart. From,
“Black Pacific,” The Massive, (Vol. 1)…………………………………………………119
viii

Figure 17. Brian Wood, Kristian Donaldson, and Dave Stewart. From, “Landfall,” The
Massive (Vol. 1)………………………………………………………………………...120
Figure 18. The Massive. Brian Wood, Gary Brown, and Jordan Bellaire. From,
“Ragnarok,” The Massive (Vol. 5)……………...............................................................121
1

Chapter 1. Introduction
In the 21st century the post-apocalyptic scenario is particularly compelling.1 This
palpable narrative proliferates in literary, visual, and popular culture in the U.S,
appearing in the work of authors like Colson Whitehead, Cormac McCarthy and Max
Brooks, comics, film, and television programs like The Walking Dead and Zombie Land
and in the oeuvre of environmentally concerned visual artists like Chris Jordan and
Agnes Denes. The increasing popularity of these works demonstrates that the end of the
world as we know it is an unquestionably salient topic.
Scholars of culture and neoliberalism2 have noted the complex economic, social,
and political conditions, particularly in the U.S., which make it nearly impossible to
imagine a structural alternative to contemporaneity. Nicholas Mierzoff describes this
condition as an order of seeing, which he calls “immersion,” that has no outside but is
instead, “constituted by the cosmographic circulation between nature and culture, the
West and its Empire.”3 This perceived lack of “outside,” it can be argued, is a primary
source for the popular obsession with apocalypse and dystopia. Though James Berger
considered post-apocalyptic representation as a site of hope in 1999, describing the
impetus for this mode as a recognition of, “formative catastrophes and their symptoms,”

1 And by post-apocalypse I am here referring to a structural and institutional upheaval or change from a
contrasting present, fictional or real.
2 David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Michel
Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-79, Translated by Michel
Senellart, (New York: Picador, 2008); Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The cultural logic of late
capitalism, (London: Verso, 1993); Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, (Winchester,
Washington: Zero Books, 2009); Walter Benn Michaels, “The Beauty of a Social Problem e.g.
unemployment,” Twentieth Century Literature, 57, no. 3 (2011) to list just a few.
3 Nicholas Mirzeoff, “The Sea and the Land: Biopower and Visuality from Slavery to Katrina,” Culture,
Theory, and Critique, 50, no. 2-3 (2009): 289-305.