İbrahim Mertcan Alçınkaya
Beyond Capes and Batons: Critique and Glorification of Police Power in Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Batman: Year One
Polish Journal for American Studies, vol. 19 (2025), pp. 153-167

Abstract: Since the mid-1980s, numerous mainstream and indie American comic books have presented realistic narratives which provide (tense coherence) a critical lens to view contemporary social issues. As one of those social issues, police violence appears as a common theme in mainstream and indie revisionary narratives such as The Punisher (1986), Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1987), and Black Kiss (1988). This paper challenges the view of the post-Comics Code revisionary narrative merely as social critique by offering a Neocleousian reading of Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Batman: Year One (1987). While a close reading of policing in Year One offers an accurate portrayal of police-related issues—corruption, militarization, and brutality—of the 1980s American metropolis, visualizations of violent encounters between police and criminals arguably glorify and justify police power. American comic books as cultural celebrations of violent policing, I borrow Mark Neocleous’ theory of police power—which describes policing as a militaristic state apparatus of maintaining status quo. Such two-pronged analysis will demonstrate that while comics provide accurate lenses to view contemporary social issues, they nonetheless glorify and justify such problems, complicating their
political stance.

Keywords: invisible, comics, police, power, brutality, militarization, corruption, superhero

DOI: 10.7311/PJAS.19/2025.11

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