Qualitative Criminology (QC)
Abstract
"In what can be described as an ethnographic content analysis of (super) heroic proportions, Nickie D. Phillips and Staci Strobl’s Comic Book Crime: Truth, Justice, and the American Way provides an in-depth exploration of crime and justice discourses presented in the medium of the comic book in the first decade of the 2000s. The authors employ years of in-depth participant observation in the comic book subculture along with group interviews to inform their analysis of the story arcs in two hundred popular comic book series, along with a number of graphic novels, in the post-9/11 American context. Drawing on a cultural criminological framework, Phillips and Strobl skillfully weave in a host of intellectual perspectives as diverse as postcolonial theory, theology, and Freudian psychoanalysis in their interrogation of comic books as cultural artifacts in which they argue the “repetition of cultural meanings… reinforces particular notions of justice, especially the punishment philosophies of retributive justice and incapacitation… meted out by crime fighting heroes and superheroes who are depicted as predominantly white males defending a nostalgic American way of life.” (p. 3)"
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Mazurek, Jordan E.
(2015)
"Nickie D. Phillips & Staci Strobl, Comic Book Crime: Truth, Justice, and the American Way,"
Qualitative Criminology (QC): Vol. 3:
No.
1, Article 10.
Available at:
https://dc.swosu.edu/qc/vol3/iss1/10
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