Holy Terror, The Fixer (Batman’s lookalike) is therefore represented as trigger-happy, hypermasculine psychopath who indulges in torture (82-83) and mass murder, which he defines “postmodern diplomacy” (79).12 After the first bombs explode, he claims All my life, there’s been something wrong. Something missing. A sense that everything I’m seeing all around me isn’t entirely true. That this seemingly ordered world of laws and logic and reason is nothing but a shroud. A chimera. A mask. But every once in a long while, the mask falls away. Every once in a long while, the whole world makes perfect sense. The world reveals itself. I am peace. And at war” (HT, 69-70) Later on, while preparing for the counterattack against the terrorist conspiracy (whose fifth column includes a drunk Irish dynamiter, just to add another stereotype), he claims, “I’ve spent my whole life getting ready for tonight” (94). All these words express the ontological uncertainty of apocalyptic fiction, as in H.G. Wells’s scientific romances and short stories, in which “the eruption of the unexpected [suggests] the precariousness of what currently passes for reality.”(Draper 1987: 26)13. This form of anxiety produces the terrorist act (in particular 9/11) as a quasi-religious moment that pierces the veil of contemporary, postmodern apathy. As Baudrillard famously states in The Spirit of Terrorism, Throughout the stagnation of the 1990s, events were ‘on strike’ […]. Well, the strike is over now. Events are not in strike any more. With the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, we might even be said to have before us the absolute event, the ‘mother of all events’, the pure events uniting within itself all the events that have never taken place.” (2003: 3–4) Terrorism is here conceptualised as hyperbole, as an event which goes beyond definitions and interpretations (see Houen 2002: 5). The logical corollary is that “[9/11] attacks were thus felt to be so excessive that combating then was taken to be a matter that exceeded the bounds of law” (id.: 6) However, this does not impede the questioning of the hero’s legitimacy. In fact, the very clash between the historical discontinuity and the graphic novels’ narrative structure triggers a crisis that eventually determines HT’s aesthetic failure. From the text above, highlight the appropriation of terrorism tropes in these graphic novels
1. The character of The Fixer is portrayed as a hypermasculine psychopath who indulges in torture and mass murder, viewing it as a form of "postmodern diplomacy."
2. The character expresses a sense of unease and a belief that the world is not as it appears, leading him to see himself as both a bringer of peace and a warrior.
3. The terrorist acts are portrayed as quasi-religious moments that pierce the veil of contemporary apathy, reflecting a sense of ontological uncertainty and existential anxiety.
4. The 9/11 attacks are likened to the "mother of all events," an absolute event that transcends definitions and interpretations.
5. The excessive nature of the attacks leads to a belief that combating terrorism goes beyond the bounds of law.
6. The clash between historical discontinuity and the narrative structure of the graphic novels leads to a crisis that affects the hero's legitimacy.