EJAC 35 (2) pp.

77–95 Intellect Limited 2016

European Journal of American Culture

Volume 35 Number 2
© 2016 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/ejac.35.2.77_1

MAAHEEN AHMED
Ghent University

MARTIN LUND
Linnaeus University and CUNY Graduate Center

‘We’re all Avengers now’:

Community-building,
civil religion and nominal
multiculturalism in Marvel
Comics’ Fear Itself

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This article discusses Marvel Comics’ 2011 crossover ‘event’ ‘Fear Itself’. It suggests comics
that the event argues for national unity in a time of crisis by mobilizing America’s superheroes
self-definition as a multicultural nation as well as civil religion. The article discusses multiculturalism
‘Fear Itself’s’ attempted construction of national myth through looking at the way civil religion
it represents the media, US multiculturalism (in a generalized form that nominally Greatest Generation
includes non-white groups while frequently failing to account for them) and ‘sacral- community-building
ized’ civil religious aspects of US history. Especially salient in this connection is
the event’s engagement with the Roosevelt years. In doing so, it is argued, ‘Fear
Itself’ presents an Americanness that relies on an idealized and nostalgic notion of
the so-called ‘Greatest Generation’, a tightly knit, self-sacrificing civil society that
supposedly came into being during that period.

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Maaheen Ahmed | Martin Lund

When he first appeared in 1938, Superman, the first US superhero, cham-

pioned New Deal ideals. Since then – through World War II, the Cold War
and into the War on Terror – American superhero comics have often helped
reproduce American mythologies of good and evil, the dominant values of the
majority culture and the prevailing definition of what it means to be American
(cf. Wright 2003; Costello 2009; Johnson 2011; Yockey 2012). As comics histo-
rian Bradford Wright notes: ‘Emerging from the shifting interaction of politics,
culture, audience tastes, and the economics of publishing, comic books have
helped frame a world-view and define a sense of self for the generations who
have grown up with them’ (2003: xiii).
In a similar vein, political scientist Matthew J. Costello suggests that the
aftermath of Marvel Comics’ War on Terror and Patriot Act allegory ‘Civil
War’ (2007), which resulted in the death of Steve Rogers (the original Captain
America who first appeared in 1941), ‘mirrors the contemporary quest to
define the American self in the postmythic, postconsensus moment’ (2009:
29–30). This quest, for Costello, springs from the absence of a mythic defini-
tion of national identity after the collapse of the Cold War liberal consensus,
which renders collective action difficult but has the potential to inspire the
nation to enter the future ‘free of the blinders of myth’ (2009: 30). A future free
of myth, however, seems far away, and Marvel’s ‘Fear Itself’ (April–October
2011), a ‘crossover event’ or highly publicized storyline unfolding across
several comic book series, often takes recourse to a sentimentalized past: plac-
ing the social, geopolitical and economic threats haunting America since 9/11
at its core, ‘Fear Itself’ links them with past ones through resurrecting ideals of
Americanness associated with the Great Depression and World War II, while
also reflecting on Marvel’s own recent fear-haunted comics.
‘[E]very period has its ghosts (and we have ours), its own experience […]
and its proper hauntological media’, reads one of Jacques Derrida’s oft-quoted
footnotes (1994: 241). This observation emphasizes the persistence of histori-
cal events and perceptions in constructions of the present as well as the role of
media in framing, preserving and perpetuating all that can remain of history –
its ghosts. Superhero comics can thus be seen as hauntological media, with
the ghosts populating them implicating a ‘politics of memory, of inheritance,
of generations’ (Derrida 1994: xviii, 96), working reflexively, without break-
ing the norms of ‘the mythologization of the superhero and the nation they
routinely represent’ (Yockey 2012: 350). This article shows how ‘Fear Itself’,
in allegorizing the United States almost a decade after 9/11 through a version
of the Ragnarök myth tailored to the superhero genre, instrumentalizes civil
religion to call for national unity in response to a troubled time. It also elabo-
rates on how the ‘event’ questions a common trend in superhero comics of
the preceding decade, and transcends certain conventions of superhero story-
telling while remaining, nonetheless, haunted by those conventions as well as
the ghosts of 9/11 and its wake.

SITUATING ‘FEAR ITSELF’: SOCIAL CAPITAL AND THE CULTURE

OF FEAR
The core miniseries Fear Itself (Fraction and Immonen 2012) introduces a new
character called the Serpent, who resembles the Midgard Serpent but has been
reworked as Odin’s brother. With the aid of an army of Nazis and his Worthy – a
group of ancient followers of the Serpent whose spirits possess some of Marvel’s
heroes and villains through magical hammers that fall from the sky – the Serpent

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wages a war to claim the throne of Asgard while spreading fear in the human
world. The Marvel Universe’s heroes unite to face this new threat, with Thor
and Steve Rogers (who was resurrected shortly after his death) playing the
most prominent roles. The situation becomes progressively worse, and towards
the end all seems lost, with Washington, DC, nearly levelled by Nazis loyal to
the first hammer-wielder, Sin. By the time Thor finally defeats the Serpent,
many other cities around the world have also been decimated.
In the course of ‘Fear Itself’, Steve Rogers almost succumbs to despair
(Fraction and Immonen 2012: n.p., #5), as does Spider-Man (Yost and McKone
2012: n.p., #1), but the heroes do not give up and, importantly, neither do
the people. In fact, Spider-Man regains hope when he sees ordinary people
keeping up the fight (Yost and McKone 2012: n.p., #3) and Rogers’ hope like-
wise returns in a climactic scene when Rick, a civilian resident of Broxton,
Oklahoma (where Asgard had been located until its destruction at the end
of another recent Marvel event) joins him in facing an approaching army
(Fraction and Immonen 2012: n.p., #7; Gage et al. 2012b: n.p., #7; Figure 1). At
Fear Itself’s conclusion, Earth has suffered much destruction, but its cities will
be rebuilt, the world will bounce back and ‘[t]he Avengers will bury our dead,
mourn our losses … and then get back to work …’ (Fraction and Immonen
2012: n.p., #7, original emphasis).
The final point about the scope of this work is left to Rick, a middle-aged,
middle-class American, whose actions suggest that rebuilding concerns not
only cities, but also communities. In Fear Itself’s final scene, Rick welcomes

Figure 1: Fear Itself #7, n.p. © Marvel, 2011.

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Winslow, a new African American neighbour. Seeing that the new arrival’s
gas-powered lawn mower is not working, Rick lends him an old hand-pushed
one, since ‘[w]e all gotta take care of each other, right?’. Even though Rick’s
mower is blunt and old, Winslow agrees to ‘give it a try’ (Fraction and Immonen
2012: n.p., #7). This lawn mower exchange resurrects an older, sentimental-
ized value system of camaraderie amongst citizens. By framing the conclusion
in this way, Fear Itself echoes one of the ways in which social capital could
be recreated in the United States, according to political scientist Robert D.
Putnam in his best-seller Bowling Alone, in which he suggests that Americans
should ‘spend […] more time connecting with our neighbors than we do today […]
One deceptively simple objective might be this: that more of us know more of
our neighbors by first name’ (2000: 407–08, original emphasis).
‘Fear Itself’ also mirrors another claim made by Putnam: ‘Creating (or
recreating) social capital is no simple task. It would be eased by a palpable
national crisis’ (2000: 402). To a certain extent Putnam was right about the
galvanizing effect a national catastrophe could have. The immediate aftermath
of the events of 9/11 saw a surge in ‘solidarity and civility [and] the powerful
egalitarianism of disaster’ (Sorkin 2013: 15). This, however, was accompanied
by an ever increasing manipulation of fear characterizing a ‘post-9/11 culture
of anxiety’ (Sorkin 2013: 193; cf. Johnson 2011). When ‘Fear Itself’ was being
produced, a long process of social erosion seemed to be reaching a critical
point. The political landscape was rapidly becoming partisan after the end of
George W. Bush’s presidency, as reflected in the ascendancy of the Tea Party
and the Occupy Movement’s taking over Zuccotti Park a month before the
crossover concluded. The traditional news media and online news outlets had
grown strident in their search for attention-grabbing talking points and head-
lines, feeding a culture of fear and exacerbating the situation (cf. Putnam 2000;
Patterson 2005; Packer 2013). The coming of the Serpent – ‘terror given shape’
in Odin’s words (Fraction and Immonen 2012: n.p., #4, original emphasis) –
and ‘Fear Itself’s’ frequently over-explicit connections with the contempo-
rary United States transpose this post-9/11 culture of fear and polarization to
comics.
In doing so, ‘Fear Itself’ is not unique. Superhero comics are often haunted
by the worries, politics and crises of their day. What differs is their portrayal
of such issues and the solutions they offer. Throughout the post-9/11 decade,
Marvel’s comics grew darker, shifting to ‘a realm of overwhelming fear [that]
forced readers to question who could be trusted’ (Johnson 2011: n.p.; Costello
2009: 229–41). In ‘Avengers Disassembled’ (2004–2005), Marvel’s flagship
superhero team was torn apart from the inside, when one of their own turned
insane. In ‘House of M’ (2006), an Avenger transformed the whole world in
order to make it fit her image of a perfect society. In ‘Civil War’ (2007), which
asked readers ‘[w]hose side are you on?’, the government stepped in after a
superhero-related catastrophe and tried to regulate superhero conduct, caus-
ing a violent rift in the superhero community. 2008’s ‘Secret Invasion’ – which
asked ‘Who do you trust?’ – deepened the sense of mistrust by telling a story
in which it was impossible to know who was a shapeshifting alien infiltrator.
In 2008–2009’s ‘Dark Reign’, Marvel’s United States was ruled by a madman.
Describing superhero comics as ‘a cultural barometer for American society
as a whole’, historian Jeffrey K. Johnson concludes that ‘the decade’s stories
reveal a country gripped by fear, suspicion and mistrust’ (2011: n.p.).
‘Fear Itself’ often repeats the idea voiced in Avengers #13, that ‘[t]he
world had really seemed to go to hell lately’ (Bendis and Bachalo 2011: n.p.).

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This sentiment was also a reason for ‘Fear Itself’ becoming as large as it
did. Although the event was originally conceived as a smaller-scale Captain
America/Thor crossover, Marvel’s editor-in-chief immediately recognized
that the Serpent could cast a longer shadow when ‘unleashed in a world
reflecting our own – with all of its tensions, anxieties and fears running so
rampant’ (Thomas 2011: n.p.). Consequently, Fear Itself #1, the first of more
than 150 ‘Fear Itself’ comic books, opens with a heated protest about the
building of an unspecified something at a ‘sacred site’ in lower Manhattan, a
clear allusion to the polemical ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ debate. The storyline
is thus immediately situated within the polarized public discourse of
the contemporary United States, the ferocity of which is indicated by the
outbreak of a riot (Fraction and Immonen 2012: n.p., #1; cf. Williams 2013:
244–45, 239).
Fear Itself #1 also weaves in concerns regarding the perceived loss of
older manifestations of social capital, such as communality and a shared
pursuit of public good (cf. Putnam 2000: 403). Such losses are presented
as a real threat, as in the scene where Rick’s neighbour Bill who, having
lost his job, his savings and his house, leaves small-town Broxton with
the following advice: ‘Start locking your doors at night. […] This stuff
keeps happening and folks’ll be at each other’s throats soon’ (Fraction and
Immonen 2012: n.p., #1, original emphasis). Bill fears that current events
are leading towards a civic breakdown; as shown by other events like the
New York riot, ‘Fear Itself’ suggests that the same trajectory can be traced
on a national level.
After the Avengers determine that the riot was caused by the protest-
ers losing control, instead of being the product of nefarious influences, Steve
Rogers – who has not yet re-assumed the mantle of Captain America –
conveys his disappointment and frustration at not being able to stop it. In
reply, Tony Stark (Iron Man) remarks that ‘Captain America’ does not have
the same ‘caché’ it once did:

I’m sorry that’s hard to hear, Greatest Generation, but it’s true. People
are mad right now, and broke and they’ve been lied to and ripped off – and
when people who’re already mad get scared then all hell kinda breaks
loose. So how did you guys get out of it, hmm? In your day? You built.
(Fraction and Immonen 2012: n.p., #1, original emphasis)

Coupled with the event’s unmistakable reference to Franklin Delano

Roosevelt’s first inaugural address – ‘the only thing we have to fear is fear itself’
(1933: n.p) – the ‘Greatest Generation’ remark and the references to building
and, in a later scene, to public works (Fraction and Immonen 2012: n.p., #1),
introduce a New Deal nostalgia to ‘Fear Itself’. What Stark proposes to build
is the recently destroyed Asgard. For Stark, the reconstruction of Asgard is
supposed ‘to be a monument of unity’, bringing together the Avengers, a US
institution, and the Asgardians, a supposedly ultimate Other, coming from an
alien place and embodying an alien culture (Bendis and Bachalo 2011: n.p.,
#13). This intent to rebuild is made public at a press conference that is delib-
erately turned into a ‘stunt-y’ media event to offer the public some comfort
since the heroes ‘can’t punch a recession’ or suddenly make everyone feel safe
again (Fraction and Immonen 2012: n.p., #1, original emphasis).
The scene between Steve Rogers and Iron Man and the subsequent
press conference introduce three central themes for the event: the role of

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the media and communications in fostering or countering fear, civil religion

and multiculturalism. These themes will now be discussed in detail since
their treatment best highlights how ‘Fear Itself’ attempts to render its stories
relevant for the contemporary context while evoking a glorified past, bending
some genre conventions and holding on to others.

‘ARE YOU AFRAID ENOUGH?’: MEDIA SCARES VERSUS THE

COMMUNITY-BUILDING POTENTIAL OF SOCIAL MEDIA
An important breeding ground for the culture of fear is the media. While the
media are occasionally explicitly described as fear-mongering, their critique in
‘Fear Itself’ is more often implicit. In Secret Avengers #15, for instance, a gossip
website claims that the new Captain America’s death during the attack on
Washington is a hoax, because it gets them traffic (Spencer et al. 2012: n.p.);
the ‘New York Spot’ (a reference to the sensationalist New York Post) wrong-
fully and intentionally accuses the superhero Black Panther of terrorizing citi-
zens (Liss et al. 2012: n.p., #1); and the first Uncanny X-Men tie-in displays the
newspaper headline, ‘Are you Afraid Enough? World Crisis Survival Special’
(Gillen and Land 2012: n.p., #540). Interspersed throughout the core mini-
series are snippets of reportage signalling the partisan and fear-mongering
tone of contemporary public discourse in the United States. As the Serpent
grows stronger and as people’s fear grows, their reactions become worse,
provoking military interventions and suicide bombings on an international
scale (Fraction and Immonen 2012: n.p., #6). A vicious cycle is thus illustrated:
people feel fear, the media pick up on their fears, add to them (or manufacture
new ones) and release them back into the world, weakening the social fabric
by provoking fear and hate.
In the end, however, the situation is reversed in a way that brings out ‘Fear
Itself’s’ proposed solution to the spread of fear in the United States: through
reports on collective efforts, communications and the media are depicted as
being potentially capable of strengthening the social fabric by inspiring collec-
tive action and community-building. Thus, as Thor and the slain Serpent
tumble down to Earth after their climactic battle, the scene is interlaced with
‘reports […] of what’s been called a civilian militia defending a local hospital’
and of a food bank established at a mosque, suggesting that the defeat of fear
comes through unity and cooperation (Fraction and Immonen 2012: n.p., #7,
original emphasis).
The suggestion that media and communications provide opportunities
to effect positive change is most evident in ‘Lurker’, one of the storylines in
the anthology series The Home Front (C Gage et al., 2012b). It starts with the
superhero Speedball, blamed for a catastrophe that set Marvel’s ‘Civil War’ in
motion, being discussed in a televised debate between a reasoned debater and
a biased pundit, and on the Internet, where the view is decidedly negative.
Soon after, he is attacked by a mob angry about his earlier actions. Towards
‘Lurker’s’ end, however, Speedball and community organizer Miriam Sharpe
use the Internet to disseminate images of people overcoming their fear and
helping each other (Gage et al. 2012b). Demonstrating the increasingly recog-
nized and utilized potential of social media to save lives in disasters and ‘to
address mutual concerns, solve problems, and build consensus – potentially
restoring the social capital that has been lost’ (Hochheiser and Shneiderman
2010: 64), the Internet becomes an effective, even life-saving, means of
communication and community-building.

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As such, communications and the media are figured as tools that can have 1. In July 2011’s ‘X-Men:
Schism’, for instance,
both positive and negative effects, depending on how they are used. Aside where another flagship
from its critique of sensationalist media, ‘Fear Itself’s’ position is worth high- superhero group broke
lighting because the initially negative portrayal of the media and the gradual up, and the superhero
community was torn
shift towards a more positive figuration can also be interpreted as a self-reflex- apart again in the
ive comment on the event’s attempt to reverse the fear-mongering trend in April–October 2012
Marvel’s own post-9/11 comics. Sharing commonalities with a counter-current event ‘Avengers vs
X-Men’.
in the Zeitgeist that had inspired, among other things, comedians Jon Stewart
and Stephen Colbert to host their 30 October 2010, ‘Rally to Restore Sanity
and/or Fear’, at which Stewart ‘made an impassioned defense of American
unity and denounced cable-news depictions of a country riven by animosity’
(Steffen and Gold 2010), ‘Fear Itself’ suggests that the media, including
comics, work best when they try to inspire unity and collective action. This
idea would have no lasting impact on Marvel’s production, as their later
events about community breakdown illustrate1 and, as will be discussed at
the end of this article, the event never questions the dominant fear-narrative
itself, but it permeates the event. One of the ways in which ‘Fear Itself’ moti-
vates such action is through mobilizing and amplifying an older trend that
attempts to portray a multicultural United States.

‘[S]TRONGER THAN FEAR’: NOMINAL MULTICULTURALISM

Marvel has been trying to make its universe more diverse since the early
1970s, but few of its attempts were commercially successful or free of stereo-
type (Wright 2003: 247–50). For decades, the publisher has tried, and often
failed, to critique social inequality and to convey an anti-prejudicial message
to readers (cf. for instance Shyminsky 2006; Lund 2015). Considering this aim
and the fact that the post-9/11 years have seen ‘increasing hardline conserva-
tism regarding immigration’ (Williams 2013: 245–47), it is unsurprising that
ethno-racial tensions play a role in establishing ‘Fear Itself’s’ climate of fear.
The growing virulence of anti-immigrant rhetoric is most clearly recalled in
Black Panther (Liss and Francavilla 2012), where a frustrated, prejudiced man
takes up the mantle (and pink KKK-like hood) of an old xenophobic Marvel
supervillain, and within hours inspires a 1000 strong nativist movement. He
fails thanks to the efforts of the Black Panther, an African immigrant super-
hero, who helps the helpless through his superpowers, charity work and
community outreach, underscoring his involvement in the community and
his contributions towards strengthening it (Liss et al. 2012, #521–23). Other
attempts to sow ethno-racial dissent also fail: in the Uncanny X-Men (2012)
tie-in, one Worthy tries to incite conflict along racial lines by offering to
spare San Francisco if it turns on the mutant X-Men living there. Although
he succeeds in inspiring anti-mutant sentiment, his plot fails; ‘We’re in this
together’, affirms the mayor, refusing to scapegoat a minority (Gillen and
Land 2012: n.p., #542). In a variation of the theme in a Home Front (2012b)
vignette, vengeful drug dealers set Native Americans up to be massacred by
manipulating locals’ fears, but their stereotype-laden attempt to play ancestral
spirits makes their plot transparent. The story ends with a moral lesson, tell-
ing readers that the Other should not be feared, but engaged in dialogue and
mutual education (Gage et al. 2012b: n.p., #5).
Despite all of ‘Fear Itself’s’ diversity of theme and content and its gesturing
towards ethno-racial and religious neutrality, the event’s main characters are
the blondest, whitest, most blue-eyed of all male Marvel creations: Captain

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America and Thor. They and other white men are by far the biggest actors
throughout the event; African Americans are underrepresented and, despite
changing demographics, the representation of Latinos and Asians in ‘Fear
Itself’ does not mirror the national situation (cf. Spellman 2008: 61–88). The
most prominent allusion to immigrants and refugees, for instance, is made
through the white Asgardians, and even then Thor chooses his adopted
people and nation over those of his birth twice in the core miniseries (Fraction
and Immonen 2012, #1 and #3). And, while references to people losing things
in the recession are relatively frequent, critical reproductions of the anti-
immigrant or anti-Muslim elements of the media and political climate of fear
are few. Some already-cited exceptions notwithstanding, in the end, the fears
addressed are essentially the fears of the US white middle class.
Tying into the same representational aspiration to embrace diversity, refer-
ences to different religions, invariably recast in the mould of US civil religion,
are recurrent features in ‘Fear Itself’. The concept of civil religion, as it was first
articulated, pointed to its nonsectarian character: there are ‘certain common
elements of religious orientation that the great majority of Americans share
[sic]’ (Bellah 1967: 3) and that provide a religious dimension to life in the
United States. Two central tenets of this civil religion as a national trait are
‘the reward of virtue and the punishment of vice, and the exclusion of religious
intolerance’ (Bellah 1967: 5). Not all religious expression fits this description,
and in such cases the expression is often denounced as extremism, a failure
or a corruption of religion. This ‘dark side’ of religion is represented in ‘Fear
Itself’, most explicitly in tie-ins like the Uncanny X-Force storyline (R. Williams
et al., 2012) where the titular team tracks down a fundamentalist terrorist sect
which believes that super-powered people have brought the devil to Earth,
and whose leader encourages people to kill themselves and their loved ones
before their souls can be taken.
Conversely, religion that fosters tolerance and acceptance is often seen
as a constructive force (cf. Williams 2013: 242). Inter-religious coexistence,
for instance, is portrayed in Spider-Man #2 (Yost and McKone, 2012), when
a reporter retreats for sanctuary in St. Mark’s Church, New York, to find a
Catholic, a Muslim and an ultra-Orthodox Jew praying together inside.
Although this ecumenical moment is disrupted when an armed, paranoid
man enters, a priest brings him to reason by asking to look around and realize
that he is not alone, thus further stressing the potential of religious congre-
gations to foster social cohesion. As the man falls to the ground, asking for
forgiveness, the priest tells Spider-Man that ‘[t]here are still some things
stronger than fear’. Striking a similar note, and exemplifying religious convic-
tion as a motivator for positive interaction between groups, in Home Front #6
(Gage et al. 2012b), the Muslim mutant Dust protects ultra-Orthodox Jews in
New York.
‘Fear Itself’s’ ecumenical gesturing can be interpreted as utilitarian: reli-
gion is presented as a social positive as long as it, like the media, inspires
civility and the creation of ‘bridging’ (or inclusive) social capital rather
than segregation and ‘bonding’ (or exclusive) social capital (Putnam 2000:
22–23; cf. Bellah 1967: 5–6; Williams 2013: 242). Indeed, Putnam had trou-
ble seeing how the erosion of social capital of the last several decades could
be redressed without religious contributions. As he put it, ‘[f]aith commu-
nities where people worship together are arguably the single most impor-
tant repository of social capital in America. […] [H]ow involved we are
in religion today matters a lot for America’s social capital’, since religious

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sentiment can extend outward into secular social or political participation

like charity work or social outreach (Putnam 2000: 408–09, 66; cf. Williams
2013: 242). From a civil religious perspective, wrote US civil religion’s first
theorist Robert Bellah (1967), God has a special interest in the United States,
and the American people have a special obligation to carry out God’s will
on earth. Different generations have tried to realize this role in different
ways. In Bellah’s time, the ‘great problem’ was made up of ‘the common
enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself’ (1967: 5). In 2011,
for Marvel, it was ‘fear itself’. To this end, unity is combined with a plural-
ism which accepts ‘good’ religion. However, the ecumenism of religious
representation in ‘Fear Itself’, as in supposedly nonsectarian civil religion in
general, also promotes a submission to communal norms and a sublimation
of difference.
Anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss’ concept of bricolage denotes a way
of thinking and myth-making that consists of putting together whatever
symbolic materials are at hand, often in unusual ways (1962: 26–27). Such
a process is discernible throughout the construction of the Marvel Universe
and fans out on a transcultural scale in ‘Fear Itself’. Thus, the Ragnarök myth
is intertwined with symbolic elements lifted from various religious, folk-
loric and popular traditions. As elsewhere in Marvel’s publication history,
however, these traditions are tailored to fit implicitly normative American
(i.e. mostly white, male, middle class; cf. Shyminsky 2006) readers, due to
which what is portrayed is ultimately a nominal multiculturalism: every-
thing that is held central or sacred to cultures and religions long-dead and
still vibrant is made to conform with the superhero genre’s conventions (cf.
Shyminsky 2006: 393–94), civil religion and a particular, limited conception
of multiculturalism.
Even as the event blurs boundaries between different religious and
cultural patrimonies, it reasserts the Judaeo-Christian normativity on which
US civil religion is based by constantly translating events into a language
most comprehensible to those adhering to the implicit cultural norm
(cf. Mock 2013: 111): Tony Stark calls the devastation he witnesses in Paris
‘biblical’ and ‘petition[s] the Lord [referring to Odin] with prayer’ (Fraction et
al. 2012). Even one of the Worthy speaks of spreading the Serpent’s ‘gospel
of terror’ (Gage et al. 2012a: n.p., #16). When, in a flashback, Odin describes
Valhalla to the superheroine Valkyrie, he calls it ‘heaven’ and ‘paradise’
(Spencer et al. 2012: n.p., #14). He even goes so far as to appropriate Job 1:21:
‘Odin giveth; Odin taketh away’ (Fraction and Immonen 2012: n.p., #1,
emphasis original).
These references cannot be regarded as merely generic references to
God of the type common to presidential addresses and other articulations
of supposedly non-denominational US civil religion (which themselves were
becoming problematic already when the idea of civil religion was first intro-
duced; cf. Bellah 1967: 15), but rather as revealing the linguistic and imagi-
native limits set by Judaeo-Christian discourse. When Thor finally battles the
Serpent, he does so in full armour and with a sword, while the Serpent takes
the form of a dragon. The image presented more readily recalls certain repre-
sentations of the archangel Michael fighting his dragon, Satan (Rev. 12: 7–9),
than of Thor fighting the Midgard Serpent (Figure 2). But nothing in ‘Fear
Itself’ is as suggestive of Judaeo-Christian primacy as Journey into Mystery
#627 (Gillen and Elson, 2012), where Mephisto makes it clear that neither
he nor any pretender to the devil’s throne is really Satan and that, while all

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Figure 2: Fear Itself #7, n.p. © Marvel, 2011.

manner of gods and demons, angels and sorcerers – including the Council
of Godheads, a conference of ‘all-fathers’ from different pantheons – gather
at the otherworldly ‘Infinite Embassy’, the ‘Principal’, i.e. God, does not join
them in that transcendental ‘playground’; the Judaeo-Christian transcendent
alone is beyond representation and adaptation.
It is from examples like these that the limits of ‘Fear Itself’s’ attempt to
transcend conventional thinking become clear. ‘We are all multicultural-
ists now’, lamented sociologist Nathan Glazer, ‘mean[ing] that we all now
accept a greater degree of attention to minorities and women and their role
in American history and social studies and literature classes’ (1997: 14). For
him, multiculturalism at its most basic posits that all groups should be recog-
nized and presents a basic demand for equality and inclusion under the same
rules. In this formulation, multiculturalism does not contradict what Glazer
and others have come to regard as the United States’ ‘essential inclusiveness’
(Frye Jacobson 2008: 181), a view that clashes with or at least oversimplifies
a history marred by minority-exclusion, nativism and white supremacism (cf.
Takaki 2008; Roediger 2008). Nor does it threaten to ‘undermine’ a belief in
the United States as ‘what is still, on balance, a success in world history, a
diverse society that continues to welcome further diversity, with a distinc-
tive and common culture of some merit’ (Glazer 1997: 20). Similarly, while
‘Fear Itself’ does appear to subscribe to a multiculturalism that acknowledges
diversity and promotes a measure of cultural openness, it is a multiculturalism
unable to go far beyond the Judaeo-Christian foundations of US civil religion
(Williams 2013; Mock 2013) or the ‘Master Narrative of American History’,

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a powerful and popular story that insists that America was settled by European
immigrants and that Americans are white (Takaki 2008: 4; cf. Frye Jacobson
2008; Roediger 2008).

‘BLITZKRIEG, U.S.A.’: CIVIL RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM AND THE

‘GREATEST GENERATION’
More sustained than the evocation of American multiculturalism in ‘Fear
Itself’ is an historical-nationalist thread, an expression of a civil religion that:
‘treat[s] the sociopolitical collectivity as having sacred dimensions and finds
both its collective identity and its history religiously meaningful’ (Williams
2013: 240); and ‘discard[s] the “camouflage” of divinity so that society might
worship itself openly’ (Mock 2013: 110). Several historically salient and sacred
signifiers of US civil religion are evident throughout the event. During the
attack on Washington, one superhero must try to persuade a Congressman to
leave the Capitol. The Congressman refuses: ‘People are scared […] Seems to
me the best thing a man like myself can do is show them business just goes
on. Maybe if they see us do that, they can keep going, too’ (Spencer et al.
2012: n.p., #13). While they speak, the Lincoln Memorial comes alive and
joins in the fight against the invading Nazi forces, as do George Washington,
Union soldiers and revolutionary militiamen. The stream of historical warriors
also includes, among many other people and things, Native Americans and
dinosaurs, but the emphasis is on the presidents who are two of the central
figures in the ‘pantheon’ of American civil religion.
The Congressman stays on the floor and gives a televised speech that quotes
the entirety of Lincoln’s ‘Gettysburg Address’. Lincoln’s well-known remarks
remain an eloquent reminder of the nation’s founding principles of justice
and equality, serving then, as now, as a reminder that national unity is not a
foregone conclusion, but something that must be struggled for. Any character
could arguably have done this to great effect. However, the Congressman is
not only a representative of the people, but also African American, a former
civil rights activist and a mutant, a persecuted group in the Marvel Universe
that over the years has been used as a stand-in for several different minorities.
This layering of marginalized identities makes his dedication to the country
and his willingness to stay and fight for it seem simultaneously more powerful
and more calculated as a rhetorical gesture on the creative team’s behalf, than
if it had chosen most other established Marvel characters. The speech itself is
an important icon: it is the primary cementation and clearest articulation of a
cycle of death, sacrifice and rebirth in US civil religion, which ‘Fear Itself’ plays
on repeatedly (cf. Bellah 1967: 10–11).
But ‘Fear Itself’s’ central civil religious symbol is its evocation of Roosevelt’s
inaugural, which was sacralized soon after it was delivered. Several strands
of mythologized history related to Roosevelt’s presidency are threaded in the
event. The first one is anchored in the identity of one of the main enemies:
the Nazi Sin, who is the daughter of the Red Skull, Captain America’s sworn
enemy since his creation in 1941. Nazi holdovers have long been a staple of
the Marvel Universe. Besides adding a dualistic good versus evil theme to the
event, they also serve as signs of something inimical to everything the United
States is supposed to be. What is most significant here is that the central
battle – ‘Blitzkrieg, U.S.A.’ – is fought in Washington, DC (e.g. Spencer et al.
2012: n.p., #13; Avengers #13, n.p. and New Avengers #14, n.p. in Bendis and
Bachalo 2011). In a pattern increasingly common since 9/11, ‘Fear Itself’s’ Nazi

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Maaheen Ahmed | Martin Lund

invasion of the capital invokes, in response to a new national crisis symbol-

ized in the burning of the Capitol, World War II and mines it for heroic figures
and patriotic images, to call for the same sense of national unity and purpose
that was supposedly inspired by the Nazis’ historical rise (Rose 2008: 1; cf.
Putnam 2000: 268–71).
Congruently, photographer Joe Rosenthal’s Pulitzer Prize winning, widely
replicated Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima (1945) is remediated in ‘Lurker’, when
Speedball records the efforts of ordinary people working together. To a
certain, if lesser, extent, this panel also remediates Thomas Franklin’s famous
but controversial photograph of three firemen raising a flag over Ground Zero
after 9/11, which in turn is often compared to Rosenthal’s picture (Friend
2006: 310–48). Recalling Ground Zero, the panel (Figure 3) shows ruins on
the home front rather than on a conquered foreign island, and the six famous
marines are replaced by a soldier and a fireman. The comic book image retains
the posture of the photographic soldiers raising the flag. With this, the dyna-
mism and hope of the original image are also preserved. A nuance is none-
theless discernible: the debris surrounding the soldiers was cropped from the
public version of Rosenthal’s image, whereas the comic offers a wider shot
that reveals the extent of the surrounding destruction. Moreover, bridging fact
and fiction, past and present, the superhero Speedball is superimposed on the
image but stays at its edge, and films.
Here, ‘Fear Itself’ visually quotes a powerful symbol of the United States’
victory in a fight that is generally sanitized – shorn of the horrors of the
battlefield, of home front friction or memories of the internment of Japanese
Americans, the segregation of the armed forces and of the historical peak
of anti-Semitism in the United States – and viewed as an ‘unambiguous
Good War’ (Rose 2008; Kennedy 2001: especially 855–58). In combination
with the 9/11 imagery, this visual reference is, like ‘Fear Itself’s’ allusions
to World War II era, suggestive of the supposed extent and urgency of the
fear-narrative. The flag itself is tattered, suggesting the nation’s suppos-
edly shattered morale and self-image. Still, it preserves its stars, just like
the nation overcomes its fear and pulls itself through yet another crisis;
the image, then, asks readers to remember their own, and their nation’s,

Figure 3: Fear Itself: The Home Front #4, n.p. © Marvel, 2011.

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 ‘We’re all Avengers now’

emotional responses to World War II and 9/11, rather than the events them-
selves (cf. Yockey 2012: 354). Miriam Sharpe’s voice-over to this scene,
which makes its central point in combination with this visual evocation
of World War II and 9/11, ends on a unifying note: ‘Times like this … we
can get through them together. Or not at all’ (Gage et al. 2012b: n.p., #5).
Such calls for cooperation ring throughout the event, as when Thor and
the Serpent fight their final battle, and a reporter’s voice-over remarks how
superheroes and ordinary people ‘are standing together against the fear that
has consumed our world’ (Gage et al. 2012a: n.p., #20, emphasis original).
‘Fear Itself’, then, echoes not only Roosevelt’s words about fear itself,
but also his inaugural assertion that ‘[t]hese dark days will be worth all they
cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but
to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men’ (1933). This perspective is
perhaps most clearly articulated in the final pages of ‘Lurker’, where Miriam
echoes Roosevelt’s hope:

Regular people stood up and helped the heroes. Helped each other.
Helped themselves. […] That’s the message I want to leave you with.
You won a great victory. You came together in the face of fear. You
helped each other out when it would have been easier to run and hide.
Celebrate that. Remember it. We can save ourselves. But we can only do
it by saving each other.
(Gage et al. 2012b: n.p., #7, emphasis original; Figure 4)

Notwithstanding the event’s title and its occasional evocations of

Roosevelt’s inaugural, ‘Fear Itself’s’ central reference to the past comes
from a more recent product of US cultural memory: Tony Stark’s ‘Greatest
Generation’ nickname for Steve Rogers in Fear Itself #1, which discursively
frames the reading in terms of the Roosevelt era from the event’s beginning.
This laudatory and sentimental term was coined by journalist Tom Brokaw
(1998) to refer to the men and women who came of age during the hardships

Figure 4: Fear Itself: The Home Front #7, n.p. © Marvel, 2011.

89
Maaheen Ahmed | Martin Lund

of the Great Depression and World War II and has come to deeply inform
popular perceptions of that generation and the war it fought. The ‘Greatest
Generation’ was, in Brokaw’s words, ‘a generation of towering achieve-
ment and modest demeanor, a legacy of their formative years when they
were participants in and witness to sacrifices of the highest order’ (1998: 11).
According to this popular, civil religious myth, the ‘Greatest Generation’
happily forsook material comforts and gave up their lives on the battlefield,
all for the greater good, and then ‘immediately began the task of rebuilding
their lives and the world they wanted’ (Brokaw 1998: xix–xx; Putnam 2000:
268–72; cf. Kennedy 2001: especially 363–80, 852–58; Rose 2008). Described
by Putnam as a ‘long civic generation’, they are idealized as a group that has
been ‘exceptionally civic – voting more, joining more, reading more, trusting
more, giving more’ (Putnam 2000: 254). Such a legendary generation provides
a venerable model in a time of perceived national crisis and civic polarization.
Miriam Sharpe’s actions embody this motif. Her son died in the explosion
that sparked Marvel’s ‘Civil War’, an explosion which Speedball accidentally
caused. Hence, for her, working with Speedball is a sacrifice. Similarly, the
new Captain America dies fighting; Thor fights the Serpent, knowing that it
means certain death; a group of Avengers-in-training are willing to sacrifice
themselves for the chance of stopping two of the Worthy (Gage et al. 2012a:
n.p., #19). As war broke out, the ‘Greatest Generation’ committed itself to
defeating what seemed to be an impossibly large threat and to secure what
Roosevelt (1941) called the ‘Four Freedoms’. The first three – freedom of reli-
gion and speech and freedom from want – are all aspired to in one place or
another in ‘Fear Itself’, but it is the fourth freedom that is most resoundingly
endorsed by the Marvel team behind the event: freedom from fear. While the
sacrifices made in ‘Fear Itself’ are often performed in a more ostentatious way,
they are all made for that same purpose.
If Matthew Costello is right, if ‘Civil War’ was the ‘final denouement
in the unravelling of the liberal consensus’ (2009: 237), and Steve Rogers’s
death symbolized the end of the myth of American progress and virtue (2009:
238–39), then ‘Fear Itself’ at its most political seems almost like a call to return
to a time untainted by the Cold War’s compromises or the War on Terror’s
excesses. Instead, it presents an Americanness that relies on the idealized
notion of a tightly knit, self-sacrificing civil society that supposedly came into
being during the Roosevelt years. Although, in the recent past, Marvel’s crea-
tors had helped ‘create a nightmare for heroes and villains alike’ (Johnson
2011: n.p.), in ‘Fear Itself’, they try to counter that trend with a nostalgia
anchored in the figure of Rogers, who had been at his most successful in the
supposedly prelapsarian age of Roosevelt. This nostalgia for the Roosevelt
era is also expressly articulated when Rick tells an old man that Tony Stark’s
company is named Stark Resilient now, and the man replies, ‘[r]esilient’s
what we were in the war. Now look at us’ (Gage et al. 2012b: n.p., #7, original
emphasis).
Steve Rogers is a perfect symbol for the ‘Greatest Generation’: he first
appeared only months before the United States entered World War II, and
has since then often been ‘offered as the embodiment of all that is best about
America’ (Costello 2009: 13). His death in 2007 was reported in the main-
stream media as the ‘death of the American Dream’ (Johnson, 2011: n.p.).
During the attack on Washington in ‘Fear Itself’, Rogers’ replacement dies
and Rogers takes up his iconic shield again. Roosevelt said in his inaugu-
ral (1933) that ‘[t]his [was] a day of national consecration’ and called for the

90
 ‘We’re all Avengers now’

conscription of a ‘great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack 2. Cf. the discussion about
the riot in Fear Itself #1
upon our common problems’. The echo of this speech in ‘Fear Itself’s’ title is above.
itself suggestive of a desired re-consecration to that purpose. Rogers’ resur-
rection as Captain America through a civil religious cycle of death, sacrifice
and rebirth (cf. Bellah 1967: 10) similarly suggests a call to resurrect the ideal-
ized sense of purpose and willingness to sacrifice that in cultural memory has
come to characterize Brokaw’s ‘Greatest Generation’ or Putnam’s ‘long civic
generation’. At the end of ‘Lurker’, accompanying Miriam Sharpe’s mono-
logue about ‘saving each other’, ordinary (white) men and women are even
represented as an army, charging behind Captain America towards an unseen
foe (Figure 4), as if to drive this point home.
But the appeals to sacrifice, community, cooperation and, more important,
to the ‘Greatest Generation’ that recur throughout ‘Fear Itself’, are appeals to
something that never truly existed, fantasies about a unity and patriotism that
was never as widespread as myth would have it, especially not on the front
lines (cf. Rose 2008). Such heights are not likely to be reached in the best
of times, much less in the current polarizing culture of fear. In effect, ‘Fear
Itself’ asks its readers to model itself on a mythologized generation that is
‘more invention than truth’ and uses romanticized martial imagery to reduc-
tively present the current state of the nation as one of war in which people
are drawn closer together, conflict is minimized and cohesion maximized (cf.
Rose 2008: 254). Conjuring images of World War II and 9/11, ‘Fear Itself’, like
other superhero images that connect with tragedy in visually and affectively
excessive ways, ‘exploits the nostalgic appeal of the past in order to mitigate
crises in the present’ (Yockey 2012: 354–57). In doing so, it presents a simplis-
tic myth of good versus evil that masks the social and ideological differences
that are at the heart of the nation’s problems and obscures the inequalities
that this creates.

‘[S]AVING EACH OTHER’: MYTH, FICTION AND REALITY

As is often the case with superhero comics, much of ‘Fear Itself’s’ action
and its catalysts are placed beyond the control of mere mortals: the Serpent
and his supernatural agents spread and feed off the fear generated by super-
powered mayhem and terror and superheroes save the day with superhuman
powers. Reducing sociocultural concerns to superhuman personifications
and pitting them against superheroes who rectify everything in the end may
provide some catharsis. But it also reduces complexity since such neat reso-
lutions can both trivialize the situation and mask the need for concerted
action.
‘Fear Itself’ is arguably somewhat different in this respect. It makes a point
to show that the fear was there in the Marvel Universe before the Serpent
arrived, exacerbated, as in the real world, by the media, the economy, xeno-
phobes and partisan politics.2 And the fight is not fought or won by super-
powers alone. Indeed, civilians are accorded more significant roles than is
common in the genre, working with and even helping the superheroes. This
emphasis on the emotional and physical involvement of ordinary citizens
seems designed to convey and strengthen a sense of community, unified
under a non-denominational civil religion. The inclusion of fragments taken
from (fictionalized) Internet and television broadcasts, as well as the recurring
invocation of recent and historical disasters, the culture of fear and the reces-
sion brings the story closer to contemporary experience. While the subtext

91
Maaheen Ahmed | Martin Lund

of superhero comics has never been about the heroes themselves, but about
their readers (see Eco 1972), ‘Fear Itself’s’ focus on the role of civilians brings
this to the surface. Consequently, Speedball’s pep talk to himself – ‘[t]his isn’t
about you’ (Gage et al. 2012b: n.p., #5, original emphasis) – certainly seems to
ring true.
That said, ‘Fear Itself’ nonetheless conforms to the conventions of the
superhero genre in significant ways. The call for unity is often expressed
with familiar superhero tropes and the event is permeated with ‘feel good
moments’ (e.g. Figure 1), inspirational and bombastic monologues (e.g.
Figure 4) and last-minute rescues. More notably, twice during the event
there is a type of ‘meta-apologia’ for superheroes, much in the vein of the
self-reflexivity discernible in the genre (cf. Yockey 2012). In Secret Avengers
#15, a reporter who has no love for superheroes concedes that even the
current cynical generation needs them: ‘They want to believe that there
are people out there who can beat anything – even death’ (Spencer et al.
2012: n.p., original emphasis). This dialogue also marks a limit; superhe-
roes inspire, but for that, they do not get to be human, because readers
need them to be something more. Similarly, Miriam Sharpe says during the
monologue that runs over the remediation of Rosenthal’s picture, that she
had been wrong in saying that the world does not need superheroes; there
are times when it does, but we should not depend only on them. ‘We can
help them, too’ (Gage et al. 2012b: n.p., #5, original emphasis). Readers,
then, are asked to absorb the superheroes’ will and ability to combat insur-
mountable difficulties, to use them as a model for their own reaction to the
world (cf. Yockey 2012: 354), even as it is acknowledged that this is ulti-
mately impossible.
Whether it is in the superheroic fight against the Serpent or in the stories
about ordinary people presented throughout ‘Fear Itself’, the recurrent message
is that the world has become a destructively frightening place. It is here that
Roosevelt’s inaugural (1933) reverberates most strongly as a subtext:

This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will
prosper. […] [L]et me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have
to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which
paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

After having spent a decade helping to preach fear and paranoia as the only
sane response to the world (Johnson 2011), Marvel tried to reverse its own
trend with ‘Fear Itself’, almost as if it were responding to Roosevelt’s haunting
call to conversion.
For all its calls for unity, however, ‘Fear Itself’ never questions the domi-
nant cultural narrative, but rather tries to work within it. Whatever else
Americans may be able to become, if they can overcome their differences
and come together, they are in ‘Fear Itself’, first and foremost, nonetheless
afraid. Thus, the event accepts the existence of crippling fear, creating from it
an apocalyptic narrative for which it offers a utopian solution (cf. Yockey 2012:
366), permeating it with civil religion, nominal multiculturalism and the exul-
tation of the ‘Greatest Generation’ as a role model to manufacture an imag-
ined community. In doing so, the failures of capitalism, of America’s promises
of justice and equality or of the media, that have all helped drive Americans
further apart in recent years are never considered. When everyone pitches in
and does what they can to stop the onslaught of fear, as Captain America

92
 ‘We’re all Avengers now’

tells Rick upon his return to the front line, ‘[w]e’re all Avengers’ (Fraction
and Immonen 2012: n.p., #7; Figure 1). But the Avengers remain a fiction.
Captain America’s comment, inspiring though it may be, and in spite of ‘Fear
Itself’s’ unusual emphasis on civilian participation, ultimately and inadvert-
ently becomes myth, elevating ordinary citizens to the unattainable heights
of superheroes and the legendary ‘Greatest Generation’ of which he is a
symbol.

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SUGGESTED CITATION
Ahmed, M. and Lund, M. (2016), ‘“We’re all Avengers now”: Community-
building, civil religion and nominal multiculturalism in Marvel Comics’
Fear Itself ’, European Journal of American Culture, 35: 2, pp. 77–95,
doi: 10.1386/ejac.35.2.77_1

CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS
Maaheen Ahmed is a Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) postdoctoral
fellow at Ghent University. Her current project focuses on the portrayal of
troubled minds in personal and collective contexts in French- and English-
language comics. Her second project draws out the links between monstrous
protagonists in comics and their counterparts in Romantic images and litera-
ture. Articles on comics have appeared in journals such as the International
Journal of Comic Art and the European Journal of American Studies. Openness
in Comics: Generating Meaning within Flexible Structures (University Press of
Mississippi, 2016) is her first monograph.
Contact: Room 130.029, Department of Literary Studies, Ghent University,
Blandijnberg 2, 9000 Ghent, Belgium.
E-mail: maaheen.ahmed@ugent.be

Martin Lund is a Swedish Research Council International Postdoc at Linnaeus

University, Växjö, and a Visiting Research Scholar at the Gotham Center for
New York City History, CUNY Graduate Center, NYC. His current research
focuses on representations of New York City in American comic books and
graphic novels. Recent publications include a chapter on Chick tracts (Comics
and Power, Cambridge Scholars, 2015); an article on X-Men, identity and
confirmation bias (European Journal of American Studies, 10: 2, 2015); an article
on urban dystopia, slum voyeurism and failures of identity in Marvel’s District
X (Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, 6:1, 2015); and an article on New York City
according to comics writer Brian Wood (International Journal of Comic Art, 17: 2,
2015). Martin is also an editor of the recently restarted Scandinavian Journal
of Comic Art and co-editor (with A. David Lewis) of the anthology Muslim
Superheroes: Comics, Islam, and Representation (Harvard University Press, forth-
coming).
Contact: Room 6403, Gotham Center for New York City History, CUNY
Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016-1309, USA.
E-mail: p.martin.lund@gmail.com

Maaheen Ahmed and Martin Lund have asserted their right under the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of
this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

95
Consumer Culture
Selected Essays
Edited by Gjoko Muratovski

We live in a society that defines us by what we consume and how. Every

day we make purchasing decisions that express our sense of belonging,
our commitments to the environment, and our systems of belief. We
often choose to buy things, not necessarily because we need them, but
because we believe that these things will help us express who we are
- in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. Whether we like it or not,
consumerism is the prevalent ideology of our time. Led by Gjoko Mura-
tovski, Consumer Culture is the ideal starting point for an investigation
into the social construction of the global economy.
ISBN: 9781783205462
Gjoko Muratovski has more than twenty years of design and branding
Hardback
250 pp | 170 x 230mm experience. He is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Design, Business &
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