- 1 I chose to refrain from using the term “graphic novel” due to the fact that both anthologies discus (...)
- 2 On June 25, 2025, DC Comics released Superman: The World, the analysis of which is not included in (...)
1In the span of three years, DC Comics released two comic-book1 anthologies whose protagonists are one of DC’s most complex and venerated heroes and one of the most complex and terrifying villains. In the 2021 Batman: The World, the “Dark Knight’s fight for justice goes global” (Various, Batman back cover), and in the 2024 Joker: The World, the “Clown Prince of crime’s brand of chaos goes global” (Various, Joker back cover)2. As the term “anthology” implies, Batman: The World and Joker: The World are not uniform texts with single, unified plotlines; instead, they are both collections of short stories, all of which take place in different corners of the world. In Batman: The World and Joker: The World, both eponymous protagonists begin their adventures in the USA and then shift to such places as the Brazilian favelas, the Bosphorus Strait in Turkey, the Bavarian Alps, and the Wawel Royal Castle in Cracow, Poland. A prominent feature of both anthologies in question is the fact that each short story has been created by artists from the country that Batman or Joker is visiting in a particular story.
2Even though Batman: The World was advertised as a “first-of-its-kind publishing event” (Various, Batman back cover), the fact is that similar collaborative authorships of anthologies, which provides an amalgam of different graphic and narrative styles, had been published before. One such example is the 2007 Astérix et ses Amis—Hommage à Albert Uderzo, which was a tribute to Albert Uderzo—the co-creator of the Asterix comic books—on his eightieth birthday. Astérix et ses Amis features thirty-four one-page short stories in which artists such as Grzegorz Rosiński, David Loyd, Jean Van Hamme, and others presented their take on the adventures of the brave Gauls (Batem). Nevertheless, the fact that the adventures presented in Batman: The World and Joker: The World have been created by “creative teams from across the globe, … [and take] place in their home countries” (Various, Batman back cover) provides excellent opportunity for an in-depth analysis of cultural elements included by each team of artists.
3As the goal of this study is to analyze the said cultural elements, I chose to do so through the prism of Performance Studies. Following Erving Goffman’s definition of performance as “all the activity of an individual which occurs during a period marked by his continuous presence before a particular set of observers and which has some influence on the observers” (13), I propose to look at the work of artistic teams behind Batman: The World and Joker: The World as a “performance,” which is understood here as an act(ivity) of creation of a particular story which can be observed/read by readers, reviewers, and researchers. Based on Julien Talpin’s reflections on “representative performances” (84), in which she analyses the nature of performances by representatives of “historically marginalized groups” and the relations between the representative and the represented (83), I propose to approach the artists who created Batman: The World and Joker: The World as representatives of their national cultures (the represented). As observed by Talpin, “[r]epresentation does not require election” (96), which is true for the authors of Batman: The World and Joker: The World, who had been selected by DC publishers but not by their own nations to represent them in their performances. Thus, their work is not so much a representation of their national cultures but a representative performance, in which they enacted certain cultural forces of their countries of origin. Talpin also proposes to understand representation as a performance as it allows “to grasp its inclusive and exclusive dimensions” (102). Such selectiveness is observable in the performances of the authors of Batman: The World and Joker: The World, who representatively perform certain and not all elements of their national cultures. This selectiveness is yet another argument for looking at the work of the creators of Batman: The World and Joker: The World as performance, as “[p]erformance questions and dismisses the dramatic principles and conventions of representation, as well as its assimilation to the model it replaces and on which it sometimes imposes itself, by extension” (Roland 1).
4The goal of this study is to analyze what elements of their own national cultures the authors perform in their work and whether certain patterns can be observed when the stories are read collectively. In this analysis of performativity of Batman: The World and Joker: The World, the verb “perform” and the adjective “performative” will be used to denote “compose[d] visually and textually with a particular meaning expressed in the act of performance” when applied to the work of the creative teams. Also, the term “chapter” will be used in reference to each, individual short story.
5Though global in their content, only the European portion of both anthologies will be analyzed in this study. This scope of analysis is dictated by the Transatlantic theme of this special issue, i.e., “Transatlantic Flows: Cross-Cultural Interfaces between the U.S. and Europe,” and the fact that I am a European Americanist.
6Antonin Artaud, one of the first proponents of performativity, saw it as “an uneasy, perception-changing association between the make-believe and the real,” which was what theater “has been created to teach us” (Jaworska-Biskup and Zawadka 2). Theatrical performativity so understood and the association between the make-believe and the real are clearly visible in Batman: The World and Joker: The World as well as in the whole history of the Batman/Joker franchise.
- 3 The names Bruce Wayne and Batman are used interchangeably in the article, with the first one being (...)
- 4 Even though there have been numerous stories on the origins of the Joker, none can be viewed as a d (...)
7Ever since Batman and Joker first appeared on the pages of Detective Comics #27 (March 1939) and Batman #1 (April 1940), their adventures, whether in comic books, graphic novels, films, TV series, and video games, have been marked by a great deal of theatricality. Both characters conceal and/or display their identity through theatrical performance. Bruce Wayne3 puts on the bat-suit and the mask in order to fight crime as Batman; Joker, whose true identity is a mystery,4 presents himself as a demonic clown in a purple suit, green hair, white-powdered face, and blood-red lips. Batman’s whole arsenal of weapons and tools (batarangs, Batmobile, utility belt, etc.) is fashioned after the nocturnal bat, which is meant to be symbolic and threatening to evildoers. Joker’s heinous deeds are never “mere” crimes; Joker craves audience in his desire to spread chaos, and his crimes are theatrical performances. Additionally, by making analogy to Robin Bernstein’s understanding of childhood as a performance, the essence of which is “accepting certain social norms or resisting them” (Jaworska-Biskup and Zawadka 127), in Batman and Joker, we deal with performance of acceptance (Batman) and rejection (Joker) of the said norms. Moreover, whether Batman is Bruce Wayne’s alter-ego, or, as it has been suggested, it is Bruce Wayne that is the mask behind which Batman hides his true identity (Rucka et al. 7–8), and whether Joker is a construct of the deranged mind of the comedian in The Killing Joke (1988), or an identity Arthur Fleck accepts in the Joker movie (2019), both characters perform their identities through concealment. Borrowing from Goffman, it can be said that both Batman and Joker offer impressions of their identities “by accentuating certain facts and concealing others” (43).
8Just as Batman and Joker perform their identities, so do the creators of individual chapters of Batman: The World and Joker: The World perform the cultures of their countries of origin and/or residence. Theirs are performances understood as “enactment[s] of cultural forces” (Jaworska-Biskup and Zawadka 172–173). While certain “authenticity” is highlighted by the publishers of Joker: The World in the statement that each story was “tailored to the authentic style, tone, and cultural sensibilities of different nations” (Various, Joker back cover), my claim is that both anthologies should be read as performances, which ought to be viewed as “artistic practice” (Schechner 16) of the creative teams behind particular chapters of both anthologies. Their artistic practice does not preclude authenticity, but rather it offers performativity of different national cultures. In Batman: The World and Joker: The World, the reader is exposed to make-believe stories, which feature—for the most part—fictional characters, who experience adventures in the real—though here performed—spatial and temporal settings.
9Assuming Michel Foucault’s claim that performance “relies solely on action ‘as and when it occurs’” (25), there are three types of performances one comes across in the study of Batman: The World and Joker: The World: 1) one performed by the publishers of the two works in question, 2) one performed by the characters populating both anthologies, and 3) one performed by the artists in their creation of their versions of cultures, places, and landmarks experienced and visited by Batman and Joker.
10The publisher’s performance manifested itself in originating the idea for both Batman: The World and Joker: The World, which allowed their protagonists to transition to various places and environments, and in actualizing the concept of two collections of travel stories in the form of printed and digital anthologies. Moreover, the order in which the publishers chose to arrange the chapters of both Batman: The World and Joker: The World can be interpreted as a performance, the goal of which is to reflect the natures and identities of the protagonists of the anthologies. Batman—on occasions referred to as the “world’s greatest detective” (O’Neil and Wilson 186)—is disciplined, methodical, and logical; his travels follow a simple, and yet logical pattern. He starts in Western Europe, then he moves to Europe’s former Eastern Bloc, next to North and South Americas, and finally Asia. Joker, on the other hand, who is the Clown Prince of chaos and anarchy and who frequently acts on impulse, does not seem to follow any particular itinerary. From Western Europe, he moves to North and South Americas, then the former European Eastern Bloc, then Asia, South America again, Africa, Central Europe, and finally Asia.
11Table 1. The order of chapters in Batman: The World (2021) and Joker: The World (2024). Source: Author.
- 5 Jim Lee (President, Publisher & Chief Creative Officer), Katie Kubert, Andrew Marino, Steve Cook, L (...)
12While performative identities of Batman and Joker have been hinted at in the very performance of the editorial work by the publishing teams5 behind Batman: The World and Joker: The World, it is the performance of the creative teams responsible for each chapter of the anthologies that is of greater significance in the context of this study, as their performances resulted in performativity of individual characters (Batman, Joker, and others) as well as of national cultures represented by each creative team.
13What follows is a visual and textual analysis of selected chapters of Batman: The World and Joker: The World in the context of their performativity. As Batman’s and Joker’s itineraries diverge in terms of the order of countries they visit, the analysis will first focus on those European countries visited by both characters, which will be followed by the analysis of Batman’s adventures in France and in the Russian chapter.
- 6 Here referring to the title page of each chapter.
14Both analyzed anthologies open with chapters in which the protagonists are still in the modern-day USA. In “Global City” (writer: Brian Azzarello; art, colors, and cover6: Lee Bermejo; letters: Jared K. Fletcher), Batman’s succinct origin story (Various, Batman 7) is followed by his recollections of numerous nemeses he faced over the years; those include: Penguin, Catwoman, and, naturally, Joker (8–15). The setting of this chapter is Gotham City. While a fictional metropolis, Gotham City has a long-standing tradition of being used to perform the darker aspects of New York City. As demonstrated by William Uricchio, Gotham’s ties to NYC, whether in Detective Comics, Batman comics, or in the historical link between the names of the two cities, go back as far as 1807 (Ahrens and Meteling 121–123) and Gotham “remains a widely used sobriquet for New York City” (qtd. in Ahrens and Meteling 121). The performativity of drawing and textually describing Gotham is visible in the fact that the city has been “explicitly modeled on the ‘dark and brooding’ aspects of New York City’s architecture and atmosphere” (qtd. in Ahrens and Meteling 121), which can be found on the pages of the “Global City” chapter (7–15). While Gotham has always been a performative representation of certain aspects of NYC in Batman stories, in Batman: The World, the protagonist performs an act of personification of Gotham when he compares Gotham to a wife, whom he would protect with whatever it takes (8), and highlights the “marital” unity between him and the city (10). The chapter ends with Batman’s conclusion that Gotham outgrew him, and that the blood which had been shed in Gotham “had seeped, pooled, and been spilled… around the world” (13). Batman decides to “follow her [Gotham’s] light” as he posts a warning to anyone who might harm the world, which is his city, that he will hurt them (15), and with that his crusade goes international.
15Joker’s adventures, in “Epilogue Is Prologue” (writer: Geoff Johns; art and cover: Jason Fabok; colors and cover colors: Brad Anderson; letters: Rob Leigh), do not begin in his hometown of Gotham. Instead, we find Joker in a fictional small town of Comoedia in Alaska during a snowy and stormy night as he emerges from darkness and enters a homely, family-run Grimaldi’s Donuts café (Various, Joker 7–9). In the café, there are a father and a daughter, who run the café; the daughter’s fiancé, Emmet (a police officer), who comes for donuts and to talk about the wedding they are planning together; and a mother with her son Jeremy, whose “father isn’t in the picture” (11). After electroshocking Emmet, Joker orders a coffee and two jellies and then, in his typical, devilish manner, he asks the proprietor to pick a card. It is made clear that whatever card will be picked, it will result in Joker hurting him. Seeing the proprietor’s crippling fear, young Jeremy bravely volunteers to be the one who picks a card, and after he selects a Joker card, the villainous Joker offers the boy a popsicle and leaves the premises (9–12). At the beginning of the chapter, when Joker enters Grimaldi’s Donuts café, he praises the Comoedians’ “small-town work ethic” (9); at the end as he is venturing back into darkness, he thanks the terrified towners for their “small-town hospitality” (6).
16One way to interpret the American chapter of Joker: The World is as a twisted metaphor of the biblical tale of the garden of Eden. In this metaphor, the setting of “Epilogue Is Prologue” performs the role of an American Garden of Eden, i.e., a somewhat idealized version of American life in a small town, and Joker is clearly the Serpent, who comes to poison this paradise. However, in this version, it is the Serpent, and not Adam and Eve, who leaves the paradise. The symbolism of Joker as the Serpent is heightened when “Epilogue Is Prologue” is juxtaposed with “Global City,” which opens Batman: The World. Joker might have failed to poison the idyllic Comoedia (at least permanently), but in Batman’s mind, Joker and the likes of him poison Gotham and, by extension, America, and then, their venom infects the rest of the world. When juxtaposed, the two American chapters are origin stories; on the surface, they tell the origin story of the evil-doer’s and the evil-fighter’s international adventures; beneath, however, there is a disturbing genesis of the original sin, which was birthed by the Serpent(s), such as Joker in America, and then spread all over the world.
- 7 Alfred Pennyworth – Wayne’s/Batman’s butler, friend, and crime-fighting associate.
17Batman, in “Closed for Holidays” (writer, art, colors, cover: Paco Roca; letters: Dolores Faraco), visits contemporary Spain where, as Bruce Wayne, he actually takes a break from fighting crime. The story of the rare instance of Wayne’s vigilante inactivity is performed in three acts. In the first one, the reader sees him arriving at the “Spanish seashore,” heading to a hotel, and beginning his vacation (Various, Batman 31–33). This act is narrated by Alfred7 in the form of a telephone message left for Bruce, in which the trusted friend wishes Wayne a well-deserved rest, expresses his concerns about Bruce’s health—both physical and mental, and recommends enjoying the beach, the cuisine, the entertainment, and life in general (31–33). In the second act, there is no narrator; instead, there are forty-four panels, which present Wayne gradually getting out of shape. In those panels, he is presented doing what Alfred has recommended—enjoying life. We can see him at the beach, in a hotel pool, at a casino with a drink in his hand; he is tasting local cuisine, swimming in the ocean, sunbathing, gambling, and enjoying the company of beautiful women. However, most of the time he spends in his hotel room, stuffing himself with junk-food, putting on weight, and locking himself away from the world (34–38). Act three begins with a panel presenting Wayne reaching for something in his room closet as Alfred returns as the narrator in the form of an audio message to Wayne (38). While Alfred expresses his concern over the fact that he cannot find Wayne’s Batman costume back in Gotham and reminds Wayne that he swore to leave his Batman persona behind (at least for the period of his vacation), the reader can see Wayne taking the very costume out of the briefcase he has just retrieved from the closet (38–39). The last page of this act and this chapter presents Batman venturing into the Spanish night and gliding above the vibrant sea resort (40), and for the first time in this chapter, the reader can see him smile.
18In Batman: The World, the Spanish coast is performed as a sunny place where one can rest and “just disconnect” (Various, Batman 32). The Spanish chapter of Batman’s adventures does not offer much in terms of performative Spanish culture; instead, it poses the question whether Batman is Wayne’s performative identity or the other way round. The answer implied in “Closed for Holidays,” in the image of Wayne smiling for the first time as he puts on the bat costume once again, seems to align with the one offered by Wonder Woman Annual #1, in which Wonder Woman introduces herself as Diana (her true name) and, under the influence of the lasso of truth, Superman uses his Kryptonian name of Kal-el, while Batman says his name is… Batman (Rucka et al. 7–8), which implies that in his mind Batman identity supersedes that of Wayne’s—Bruce Wayne is the performative identity; Batman is the “real” one.
19Joker, for whom Spain is the first stop on his international journey, discovers the dark side of Madrid, which he describes as “Gotham, but with sunny terraces and good food” (Various, Joker 16) and “the world upside down” (17). In the chapter “Spring Break” (script, art, colors, letters, and cover: David Rubin), Joker at first feels like at home in present-day Madrid, a place that is a paradise for a person “with the kind of interests” he has, i.e. “[c]orruption and evil [which] run rampant here [in Madrid]” (17). He delights in a place where “decent citizens are persecuted … while those who promote chaos and hatred are protected” (17), a place where “[p]eople applaud lies even when they know they are lies… and the most unhinged and mediocre are elected to important institutional offices” (17). However, being the agent of chaos himself, Joker gets bored with the place as he finds that spreading terror in this city is too easy for him and, thus, boring. Since Madrid poses no challenge for him, Joker decides to return to Gotham (24). But being Joker, he cannot leave without a “spectacular farewell” (22), which is committing a mass murder of the people visiting Museo del Prado.
20In Joker: The World, Madrid is performed as a place of a nightmare, where people “confuse freedom with chaos … [and] murder and theft with good management” (Various, Joker 20). The Spanish chapter of Joker: The World provides quite a dose of performative Spanish culture. Above the bed in Joker’s hotel room, we can see a reproduction of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (18), one of the best-known depictions of the horrors of the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939. While Joker is at Prado Museum, three nightmarish paintings by Francisco Goya can be seen; these are: Fight with Cudgels [Spanish: Riña a garrotazos], Witches’ Sabbath [Spanish: El Aquelarre], and Saturn Devouring His Son [Spanish: Saturno devorando a su hijo] (20). These images not only heighten the horrors witnessed by Joker in Madrid but also perform an illustration of Spain’s troubled past of Generalissimo Franco’s fascism, which lives on in the performative neo-fascists presented in the chapter (17), or the Spanish inquisition whose legacy is performed in the image of brute police officers battering civilian women (17). Visually, Joker: The World offers quite a realistic performance of Madrid’s landmarks and architecture; however, textually, the chapter is a caricatural portrayal of the city itself and a grim comment on Spanish culture in general.
21In “Ianus” (writer: Alessandro Bilotta; art and cover: Nicola Mari; colors: Giovanna Niro; letters: Andrea Accardi), as the title foretells, Batman, in a manner of speaking, comes face to faces with an ancient Roman god—Ianus. The story in “Ianus” is presented in a reverse narrative; the chapter begins in medias res, somewhere in present-day Rome—a city that has “seen all sorts of things” (Various, Batman 44)—during the “last encounter” between the Dark Knight and a gang led by Cesare, a criminal wearing an Ianus mask (44-7). Batman has encountered Cesare before, which is presented in two flashback stories that follow the opening one. In the first one (48–49), Batman has a conversation with a teenage Cesare when the latter one is in a juvie. Their conversation is about how Cesare’s past does not dictate his future. In the last act and the final flashback (50–52), we are presented with a story about how a hired assassin attempted to kill Cesare’s father who was a gangster. In the scene, which mimics the scene of the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents, which in turn gave birth to Batman, the outcome is different—the Dark Knight prevents the assassination and thus gives young Cesare “the chance to look forward without having to look back” (52). The significance of Ianus in this story is twofold; in ancient Rome, Ianus was considered the animistic spirit of doorways (januae) and archways (jani) (“Janus”), i.e., thresholds, transitions, and beginnings, which is what the plot centers around. Throughout the chapter, Batman warns Cesare against crossing the threshold to the world of crime, while Cesare reminds Batman that he himself crossed a threshold to the life of fighting crime as a result of circumstances similar to those experienced by Cesare—witnessing the killing of their parents. Also, the two-faced Ianus, at least the way he is performed in this chapter, looks only to the future and the past, never the present, which, as explained by Cesare, means that “the world moves in a circle, always going back to itself” (48). In other words, history repeats itself because the past always affects the future and, in Cesare’s opinion, and to Batman’s objection, it is impossible to escape one’s past. And no city can testify to this more than one of the world’s longest-existing cities—Rome, which “has seen all sorts of things,” a sentiment which is expressed twice in the chapter (44, 52).
22Joker’s visit to contemporary Italy, in “Strategy of Tension” (writer: Enrico Brizzi; art and cover: Paolo Bacilieri; colors: Vincenzo Filosa; letters: Andrea Accardi and Paolo Bacilieri), highlights the transatlantic connection between American and Italian cultures. The inspiration for coming to Bologna, as this is where we find Joker, came to him from Ernest Hemingway’s Across the River and into the Trees, in which Joker had read that Bologna is a “tough town where the food is grand” (Various, Joker 39). As the reader follows the characters of this chapter across the city, they will notice a Batman comic book on the display of a newsagent kiosk (40). The town itself is visually performed in great detail in this chapter. The reader gets to see depictions of Bologna’s towers, arcades, the “most ancient university in the western world” (40), the main square, and the monument of Neptune holding the trident, which was the inspiration for the Maserati car manufacturer logo. The food is also there: pasta, wine, gelato ice-cream, and espresso coffee (37–52). In all this charming environment, the reader finds corruption and violence (as expected in a Joker story). As Joker usurps a position of a visiting professor at the university, he gets involved in student riots spurred by police brutality. When one of his favorite students is shot and killed by a corrupt higher-ranking police officer, Joker performs his own version of justice, or rather the “first Italian word” he has ever heard—vendetta (48). Dressed up as Batman, Joker shoots the killer-cop dead. Throughout the scenes of student riots, brutal clashes with the police and the vendetta, Joker utters a long monologue on power and tyranny (compared here to Goliath), resistance and anarchy (compared here to David), and Italian culture (43–52). The performative identity of the nation of Italy, as intended by the authors and put into Joker’s mouth, is summed up in the last statement of the monologue: “In Italy there aren’t such things as good and evil, wrong or right… it’s all about tough and tougher, good or bad reputation… It has been this way for two thousand years in this adorable, mad country” (52). The performative contradiction of Italy being delightful but also dangerous is highlighted not only in Joker’s words and the narrative of the chapter itself but also in Bacilieri’s drawings which blend realistic depictions of Bologna’s landmarks with caricatural representations of the characters in the chapter.
23Both Joker’s and Batman’s visits to Italy highlight the link between past and present and the continuity of history. The Italian chapters link spatial performativity of Rome and Bologna with temporal performativity of individual and national histories and identities.
24Joker is the protagonist of both German chapters of Batman: The World and Joker: The World. The main theme of “A Better Tomorrow” (writer: Benjamin von Eckartsberg; art, colors, letters, cover: Thomas von Kummant) in Batman: The World is ecology. In this chapter, Joker performs the role of an eco-terrorist, who plans to murder Walter Steingarter, a wealthy producer of chemicals, whose company “produces countless tons of CO2” and “exports hazardous waste to developing nations that are slowly dying from it” (Various, Batman 59). The ecological theme clearly indicates that the story takes place in modern times. As usual, Joker is aided by a group of thugs, who, in this tale, are dressed up as Perchten, an Alpine pagan deity, which in the story is a form of performance meant to be, in Joker’s words, a “little nod to the local folklore” (56). The local folklore in question is that of the Bavarian Alps, where we meet Joker and his accomplices on the Twelfth Night, which in the chapter is referred to as the “Night of Three Kings” (55). The naming of the Christian festival is performative as instead of the protestant/Shakespearean term, von Eckartsberg chose to use a more German-catholic name for the holiday. The presence of Perchten is also performative as the deity is drawn to look more like a Krampus—another creature of German folklore. While Perchta (singular of Perchten) served the role of a stricter Santa Claus in German tradition—she would reward “good” children with a silver coin and slit their bellies if they were “naughty” (Smith 167–168), Krampus serves in the pagan tradition as the antithesis of Santa, as his job is only to punish the misbehaving children by beating them with sticks and branches (Tikkanen). Whether Perchten or Krampuses, their presence signifies the motif of vigilantism, i.e. punishing the wicked, which is performed by Joker in his anarchistic, perverse manner. This chapter can be read as a performative German mindset of the twenty-first century, which makes this culture focus on the ecological challenges of today that need to be faced for the sake of a better future. Germany’s focus on sustainable and renewable energy, expressed in the country’s Energiewende (Eng. energy transition) policy (King), which makes the country rank third on the 2024 Environmental Performance Index (“2024 Environmental Performance Index”) is visibly performed in “A Better Tomorrow.” The German chapter is, at the same time, a performative call for environment protection practices and a performative warning against eco-terrorism.
25“No Jazz” (writer: Torsten Sträter; art, colors, and cover: Ingo Römling; letters: Astarte Design) in Joker: The World does touch on the theme of climate, but overall, it is a short, humorous satire on cultural differences, which also reveals certain characteristics of German youth cultures—past and present. While still in Gotham, listening to jazz music and killing one of his thugs who dared to ask Joker to turn the music off, Joker learns about a German scientist, who invented a “weather-terraforming technology” (Various, Joker 28), which is meant to help draught-stricken regions of the world, and which Joker wants to use to send a tornado to Gotham (30). A German scientist sounds like a cliché, and this chapter of Joker’s transatlantic adventures performs a few such clichés and stereotypes about Germany. Aside from Dr. Heinz Schropottneck (the scientist), the story of Joker’s visit to modern-day Germany features autobahns (highways) with no speed limit, which Joker adores (29) and a party where heavy-metal music is playing loud, which hurts Joker’s ears (34–36). The party is attended by counter-culture, antiestablishmentarian young people, who admire Batman’s “wicked boots” and “awesome outfit” (35), and to whom Joker, who himself is definitely antiestablishmentarian and anarchist, might relate, were it not for “such noise” (29) they are listening to.
26At first reading, “No Jazz” seems to be a short, comic take on “one man’s poison is another man’s medicine”—the “noise” that jazz and heavy metal are to different people. However, cultural and historical analysis reveals that the theme of music is where a portion of German culture is performed most visibly in this chapter of Joker: The World. By performing a juxtaposition of the musical themes of jazz and heavy metal, the artists behind “No Jazz” comment on the continuity of antiestablishmentarianism among German youth cultures. In the 1930s Germany, the Nazi regime considered jazz and swing music demoralizing to the German youth, which led to numerous acts of repression towards so-called Swing Jugend (Swing Youth)—a subculture of young Germans who opposed and ridiculed the Third Reich ideology and establishment (Wallace and Alt). The inclusion of heavy metal music, which is inherently associated with rebellion and antiauthoritarianism, represents the popularity this musical genre enjoys in Germany. This popularity is evidenced in the huge artistic and commercial success of bands such as Rammstein, whose 2019 album Rammstein reached No. 1 of music charts not only in Germany but also in thirteen other countries (Spahr), and heavy metal festivals such as Wacken Open Air, which was attended by eighty five thousand metalheads in 2025 alone (“Thank You, Metalheads - W:O:A 2025 Is Sold Out!”). The theme of music as a form of rebellion included in this chapter can be read as a performative warning against an ever-present threat of authoritarianism.
27Other than jazz and Perchten, there are hardly any direct historical references in “A Better Tomorrow” and “No Jazz,” unlike in the chapters on Spain and Italy. The focus in those chapters is on Germany’s and the planet’s better tomorrow (in environmental terms), and the joys of living in the moment, whether the soundtrack of the said living is jazz or heavy metal.
28In “Red Mass” (writer: Štěpán Kopřiva; art, colors, letters, cover: Michal Suchánek), the performativity is spatial and temporal as the story takes place in the ominous year 1984 at “the peak of Cold War” (Various, Batman 70), when Batman’s investigation takes him to the communist era Prague—“the city on the other side of the Iron Curtain” (69). Then and there, Batman is hunting a “Gotham killer,” Kim Koval, who has fled Arkham Asylum and is hiding at a Prague laboratory run by Dr. Frantisek Hudec—a prominent member of the communist party, who is referred to as “Bolshevik Sorcerer” and who is a creator of “psychic weapons” (70). In this chapter, which reads as a typical story of Batman’s crime-fighting crusade, the city of Prague performs the role of a refuge for “psychics, fortune-tellers, dowsers from all over the Eastern Bloc” (71). Prague’s belonging to the Eastern bloc of the communist era is performed by means of images of the city’s architecture, which is tainted with the soviet symbol of the hammer and sickle. In certain panels, we can also see artifacts from other Eastern Bloc countries, e.g. a Polish edition of Głos Pana (Eng. His Master's Voice) by Stanisław Lem (71)—one of the most renowned science-fiction writers, who wrote most of his works under the communist regime. At one point of the story, two boys see Batman, and one of them explains that Batman is “something like Bobík. Only weaker,” which is accompanied by the authors’ footnote which explains that Bobík is a “hero from legendary Czech kids’ comics” (73). The juxtaposition of the two “heroes” followed by the “only weaker” comment becomes a performance of the authors’ national pride but, more than that, of the famed Czech sense of humor, which is revealed to curious readers who do a little research and learn that Bobík was a cartoon character of an anthropomorphized pig, who was known for his strength and appetite (Čtyřlístek). After Batman stops Dr. Hudec and Kim Koval from using psychic powers to make millions of people across Western Europe to commit mass suicides (72–77), the boy admits that perhaps Batman is after all stronger than Bobík (78). If there is one performative cultural element that makes this story transatlantic, it is the juxtaposition of Batman and Bobík—both being comic book heroes who inspire, as it is safe to infer that Čtyřlístek comic books, which featured the Bobík character, inspired Kopřiva and Suchánek to create comic books.
29Kopřiva and Suchánek also created “Kafka, Beer, Semtex,” which is found in Joker: The World. Already in the title, the authors present phenomena that make Czechia famous: literary works of Franz Kafka, the culture of drinking beer, and explosive material Semtex. Such juxtaposition of a man of letters, a beverage, and a weapon of destruction would be odd, were it not for the fact that they appear in the title of a chapter on the shenanigans of an anarchistic villain whose preoccupation is to spread chaos. In a way, the title of the chapter reflects the unpredictability of Joker’s character. The title itself provides a performative platform for Kopřiva and Suchánek to present these three elements of their native culture. However, apart from Kafka, beer, and Semtex, other Czech cultural phenomena are also performed in this chapter.
30The chapter’s plot centers around a council of Jokers led by the original, American Joker, who are conducting auditions for the position of the “Czech Joker” (Various, Joker 83), which are held somewhere in present-day Czechia. As there are three candidates for the job, the chapter is divided into three acts. The first act (81–82) serves only as an introduction of the setting (the Czech Republic) and the theme of the interviews; it performs little of Czech culture aside from the drawn image of the façade of the Czech National Bank headquarters in Prague that the first candidate is robbing (81). In this act, the candidate explains that the fact that he robbed the bank on an electric scooter was subversive and that it serves as “subtextual commentary on electric eco-mobility in the context of the unscrupulous mammonizing of financial institutions” (82), which reads as a parody of the Kafkaesque writing style. In act two (83–84), the Czech culture is performed by means of clothing. The second candidate, a female, is dressed in a traditional folk kroj (Czech for “outfit”), and so are the folk musicians whom we can see performing at a folklore festivity (83), an element of which usually is beer-drinking. However, that element is not performed in this subchapter. In act three (85–90), the third candidate tells a twisted story of his encounter with the Jewish-Praguian mythological creature of Golem. Among numerous Golem legends, one of the most famous ones is the tale of “Rabbi Judah Loew Ben Bezalel, the chief Rabbi of Prague in the late 16th century [who] was said to have created a Golem out of clay from the banks of the Vltava River and brought it to life through rituals and Hebrew incantations to defend the Prague ghetto from anti-Semitic attacks” (Green). In this third act of the Czech chapter, the third candidate claims to have destroyed Golem with a “legendary tank 23” (85)—in reality, a problematic monument, which was placed in Prague to commemorate the town’s liberation from the Nazis by the Soviets, but after 1968 was considered by many Czechs as a symbol of Soviet oppression and occupation (“Tank No. 23”). As the story continues, the tank becomes a Tatra 602 sports car, which was produced in the former Czechoslovakia in the years 1949–1952 (Niederle). In the story, the car is driven, first by Kafka and then by a Czech ice-hockey legend, Jaromír Jágr, who used to play in the American-Canadian National Hockey League.
31Apart from the elements of Czech culture performed by Kopřiva and Suchánek, the artists also include a performative element of American culture. In the Czech chapter of Joker’s adventures, Joker himself performs an allegory of American international business. As the head of his own “multinational franchise” (Various, Joker 85), Joker presides over the auditions for the Czech Joker, during which the second candidate, when asked where she sees herself in five years, answers that she wants to be the “Czech Joker … and … among the top three European Jokers” (83). The comment can be seen as a reference to American multinational corporations affecting European cultures.
32The “Kafka, Beer, Semtex” chapter is self-referential and a metatext, in which the artists make use of the sense of humor that the Czechs pride themselves on. In the chapter, Joker praises the third candidate for his disregard for society, morality, and… the rules of storytelling (Various, Joker 89), which is what Kopřiva and Suchánek did in their own storytelling. They also filled the pages of the Czech chapter with, as the second candidate for the “Czech Joker” position puts it: “all the clichéd junk people associate with the Czech Republic … a Golem, Kafka, Beer, Communism, Semtex, Prague monuments, some Czech technology with sexy design [Tatra 602] … [and] few world celebrities [Jaromír Jágr]” (84). Since all the “clichéd junk” comes from Czech past, the second candidate explains that she wants to “get rid of the weight of the past” and to “create the archetype of the Czech Joker on a modern basis” (84), which can be interpreted as a performative wish by the authors for Czech Republic to become a more modern state.
33In Czechia’s neighboring Poland, Batman, in “Defender of the City” (writer: Tomasz Kołodziejczak; art, and cover: Piotr Kowalski; colors: Brad Simpson; letters: Tomasz Bratkowski), visits the country’s capital city of Warsaw. In Batman’s opening words of the chapter, the twenty-first century Warsaw is a “strange and interesting city, … It’s eight hundred years old, but it was rebuilt almost from scratch a few decades ago. It’s modern, but at the same time, the city remembers its past” (Various, Batman 109). This narrative description is accompanied with images of Warsaw’s Old Town and the modern downtown. In the Old Town, we can see the Royal Castle and the Zygmunt’s Column; in the downtown, we can see modern skyscrapers surrounding the Palace of Science and Culture—a remnant of the communist era (109). Batman also mentions “the city’s coat of arms [which] is a legendary mermaid. But instead of being a temptress with her marvelous voice and beauty, she defends Warsaw armed with a shield and a sword” (109); the Mermaid statue is visually performed in the accompanying panel. Another landmark of Warsaw performed visually is the Poniatowski Bridge, which stretches across the Vistula River (114).
34Already in the prologue to this chapter, we deal with cultural performativity, which continues on the following pages. Bruce Wayne’s face is drawn in the resemblance of Kapitan Żbik (Eng. Captain Żbik)—a fictional protagonist of popular Polish comic books of the communist era, militia-officer, and a Polish superhero of those days. When Bruce Wayne comes to Warsaw, we can see him walking down what looks like the Nowy Świat (Eng. New World) Street (Various, Batman 111), as he is going to a business meeting with Anna Wadowska, a woman who he thinks has developed a crime-preventing device, which he believes would be useful back in Gotham. This motif is a nod to Polish IT specialists, who rank among the best in the world (Serowy). When Wadowska tells Wayne that her company is not for sale and that he should try “the video game industry” (112), her words can be read as a reference to such Polish companies as CD PROJECT Red, which have produced such globally popular video games as The Witcher series and Cyberpunk 2077. The artists also poke fun at how difficult English language speakers find Polish words to pronounce, the example given in the chapter is nietoperz; which is Polish for bat (111).
35Aside from the cultural performativity, the chapter presents performativity of its protagonists. Batman acts as Bruce Wayne when he comes to Warsaw with an offer to purchase Warsaw Tech. Moreover, when Wayne comes to Poland, he uses the alias of Franck Hayme in order to avoid the media attention (Various, Batman 112). Wadowska’s refusal to do any business with Wayne is motivated by her fear of Gotham’s “chaos … violence, or … insanity disguised as Batman,” whom death follows (113). In saying that, Wadowska acts as a vigilante herself—the eponymous “defender of the city” (108)—the city which “has already experienced enough fear—wars, uprisings, total destruction” (113). After she is saved by Wayne/Batman from the hands of drug dealers, Wadowska agrees to cooperate with Wayne Industries so that “both cities could help each other” (118), which is an opening of Poland’s business to American investors, one that Poland has seen since the political transformation of 1989 and one that is performed in Wadowska’s succinct: “Welcome to Warsaw, Mister Wayne” (118).
36Wayne/Batman may have been invited to Warsaw; Joker, however, comes to Poland’s former capital, Kraków, uninvited in “The Royal Jester” (writer: Tomasz Kołodziejczak, art; colors, and cover: Jacek Michalski; letters: Tomasz Bratkowski). What draws Joker to modern-day Kraków is a painting by a Polish artist, Jan Matejko—“The Royal Jester,” which portrays “a real character from the 16th century, the royal jester—Stańczyk” (Various, Joker 157). The painting is one of the most renowned works of Polish art, which “has entered the canon of Polish culture” (158), some of which is performed in this chapter. The reader of “The Royal Jester” chapter will see performative images of the Stańczyk painting, as well as the Wawel Royal Castle where the painting is a part of a temporary exhibition in the Knight’s Hall (156–158). A portion of the castle’s and Poland’s 16th-century history is presented on those pages by a performative in its nature tour given by a tour guide, who shows a tourist group round Wawel. As she describes the painting and the character of “not a typical court jester” (Stańczyk)—a clown who came to be considered a “sage, a philosopher, and a prophet” (157)—we can see the face of the clown of Gotham expressing a sense of affinity with the clown of Kraków.
37Joker’s attempt to steal the painting is rendered futile by a team of Polish superheroes, led by “Zawisza… Black Knight, Sulima coat of arms. Defender of Kraków” (Various, Joker 160), who is a performative version of the actual, historical knight, Zawisza Czarny (Eng. Zawisza the Black). This performative Zawisza wears a futuristic, Batman-like knight’s armor; however, what differentiates this, in Joker’s words, “provincial imitation of Batman” (162), is the fact that, unlike the dark knight of Gotham, the “black knight of Kraków … kill[s] bad people” (163). Having learned about Zawisza’s mercilessness, Joker runs away back to Gotham where he is presented on the last page of the chapter in the center of a full-page borderless panel sitting in a pose and clothes similar to the ones of Stańczyk in Matejko’s painting. This pastiche of the “The Royal Jester” painting, which ends the Polish chapter, can be interpreted as Kołodziejczak’s et al. performance of a parallel between 16th-century Stańczyk, Kraków and Poland, and contemporary, though fictional, Joker, Gotham and America. The royal clown of Kraków was laughed off by the Polish king and the court when he tried to warn them against an impending invasion. The royal courtiers and the magnates’ thoughts were “only on entertaining themselves” (158), and their carelessness led to the fall of the great state which used to be a “European empire between two seas. Large and populous, relatively rich, democratic and tolerant” (156). The clown-prince of crime from Gotham perceives Americans to be “[p]eople who think only about entertainment” and envisions “[a]narchy and chaos. And then the fall of an empire between two seas, relatively rich, democratic and tolerant” (164), which will begin with a fall of “only one city” he adds with a devilish smile (164). Whether it is a performative warning, cultural criticism, or a prophecy, on the last page of the Polish chapter, the transatlantic and cross-temporal connection is performed between Kraków and Gotham.
38Batman, in “The Cradle” (writer: Ertan Ergil; art, colors, and cover: Ethem Onur Bilgiç; letters: Aykut Tanay), travels from Gotham to contemporary Ankara, Turkey, following an illegal shipment of weapons. From the start, Ergil positions modern Turkey in a historical context of the culture’s glorious past. The destination of the shipment is referred to with terms: “the first sun” and “the cradle of civilization” (Various, Batman 94). The “cradle of civilization” refers to the ancient region of Mesopotamia—“the area that is now eastern Syria, southeastern Turkey, and most of Iraq” (Edzard et al.). To narrow his search, Batman deduces that “the first sun” refers to the “Hittite empire Sun Disc” (94)—a religious symbol of the Hittites, who settled Anatolia (Ankara Üniversitesi)—“the peninsula of land that today constitutes the Asian portion of Turkey” (Lloyd et al.). The connection between Turkey and Mesopotamia is also performed visually on Batmobile’s screen panel, which shows a map of Anatolia and Mesopotamia, and the Hittite Sun Disc (94). Other visual performances of Turkish landmarks, which are accompanied by detailed descriptions, include Divriği Great Mosque and Hospital in Sivas (98); various locations in Istanbul, such as St. George's Cathedral, Bosphorus Bridge (100), and Hagia Sophia (106); and Hitit Güneş Kursu Anıtı (Eng. The Hittite Sun Disc Monument) in Ankara (96).
39When Bruce Wayne arrives in Ankara, Turkey, he notices a fictional plaque on the pedestal of the Sun Disc Monument, which reads, in Turkish followed by English translation:
DOGUDAN BATIYA
FROM THE EAST TO THE WEST
DÜNDEN YARINA
YESTERDAY TO TOMORROW
KALPLERIMIZ TAŞLAŞMIŞTIR
OUR HEARTS TURNED TO STONE
GÜÇTEN, SONSUZLUGA
BY THE POWER, TO ETERNITY (Various, Batman 97)
40In what reads like a story of Dan Brown’s adventures of Professor Langdon, Wayne and Alfred discuss the meaning of the monument and the plaque, and in their conversation, historical, cultural, and political role of Turkey is performed by Ergil, in whose script Alfred tells Wayne: “There’s a pleasant irony in the ‘EAST TO WEST’ line. The land you’re in has connected Eastern and Western civilizations throughout history. Turkey quite literally serves as a bridge between Europe and Asia. This is the original cradle of humankind” (97). “The Cradle” chapter offers temporal (cradle of humankind) and spatial (bridge between Europe and Asia) performativity of the land over the Bosphorus Strait.
- 8 “An elite Ottoman cavalry unit, known for their scary looks, courage, and power” (Various, Joker 10 (...)
41The Istanbul (or rather Constantinople) harbor at the Bosphorus Strait serves as the setting of the “Fool’s Bootblack” (writer: Metin Akdülger; art, colors, and cover: Ethem Onur Bilgiç; letters: Aykut Tanay). This chapter of Joker’s adventures takes the reader to the “late 1800s … the once-glorious Ottoman state” (Various, Joker 94). Joker—here named Mr. Jester, wears an outfit which is Joker’s purple and green version of the nineteenth-century Ottoman gentleman, including fes—a traditional red headdress. When he meets the Ottoman version of his lover, Harley Quinn, she refers to Mr. Jester as her muhallebi, which, as the writers of the chapter explain, is a “traditional Turkish milk pudding” (106). In the character of the Mad Bat—an Ottoman version of Batman—the Ottoman Empire’s military might is performed, as he is described as “the only member left from the Deliler Battalion8 … the mightiest warrior of the whole Janissary guild” (102). In Istanbul, whose Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia are visually performed in the background of the first borderless panel (94), once again East meets West.
42At one point of the story, Mr. Jester encounters two American gentlemen—Ezekiel Arkham, “a wealthy man among the founders of a newly built city … [and] his close friend J.T. Wood” (Various, Joker 94), who came to Constantinople to watch a play and gather archeological “spoils” (94). The characters of Arkham and Wood establish a cross-temporal connection with the Istanbul of the 1800s and contemporary Gotham, as well as spatial connection between East and West. They also bear resemblance to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, which can be read as a reference to the origins of the Batman character, frequently described as the “world’s greatest detective” (O’Neil and Wilson 186), a title also associated with Holmes. However, the East-West encounters of the nineteenth century are performed in a manner not favorable to the West.
43In “Fool’s Bootblack,” its creators perform an accusation of western colonialism characterized by a sense of cultural superiority. The accusation is expressed by Mr. Jester, who, in ironic tone, talks about the “magnanimous western scientists who visit the ancient lands taken for granted by our [Turkish/Ottoman] state so they can save, safeguard, and salvage our heritage” (Various, Joker 97). Moreover, the chapter’s plot centers around Mr. Jester’s plan to poison the audience of a play at the fictional Karaköy Maskara Ocağı Theater with the use of shoe polish (hence “Fool’s Bootblack”). There is plenty of theatrical performativity featured in this chapter, and the theater is the focal point of this story as it turns out that all the people attending the play are Westerners, who have been lured there by Mr. Jester so that he could enact his revenge on “all those kidnappers” who “take our [Turkish/Ottoman] heritage to their homelands, like some game animal they hunt in the wild … [and] take the relics apart and sell them to bolster their power and legitimacy” (104). Mr. Jester refers to his plan in theatrical terms—“to stage the best play one can ever see” (103)—as he talks to the Mad Bat. When the Mad Bat confronts Mr. Jester, he also uses theatrical terminology when he declares that the “curtain has fallen—whatever show you [Jester] have, I am the only audience you’ll get” (101). Whether the Mad Bat prevents Mr. Jester’s revenge on the West is an open question, as the story ends with a panel presenting the invited Westerners following Mr. Jester and Quinn into the theater.
- 9 In fact, all the artists whose works are included in both anthologies displays assumption that the (...)
44The “Paris” chapter (writer: Mathieu Gabella; art, colors, letters, and cover: Thierry Martin) performs what could be a culmination of a long and complicated love affair between Bruce Wayne a.k.a. Batman and Selina Kyle a.k.a. Catwoman, which started as early as in Batman #1 published on March 6, 1940 (Lapin-Bertone). Given the time-frame of the Wane-Kyele relationship, it is possible to state that when creating this most succinct (in length and content) of all the chapters in both anthologies, the artists behind “Paris” performed an act of assumption—the assumption that the reader of this chapter is aware of said relationship between Batman and Catwoman.9 In the French chapter of Batman: The World, which is set sometime in the twentieth or twenty-first century Paris, Batman comes to the City of Lights lured by Catwoman, who pretends to want to rob the Musée du Louvre. In fact, she sets a trap on Bruce Wayne to make him reveal his true feelings for her. For that, she uses Wonder Woman’s lasso of truth (Wonder Woman serves as the curator of the Louvre in the story). As most of this short story takes place in the Louvre Museum, the reader is presented with performative versions of the museum itself and its most famous exhibits: the Venus of Milo statue, the Mona Lisa painting, the Nike of Samothrace statue, the Coronation of Napoleon painting, the Lamassu sculpture, and the Liberty Leading the People painting. On the last page of this chapter, we see Wayne and Kyle, who are wearing elegant outfits and taking a romantic stroll over the Pont Alexandre III bridge, which leads to the Champs-Élysées. Also, in the first and last panels of this chapter, there is the Parisian skyline with the Eifel Tower in the center.
45There are at least two ways in which “Paris” can be read in terms of the chapter’s performativity. For one, presentation of the “best” of Louvre and, by analogy, the “best” of what French culture has to offer by the artists who created the French chapter of Batman: The World can be seen as a performance of national (or local) pride, exemplified by references to proud moments of French history. It could also be said that in “Paris,” the city itself is performed. However, given the transatlantic theme featured here, i.e. two Americans coming to Paris to find love, it could be argued, that it is not the city itself that is performed in this chapter, but rather what Americans (and not only Americans) tend to associate Paris with: love, romance, art, and fashion.
46Batman is not the protagonist of “My Bat-Man” (writers: Kirill Kutuzov and Egor Prutov; art, colors, and cover: Natalia Zaidova; letters: Olga Varlamova), at least not directly. Instead, in him, the American cultural influence is performed in this chapter, which focuses on the character of Mr. Brick, a cartoonist and a political illustrator, who grew up in communist Soviet Union. Thanks to his grandfather, who worked at the Foreign Trade Ministry, he got to know Bat-Man, as that was the original spelling of the caped crusader’s name (Various, Batman 81). “My Bat-Man” is a story of inspiration, in which we first learn how Mr. Brick, inspired by the Bat-Man character, grew up to be a cartoonist and later-on a newspaper illustrator of articles on Batman (82–84). We also get to see Mr. Brick being invited to the US to be honored for his achievements as a political cartoonist, which he finds ironic as he spent life drawing “this Batman of theirs [Americans]” (87), which was his passion—political cartoons were just the means of earning a living. In the U.S., Brick gets a chance to (briefly) meet his hero and inspiration, who is exactly like Brick imagined him in his drawings (89), and he buys a pen for his granddaughter—much like the one he got from his grandfather (81), but this one has Wonder Woman figurine on the tip of it (90). At the end of the chapter, we see Brick’s granddaughter, who is trying her hand at drawing, and her first drawings are those of Wonder Woman (90). In a way, “My Bat-Man,” is a performative collective biography of Russian comic book artists, such as Kutuzov, Prutov, Zaidova, and Varlamova, who themselves were once inspired by various comic book superheroes. It is also a performative love letter to the superheroes and those who read their stories.
47“My Bat-Man” features a number of performative examples of the changing and yet constant political and cultural reality in Russia of the turn of the centuries. The temporal aspect of the changing reality is performed by means of a tier of three panels presenting Brick watching TV—in each panel, the TV set becomes more modern, from old CRTs to modern flat-screens as he himself is presented older and older (Various, Batman 87). The passage of time is also performed in the changing styles of Brick’s cartoons and illustrations which signify his growing into maturity as an artist. The cultural reality of the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia is performed by a number of visual and textual traits. The soviet period is performed by means of buildings atop of which there are the soviet stars and of images of Lenin, as well as through mentions of propaganda spread by the ironically titled newspaper Prawda (Eng. Truth). The transformation period is performed by means of illustrations and posters created by Brick which feature slogans written in Cyrillic, e.g. перестройка (Eng. perestroika), a Russian term for the reform movement of the 1980s Soviet Communist Party (“Perestroika”). The reader does not get to see much of contemporary Russia being performed; we know it is contemporary from the image of a flat-screen TV set (87). Two elements of the Soviet/Russian culture seem to remain constant in this changing reality. Russia’s love of its national sport, ice-hockey, which is performed in the form of a criminal, NKVDemon, whom Batman is chasing across a station of the Moscow Underground, and whose costume is that of a hockey player. The other element is the ever-present “Big Brother,” an entity which is performed in the name of the NKVDemon criminal, which is a reference to the “Soviet secret police agency, a forerunner of the KGB” (“NKVD”), and in the frequent mentions of propaganda, such as the Pravda newspaper (83–84), and the poster presenting an inebriated bricklayer and a terrified family, which reads: “Was he drunk? You will be sorry!” (85). The fact that out of the two anthologies analyzed here, only Batman: The World, which came out in 2021, features a Russian chapter, can be seen in the context of performativity on the behalf of the publishers. It is safe to assume that the fact that no Russian chapter was included into the 2024-released Joker: The World had to do with sanctions placed on the country following its invasion of Ukraine, which is a performative act in itself—an act of protest against Russian government and/or solidarity with the people of Ukraine.
48When they are read separately, each chapter of Batman: The World and Joker: The World offers an amalgam of performative national stereotypes and clichés, e.g. Czech beer, Parisian art, Italian gelato, etc., and more serious performative representations of given cultures. All the chapters in both anthologies can be seen as cultural performances, which Jon McKenzie defines as “occasions in which, as a culture or society, we reflect upon and define ourselves, dramatize our collective myths and history, present ourselves with an alternative and eventually change in some ways while remaining ourselves in others” (31). Each chapter reveals what the artists, who created them, find worthy of praise, e.g. the pride in the ideals of the French Revolution performed by means of the paintings in Louvre, and which deserve criticism, e.g. corrupt Italian police officers. To paraphrase Steven Hoelscher’s observation on the role of performance understood as “performative display of memory” that is a “cultural practice that represents and enacts popular ideas about the past” (662), each chapter of the anthologies, which are analyzed here, can be read as performative displays of national cultures and identities, i.e., cultural practices which represent and enact popular ideas about a given culture.
49When the stories constituting Batman: The World and Joker: The World anthologies are analyzed collectively, certain aspects of the nature of performativity itself is revealed. Shana Komitee states that “a group’s alleged nature is actually a series of performances: behaviors that are learned, rehearsed, and presented over time” (4), which indicates a close connection between a culture’s past and present. In majority of the chapters, this immanence of any given culture’s past and present is emphasized. Whether it is Warsaw in “Defender of the City,” which is both modern and old; the ideals of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity represented in the works of art at the contemporary Louvre in “Paris”; or the propaganda of the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia, the performative cultures of the present day are inseparable from their histories. The manner in which the cultures are performed in the two anthologies seems to confirm Philip Auslander’s observation that “performativity is understood as a ‘reiteration of norms which precede, constrain, and exceed the performer and in that sense cannot be taken as the fabrication of the performer’s ‘will’ or ‘choice,’’ since the enacted social conventions result from earlier repetitions of certain behaviors” (173). While the artistic teams that have created Batman: The World and Joker: The World seem to have made choices regarding what to write and draw, the performative national cultures they presented are the result of a given culture’s history. In fact, it can be stated that they all share conviction that in order to make readers learn anything about the artists’ cultures, a historical context is required. One exception here are the German artists, who “chose” to have their chapters be the only ones in both anthologies in which history is omitted. But even that seems to align with Auslander’s claim on performativity as a repetition of behaviors. Benjamin von Eckartsberg, Thomas von Kummant, Torsten Sträter, Ingo Römling, and Astarte Design all belong to the “Kriegsenkel generation⎯the grandchildren of World War II … [whose] parents and grandparents had lived through the bombardment of German cities, the loss of family members, the pain of forced displacement, and the long-lasting shame of the Nazi war crimes” (Jakob 184). As Lina Jakob explains, “[t]he fact that our [the Germans’] grandfathers participated in World War II is not a source of pride and inspiration but an enduring legacy of shame” (2). Given the above, it is no wonder that in the German chapters, the reader will find a performative focus on the future, especially in terms of ecology, instead of Germany’s troubled relationship with its own history, especially that of the first half of the twentieth century.
50Even the remaining chapters, which have not been analyzed in this study, all feature this temporal aspect of performativity. In Batman: The World’s “Funeral” (writer: Alberto Chimal; art and colors: Rulo Valdés; letters: Eduardo López Castán; cover: RV and Edgar Gómez Alvarez) and Joker: The World’s “The Wrestler” (writer: Alvaro Fong Varela; art, colors, and cover: Oscar Pinto; letters: Hector Negrete), Mexican past and present are performed by means of images and mentions of ancient Aztec city of Templo Mayor and modern Mexico City (Various, Batman 119–128), and modern wrestlers wearing masks on Dia de los Muertos (Various, Joker 65–77). In Batman: The World’s “Where Are the Heroes?” (writer and letters: Carlos Estefan; art and cover: Pedro Mauro; colors: Fabi Marques) and Joker: The World’s “City of the Mad, Cemetery of the Living” (writer: Felipe Castilho; art, letters, and cover: Tainan Rocha; colors: Mariane Gusmão), Brazilian past and present are performed by means of images and mentions of contemporary and constant violence and corruption, and a quote from a nineteenth-century poet, Machado de Assis (Various, Batman 129-40). In Batman: The World’s “Batman Unchained” (writer, art, letters, and cover: Okadaya Yuichi) and Joker: The World’s “The Unfunny Joke” (writer: Satoshi Miyagawa; art and cover: Keisuke Gotou), Japanese past and present are performed by means of images and mentions of traditional kimonos and old-timey shoguns (Various, Batman 165-78), modern manga style of drawing, and contemporary American locations and products (Various, Joker 165-84). In Batman: The World’s “Munnin” (writer: Inpyo Jeon; artists: Jaekwang Park and Junggi Kim; colors: Jaekwang Park; letters: Dongmin Baek; cover: Junggi Kim) and Joker: The World’s “Copycat” (writer: Inpyo Jeon; art, colors, and cover: Jaekwang Park; letters: Dongmin Baek), South Korean past and present are performed by means of images and mentions of the futurism of Waynetech company in Seoul and a theme of memory (Various, Batman 141–152). In Joker: The World’s “Funeral” (writer: Matías Timarchi; art, colors, and cover: Germán Peralta; letters: Yasmin Govoni), Argentinian past and present are performed by means of images and mentions of modern-day Buenos Aires with its fútbol gangs and Pampa region where the gaucho lifestyle still exists (Various, Joker 121-36). In Batman: The World’s “Batman and Panda Girl” (writers: Xu Xiaodong and Lu Xiaotong; art and cover: Qiu Kun; colors: Yi Nan; letters: Li Xiaobing), Chinese past and present are performed by means of a blend of images and mentions of traditional Chinese architecture and modern skyscrapers. In Joker: The World’s “Black Therapy” (writer: Dr. Ejob Gaius; art and cover: Bertrand Mbozo’o Zeh; colors, letters, and cover color: E.N. Ejob), Cameroonian past and present are performed by means of images and mentions of modern-day psychiatry and traditional Cameroonian outfits (Various, Joker 137–151). All these chapters deserve a deeper analysis in the context of performativity of their national cultures if only to determine whether, just like in the case of the European chapters, their performativity proves that, just as “identity is a dynamic concept” (Jaworska-Biskup and Zawadka 56), so is national culture whose present is never free from its past, despite culture’s constant evolution.
51As indicated in this study, Batman: The World and Joker: The World are cultural performances. Elżbieta Wilczyńska notes that cultural performances are “cultural activities … [which] draw from repertoire of acts and rituals of a given culture and repeat or recast them, connecting the present with the past via history and tradition” (qtd. in Jaworska-Biskup and Zawadka 147). In their acts of creation, the artists and publishers, who gave us Batman: The World and Joker: The World, reached to the repertoire of acts and rituals of their cultures, repeated and recast them, and, by connecting the present with the past via history and tradition, produced performative national cultures of their countries of origin and, in most cases, of residence.