This chapter scrutinizes two genres that seem closer to the world of comic books than to graphic novels, but that have nevertheless proven extremely influential in the development of the latter. It opens with a definition of both science fiction and fantasy, contrasted genres yet with many shared tropes, and it acknowledges the difficulties of summarizing the specific features of each category. The chapter addresses the most important forerunners of both genres, such as Little Nemo in Slumberland, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, or Prince Valiant, whose relevance for the graphic novel is now fully recognized. It aptly analyzes the birth of Action Comics in 1938 as a turning point and the start of the superhero genre with the Superman character, in whom science fiction and fantasy converge (although later forms of both genres also bear the strong influence of crime comics). The chapter also compares the Marvel and DC production and examines the development of franchises, which prove perfectly compatible with the creation of author-oriented graphic novels. Examples of such affinity are The Swamp Thing, The Sandman, Saga, and The Walking Dead.

This chapter deals with a genre that, at first sight, clashes with both the major themes and the publication format of the graphic novel: superhero comics. However, the history of the graphic novel demonstrates that it cannot be completely separated from superhero comics. Some important forerunners of the graphic novelists have had long careers in producing superhero comics, and some of their works went far beyond the standards of comics publication in the 1960s and 1970s. Moreover, when the graphic novel gradually consolidated, comics publishers such as Marvel began to adopt the format and to use the direct market system as a response to the decline of comic book distribution. The chapter offers a close analysis of two graphic novels that had superheroes at their core: Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (Miller) and Watchmen (Moore and Gibbons). It gives an overview of the imitations and continuations of these books, with a special look at Eddie Campbell’s “Graphic Novel Manifesto” (2004). It concludes with a case study of the Batman universe.

North Korea and posthuman superheroes rarely share discursive space. One reason: North Korea - the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) - is often imagined as a pre-posthuman Cold War relic. Another reason: it may seem wrong, even blasphemous, to discuss posthumanism and superheroes vis-à-vis a regime that systematically violates human rights. While mindful of such realities, I believe posthumanism can refresh overly rehearsed scripts surrounding the DPRK. The vocabulary of posthumanism (e.g. Donna Haraway’s “cyborg”) and posthuman characters from science fiction (e.g. the instantly legible superhero Spider-Man as well as the less legible Korean American Spider Lim in Richard Powers’s novel Plowing the Dark) can provide new approaches to North Korea’s “otherness” and “post”-DPRK refugees. Moreover, superheroic icons and posthumanism can address a new American art of DPRK origin such as the artwork of Song Byeok and Sun Mu. Finally, posthumanism and superheroes must narrate Korea’s future beyond trauma, war, and division. It is time for us to uproot, fruitfully, kimilsungia and kimjongilia from their rotting namesakes. Let them grow wild in the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). How might these organisms mutate? Dear Korean and Korean American artists and writers: let us now respond.