Martha Washington: the vision of two white men about a black heroin

Abstract

Martha Washington is a black comic book heroin created in 1990 by Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons. The stories take place in a dystopian version of the USA, in which the country is under the rule of an authoritarian government and is facing a new civil war. The plots narrate the character’s physical and moral development, which goes from a young soldier, who only obeyed orders, to a great revolutionary warrior who frees the USA from government tyranny. Martha is a character who, through her willpower, overcomes adversity and becomes a great leader, destined to bring freedom to other nations and worlds. The authors’ focus is to discuss this aspect of individual overcoming, considered essential in superhero narratives. The work is also permeated by a legitimation and valorization of US military interventions in other nations based on the idea that this would be necessary to make the world free of tyrants of all kinds. Thus, the idea of this article is to analyze the way in which the authors constructed a positive stereotype of black women, and at the same time disseminated ideas that support the USA imperialist domination.