3 - Sympathy for the Devil? The Changing Face of the IRA in American Superhero Comics

Summary

Introduction

In 1986, an Irish Republican Army (IRA) plot to blow up the British Parliament was thwarted by the quick thinking of an American photojournalist. Four years later, a similar plan to kill members of the British royal family was foiled by the brave intervention of a US businessman. The heroic photojournalist was Peter Parker a.k.a. Spider-Man; the daring businessman was Oliver Queen a.k.a. Green Arrow. These events, which transpired between the covers of Web of Spider-Man #20 and Green Arrow #43, are just two examples of IRA violence spilling over onto the pages of Marvel and DC comics. Indeed, between the 1970s and 1990s, superheroes such as Shamrock, Jack O’Lantern, Metamorpho, Nightwing, and Speedy all found themselves inadvertently embroiled in what has euphemistically been called the ‘Troubles’, the ethno-nationalist conflict that raged in Northern Ireland during that period, sometimes extending to the rest of the island, neighbouring Britain and mainland Europe. The conflict originated in the differing constitutional aspirations of the two main communities in Northern Ireland, namely Catholic nationalists, who see themselves as Irish and aspire to a united Ireland, independent of Britain, and Protestant unionists, who regard themselves as British and desire to remain part of the UK. When civil rights marches protesting the inequalities between the nationalist minority and the unionist majority turned violent in the late 1960s, republican paramilitaries, such as the IRA, on the nationalist side, and loyalist paramilitaries, such as the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), on the unionist one, took up arms to protect their communities and fight for their interests. What ensued was a brutal conflict, with almost 3,500 people being killed by paramilitaries, local police and the British army, the last of which had originally been deployed in the area to restore order.

Despite the tragic human toll, the Northern Ireland conflict proved to be ‘a thriller writer's dream’ (Pelaschiar 1998, 19), spawning its own literary and film genre, the Troubles thriller. This genre was particularly popular in Hollywood in the 1990s, as evidenced in movies such as Patriot Games (Philip Noyce 1992), Blown Away (Stephen Hopkins 1994) and The Devil's Own (Alan J. Pakula 1997).