Weapons of Mass Distraction: A Comic Genealogy of <i>A Connecticut Yankee</i> ’s Speculative Exceptionalism

Abstract This article explores American print archives to construct a canon of pre-1898 comic imaginations of advanced weaponry in the service of empire-building. It examines news articles, novels and short fiction, comic songs, and comic almanacs to situate Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court as a science fiction novel that participates in and responds to an extant tradition of futuristic, comic speculation about war, empire, and colonialism. In connecting Twain’s prescient account of the violent outcomes of American exceptionalism and expansionism to earlier examples of comic, speculative fiction and illustrations that imagine the convergence of techno-determinism, imperialism, and war, the article historicizes Twain’s satire within an emergent lineage of comic art that addresses (whether to critique, celebrate, or merely laugh at) U.S. imperialism.