Performative National Cultures in Transatlantic Adventures of Batman and Joker

On September 14, 2021, DC Comics released Batman: The World, a comic-book anthology featuring fourteen short stories of international crime-fighting endeavors of the eponymous superhero. Three years later, DC Comics followed up with Joker: The World, which was released on September 17, 2024. This anthology focuses on travelling adventures of one of popular culture’s most sinister villains. In Batman: The World and Joker: The World, both eponymous protagonists’ adventures begin in the USA and then shift to places such as the Brazilian favelas, the Bosphorus Strait in Turkey, and the Wawel Royal Castle in Cracow, Poland. A prominent feature of the 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. Such collaborative and international authorships of the anthologies allow for an in-depth analysis of cultural performances executed by each team of artists. The goal of this study is to analyze the European portion of Batman’s and Joker’s adventures, as presented in Batman: The World and Joker: The World, in order to highlight the performativity of the cultural elements they decided to include in their work. The analysis will cover both visual and textual performances of cultural elements that the creative teams included in each individual story.