Permission for brutality

Abstract

This study examines how medievalist comics insist on their historical accuracy (implying that they represent authentic facts, rather than simulacra) and routinely present brutality and invisibility as linked with an authentic Middle Ages while also restricting fair representation to the world of fantasy. Witches and pagan magical beings are contextualised in a medievalist story world, and the patina of historicity of the story world dictates not only the presence or absence of these types of characters, but further predicates the representation of females and queer characters in general, especially their parts in the violence of the medievalised story world. While the magical beings are clearly simulacra, authors and readers seem to overlook the fact that the “brutal” Middle Ages are also simulacra. The positioning of equality and the presence of queer folk squarely in the fantastical story world, beside ostentatiously fantastical beings, creates a correlation for the readers and authors that equality and representation are, too, only simulacra.