Harald Havas’s ASH: Austrian Superheroes (2016- ) is a comic about the Neue Wiener Wächter: the red-and-white-clad Captain Austria, Jr. and his teammates Der Bürokrat, Lady Heumarkt and Das Donauweibchen. Their localized code-names identify them as a form of “nationalist superhero,” who “explicitly identifies himself or herself as representative and defender of a specific nation-state, often through his or her name, uniform, and mission” (Dittmer 7).

Constructing Austrian superheroes on this model is problematic, however; as Markus Engelns points out, “das ‘glorreichste’ Zeitalter des [Superhelden-]Genres [fällt] gleichzeitig mit dem wenig glorreichen Zweiten Weltkrieg zusammen[]” (2), when Austrians were among the real-life supervillains calling nationalist superheroes into being. Moreover, postwar Austria has been haunted by virulent nationalism, particularly since the mid-1980s rise of the Freedom Party as representative of the Drittes Lager—referring to Austria’s post-Habsburg domination by three political camps, on the socialist left, the Christian-conservative centre, and the ethno-nationalist right. The Austrian Superheroes thus confront a modern version of Ernst Gellner’s “Habsburg dilemma”: they must be recognizably Austrian without appearing to endorse the chauvinist nationalist Lager.

To forestall any such misapprehension, Havas employs aspects of “camp,” a self-consciously ironic performance of marginalized identity positions (Barounis 310-11). Andreas Platthaus anticipates this reading when he aptly describes Austrian Superheroes as “die Freak-Liga aus Österreich”: individually, they are a Jewish student intimidated by his abusive father (the original Captain Austria); a socially awkward, possibly autistic nerd; a powerful but overweight older woman; and a water nymph from a parallel dimension. Depicting Austrian identity through the lens of camp not only places this diverse team outside the nationalist camp; indeed, it posits them as “post-national” nationalist superheroes (cf. Karner 421-23).

Works Cited

Barounis, Cynthia. “‘Why so serious?’: Cripping Camp Performance in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight.” Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, vol. 7, no. 3, 2013, pp. 305-320.

Dittmer, Jason. Captain America and the Nationalist Superhero: Metaphors, Narratives, and Geopolitics. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2013.

Engelns, Markus. “Der Dritte Weltkrieg als Reifeprüfung: Struktur und Funktion von Weltkriegsszenarien in aktuellen Superheldencomics.” Medienobservationen. Sept. 7, 2009.

Havas, Harald, et al. ASH: Austrian Superheroes 0-4. Vienna: Contentkaufmann, 2016.

Karner, Christian. “The ‘Habsburg Dilemma’ Today: Competing Discourses of National Identity in Contemporary Austria.” National Identities, vol. 7, no. 4, 2005, pp. 409-432.

Platthaus, Andreas. “Die Freak-Liga aus Österreich.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 4, 2016. http://blogs.faz.net/comic/2016/07/04/diefreakligaausoesterreich889/.