Julian Schmid, Marvel, DC and US Security: The Superhero Genre and Foreign Policy in the Twenty-first Century – Edinburgh University Press, October 2025

Explores how Hollywood’s superhero genre has shaped US foreign policy and security discourses

• One of the first book-length, inter-disciplinary studies on the intertwined development of ‘9/11’ as an event, the ‘War on Terror’ and superheroes
• Provides a new and innovative path to theorise and conceptualise International Relations, security and foreign policy
• Presents a unique window to understand contemporary political issues such as security, terrorism and war through film and popular culture
• Combines and contributes to a range of different disciplines such as International Relations, Critical Security Studies, Foreign Policy Analysis, Critical Terrorism Studies and Critical Geopolitics
• Addresses and reformulates concepts such as security, crisis, heroism, national identity and their relationship to power, agency and the everyday

This book considers how the long-standing superhero genre has been reinvigorated in the twenty-first century as an interlocutor of security and surveillance discourses following the events of ‘9/11’. While superheroes have a long cultural history, Schmid argues that their contemporary representations in Hollywood films and TV shows create and deepen specific discourses on security, terrorism and violence. He shows how the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC Extended Universe, in particular, are important artefacts that can help us to understand how these discourses are popularised and ultimately normalised.

The book offers a rich account of the emergence of superheroes against the backdrop of America’s history since its founding in 1776 and their rise to popularity through comic books since the 1930s. Analysing the connections between superheroes, foreign policy and security from ‘9/11’ to the present, it demonstrates the significance of superheroes for the construction of heroism and security in contemporary times.