Narratives of Nostalgia and Repair in American Comics and Literature

Through a study of both novels and comic books of 20th and 21st century, this book claims that it is not possible to create any narrative of exceptionalism without also manufacturing a sense of nostalgia for a past that may or may not have existed. Acts of personal or historical repair are central to such nostalgia and symptomatic of a desire to both escape and confront difficult pasts. The myth of American exceptionalism is one such narrative of nostalgia that, in its conception of damage and acts of ‘repair,’ disables histories.

Through works by Michael Chabon, Art Spiegelman, Philip Roth, Alan Moore, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, this book reframes the idea of heroism and locates it outside of the hegemonic narrative of American exceptionalism. This book puts comics studies and literature in dialogue with disability studies to argue that an ‘able’ history, just like an ‘able body,’ is a myth.

The figure of the superhero, or the trope of heroism, is central to the moments of historical repair as well as the identity politics of who repairs the damage. The corpus illustrates how American escapism and counterfactual conception of a nation’s past can prolong the trauma of beleaguered communities, cultures, bodies, and histories. This book reveals how prostheticising one version of history can amputate another; there is no narrative of exceptionalism that is also not simultaneously a narrative of disability.

Dr Aanchal Vij completed her PhD in contemporary American literature and graphic narratives from the University of Sussex, UK. Her current research explores the relationship between disability, race, and comics. Her work has appeared in Critical Essays on BoJack Horseman (2023) and Comics and Catharsis: Exploring Graphic Narratives of Trauma and Healing (2025). She currently works as an Editor at Bloomsbury Academic on the Drama and Literary Studies list.