Thomas Giddens is Lecturer in Law and Co-Director of the Centre for Law and Culture at St Mary's University. He researches in cultural legal studies, focusing on the use of comics and graphic fiction in legal studies, as well as criminal justice and legal philosophy.

Establishing the medium of graphic fiction as a critical resource for interdisciplinary legal studies, this collection is the first to address the intersection of comics and law. Graphic fiction has gained enormous cultural capital and academic interest over recent years. Whether in their representations of lawyers and the legal system, their dystopian imaginations, their treatment of issues of justice and social order, or in their superheroic investment in the protection of the innocent and the punishment or capture of those who would harm them, like other narrative forms - literature, film, theatre - graphic fiction explores and expresses human life in all its social, moral and legal complexity. In the context of a now well established interest in cultural legal studies, this book showcases the critical potential of comics and graphic fiction as a resource for interdisciplinary legal studies and legal theory.

Introduction, 1 Lex Comica: On Comics and Legal Theory, Part 1: Introducing Comics and Law, 2 Holy Blurring of Core Copyright Principles, Batmobile!, 3 Devil's Advocate: Representation in Heroic Fiction, Daredevil and the Law, 4 I am the Law Teacher!: An Experiential Approach using Judge Dredd to Teach Constitutional Law, 5 Not Foresighting and Not Answering: Using Graphic Fiction to Interrogate Social and Regulatory Issues in Biomedicine, 6 Law and the Machine: Fluid and Mechanical Selfhood in The Ghost in the Shell, Part 2: Graphic Criminology, 7 When (Super)heroes Kill: Vigilantism and Deathworthiness in Justice League, Red Team, and the Christopher Dorner Killing Spree, 8 Extreme Restorative Justice: The Politics of Vigilantism in Vertigo's 100 Bullets, 9 Violent Lives, Ending Violently?: Justice, Violence and Ideology in Watchmen, 10 Stepping off the Page: 'British Batman' as Legal Superhero, Part 3: Graphic Justice International, 11 The Hero We Need, Not the One We Deserve: Vigilantism and the State of Exception in Batman Incorporated, 12 Judge, Jury and Executioner: Judge Dredd, Drones, Jaques Derrida, 13 Crimes against (Super)Humanity: Graphic Forms of Justice and Governance, 14 Graphic Reporting: Human Rights Violations through the Lens of Graphic Novels