Character Analysis: The Death Ray

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The Death Ray by Daniel Clowes is a graphic novel about the story of Andy and how he learned about his superpowers. A superhero is someone who has saved the day by accomplishing something heroic. Even though we look at superheroes as a something fiction, based on this we have everyday heroes around us such as firefighters, police officers, doctors and many more. In Clowes work, we quickly discover that this superhero theme plays out a little differently than what we are used to. The way that Clowes presents Andy to his super power, it is evident this is not an ordinary superhero story. It is arguable that despite the fact that Andy did more harm than good with his powers, his intentions were good. Therefore, he would be considered a superhero. …show more content…

In The Death Ray, Andy becomes interested in smoking cigarettes. Andy quickly learns that something goes wrong when he smokes cigarettes. On page 9 of The Death Ray, Clowes took the time to emphasize how something went wrong when Andy did this. He did this by illustrating the color of his vomit in an entirely different color to bring emphasis to how sick he was. Also, when he vomits, Andy is drawn slouching to show how it has affected his whole body. At first, Andy thought he was just sick from the cigarettes, but he soon learns that when he was a kid, his dad treated him with an experimental hormone that causes nicotine to react with his body and give him this power of super strength. The trigger of his superpower is very peculiar and even more questionable on rather or not this is considered a superpower. On the superhero side, it is arguable that this is heroic because he now has a superpower and he is going to save the world. Nicotine used to be considered a cool thing and sometimes looked at an accomplishment of a risk you took. Based off of this style, Clowes had the intentions of Andy being a superhero. However, when we look at superhero stories, we don’t combine negativity with a positive outcome. In the superhero genre, negativity represents the villains. Looking at Andy’s superpower, it is also arguable that this story would represent the villain side of a …show more content…

It is clear that sometimes Andy abused his powers to do what he thought was right and this was based solely off of Andy’s opinion. We see that he lived with regret for the mistakes he made and but in the end, he is still a superhero. The way this superhero story is told is different than most superhero stories, but the thing to take away from this is that a superhero is someone that has the intentions to save the world. Superheroes sometimes make mistakes and do action not based on the best efforts, but that doesn’t change who they are. They are still a superhero. In this story, Andy had good intentions, but sometimes his opinion wasn’t the same as the people around

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