摘要：Gilles Deleuze's explicit and self-conscious entanglements with the arts are well-known, especially his particular obsession with cinema. And as multiple theorists of the emerging interdisciplinary field of comics studies have observed, there is a close connection between comics and the cinema. 1 More specifically, it is often argued that the comics, as an artform consisting of a sequence of (textual and pictorial) images, is actually both a literal and conceptual precursor of the cinema ¨C in that cinema merely takes the individual panels of the comic book and then animates them using the camera. Consequently, it would seem that Deleuze and comics would almost of necessity have at least something to say to ¨C and create with ¨C each other. There is of course a tremendous variety within the medium of comic books, but following Deleuze and Guattari's suggestion (in the Introduction to A Thousand Plateaus) that there is something 'special' about the United States, I will focus on the classic comic book as it has developed there. 2 More importantly, it is in the U.S. the superhero genre has been most popular and widespread, and I will argue forthwith that there is something special indeed about this genre in relation to Deleuze's thought. In short, it is in its resonances with comic books that Deleuze's philosophy most vividly shows itself to be a form of literature. Finally, and of particular importance for this special edition of Transnational Literature, my analyses will reveal distinct philosophical (super)powers of concept-creation in the forms of superhero comics themselves (which Deleuze may have unconsciously harnessed in the development of his own concepts).
