Relocating/Dislocating the Center in Milligan and Fegredo’s Enigma

Abstract

One of the first original creations for DC’s Vertigo line, Milligan and Fegredo’s Enigma begins as a deconstruction of superhero tropes; however, it then veers into a narrative of sexual discovery when the protagonist Michael Smith and his favourite comic book hero, the Enigma, unexpectedly fall in love. In many ways, Enigma can be read as an eccentric text that uses intentionally flawed narrative structures, destabilizes generic tropes and ultimately denounces rigid gender constructs. Milligan and Fegredo’s attempt to defend heterodoxy within the constraints of mainstream comics publishing is, I argue, one of the texts that would go on to define Vertigo’s specific position as a halfway-house between mainstream and alternative.