Games Workshop repeatedly asserts that Warhammer 40,000 is satire, and the setting uses grimdark exaggeration to critique the real world. Many works of satire, especially those in the Juvenalian mode often employed by 40K, view the laying bare of social ills and hidden assumptions to be the ultimate goal. This lines up with Mikhail Bakhtin’s broad account of satire, parody, irony, and other comedic forms as devolutions of the Renaissance carnival, in part because they lack the original’s regenerative aspects. While there are certainly purely deconstructive works, some satires point towards a better world while attacking the one that currently exists.
40K exists in both of these satirical modes. It is often read as a straightforward deconstruction of its targets. While this is certainly present, I will examine how the literature of Black Library, specifically the Orks, presents a positive, pro-social form of satire. Employing a metamodernist framework, including works by Timotheus Vermeulen, Robin van den Akker, and others focusing on the oscillation between modernism and postmodernism, I will examine how the Orks bounce between parodic deconstruction of the 42nd millennium and an optimistic reconstruction of personal and political values, at times even accomplishing both simultaneously. The primary focus will be on the adventures of Ufthak Blackhawk in the novels Brutal Kunnin’ and Da Big Dakka, by Mike Brooks, which I will use to show how the “savage” greenskins argue for moderation, thinking for oneself, and a form of tolerance in their parodic juxtaposition to the rest of the galaxy.
This presentation is based in part on a chapter my forthcoming monograph from McFarland & Company on reading Warhammer 40k as anti-fascist satire.
Author bio
Ryan L. Johnson teaches Humanities at Dallas College. His research focuses on examining comics, manga, and popular culture as tools for exploring ideological formation and contemporary intellectual movements. He is the author of The Code of the Superhero: Morality and Citizenship in the Comics from McFarland & Co.
