Global Comics: The Basics

Offering an accessible introduction to the world of comics, this book provides a critical overview of how the form and content of comic books from around the globe have evolved over time.

From Tokyo’s manga cafés to Buenos Aires’s kioscos, from Parisian ateliers to Lagos’s digital studios, comics have become a truly planetary art form. Global Comics: The Basics is a comprehensive guide to this vibrant world republic of sequential art, tracing how local traditions–Japanese manga, Franco-Belgian bande dessinée, Latin American historietas, African comics, and more–developed their distinctive visual grammars while increasingly cross-pollinating across borders. Frederick Luis Aldama illuminates how creators from Osamu Tezuka to Marjane Satrapi, from the Hernandez Brothers to Deena Mohamed, have wielded the unique power of words-and-pictures storytelling to witness history, challenge power, and reimagine identity. This book offers an important guide to the history of comics globally, situating comic book production, dissemination, and consumption within historical, social, cultural, regional, and global contexts.

Essential reading for anyone interested in learning more about the history and cultural significance of comics on a global level and why they matter more than ever in our interconnected age.