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These essays from various critical disciplines examine how comic books and graphic narratives move between various media, while merging youth and adult cultures and popular and high art. The articles feature international perspectives on comics and graphic novels published in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Portugal, Germany, Turkey, India, and Japan. Topics range from film…
“Boys’ love,” a male-male homoerotic genre written primarily by women for women, enjoys global popularity and is one of the most rapidly growing publishing niches in the United States. It is found in manga, anime, novels, movies, electronic games, and fan-created fiction, artwork, and video. This collection of 14 essays addresses boys’ love as it…
These 15 essays investigate comic books and graphic novels, beginning with the early development of these media. The essays also place the work in a cultural context, addressing theory and terminology, adaptations of comic books, the superhero genre, and comic books and graphic novels that deal with history and nonfiction. By addressing the topic from…
To say that graphic novels, comics, and other forms of sequential art have become a major part of popular culture and academia would be a vast understatement. Now an established component of library and archive collections across the globe, graphic novels are proving to be one of the last kinds of print publications actually gaining…
Marvel Studios’ approach to its Cinematic Universe–beginning with the release of Iron Man (2008)–has become the template for successful management of blockbuster film properties. Yet films featuring Marvel characters can be traced back to the 1940s, when the Captain America serial first appeared on the screen. This collection of new essays is the first to…
Comic books have presented fictional and fact-based stories of the Korean War, as it was being fought and afterward. Comparing these comics with events that inspired them offers a deeper understanding of the comics industry, America’s “forgotten war,” and the anti-comics movement, championed by psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, who criticized their brutalization of the imagination. Comics–both…
Watchmen has been hailed as the quintessential graphic novel and has spawned a body of literary criticism since its 1986 initial appearance in installments. This work explores the graphic novel’s reception in both popular and scholarly arenas and how the conceptual relationship between images and words affects the reading experience. Other topics include heroism as…
This volume collects a wide-ranging sample of fresh analyses of Spider-Man. It traverses boundaries of medium, genre, epistemology and discipline in essays both insightful and passionate that move forward the study of one of the world’s most beloved characters. The editors have crafted the book for fans, creators and academics alike. Foreword by Tom DeFalco,…
From his first comic-book appearance in 1939 through his many incarnations on the big screen, the archetypal superhero known as The Batman has never been far from the American consciousness. The character shaped the way we read comics and graphic novels, view motion pictures, and analyze the motifs of the Hero, the Anti-Hero and the…
Superhero adventure comics have a long history of commenting upon American public opinion and government policy, and the surge in the popularity of comics since the events of September 11, 2001, ensures their continued relevance. This critical text examines the seventy-year history of comic book superheroes on film and in comic books and their reflections…
This updated and expanded textbook inspires a greater appreciation for literature by studying important literary themes found in comics. By deconstructing comics, it raises critical thinking about literature, a crucial skill for understanding language and composition. Chapters discuss DC, Marvel and other comics’ varied attempts at portraying race, politics, economics, business ethics and democracy; responses…
This book explores the connections between comics and Gothic from four different angles: historical, formal, cultural and textual. It identifies structures, styles and themes drawn from literary gothic traditions and discusses their presence in British and American comics today, with particular attention to the DC Vertigo imprint. Part One offers an historical approach to British…
Conventional wisdom holds that comic books of the post-World War II era are poorly drawn and poorly written publications, notable only for the furor they raised. Contributors to this thoughtful collection, however, demonstrate that these comics constitute complex cultural documents that create a dialogue between mainstream values and alternative beliefs that question or complicate the…
Sequential art combines the visual and the narrative in a way that readers have to interpret the images with the writing. Comics make a good fit with education because students are using a format that provides active engagement. This collection of essays is a wide-ranging look at current practices using comics and graphic novels in…
Few scholars nursed on the literary canon would dispute that knowledge of Western literature benefits readers and writers of the superhero genre. This analysis of superhero comics as Romance literature shows that the reverse is true–knowledge of the superhero romance has something to teach critics of traditional literature. Establishing the comic genre as a cousin…
The essays in this collection discuss how comics and graphic narratives can be useful primary texts and learning tools in college and university classes across different disciplines. There are six sections: American Studies, Ethnic Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, Cultural Studies, Genre Studies, and Composition, Rhetoric and Communication. With a combination of practical and theoretical…
