Showing 209–224 of 1000 resultsSorted by popularity
This book is the follow-up to Thierry Groensteen’s ground-breaking The System of Comics, in which the leading French-language comics theorist set out to investigate how the medium functions, introducing the principle of iconic solidarity, and showing the systems that underlie the articulation between panels at three levels: page layout, linear sequence, and nonsequential links woven…
A new theoretical framework that critiques many of the assumptions of comics studies It has become an axiom in comic studies that “comics is a language, not a genre.” But what exactly does that mean, and how is discourse on the form both aided and hindered by thinking of it in linguistic terms? In Comics…
Essays that query the roles of trust, truth, and family memoirs in autobiographical comics Essays by Jan Baetens, David M. Ball, Lopamudra Basu, Christopher Bush, Isaac Cates, Michael A. Chaney, Alisia Chase, Sharon O’Brien, Davida Pines, Yaël Schlick, Rachel Trousdale, and Benjamin Widiss Autobiography has seen enormous expansions and challenges over the past decades. One…
Michael Allred stands out for his blend of spiritual and philosophical approaches with an art style reminiscent of 1960s era superhero comics, which creates a mixture of both post-modernism and nostalgia. His childhood came during an era where pop art and camp embraced elements of kitsch and pastiche and introduced them into the lexicon of…
Contributions by Jan Baetens, Alain Boillat, Philippe Bourdier, Laura Caraballo, Thomas Faye, Pierre Floquet, Jean-Paul Gabilliet, Christophe Gelly, Nicolas Labarre, Benoît Mitaine, David Roche, Isabelle Schmitt-Pitiot, Dick Tomasovic, and Shannon Wells-Lassagne Both comics studies and adaptation studies have grown separately over the past twenty years. Yet there are few in-depth studies of comic books and…
The Thing. Daredevil. Captain Marvel. The Human Fly. Drawing on DC and Marvel comics from the 1950s to the 1990s and marshaling insights from three burgeoning fields of inquiry in the humanities–disability studies, death and dying studies, and comics studies–José Alaniz seeks to redefine the contemporary understanding of the superhero. Beginning in the Silver Age,…
The marvelous recovery of neglected black artists and their awesome body of comics creativity Syndicated cartoonist and illustrator Tim Jackson offers an unprecedented look at the rich yet largely untold story of African American cartoon artists. This book provides a historical record of the men and women who created seventy-plus comic strips, many editorial cartoons,…
Ed Brubaker (b. 1966) has emerged as one of the most popular, significant figures in art comics since the 1990s. Most famous as the man who killed Captain America in 2007, Brubaker’s work on company-owned properties such as Batman and Captain America and creator-owned series like Criminal and Fatale live up to the usual expectations…
Never before have comics seemed so popular or diversified, proliferating across a broad spectrum of genres, experimenting with a variety of techniques, and gaining recognition as a legitimate, rich form of art. Maaheen Ahmed examines this trend by taking up philosopher Umberto Eco’s notion of the open work of art, whereby the reader–or listener or…
From nineteenth-century American art and literature to comic books of the twentieth century and afterwards, Chad A. Barbour examines in From Daniel Boone to Captain America the transmission of the ideals and myths of the frontier and playing Indian in American culture. In the nineteenth century, American art and literature developed images of the Indian…
Contributions by Jônathas Miranda de Araújo, Guillaume de Syon, Hugo Frey, Kenan Koçak, Andrei Molotiu, Annick Pellegrin, Benjamin Picado, Vanessa Meikle Schulman, Matthew Screech, and Gwen Athene Tarbox As the creator of Tintin, Hergé (1907-1983) remains one of the most important and influential figures in the history of comics. When Hergé, born Georges Prosper Remi…
A critical study of the extraordinary Canadian comics creator At once familiar and hard to place, the work of acclaimed Canadian cartoonist Seth evokes a world that no longer exists–and perhaps never existed, except in the panels of long-forgotten comics. Seth’s distinctive drawing style strikingly recalls a bygone era of cartooning, an apt vehicle for…
Chris Murray reveals the largely unknown and rather surprising history of the British superhero. It is often thought that Britain did not have its own superheroes, yet Murray demonstrates that there were a great many in Britain and that they were often used as a way to comment on the relationship between Britain and America….
Boys Love Manga and Beyond looks at a range of literary, artistic and other cultural products that celebrate the beauty of adolescent boys and young men. In Japan, depiction of the “beautiful boy” has long been a romantic and sexualized trope for both sexes and commands a high degree of cultural visibility today across a…
Along with Batman, Spider-Man, and Superman, the Joker stands out as one of the most recognizable comics characters in popular culture. While there has been a great deal of scholarly attention on superheroes, very little has been done to understand supervillains. This is the first academic work to provide a comprehensive study of this villain,…
In The Expanding Art of Comics: Ten Modern Masterpieces, prominent scholar Thierry Groensteen offers a distinct perspective on important evolutions in comics since the 1960s through close readings of ten seminal works. He covers over half a century of comics production, sampling a single work from the sixties (Ballad of the Salt Sea by Hugo…
