Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> Comics & Graphic Novels

This essay collection examines the theory and history of graphic narrative - realized in various different formats, including comic strips, comic books, and graphic novels - as one of the most interesting and versatile forms of storytelling in contemporary media culture. The contributions assembled in this volume test the applicability of narratological concepts to graphic narrative, examine aspects of graphic narrative beyond the 'single work, ' consider the development of particular narrative strategies within individual genres, and trace the forms and functions of graphic narrative...

George Benjamin Luks (1867-1933) is renowned for the oil paintings, watercolors, and pastel drawings he created as an acclaimed member of the artists' collective known as the Ashcan School. His professional development came, however, from his apprenticeship as a newspaper and magazine artist. Luks spent his early career drawing cartoons, spot illustrations, political caricatures, and comic strips for the New York World and other papers. These early portraits and stories of street urchins, peddlers, shopkeepers, and other ordinary New Yorkers would all be revisited in his later...

The early 1980s saw a revolution in mainstream comics--in subject matter, artistic integrity, and creators' rights--as new methods of publishing and distribution broadened the possibilities. Among those artists utilizing these new methods, Chester Brown (b. 1960) quickly developed a cult following due to the undeniable quality and originality of his Yummy Fur (1983-1994).

Chester Brown: Conversations collects interviews covering all facets of the cartoonist's long career and includes several pieces from now-defunct periodicals and fanzines. It also includes original...

"Sean Howe's history of Marvel makes a compulsively readable, riotous and heartbreaking version of my favorite story, that of how a bunch of weirdoes changed the world...That it's all true is just frosting on the cake."
--Jonathan Lethem

"Exhaustively researched and artfully assembled, this book is a historical exploration, a labor of love, and a living illustration of how the weirdest corners of the counterculture can sometimes become the culture-at-large."
-- Chuck Klosterman

In the early 1960s, Marvel Comics introduced a series of bright-costumed superhero...

Best known for her long-running comic strip Ernie Pook's Comeek, illustrated fiction (Cruddy, The Good Times Are Killing Me), and graphic novels (One Hundred Demons ), the art of Lynda Barry (b. 1956) has branched out to incorporate plays, paintings, radio commentary, and lectures. With a combination of simple, raw drawings and mature, eloquent text, Barry's oeuvre blurs the boundaries between fiction and memoir, comics and literary fiction, and fantasy and reality. Her recent volumes What It Is (2008) and Picture This (2010) fuse autobiography,...

If the source of manga and anime is physically located in Japan, the temptation for many critics and scholars is to ask what aspects of Japanese culture and history gave rise to these media. This ninth volume of Mechademia--an annual collection of critical work on anime and manga--challenges the tendency to answer the question of origins by reductively generalizing and essentializing "Japaneseness."

The essays brought together in Mechademia 9 lead us to understand the extent to which "Japan" might be seen as an idea generated by anime, manga, and other texts...

The intersections of law and contemporary culture are vital for comprehending the meaning and significance of law in today's world. Far from being unsophisticated mass entertainment, comics and graphic fiction both imbue our contemporary culture, and are themselves imbued, with the concerns of law and justice. Accordingly, and spanning a wide variety of approaches and topics from an international array of contributors, Graphic Justice draws comics and graphic fiction into the range of critical resources available to the academic study of law. The first book to do this, Graphic...

Between the covers of Vixens, Vamps & Vipers, fans will rediscover the original bad girls of comics--as fierce and full of surprises as they were when the comic book industry was born. From murderous Madame Doom to He-She, dubbed by io9 as "the most unsung comic book villain ever," Mike Madrid resurrects twenty-two glorious evildoers in fully reproduced comics and explores the ways they both transcend and become ensnared in a web of cultural...

The early 1980s saw a revolution in mainstream comics--in subject matter, artistic integrity, and creators' rights--as new methods of publishing and distribution broadened the possibilities. Among those artists utilizing these new methods, Chester Brown (b. 1960) quickly developed a cult following due to the undeniable quality and originality of his Yummy Fur (1983-1994).

Chester Brown: Conversations collects interviews covering all facets of the cartoonist's long career and includes several pieces from now-defunct periodicals and fanzines. It also includes original...

In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, this collection--which gathers scholars in the fields of race, ethnicity, and humor--seems especially urgent. Inspired by Denmark's Muhammad cartoons controversy, the contributors inquire into the role that racial and ethnic stereotypes play in visual humor and the thin line that separates broad characterization as a source of humor from its power to shock or exploit. The authors investigate the ways in which humor is used to demean or give identity to racial, national, or ethnic groups...

Black Women in Sequence takes readers on a search for women of African descent in comics subculture. From the 1971 appearance of the Skywald Publications character "the Butterfly" - the first Black female superheroine in a comic book - to contemporary comic books, graphic novels, film, manga, and video gaming, a growing number of Black women are becoming producers, viewers, and subjects of sequential art.

As the first detailed investigation of Black women's participation in comic art, Black Women in Sequence examines the representation, production, and transnational...

Black Women in Sequence takes readers on a search for women of African descent in comics subculture. From the 1971 appearance of the Skywald Publications character "the Butterfly" - the first Black female superheroine in a comic book - to contemporary comic books, graphic novels, film, manga, and video gaming, a growing number of Black women are becoming producers, viewers, and subjects of sequential art.

As the first detailed investigation of Black women's participation in comic art, Black Women in Sequence examines the representation, production, and transnational...

In 1965, Gene Basset, a well-known political cartoonist, was sent to Vietnam
by his newspaper publishing syndicate. His assignment: to sketch scenes of the
increasingly controversial war in order to help the newspaper-reading public
better understand the events occurring in Southeast Asia.
In much the same way that M.A.S.H. gave viewers an irreverent, wry view of
war and its devastating effects on citizens as well as soldiers, Basset s sketches
portray the everyday, often mundane, aspects of wartime with an intimate touch
that eases access to the dark subject matter....

Spider-Man could not stop disaster.

Superman abandoned earth.

Batman lost a war to madness.

Captain America was assassinated.

The post-9/11 world has been dangerous for superheroes. Since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, superheroes have grown darker, more realistic, and more fallible and flawed than ever before.

The scary part is what their transformation says about all of us.

Filled with in-depth analysis and thought- provoking questions, The Superhero Response is sure to fascinate die-hard fans and casual readers alike.