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In the 1980s, a sea change occurred in comics. Fueled by Art Spiegel- man and Françoise Mouly's avant-garde anthology Raw and the launch of the Love & Rockets series by Gilbert, Jaime, and Mario Hernandez, the decade saw a deluge of comics that were more autobiographical, emotionally realistic, and experimental than anything seen before. These alternative comics were not the scatological satires of the 1960s underground, nor were they brightly colored newspaper strips or superhero comic books. In Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature, Charles Hatfield establishes the parameters of alternative comics by closely examining long-form comics, in particular the graphic novel. He argues that ...
Distinctive Styles and Authorship in Alternative Comics addresses the benefits and limits of analyses of style in alternative comics. It offers three close readings of works serially published between 1980 and 2018 – Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For, and Jason Lutes’ Berlin – and discusses how artistic style may influence the ways in which readers construct authorship.
A race for the Ark of the Covenant finds an exploration into the ethics and world of the international antiquity trade When a great antiquities collector is forced to donate his entire collection to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Nili Broshi sees her last chance to finish an archaeological expedition begun decades earlier—a dig that could possibly yield the most important religious artifact in the Middle East. Motivated by the desire to reinstate her father’s legacy as a great archaeologist after he was marginalized by his rival, Nili enlists a ragtag crew—a religious nationalist and his band of hilltop youths, her traitorous brother, and her childhood Palestinian friend, now an a...
Mid-Life is the story of a forty-year-old man, John, who becomes a father again with his much-younger second wife which results in a slow, painful attack by flowered baby bags and front facing baby carriers on his former virility and self identity. John always believed that age is a state of mind, however, his adult daughters, baby son, energetic wife, stressful job, house full of cats, and flabby body complete with bloated stomach and sagging bosom all lead John reluctantly to admit that he is having a midlife crisis. The crisis drives John to yell at his wife, pick fights with his daughters and miss deadlines at work that put his job on the line. John takes solace from the stress of everyd...
With contributions from Will Brooker, Jeffrey A. Brown, Scott Bukatman, John G. Cawelti, Peter Coogan, Jules Feiffer, Charles Hatfield, Henry Jenkins, Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence, Gerard Jones, Geoff Klock, Karin Kukkonen, Andy Medhurst, Adilifu Nama, Walter Ong, Lorrie Palmer, Richard Reynolds, Trina Robbins, Lillian Robinson, Roger B. Rollin, Gloria Steinem, Jennifer Stuller, Fredric Wertham, and Philip Wylie Despite their commercial appeal and cross-media reach, superheroes are only recently starting to attract sustained scholarly attention. This groundbreaking collection brings together essays and book excerpts by major writers on comics and popular culture. While superhero c...
Jaime's definitive statement on post-punk culture. Maggie, Hopey, and the rest of Las Locas prowl Los Angeles, the East Coast, and parts in between trying to recapture the carefree spirit of those early days a decade ago.
Featuring over 80 full-color portraits of the pioneering legends of American comic books, including publishers, editors and artists from the industry’s birth in the ’30s, through the brilliant artists and writers of behind EC Comics in the ’50s. All lovingly rendered and chosen by Drew Friedman, a cartooning legend in his own right. Featuring subjects popular and obscure, men and women, as well as several pioneering African-American artists. Each subject features a short essay by Friedman, who grew up knowing many of the subjects included (as the son of writer Bruce Jay Friedman), including Stan Lee, Harvey Kurtzman, Will Eisner, Mort Drucker, Al Jaffee, Jack Davis, Will Elder, and Bill Gaines. More names you might recognize: Barks, Crumb, Wood, Wolverton, Frazetta, Siegel & Shuster, Kirby, Cole, Ditko, Werthem… it’s a Hall of Fame of comic book history from the man BoingBoing.com call “America’s greatest living portrait artist!”
The move from the underground to the mainstream by many fanzines and underground comics has been largely ignored by the mainstream media. These writings consider how and why this has occurred and the relationship between reader and producer.
Gilbert Shelton is the creator of the multi-million selling Freak Brothers and Fat Freddy's Cat. Wonder Wart-Hog was his earliest creation and probably still his favourite. The character has appeared over the years in publications varying from Drag Cartoons to Zap Comix as well as several comics of his own. There is even a Wonder Wart-Hog motocross team!
True Swamp: Stoneground and Hillbound is Jon Lewis' follow-up to 2000's True Swamp: Underwoods and Overtime, which was named as one of the Top Ten Comics of 2000 on TIME magazine's list of the Year's Best Comics. Like its predecessor, Stoneground and Hillbound is a hefty 64-pager teeming with swampy intrigues, mossy insights and earthy humor. Lenny the Frog, in search of a new job, journeys to the hidden grotto of a visionary sculptor who has mastered the medium of clay but not the medium of social interaction. Next to this creature, Lenny looks like the very picture of balance and sanity - can our frog handle working in such conditions? Meanwhile, we get a good look at Miln the Tortoise's w...