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Nominee for the 2021 Eisner Awards Best Academic/Scholarly Work In the twenty-first century, the field of comics studies has exploded. Scholarship on graphic novels, comic books, comic strips, webcomics, manga, and all forms of comic art has grown at a dizzying pace, with new publications, institutions, and courses springing up everywhere. The field crosses disciplinary and cultural borders and brings together myriad traditions. Comics Studies: A Guidebook offers a rich but concise introduction to this multifaceted field, authored by leading experts in multiple disciplines. It opens diverse entryways to comics studies, including history, form, audiences, genre, and cultural, industrial, and economic contexts. An invaluable one-stop resource for veteran and new comics scholars alike, this guidebook represents the state of the art in contemporary comics scholarship.
Artists working in a variety of western European nations have overturned the dominant traditions of comic book publishing as it has existed since the end of the Second World War, seeking instead to instill the medium with experimental and avant-garde tendencies commonly associated with the visual arts. This book addresses this transformation.
Jean Giraud (1938–2012) started drawing comics in the late 1950s for a variety of French comics magazines. Under his real name, he found success in 1963 with the western series Blueberry, written by Jean-Michel Charlier and published in Pilote magazine. In the 1970s, he started producing science fiction works under the name of Moebius, which brought him international success, and which included works such as Arzach. He died in 2012 as a global celebrity in the comics world and a major influence across visual media. This first book-length, English-language study of Moebius finally brings international attention to an artist whose influence on the medium was profound and immediate, making hi...
Whereas in English-speaking countries comics are for children or adults 'who should know better', in France and Belgium the form is recognized as the 'Ninth Art' and follows in the path of poetry, architecture, painting and cinema. The bande dessinée [comic strip] has its own national institutions, regularly obtains front-page coverage and has received the accolades of statesmen from De Gaulle onwards. On the way to providing a comprehensive introduction to the most francophone of cultural phenomena, this book considers national specificity as relevant to an anglophone reader, whilst exploring related issues such as text/image expression, historical precedents and sociological implication. To do so it presents and analyses priceless manuscripts, a Franco- American rodent, Nazi propaganda, a museum-piece urinal, intellectual gay porn and a prehistoric warrior who's really Zinedine Zidane.
Autobiography in France has taken a decidedly visual turn in recent years: photographs, shown or withheld, become evidence of what was, might have been, or cannot be said; photographers, filmmakers, and cartoonists undertake projects that explore issues of identity. Textual and Visual Selves investigates, from a variety of theoretical perspectives, the ways in which the textual and the visual combine in certain French works to reconfigure ideas—and images—of self-representation. Surprisingly, what these accounts reveal is that photography or film does not necessarily serve to shore up the referentiality of the autobiographical account: on the contrary, the inclusion of visual material can even increase indeterminacy and ambiguity. Far from offering documentary evidence of an extratextual self coincident with the “I” of the text, these images testify only to absence, loss, evasiveness, and the desire to avoid objectification. However, where Roland Barthes famously saw the photograph as a prefiguration of death, in this volume we see how the textual strategies deployed by these writers and artists result in work that is ultimately life-affirming.
With essays by Baru, Bart Beaty, Cécile Vernier Danehy, Hugo Frey, Pascal Lefèvre, Fabrice Leroy, Amanda Macdonald, Mark McKinney, Ann Miller, and Clare Tufts In Belgium, France, Switzerland, and other French-speaking countries, many well-known comics artists have focused their attention on historical and political events. In works ranging from comic books and graphic novels to newspaper strips, cartoonists have addressed such controversial topics as French and Belgian collaboration and resistance during World War II, European colonialism and US imperialism, anti-Semitism in France, the integration of African immigrant groups in Europe, and the green and feminist movements. History and Pol...
Just pronounce the word “manga” and conflicted representations of media reception emerge: either passive teenagers immersed in Japanese fictional worlds, or hyperactive fans. To understand what drives a variety of teenagers to read manga, we conducted empirical research among French readers enrolled in secondary schools. Manga is part of a whole constellation of interests, including music and digital technology. It is also the object of analytical, ethical or concrete appropriations. Reading then becomes a way to deal with past experiences and to connect with others, to learn how to express emotions and to assert (or contest) age and gender norms.
In France, comics are commonly referred to as the "ninth art". What does it mean to see comics as art? This book looks at the singular status of comics in the French cultural landscape. Bandes dessinées have long been published in French newspapers and magazines. In the early 1960s, a new standard format emerged: large hardback books, called albums. Albums played a key role in the emergence of the ninth art and its acceptance among other forms of literary narrative. From Barbarella in 1964 to La Ballade de la mer salée in 1975, from Astérix and its million copies to Tintin and its screen versions, within the space of just a few years the comics landscape underwent a deep transformation. T...
Où en est la bande dessinée québécoise? Plaidoyer pour une juste reconnaissance de l’art de la bande dessinée au Québec, cet essai présente et analyse l’œuvre de 30 artistes et les grandes tendances dans le monde de la bande dessinée québécoise (BDQ) actuelle. Historienne de la BDQ, Mira Falardeau a offert dans ses deux précédents essais, La bande dessinée au Québec (1994) et Histoire de la bande dessinée au Québec (2008), une vision approfondie sur l’historique de cet art. Elle livre ici une analyse détaillée de planches choisies pour révéler toute la vitalité de cet art et démontrer la nécessité de le faire rayonner davantage. Elle formule aussi dix recommandations pour que la bande dessinée soit considérée comme un art à part entière au Québec et conclut en proposant deux bibliothèques idéales de BDQ pour tous les publics.