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This study explores how the definition of the medium, as well as its language, readership, genre conventions, and marketing and distribution strategies, have kept comic books within the realm of popular culture. Since comics have been studied mostly in relation to mass media and its influence on society, there is a void in the analysis of the critical issues related to comics as a distinct genre and art form. By focusing on comics as narratives and investigating their formal and structural aspects, as well as the unique reading process they demand, this study presents a unique contribution to the current literature on comics, and helps clarify concepts and definitions useful in studying the medium. (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Alberta, 1995; revised with new preface, bibliography, and index)
Winner, 2021 Katherine Singer Kovács Book Award, given by the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Winner, 2021 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards for Best Academic/Scholarly Work Honorable Mention, 2021 Harry Shaw and Katrina Hazzard-Donald Award for Outstanding Work in African-American Popular Culture Studies, given by the Popular Culture Association Winner, 2020 Charles Hatfield Book Prize, given by the Comic Studies Society Traces the history of racial caricature and the ways that Black cartoonists have turned this visual grammar on its head Revealing the long aesthetic tradition of African American cartoonists who have made use of racist caricature as a black diasporic art practice, Reb...
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 and American comics and Gothic, summarizing the development of both their creative content and critical models, and discussing censorship, allusion and self-awareness. Part Two brings together some of the gothic narrative strategies of comics and reinterprets critical approaches to the comics medium, arguing for an holistic model based around the symbols of the crypt, the spectre and the archive. Part Three then combines cultural and textual analysis, discussing the communities that have built up around comics and gothic artifacts and concluding with case studies of two of the most famous gothic archetypes in comics: the vampire and the zombie.
To See the Wizard: Politics and the Literature of Childhood takes its central premise, as the title indicates, from L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Upon their return to The Emerald City after killing the Wicked Witch of the West, the task the Wizard assigned them, Dorothy, the Tin Woodman, Scarecrow, and Lion learn that the wizard is a “humbug,” merely a man from Nebraska manipulating them and the citizens of both the Emerald City and of Oz from behind a screen. Yet they all continue to believe in the powers they know he does not have, still insisting he grant their wishes. The image of the man behind the screen—and the reader’s continued pursuit of the Wizard—is a po...
Troubling Tricksters is a collection of theoretical essays, creative pieces, and critical ruminations that provides a re-visioning of trickster criticism in light of recent backlash against it. The complaints of some Indigenous writers, the critique from Indigenous nationalist critics, and the changing of academic fashion have resulted in few new studies on the trickster. For example, The Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature (2005), includes only a brief mention of the trickster, with skeptical commentary. And, in 2007, Anishinaabe scholar Niigonwedom Sinclair (a contributor to this volume) called for a moratorium on studies of the trickster irrelevant to the specific experience...
The Jewish Graphic Novel is a lively, interdisciplinary collection of essays that addresses critically acclaimed works in this subgenre of Jewish literary and artistic culture. Featuring insightful discussions of notable figures in the industryùsuch as Will Eisner, Art Spiegelman, and Joann Sfarùthe essays focus on the how graphic novels are increasingly being used in Holocaust memoir and fiction, and to portray Jewish identity in America and abroad
This book analyzes the theme of homelessness in American literature from the Civil War through the depression. Drawing on the work of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Horatio Alger, Stephen Crane, Jacob Riis, Jack London, Meridel Le Sueur and many others, it reveals how homelessness has been either romanticized or objectified.
Without a doubt Chris Ware is one of the preeminent creators of comics today. He is a brilliant figure in a generation of extraordinarily talented people. Granted, there are a lot of innovators in the field right now, but no one else in the last seventy years has explored the capabilities of the genre to the same extent as has Ware. His genius, in part, comes from his interest in and understanding of the past accomplishments of figures such as George Herriman and Winsor McCay. One might even say that much of his work is somewhat archaeological in nature: he is interested in a reclamation of the past. Rather than merely excavating the achievements of past masters for the sake of history, howe...
This collection represents a tool to broaden and deepen our geographical, institutional, and historical understanding of the term totalitarianism. Is totalitarianism only found in ‘other’ societies? How come, then, it emerged historically in ‘ours’ first? How come it developed in so many countries either in Western Europe (Italy, Germany, Portugal, and Spain) or under implicit Western forms of coercion (Latin America)? How do relations between individual(s), mass and the visual arts relate to totalitarian trends? These are among the questions this book asks about totalitarianism. The volume does not impose a ‘one size fits all’ interpretation, but opens new spaces for debate on t...
The Marvel Cinematic Universe--comprised of films, broadcast television and streaming series and digital shorts--has generated considerable fan engagement with its emphasis on socially relevant characters and plots. Beyond considerable box office achievements, the success of Marvel's movie studios has opened up dialogue on social, economic and political concerns that challenge established values and beliefs. This collection of new essays examines those controversial themes and the ways they represent, construct and distort American culture.