Publikationsmonitor

Monitor 51: Neue Publikationen

Im Monitor werden in unregelmäßigen Abständen aktuelle Publikationen aus den letzten 6 Monaten vorgestellt, die für die Comicforschung relevant sein könnten. Die kurzen Ankündigungstexte dazu stammen von den jeweiligen Verlagsseiten. Haben Sie Anregungen oder Hinweise auf Neuerscheinungen, die übersehen worden sind und hier erwähnt werden sollten? Das Team freut sich über eine Mail an redaktion@comicgesellschaft.de.
Zu früheren Monitoren.

 

Peanuts and American Culture: Essays on Charles M. Schulz’s Iconic Comic Strip

Peter W. Y. Lee
McFarland
211 Seiten
März 2019
Verlagsseite

Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz insisted good ol’ Charlie Brown and his friends were neither “great art” nor “significant.” Yet Schulz’s acclaimed daily comic strip—syndicated in thousands of newspapers over five decades—brilliantly mirrored tensions in American society during the second half of the 20th century.
Focusing on the strip’s Cold War roots, this collection of new essays explores existentialism, the reshaping of the nuclear family, the Civil Rights Movement, 1960s counterculture, feminism, psychiatry and fear of the bomb. Chapters focus on the development of Lucy, Peppermint Patty, Schroeder, Franklin, Shermy, Snoopy and the other characters that became American icons.“

 

Serial Selves: Identity and Representation in Autobiographical Comics

Frederik Byrn Køhlert
Rutgers University Press
242 Seiten
März 2019
Verlagsseite

„Autobiography is one of the most dynamic and quickly-growing genres in contemporary comics and graphic narratives. In Serial Selves, Frederik Byrn Køhlert examines the genre’s potential for representing lives and perspectives that have been socially marginalized or excluded. With a focus on the comics form’s ability to produce alternative and challenging autobiographical narratives, thematic chapters investigate the work of artists writing from perspectives of marginality including gender, sexuality, disability, and race, as well as trauma. Interdisciplinary in scope and attuned to theories and methods from both literary and visual studies, the book provides detailed formal analysis to show that the highly personal and hand-drawn aesthetics of comics can help artists push against established narrative and visual conventions, and in the process invent new ways of seeing and being seen.
As the first comparative study of how comics artists from a wide range of backgrounds use the form to write and draw themselves into cultural visibility, Serial Selves will be of interest to anyone interested in the current boom in autobiographical comics, as well as issues of representation in comics and visual culture more broadly.“

 

The Ages of The Flash: Essays on the Fastest Man Alive

Joseph J. Darowski (Hg.)
McFarland
194 Seiten
April 2019
Verlagsseite

„While many American superheroes have multiple powers and complex gadgets, the Flash is simply fast. This simplicity makes his character easily comprehendible for all audiences, whether they are avid comic fans or newcomers to the genre, and in turn he has become one of the most iconic figures in the comic-book industry. This collection of new essays serves as a stepping-stone to an even greater understanding of the Flash, examining various iterations of his character—including those of Jay Garrick, Barry Allen, Wally West and Bart Allen—and what they reveal about the era in which they were written.“

 

The Artistry of Neil Gaiman: Finding Light in the Shadows

Joseph Michael Sommers und Kyle Eveleth (Hgs.)
University Press of Mississippi
300 Seiten
April 2019
Verlagsseite

„Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) reigns as one of the most critically decorated and popular authors of the last fifty years. Perhaps best known as the writer of the Harvey, Eisner, and World Fantasy-award winning series The Sandman, Gaiman quickly became equally renowned in literary circles for Neverwhere, Coraline, and award-winning American Gods, as well as the Newbery and Carnegie Medal-winning The Graveyard Book. For adults, children, comics readers, and viewers of the BBC’s Doctor Who, Gaiman’s writing has crossed the borders of virtually all media, making him a celebrity around the world.
Despite Gaiman’s incredible contributions to comics, his work remains underrepresented in sustained fashion in comics studies. The thirteen essays and two interviews with Gaiman and his frequent collaborator, artist P. Craig Russell, examine the work of Gaiman and his many illustrators. The essays discuss Gaiman’s oeuvre regarding the qualities that make his work unique in his eschewing of typical categories, his proclamations to „make good art,“ and his own constant efforts to do so however the genres and audiences may slip into one another.
The Artistry of Neil Gaiman forms a complicated picture of a man who always seems fully assembled virtually from the start of his career, but only came to feel comfortable in his own voice far later in life. „

Monitor 50: Neue Publikationen

Im Monitor werden in unregelmäßigen Abständen aktuelle Publikationen aus den letzten 6 Monaten vorgestellt, die für die Comicforschung relevant sein könnten. Die kurzen Ankündigungstexte dazu stammen von den jeweiligen Verlagsseiten. Haben Sie Anregungen oder Hinweise auf Neuerscheinungen, die übersehen worden sind und hier erwähnt werden sollten? Das Team freut sich über eine Mail an redaktion@comicgesellschaft.de.
Zu früheren Monitoren.

 

Young People, Comics and Reading: Exploring a Complex Reading Experience

Lucia Cedeira Serantes
Elements in Publishing and Book Culture
Cambridge University Press
110 Seiten
Februar 2019
Verlagsseite

„Scholars and professionals interested in the study and engagement with young people will find this project relevant to deepening their understanding of reading practices with comics and graphic novels. Comics reading has been an understudied experience despite its potential to enrich our exploration of reading in our currently saturated media landscape. This Element is based on seventeen in-depth interviews with teens and young adults who describe themselves as readers of comics for pleasure. These interviews provide insights about how comics reading evolves with the readers and what they consider a good or bad reading experience. Special attention is paid to the place of female readers in the comics community and material aspects of reading. From these readers, one begins to understand why comics reading is something that young people do not ‚grow out of‘ but an experience that they ‚grow with‘.“

 

Perspectives on Digital Comics: Theoretical, Critical and Pedagogical Essays

Jeffrey S.J. Kirchoff, Mike P. Cook (Hgs.)
McFarland
257 Seiten
Februar 2019
Verlagsseite

„This collection of new essays explores various ways of reading, interpreting and using digital comics. Contributors discuss comics made specifically for web consumption, and also digital reproductions of print-comics. Written for those who may not be familiar with digital comics or digital comic scholarship, the essays cover perspectives on reading, criticism and analysis of specific titles, the global reach of digital comics, and how they can be used in educational settings.“

 

“I’m Just a Comic Book Boy”: Essays on the Intersection of Comics and Punk

Christopher B. Field, u.a. (Hgs.)
McFarland
240 Seiten
Februar 2019
Verlagsseite

„Comics and the punk movement are inextricably linked—each has a foundational do-it-yourself ethos and a nonconformist spirit defiant of authority. This collection of new essays provides for the first time a thorough analysis of the intersections between comics and punk. The contributors expand the discussion beyond the familiar U.S. and UK scenes to include the influence punk has had on comics produced in other countries, such as Spain and Turkey.“

 

Urban Comics: Infrastructure and the Global City in Contemporary Graphic Narratives

Dominic Davies
Routledge
274 Seiten
März 2019
Verlagsseite

Urban Comics: Infrastructure and the Global City in Contemporary Graphic Narratives makes an important and timely contribution both to comics studies and urban studies, offering a decolonisation and reconfiguration of both of these already interdisciplinary fields. With chapter-length discussions of comics from cities such as Cairo, Cape Town, New Orleans, Delhi and Beirut, this book shows how artistic collectives and urban social movements working across the global South are producing some of the most exciting and formally innovative graphic narratives of the contemporary moment.
Throughout, the author reads an expansive range of graphic narratives through the vocabulary of urban studies to argue that these formal innovations should be thought of as a kind of infrastructure. This ‘infrastructural form’ allows urban comics to reveal that the built environments of our cities are not static, banal, or depoliticised, but rather highly charged material spaces that allow some forms of social life to exist while also prohibiting others. Built from a formal infrastructure of grids, gutters and panels, and capable of volumetric, multi-scalar perspectives, this book shows how urban comics are able to represent, repair and even rebuild contemporary global cities toward more socially just and sustainable ends.
Operating at the intersection of comics studies and urban studies, and offering large global surveys alongside close textual and visual analyses, this book explores and opens up the fascinating relationship between comics and graphic narratives, on the one hand, and cities and urban spaces, on the other.“

 

EC Comics: Race, Shock, and Social Protest

Qiana Whitted
Rutger’s University Press
196 Seiten
März 2019
Verlagsseite

„Entertaining Comics Group (EC Comics) is perhaps best-known today for lurid horror comics like Tales from the Crypt and for a publication that long outlived the company’s other titles, Mad magazine. But during its heyday in the early 1950s, EC was also an early innovator in another genre of comics: the so-called “preachies,” socially conscious stories that boldly challenged the conservatism and conformity of Eisenhower-era America.
EC Comics examines a selection of these works—sensationally-titled comics such as “Hate!,” “The Guilty!,” and “Judgment Day!”—and explores how they grappled with the civil rights struggle, antisemitism, and other forms of prejudice in America. Putting these socially aware stories into conversation with EC’s better-known horror stories, Qiana Whitted discovers surprising similarities between their narrative, aesthetic, and marketing strategies. She also recounts the controversy that these stories inspired and the central role they played in congressional hearings about offensive content in comics.
The first serious critical study of EC’s social issues comics, this book will give readers a greater appreciation of their legacy. They not only served to inspire future comics creators, but also introduced a generation of young readers to provocative ideas and progressive ideals that pointed the way to a better America.“

Publikationshinsweis „Überzeichnete Spektakel“ & Round Table „Comics, Ästhetik und Gewalt“ in Gießen

Soeben ist ComFor-Mitglied Jörn Ahrens‘ Monographie „Überzeichnete Spektakel. Inszenierungen von Gewalt im Comic“ im Nomos-Verlag erschienen.

Zur Buchveröffentlichung findet am 14. Mai in Gießen ein Roundtable über Comics, Ästhetik und Gewalt mit den Autor sowie den weiteren ComFor-Mitgliedern Frank Thomas Brinkmann, Prof. für Praktische Theologie und Religionspädagogik, Ole Frahm, Comicforscher und Mitglied der Künstlergruppe LIGNA, und Kirsten von Hagen, Prof.in für Romanische Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft, statt.

Klappentext:
„Comic und Gewalt teilen eine lange Geschichte. Über Jahrzehnte hinweg hatte der Comic ein Image als gewaltaffines Medium. Diese konstruierte Nähe zur Gewalt hat sein Selbstverständnis nachhaltig geprägt. Die Studie geht davon aus, dass Inszenierungen von Gewalt im Comic zu untersuchen heißt, dass man dessen formale Aspekte nicht ignorieren kann und legt exemplarische Fallstudien vor. Dabei gilt: Die Form bestimmt den Inhalt. Gewaltdarstellungen im Comic lassen sich nicht verstehen ohne Berücksichtigung der Formbedingungen ihrer Darstellung. Als Teil einer Auseinandersetzung mit der Bildlichkeit der Welt geht der Comic von einem visuellen Kern von Kultur aus und setzt dies konsequent um. Dazu nutzt er vor allem Techniken der Überzeichnung und des Spektakels – was früher als Zeichen seiner „Primitivität“ galt, stellt eine besondere Kompetenz des Comic dar.
Dies ist die erste Monographie zum Thema.
Mit Studien zu ‚Sin City‘, ‚Helden ohne Skrupel‘, ‚100 Bullets‘, ‚DMZ‘, Baru, Joe Sacco, Hermann Huppen und Winshluss.“

Verlagsseite

Zeitschriftenmonitor 02: Neue Ausgaben

Der Zeitschriftenmonitor ist eine Unterkategorie des Monitors. Hier werden in unregelmäßigen Abständen kürzlich erschienene Ausgaben und Artikel internationaler Zeitschriften zur Comicforschung sowie Sonderhefte mit einschlägigem Themenschwerpunkt vorgestellt. Die Ankündigungstexte und/oder Inhaltsverzeichnisse stammen von den jeweiligen Websites.
Haben Sie Anregungen oder Hinweise auf Neuerscheinungen, die übersehen worden sind und hier erwähnt werden sollten? Das Team freut sich über eine Mail an redaktion@comicgesellschaft.de.
Zu früheren Monitoren


IJOCA (International Journal of Comic Art) 20.2 (2018)

print (im Abonnement)
Website

  • John A. Lent: A 20-Year Harvest of Comic Art Scholarship: International Journal of Comic Art 1999-2018
  • Rob Rogers: Six in a Row? That Has to Be Some Kind of Record!
  • Haydon Manning, Robert Phiddian: The Editorial Cartoon’s Fading Impact – The State of Play in Australia at the Federal Election of 2016 and Beyond
  • John A. Lent: The New Wave of Investigative Cartooning in South Korea
  • Benjamin Wai-ming Ng: Drawing Chinese Political Cartoons in Japan: Blessing in Disguise or Trade-off?
  • Leonard Rifas: The Politics of Underground Comix and the Environmental Crisis
  • Richard Scully: Mark Knight vs Serena Williams – Crossing the Line: Offensive and Controversial Cartoons in the 21st Century – „The View from Australia“ – Part Two
  • Lim Cheng Tju: Morgan Chua (1949-2018) and Political Cartooning in Singapore
  • Sara S. Elmaghraby: Cartooning Poverty: Are Cartoonists Helping Sustainable Development in Egypt?
  • Jose Alaniz: „Hippies“ and Pacifism in Igor Kolgarev’s Militariisk Comics
  • Milind Ranade: Discovering Tom Browne and His Postcards
  • Jeffrey SJ Kirchoff: Beyond the Printed Page: Dementia, Graphic Medicine, and Digital Comics
  • Janis Breckenridge, Maia Watkins: Reading Between the Lines: Drawing on the Horrors of Disappearance in „Un asesino anda suelto“
  • Mike Rhode: A Chat with Izar Lunacek of Slovenia
  • Izar Lunacek: A Brief History of Slovenian Comics
  • Melanie Hernandez: Currier & Ives’s Darktown Series: Recovering White Social Capital through Violent Satire
  • Tomasz Zaglewski: Superhero Sentimentalism. Analyzing the Social Media Nostalgia for the First Wave of American Comics in Poland
  • Jean Braithwaite: Navigating Jimmy Corrigan: Time, Space, and Puzzles, Including Pagination
  • Marlene Pohle: A Cartoonist Chronicler of Cartoonists‘ Confabs
  • William H. Foster III: March Graphic Novel: „American History Lives Again“
  • Steve Danziger: Malice, Metaphysics, and Mengele – Holocaust Motifs and the Renunciation of Evil in EC Horror Comics
  • Robyn Johnson: Bishie Man or Woman, It Matters Not: Grotesque Resistance to Heteronormative Love in Yu Wo’s 1/2 Prince
  • Citlaly Aguilar Campos: Liminality and Meta-fiction in Comics: The Ayotzinapa Case by Augusto Mora
  • Joilo Batista Freitas Cardoso, Caio Mattos Moreira Cardoso: The V Mask in Translation: From Commercial to Subversive Systems
  • Ken Junior Lipenga: Intersections of Sex and Violence in Preacher
  • Ignacio Fernandez Sarasola: Crime News: Blaming Comic Books for Crimes Committed During the „Golden Age“
  • J.T.H. Connor: Behind the Scenes of the „War in Comics“ Exhibit: An Interview with Canada’s Andrew Loman and Irene Velentzas
  • Paola Moreno Izaguirre: Art Toy as Anatomical Sketch
  • Northrop Davis: Legendary Hollywood Designer Syd Mead’s Important Contributions to Landmark Anime
  • Barry Pearl: Charles M. Schulz: Cartoons Without Peanuts

Studies in Comics 9.2 (2018)

online (im Abonnement)
Website

  • Joshua Gowdy: Meaning from Movement: Blurring the Temporal Border between Animation and Comics
  • Carolina Martins: Unfolding and Crossing the Augmented Space: Metaleptic Tools and Processes within Graphic Narrative Installations
  • Tara McInerney: Doujinshi and Comiket: A Day of ‘Hare’
  • J. B. O’Ready: Exploring the Borders between American, Muslim, Female and Superhero Identities with Kamala Khan
  • Stella Oh: Colonial Hauntings in Lynda Barry’s One Hundred Demons
  • Paul Fisher Davies: Goffman’s Frame Analysis, Modality and Comics
  • Nancy Pedri: Breaking Out of Panels: Formal Expressions of Subjectivity in Ellen Forney’s Marbles and Una’s Becoming Unbecoming
  • Lauranne Poharec: Focalized Split Panels: Bridging the Borders in Comics Form
  • Golnar Nabizadeh: An Interview with Shaun Tan

Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 9 (2018)

online (im Abonnement)
Website

  • Esther De Bruijn, Kelsey Hughes: Millennial Capitalism’s Vampires: The South African Graphic Novel Rebirth
  • Tomasz Żaglewski: ‘A Joke less Killing’. Animated Remediation of a Comic Book as an Extra-mediation
  • Cord A. Scott: Cold War Politics, Cuba, and Spy vs. Spy
  • Dominic Davies: Graphic Katrina: Disaster Capitalism, Tourism Gentrification and the Affect Economy in Josh Neufeld’s A.D.: New Orleans after the Deluge (2009)
  • Olivia Albiero: Between Free Movement and Confinement: Overcoming Boundaries in Simon Schwartz’s Drüben! and Colleen Frakes’s Prison Island
  • William Schulte, Nathaniel Frederick: Black Panther and Black Agency: Constructing Cultural Nationalism in Comic Books Featuring Black Panther, 1973–1979
  • Francesca Battaglia: Gender Boundaries in Saiyūki by Kazuya Minekura: The Queer Family as a Model of Leadership
  • Buket Akgün: Mythology Moe-ified: Classical Witches, Warriors, and Monsters in Japanese Manga
  • A. J. Paylor: “Hello World!” Gwenpool: Marvel’s Camusian Absurd Hero
  • Francesco-Alessio Ursini: ‘Alla Ricerca dei Plumcake Perduti’: Visual Metaphors, Satire, and Intertextuality in Zero Calcare’s fumetti
  • Vera J. Camden, Valentino L. Zullo: Wonder Woman and the Public Humanities: A Reflection on the 2016 Wonder Woman Symposium
  • Vera J. Camden, Valentino L. Zullo: Truth, Justice, and the Amazonian Way: An Interview with Greg Rucka
  • Phil Jimenez: Wonder Woman, Feminist Icon? Queer Icon? No, Love Icon
  • Trina Robbins: Babes in Arms
  • Melanie Elizabeth Gibson: Rising from the Ashes: Making Spaces for new Children’s Comics Cultures in Britain in the 21st Century
  • Genevieve Valentine: Empire of a Wicked Woman: Catwoman, Royalty, and the Making of a Comics Icon
  • Vera J. Camden, Valentino L. Zullo: Wonder Woman Symposium Roundtable
  • Chris Gavaler, Leigh Ann Beavers: Clarifying Closure

ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies 10.2 (2018-2019)

online (open access)
Website

  • Jon Holt: What You See Is What You Get: Visualizing Hypocrisy in Umezu Kazuo’s Manga Cat-Eyed Boy
  • Rui Lopes: “must we all remain helpless?”: Superman vs. the Nuclear Threat in the Late Cold War
  • Russell McConnell: Historical Avant-Garde: How Marcia Williams Recreates Shakespeare’s Theater in the Comics Medium
  • Kai Mikkonen, Olli Philippe Lautenbacher: Global Attention in Reading Comics: Eye-movement Indications of Interplay between Narrative Content and Layout
  • Nicholas Wirtz: Beyond Words: The Visual Demands of Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Goražde
  • Asuka Yamazaki: “Only the Winner is Allowed to Live”: The Concept of Cannibalism in Attack on Titan

The Comics Grid 9 (2019)

online (open access)
Website

  • Ken Junior Lipenga: The New Normal: Enfreakment in Saga
  • Paul Fisher Davies: New Choices of the Comics Creator
  • Pat Grant: The Board and the Body: Material Constraints and Style in Graphic Narrative
  • Enrique del Rey Cabero: Beyond Linearity: Holistic, Multidirectional, Multilinear and Translinear Reading in Comics
  • Melanie McGovern, Martin Paul Eve: Information Labour and Shame in Farmer and Chevli’s Abortion Eve
  • Ian Hornsby: …Comic Books, Möbius Strips, Philosophy and…

Monitor 49: Neue Publikationen

Im Monitor werden in unregelmäßigen Abständen aktuelle Publikationen aus den letzten 6 Monaten vorgestellt, die für die Comicforschung relevant sein könnten. Die kurzen Ankündigungstexte dazu stammen von den jeweiligen Verlagsseiten. Haben Sie Anregungen oder Hinweise auf Neuerscheinungen, die übersehen worden sind und hier erwähnt werden sollten? Das Team freut sich über eine Mail an redaktion@comicgesellschaft.de. → Zu früheren Monitoren.

Teaching Comics Through Multiple Lenses: Critical Perspectives

Crag Hill (Hg.)
Routledge
186 Seiten
Dezember 2018
Verlagsseite

„Building off the argument that comics succeed as literature—rich, complex narratives filled with compelling characters interrogating the thought-provoking issues of our time—this book argues that comics are an expressive medium whose moves (structural and aesthetic) may be shared by literature, the visual arts, and film, but beyond this are a unique art form possessing qualities these other mediums do not. Drawing from a range of current comics scholarship demonstrating this point, this book explores the unique intelligence/s of comics and how they expand the ways readers engage with the world in ways different than prose, or film, or other visual arts. Written by teachers and scholars of comics for instructors, this book bridges research and pedagogy, providing instructors with models of critical readings around a variety of comics.“

Funny Girls: Guffaws, Guts, and Gender in Classic American Comics

Michelle Ann Abate
University Press of Mississippi
286 Seiten
Dezember 2018
Verlagsseite

„For several generations, comics were regarded as a boy’s club — created by, for, and about men and boys. In the twenty-first century, however, comics have seen a rise of female creators, characters, and readers.
Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the medium was enjoyed equally by both sexes, and girls were the protagonists of some of the earliest, most successful, and most influential comics. In Funny Girls: Guffaws, Guts, and Gender in Classic American Comics, Michelle Ann Abate examines the important but long-overlooked cadre of young female protagonists in US comics during the first half of the twentieth century. She treats characters ranging from Little Orphan Annie and Nancy to Little Lulu, Little Audrey of the Harvey Girls, and Li’l Tomboy — a group that collectively forms a tradition of funny girls in American comics.
Abate demonstrates the massive popularity these funny girls enjoyed, revealing their unexplored narrative richness, aesthetic complexity, and critical possibility. Much of the humor in these comics arose from questioning gender roles, challenging social manners, and defying the status quo. Further, they embodied powerful points of collection about both the construction and intersection of race, class, gender, and age, as well as popular perceptions about children, representations of girlhood, and changing attitudes regarding youth. Finally, but just as importantly, these strips shed light on another major phenomenon within comics: branding, licensing, and merchandising. Collectively, these comics did far more than provide amusement — they were serious agents for cultural commentary and sociopolitical change.“

Breaking the Frames: Populism and Prestige in Comics Studies

Marc Singer
World Comics and Graphic Nonfiction Series
University of Texas Press
312 Seiten
Januar 2019
Verlagsseite

„Comics studies has reached a crossroads. Graphic novels have never received more attention and legitimation from scholars, but new canons and new critical discourses have created tensions within a field built on the populist rhetoric of cultural studies. As a result, comics studies has begun to cleave into distinct camps — based primarily in cultural or literary studies — that attempt to dictate the boundaries of the discipline or else resist disciplinarity itself. The consequence is a growing disconnect in the ways that comics scholars talk to each other — or, more frequently, do not talk to each other or even acknowledge each other’s work.
Breaking the Frames: Populism and Prestige in Comics Studies surveys the current state of comics scholarship, interrogating its dominant schools, questioning their mutual estrangement, and challenging their propensity to champion the comics they study. Marc Singer advocates for greater disciplinary diversity and methodological rigor in comics studies, making the case for a field that can embrace more critical and oppositional perspectives. Working through extended readings of some of the most acclaimed comics creators — including Marjane Satrapi, Alan Moore, Kyle Baker, and Chris Ware — Singer demonstrates how comics studies can break out of the celebratory frameworks and restrictive canons that currently define the field to produce new scholarship that expands our understanding of comics and their critics.“

The Comics of Julie Doucet and Gabrielle Bell: A Place inside Yourself

Tahneer Oksman und Seamus O’Malley (Hgs.)
Critical Approaches to Comics Artists Series
University Press of Mississippi
240 Seiten
Januar 2019
Verlagsseite

„In a self-reflexive way, Julie Doucet’s and Gabrielle Bell’s comics defy easy categorization. In this volume, editors Tahneer Oksman and Seamus O’Malley regard Doucet’s and Bell’s art as actively feminist, not only because they offer women’s perspectives, but because they do so by provocatively bringing up the complicated, multivalent frameworks of such engagements. While each artist has a unique perspective, style, and worldview, the essays in this book investigate their shared investments in formal innovation and experimentation, and in playing with questions of the autobiographical, the fantastic, and the spaces in between.
Doucet is a Canadian underground cartoonist, known for her autobiographical works such as Dirty Plotte and My New York Diary. Meanwhile, Bell is a British American cartoonist best known for her intensely introspective semiautobiographical comics and graphic memoirs, such as the Lucky series and Cecil and Jordan in New York. By pairing Doucet alongside Bell, the book recognizes the significance of female networks, and the social and cultural connections, associations, and conditions that shape every work of art. “

The Representation of Genocide in Graphic Novels: Considering the Role of Kitsch

Laurike in’t Veld
Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels
Palgrave Macmillan
240 Seiten
Januar 2019
Verlagsseite

„This book mobilises the concept of kitsch to investigate the tensions around the representation of genocide in international graphic novels that focus on the Holocaust and the genocides in Armenia, Rwanda, and Bosnia. In response to the predominantly negative readings of kitsch as meaningless or inappropriate, this book offers a fresh approach that considers how some of the kitsch strategies employed in these works facilitate an affective interaction with the genocide narrative. These productive strategies include the use of the visual metaphors of the animal and the doll figure and the explicit and excessive depictions of mass violence. The book also analyses where kitsch still produces problems as it critically examines depictions of perpetrators and the visual and verbal representations of sexual violence. Furthermore, it explores how graphic novels employ anti-kitsch strategies to avoid the dangers of excess in dealing with genocide. The Representation of Genocide in Graphic Novels will appeal to those working in comics-graphic novel studies, popular culture studies, and Holocaust and genocide studies.“

Zeitschriftenmonitor 01: Neue Ausgaben

Mit diesem Post geht auf der ComFor-Website eine neue Rubrik an den Start: der Zeitschriftenmonitor, eine Unterkategorie des Monitors. Hier werden in unregelmäßigen Abständen kürzlich erschienene Ausgaben und Artikel internationaler Zeitschriften zur Comicforschung sowie Sonderhefte mit einschlägigem Themenschwerpunkt vorgestellt. Die Ankündigungstexte und/oder Inhaltsverzeichnisse stammen von den jeweiligen Websites.
Haben Sie Anregungen oder Hinweise auf Neuerscheinungen, die übersehen worden sind und hier erwähnt werden sollten? Das Team freut sich über eine Mail an redaktion@comicgesellschaft.de.
Zu früheren Monitoren


European Comic Art 11.2 (Sep. 2018)

Themenschwerpunkt: Spanish Comics, part II
print & online im Abonnement
Website

  • Anne Magnussen: Introduction
  • Louie Dean Valencia-García: Tintin in the Movida Madrileña: Gender and Sexuality in the Punk Comic Book Zine Scene
  • Gerardo Vilches: Satirical Panels against Censorship: A Battle That Raged during the Spanish Transition
  • Juan Carlos Pérez García: The Representation of Traumatic Memory in Spanish Comics: Remembering the Civil War and Francoism in Panels
  • Sarah D. Harris: They Tried To Bury Us; They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds’: Intergenerational Memory and La casa
  • Agatha Mohring: Therapeutic Journeys in Contemporary Spanish Graphic Novels

Comicalités: Études de culture graphique (17.11.2018)

online, open access
Website

  • Frédéric Ducarme: Are nekketsu shōnen manga sports manga? The example of Dragon Ball
  • Élise Awaïda Carton and Stéphane Carpentier: Monde sportif et univers des super-héros de bandes dessinées: Quelles remises en cause des normes corporelles?
  • Sylvain Aquatias: Genre et légitimité dans l’édition de bande dessinée: pt. 1: Le poids de la légitimité, des revues aux collections; pt. 2: Le roman graphique ou la négation du genre

Image [&] Narrative 19.3 (Nov. 2018)

Themenschwerpunkt: Lewis Trondheim
online, open access
Website

  • Chris Reyns-Chikuma, David Pinho Barros: Introduction «Lewis Trondheim, un artiste-orchestre dans le monde de la bande dessinée»
  • Chantal Cointot: Approximate Author-ity: Self-Crafting “Le Bec” and Other Trondheimian Masks
  • Côme Martin: Monumentaux inachèvements : Lapinot et les carottes de Patagonie et Capharnaüm
  • Fabrice Leroy: Quand les lapins volent : Onirisme, minimalisme et abstraction dans Lapinot et les carottes de Patagonie de Lewis Trondheim
  • Ann Miller: Trondheim, artist of the supermodern city and interstitial travel through the non-lieux
  • Jérôme Dutel: D’une mouche « expérimentale » à plusieurs mouches « commerciales »? Passages d’une bande dessinée (1995) à une série d’animation (1999-2001)

 

allmende: Zeitschrift für Literatur 38.102 (Dez. 2018)

Themenschwerpunkt: Graphic Novel
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„Was versteht man unter einer Graphic Novel? Und vor allem: Warum erfährt sie in der deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur solche Aufmerksamkeit? Neben aktuellen Tendenzen innerhalb der Szene, ob autobiografischer, zeitkritischer oder feministischer Natur, wird die Graphic Novel als Literaturgattung ins Auge gefasst. Wer waren die Initiatoren dieses Genres? Welche Impulsgeber gestalten die Szene heute aktiv mit? Wir wollen einen Beitrag leisten zur Vorstellung der »neunten Kunst« und ihren Vertreterinnen und Vertretern.
Mit Beiträgen von Titus Ackermann, Stefanie Diekmann, Tim Dinter, Matthias Gnehm, Nora Krug, Yi Luo, Ulli Lust, Nicolas Mahler, Uli Oesterle, Andreas Platthaus, Thomas Pletzinger, Kati Rickenbach, Jan Soeken, Thomas von Steinaecker, Tina Stolt, Mara Stuhlfauth-Trabert, Florian Trabert.“

Publikationshinweis: „Recontextualizing Characters“

Im Januar frisch erschienen ist das Themenheft Recontexualizing Characters. Media Convergence and Pre-/Meta-Narrative Character Circulation“ der Zeitschrift IMAGE. Das Open Access Format versammelt Aufsätze zu Comic- und Manga-Figuren – und deren theoretische Reflexion; unter anderem geht es um die mediale Verfasstheit von Batman, (Hello) Kitty, Sailor Moon, Star Wars-Protagonist_innen, Dr. Doom und Hatsune Miku.
Entstanden ist das Heft im Rahmen der ‚Winter School‘ der Universität Tübingen 2018
. Herausgeber und einer von sechs Beiträger_innen ist ComFor-Vorstandsmitglied Lukas R.A. Wilde.

IMAGE | Issue 29 | Special Issue Recontextualizing Characters | 01/2019
Vollzugriff

Monitor 48: Neue Publikationen

Im Monitor werden in unregelmäßigen Abständen aktuelle Publikationen aus den letzten 6 Monaten vorgestellt, die für die Comicforschung relevant sein könnten. Die kurzen Ankündigungstexte dazu stammen von den jeweiligen Verlagsseiten. Haben Sie Anregungen oder Hinweise auf Neuerscheinungen, die übersehen worden sind und hier erwähnt werden sollten? Das Team freut sich über eine Mail an redaktion@comicgesellschaft.de. → Zu früheren Monitoren.

Adventure Comics and Youth Cultures in India

Raminder Kaur und Saif Eqbal
Routledge
226 Seiten
ISBN 978-1138358683 (Paperback)
~£29.99
Oktober 2018
Verlagsseite

„This pioneering book presents a history and ethnography of adventure comic books for young people in India with a particular focus on vernacular superheroism. It chronicles popular and youth culture in the subcontinent from the mid-twentieth century to the contemporary era dominated by creative audio-video-digital outlets.
The authors highlight early precedents in adventures set by the avuncular detective Chacha Chaudhary with his ‘faster than a computer brain’, the forays of the film veteran Amitabh Bachchan’s superheroic alter ego called Supremo, the Protectors of Earth and Mankind (P.O.E.M.), along with the exploits of key comic book characters, such as Nagraj, Super Commando Dhruv, Parmanu, Doga, Shakti and Chandika. The book considers how pulp literature, western comics, television programmes, technological developments and major space ventures sparked a thirst for extraterrestrial action and how these laid the grounds for vernacular ventures in the Indian superhero comics genre. It contains descriptions, textual and contextual analyses, excerpts of interviews with comic book creators, producers, retailers and distributers, together with the views, dreams and fantasies of young readers of adventure comics. These narratives touch upon special powers, super-intelligence, phenomenal technologies, justice, vengeance, geopolitics, romance, sex and the amazing potentials of masked identities enabled by navigation of the internet.“

The Disappearance of Hong Kong in Comics, Advertising and Graphic Design

Wendy Wong
Palgrave
245 Seiten
ISBN 978-3-319-92095-5 (Hardcover)
~$84.99
November 2018
Verlagsseite

„This book examines Hong Kong’s struggle against the disappearance of its unique identity under the historical challenges of colonialism, in addition to the more recent reimposition of Chinese authoritarian government control, as reflected in three under-researched forms of visual media: comics, advertising and graphic design. Each section of the book focuses on one of these three forms, and each chapter focuses on one stage of Hong Kong’s changing cultural identity. The articulative position of this book is on studies of visual cultural history and media communication. Its case studies will broaden readers’ own cultural knowledge for a more international understanding. The Disappearance of Hong Kong in Comics, Advertising and Graphic Design advances the development of its three key subjects in terms of identity, communication and cultural politics, aiming to reach a wide range of multidisciplinary readers.“

Superhero Bodies: Identity, Materiality, Transformation

Wendy Haslem, Elizabeth MacFarlane und Sarah Richardson (Hgs.)
Routledge
196 Seiten
ISBN 978-1138389892 (Hardcover)
~£115.99
November 2018
Verlagsseite

„Throughout the history of the genre, the superhero has been characterised primarily by physical transformation and physical difference. Superhero Bodies: Identity, Materiality, Transformation explores the transformation of the superhero body across multiple media forms including comics, film, television, literature and the graphic novel. How does the body of the hero offer new ways to imagine identities?  How does it represent or subvert cultural ideals? How are ideologies of race, gender and disability signified or destabilised in the physicality of the superhero? How are superhero bodies drawn, written and filmed across diverse forms of media and across histories?
This volume collects essays that attend to the physicality of superheroes: the transformative bodies of superheroes, the superhero’s position in urban and natural spaces, the dialectic between the superhero’s physical and metaphysical self, and the superhero body’s relationship with violence. This will be the first collection of scholarly research specifically dedicated to investigating the diversity of superhero bodies, their emergence, their powers, their secrets, their histories and their transformations.“

Comics: Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven aus Theorie und Praxis auf ein Stiefkind der Medienpädagogik

Christine Dallmann, Anja Hartung, Alfons Aigner und Kai-Thorsten Buchele (Hgs.)
Kopaed
280 Seiten
ISBN 978-3-86736-495-9 (Paperback)
~€20.00
Dezember 2018
Verlagsseite

„Comics standen lange im Verruf, simpler Unterhaltungsstoff zu sein, der nur mehr von der Lektüre anspruchsvoller, ja bildungswertvoller Literatur abzuhalten suche. Bereits die bewahrpädagogische Debatte im frühen 20. Jahrhundert verurteilte Comics als „Schmutz und Schund“ und damit als schädlich für die moralische und geistige Entwicklung von Kindern und Jugendlichen. Wenngleich bewahrpädagogische Positionen sich gegenwärtig eher gegen andere Medien richten, haben sich viele Vorbehalte gegen Comics bis heute gehalten. Zu Unrecht, meint Ralf Vollbrecht, und dem stimmen die Herausgeberinnen und Herausgeber dieses Bandes zu und unternehmen den Versuch einer medienpädagogisch motivierten Annäherung. Dabei werden Bezüge sowohl zum wissenschaftlichen Werk und Wirken von Ralf Vollbrecht als auch zu seinen Comic-Präferenzen hergestellt. Mit diesem durchaus unkonventionellen Ansatz möge der Band hier und da bereichernde Einblicke gewähren, in seiner bebilderten Form auch unterhalten und möglicherweise sogar eine weitere Beschäftigung mit dem Themenfeld Comics aus medienpädagogischer Perspektive anregen.“

Batman and the Multiplicity of Identity: The Contemporary Comic Book Superhero as Cultural Nexus

Jeffrey A. Brown
Routledge
226 Seiten
ISBN 978-1138302853 (Hardcover)
~£110.00
Dezember 2018
Verlagsseite

„Concentrating primarily on contemporary depictions of Batman in the comic books, this book analyzes why Batman is so immensely popular right now in America and globally, and how the fictional Dark Knight reveals both new cultural concerns and longstanding beliefs about American values. The organizing premise is that while Batman is perceived as a very clearly defined character, he is open to a wide range of interpretations and depictions in the comics (what Henry Jenkins refers to as „multiplicities“), each of which allows access to different cultural issues. The idea of Batman functions as an anchoring point out of which multiple Batmen, or Batman-like characters, can occupy different positions: Grim Batman, Gay Batman, Female Batman, Black Batman, Cute Batman, and so on. Each iteration opens up a discussion of different cultural issues pertinent to modern society, such as sexuality, ethnicity, feminism and familial relationships.“

Publikationshinweis „Autobiografie intermedial“

Vor kurzem ist im AISTHESIS Verlag der von ComFor-Mitglied Kalina Kupczynska und Jadwiga Kita-Huber herausgegebene Sammelband „Autobiografie intermedial“ erschienen. Darin findet sich u. a. ein Kapitel zur „Comic-Autobiografie“ mit Beiträgen weiterer ComFor-Mitglieder.

Autobiografie intermedial.
Fallstudien zur Literatur und zum Comic

Jadwiga Kita-Huber und Kalina Kupczynska (Hg.)

545 Seiten, Deutsch,
mit zahlreichen Abbildungen.
AISTHESIS Verlag
ISBN 978-3-8498-1282-9
€ 48,00 (zzgl. Versandkosten)

Zur Verlagsseite

Verlagsankündigung:
„Medien spielen im Kontext der Autobiografie eine tragende Rolle. Zum einen begleiten sie menschliche Biografien, entscheiden über die Intensität der Erinnerung und formen ihre Speicherung. Zum anderen prägen sie die Praxis des autobiografischen Schreibens, indem sie die Kulturtechniken des Er­innerns mitbestimmen. Besonders aufschlussreich sind hierbei intermediale Formen der Autobiografie, etwa Comics oder virtuelle Autobiografien, welche die literarische Produktion nachhaltig verändern. Ist die wachsende Verbreitung der intermedialen Autobiografie ein Symptom für die Veränderung des kulturellen Gedächtnisses überhaupt? Der Band versammelt diverse Sichtweisen auf die autobiografische Praxis und versteht sich als Versuch, Autobiografie- und Comicforschung einander anzunähern. Das Spektrum reicht von einem Aufriss aktueller Positionen zur Autobiografieforschung über die Darstellung unterschiedlicher Aspekte des Phänomens (experimentelle Tendenzen der historischen Autobiografie sowie neuere mediale Formen der Autobiografie) bis hin zur Frage der existentiellen Dimension autobiografischer Erzählung.“

Monitor 47: Neue Publikationen 2018

Im Monitor werden in unregelmäßigen Abständen aktuelle Publikationen aus den letzten 6 Monaten vorgestellt, die für die Comicforschung relevant sein könnten. Die kurzen Ankündigungstexte dazu stammen von den jeweiligen Verlagsseiten. Haben Sie Anregungen oder Hinweise auf Neuerscheinungen, die übersehen worden sind und hier erwähnt werden sollten? Das Team freut sich über eine Mail an redaktion@comicgesellschaft.de. → Zu früheren Monitoren.

The Politics of Race, Gender and Sexuality in The Walking Dead: Essays on the Television Series and Comics

Elizabeth L. Erwin und Dawn Keetley (Hgs.)
McFarland
200 Seiten
ISBN 978-1476668499 (Paperback)
~$39,95
August 2018
Verlagsseite

„From the beginning, both Robert Kirkman’s comics and AMC’s series of The Walking Dead have brought controversy in their presentations of race, gender and sexuality. Critics and fans have contended that the show’s identity politics have veered toward the decidedly conservative, offering up traditional understandings of masculinity, femininity, heterosexuality, racial hierarchy and white supremacy.
This collection of new essays explores the complicated nature of relationships among the story’s survivors. In the end, characters demonstrate often-surprising shifts that consistently comment on identity politics. Whether agreeing or disagreeing with critics, these essays offer a rich view of how gender, race, class and sexuality intersect in complex new ways in the TV series and comics.“

Gender and the Superhero Narrative

Michael Goodrum und Tara Prescott (Hgs.)
University Press of Mississippi
306 Seiten
ISBN 978-1496821102 (Paperback)
~$ 30,00
Oktober 2018
Verlagsseite

„The explosive popularity of San Diego’s Comic-Con, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Rogue One, and Netflix’s Jessica Jones and Luke Cage all signal the tidal change in superhero narratives and mainstreaming of what were once considered niche interests.
Yet just as these areas have become more openly inclusive to an audience beyond heterosexual white men, there has also been an intense backlash, most famously in 2015’s Gamergate controversy, when the tension between feminist bloggers, misogynistic gamers, and internet journalists came to a head. The place for gender in superhero narratives now represents a sort of battleground, with important changes in the industry at stake. These seismic shift s–both in the creation of superhero media and in their critical and reader reception–need reassessment not only of the role of women in comics, but also of how American society conceives of masculinity.
Gender and the Superhero Narrative launches ten essays that explore the point where social justice meets the Justice League. Ranging from comics such as Ms. Marvel, Batwoman: Elegy, and Bitch Planet to video games, Netflix, and cosplay, this volume builds a platform for important voices in comics research, engaging with controversy and community to provide deeper insight and thus inspire change.“

Incorrigibles and Innocents: Constructing Childhood and Citizenship in Progressive Era Comics

Lara Saguisag
Rutgers University Press
252 Seiten
ISBN 978-0-8135-9176-6 (Paperback)
~$27,95
Oktober 2018
Verlagsseite

„Histories and criticism of comics note that comic strips published in the Progressive Era were dynamic spaces in which anxieties about race, ethnicity, class, and gender were expressed, perpetuated, and alleviated. The proliferation of comic strip children—white and nonwhite, middle-class and lower class, male and female—suggests that childhood was a subject that fascinated and preoccupied Americans at the turn of the century. Many of these strips, including R.F. Outcault’s Hogan’s Alley and Buster Brown, Rudolph Dirks’s The Katzenjammer Kids and Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland were headlined by child characters. Yet no major study has explored the significance of these verbal-visual representations of childhood. Incorrigibles and Innocents addresses this gap in scholarship, examining the ways childhood was depicted and theorized in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century comic strips. Drawing from and building on histories and theories of childhood, comics, and Progressive Era conceptualizations of citizenship and nationhood, Lara Saguisag demonstrates that child characters in comic strips expressed and complicated contemporary notions of who had a right to claim membership in a modernizing, expanding nation.“

Serials to Graphic Novels: The Evolution of the Victorian Illustrated Book

Lara Saguisag
University Press of Florida
318 Seiten
ISBN 978-0813064987 (Paperback)
~$24,95
Oktober 2018
Verlagsseite

„The Victorian illustrated book came into being, flourished, and evolved during the long nineteenth century. While existing scholarship on Victorian illustrators largely centers on the realist artists of the „Sixties,“ this volume examines the entire lifetime of the Victorian illustrated book. Catherine Golden offers a new framework for viewing the arc of this vibrant genre, arguing that it arose from and continually built on the creative vision of the caricature-style illustrators of the 1830s. She surveys the fluidity of illustration styles across serial installments, British and American periodicals, adult and children’s literature, and–more recently–graphic novels.
Serials to Graphic Novels examines widely recognized illustrated texts, such as The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Rabbit, and Trilby. Golden explores factors that contributed to the early popularity of the illustrated book—the growth of commodity culture, a rise in literacy, new printing technologies—and that ultimately created a mass market for illustrated fiction.
Golden identifies present-day visual adaptations of the works of Austen, Dickens, and Trollope as well as original Neo-Victorian graphic novels like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Victorian-themed novels like Batman: Noël as the heirs to the Victorian illustrated book. With these adaptations and additions, the Victorian canon has been refashioned and repurposed visually for new generations of readers.“

Comics and Sacred Texts Reimagining Religion and Graphic Narratives

Assaf Gamzou und Ken Koltun-Fromm (Hgs.)
University Press of Mississippi
322 Seiten
ISBN 978-1496819475 (Paperback)
~$30,00
November 2018
Verlagsseite

„Comics and Sacred Texts explores how comics and notions of the sacred interweave new modes of seeing and understanding the sacral. Comics and graphic narratives help readers see religion in the everyday and in depictions of God, in transfigured, heroic selves as much as in the lives of saints and the meters of holy languages. Coeditors Assaf Gamzou and Ken Koltun-Fromm reveal the graphic character of sacred narratives, imagining new vistas for both comics and religious texts.
In both visual and linguistic forms, graphic narratives reveal representational strategies to encounter the sacred in all its ambivalence. Through close readings and critical inquiry, these essays contemplate the intersections between religion and comics in ways that critically expand our ability to think about religious landscapes, rhetorical practices, pictorial representation, and the everyday experiences of the uncanny.
Organized into four sections–Seeing the Sacred in Comics; Reimagining Sacred Texts through Comics; Transfigured Comic Selves, Monsters, and the Body; and The Everyday Sacred in Comics–the essays explore comics and graphic novels ranging from Craig Thompson’s Habibi and Marvel’s X-Men and Captain America to graphic adaptions of religious texts such as 1 Samuel and the Gospel of Mark.“