Frederick Luis Aldama (Hrsg.): Multicultural Comics: From Zap to Blue Beetle. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010. 271 Pages. Hardcover (978-0-292-72281-1), $55.00; paperback (978-0-292-73743-3), $25.00.
Much critical ink has been spilled in recent years about the emergence of comics studies as a new and vibrant academic interdiscipline. As the research collected in publications such as Jeet Heer and Kent Worcester’s A Comics Studies Reader (2009), Randy Duncan and Matthew J. Smith’s The Power of Comics (2009) and Smith and Duncan’s Critical Approaches to Comics (2012) indicates, scholars across a variety of disciplines and institutional backgrounds are devoting much attention the study of comics. In Germany, this trend is reflected in the work of the Gesellschaft für Comicforschung (ComFor) and the prodigious scholarship produced by many of its members, published in conference proceedings, essay collections, and monographs that will undoubtedly leave an imprint on the perception of comics in academia and beyond. [1]
In the United States, the situation is even more advanced, and high-profile scholarly monographs published by major university presses are becoming increasingly common – think, for example, of Hillary Chute’s enlightening Graphic Women (2010) and Jared Gardner’s superb Projections (2012). What these and similar works suggest is that we are entering a new phase of comics studies, a phase in which scholars no longer feel the need to justify or apologize for their research interests and choice of subject matter. In this new phase, addressing questions about the place of comics within specific academic disciplines and research traditions and discussing how the analysis of comics can broaden our understanding of these disciplines and traditions is more pertinent than repeating the old adages that “comics are worthy of study, too,” and that “comics are not just for kids.” Matthew Pustz’s Comic Books and American Cultural History (2012), for instance, aims to integrate comic books into the field of historical analysis; Michael Chaney’s Graphic Subjects (2011) unites comics studies with autobiography theory; and the latest special issue of Amerikastudien/American Studies, edited by Christina Meyer, Micha Edlich, and myself, approaches comic books and graphic novels from various American studies perspectives. [2]
