Publications & Ressources

Monitor 75: New Publications on Comic Books

Monitor is an irregularly published overview of publications from the previous six months that may be of relevance to comics studies scholars. The introductory texts are the respective publishers’. Do you have suggestions or information on new releases that have been overlooked and should be introduced on our website? Please let us know via email: redaktion@comicgesellschaft.de.
See previous Monitor posts.


Bildung im Comic: Die pädagogischen Elemente des Bildungsromans in Keiji Nakazawas Barfuß durch Hiroshima

Kieler Berichte, Vol. 26

Erik Rading
Universitätsverlag Kiel
August 2023
Publisher’s website

In den vergangenen Jahren wurden immer wieder Untersuchungen veröffentlicht, die sich der Frage widmeten, ob bestimmte Comics als Bildungsromane verstanden werden können. Trotz vermeintlich naheliegender Anschlusspunkte, z. B. der (literarischen) Auseinandersetzung mit lebensweltlichen Vorstellungen von Bildung, sucht man dabei eine pädagogische Perspektive weitestgehend vergebens. Dieser Leerstelle versucht sich der vorliegende Beitrag anzunehmen, indem er die Übertragung der pädagogischen Elemente des Bildungsromans auf den Comic untersucht. Dabei folgt er der Annahme, dass sich schon im Bildungsroman wie auch im Comic lebensweltliche, gesellschaftliche und historische Verständnisse pädagogische relevanter Themen und Intentionen, wie z. B. Bildung, Entwicklung oder Erziehung, artikulieren können, ohne dass diese Ansprüchen an explizit wissenschaftlich-pädagogische Theorien genügen müssen. Wie in den genannten Untersuchungen üblich, wird zur Bearbeitung dieses Forschungsanliegens ein Comic – hier die ersten vier Bände von Barfuß durch Hiroshima des japanischen Mangaka Keiji Nakazawa – als exemplarischer Forschungsgegenstand herangezogen und hermeneutisch nach den pädagogisch relevanten Elementen des Bildungsromans analysiert. Im Zuge dessen werden – entsprechend dem methodischen Vorgehen – Überlegungen zu einer spezifischen Hermeneutik des Comics präsentiert, der bisher als Erzählform kaum Berücksichtigung in methodologisch-hermeneutischen Überlegungen fand.”

 


Secondary Action Heroes of Golden Age Comics

Lou Mougin
McFarland
August 2023
Publisher’s website

“The 1940s saw the birth of many enduring superheroes like Superman, Batman, Captain America and Captain Marvel. Outside of the superhero genre, the golden age of comics also featured a host of lesser-known, evil-fighting action figures, and this book contains a wealth of information about these heroes without capes. Covered here are jungle heroines like Sheena, Rulah and Princess Pantha; science fiction stalwarts including Spacehawk, Hunt Bowman and Futura; adventurers such as Kayo Kirby, Werewolf Hunter and Senorita Rio; and Western heroes ranging from Tom Mix to the Ghost Rider.”

 

Comics and Migration: Representation and Other Practices

Global Perspectives in Comics Studies

Ralf Kauranen, Olli Löytty, Aura Nikkilä, Anna Vuorinne (Eds.)
Routledge
2023
Publisher’s website

“Comics and human mobility have a long history of connections. This volume explores these entanglements with a focus on both how comics represent migration and what applied uses comics have in relation to migration. The volume examines both individual works of comic art and examples of practical applications of comics from across the world.
Comics are well-suited to create understanding, highlight truthful information, and engender empathy in their audiences, but are also an art form that is preconditioned or even limited by its representational and practical conventions. Through analyses of various practices and representations, this book questions the uncritical belief in the capacity of comics, assesses their potential to represent stories of exile and immigration with compassion, and discusses how xenophobia and nationalism are both reinforced and questioned in comics. The book includes essays by both researchers and practitioners such as activists and journalists whose work has combined a focus on comics and migration. It predominantly scrutinises comics and activities from more peripheral areas such as the Nordic region, the German-language countries, Latin America, and southern Asia to analyse the treatment and visual representation of migration in these regions.”

 

Muslim Comics and Warscape Witnessing

Studies in Comics and Cartoons

Esra Mirze Santesso
Ohio State University Press
September 2023
Publisher’s website

“Recent decades have seen an unprecedented number of comics by and about Muslim people enter the global market. Now, Muslim Comics and Warscape Witnessing offers the first major study of these works. Esra Mirze Santesso assesses Muslim comics to illustrate the multifaceted nature of seeing and representing daily lives within and outside of the homeland. Focusing on contemporary graphic narratives that are primarily but not exclusively from the Middle East—from blockbusters like Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis to more local efforts such as Leila Abdelrazaq’s Baddawi—Santesso explores why the graphic form has become a popular and useful medium for articulating Muslim subjectivities. Further, she shows how Muslim comics “bear witness” to a range of faith-based positions that complicate discussions of global ummah or community, contest monolithic depictions of Muslims, and question the Islamist valorization of the shaheed, the “martyr” figure regarded as the ideal religious witness. By presenting varied depictions of everyday lives of Muslims navigating violence and militarization, this book reveals the connections between religious rituals and existence in warscapes and invites us to more deeply consider the nature of witnessing itself.”

 

The Cambridge Companion to the American Graphic Novel

Cambridge Companions to Literature

Jan Baetens, Hugo Frey, Fabrice Leroy (Eds.)
Cambridge University Press
September 2023
Publisher’s website

The Cambridge Companion to the American Graphic Novel explores the important role of the graphic novel in reflecting American society and in the shaping of the American imagination. Using key examples, this volume reviews the historical development of various subgenres within the graphic novel tradition and examines how graphic novelists have created multiple and different accounts of the American experience, including that of African American, Asian American, Jewish, Latinx, and LGBTQ+ communities. Reading the American graphic novel opens a debate on how major works have changed the idea of America from that once found in the quintessential action or superhero comics to show new, different, intimate accounts of historical change as well as social and individual, personal experience. It guides readers through the theoretical text-image scholarship to explain the meaning of the complex borderlines between graphic novels, comics, newspaper strips, caricature, literature, and art.”

 


Ilan Manouach in Review: Critical Approaches to his Conceptual Comics

Pedro Moura (Ed.)
Routledge
September 2023
Publisher’s website

“This book takes an interdisciplinary and diverse critical look at the work of comic artist Ilan Manouach, situating it within the avant-garde movement more broadly.
An international team of authors engages with the topic from diverse theoretical approaches, from traditional narratology and aesthetic close readings of some of Manouach’s books, engaging with comics’ own distinctive history, modes of production, circulation and reception, to perspectives from disability studies, post-colonial studies, technological criticism, media ecology, ontography, posthumanist philosophy, and issues of materiality and media specificity.
This innovative and timely volume will interest students and scholars of comic studies, media studies, media ecology, literature, cultural studies, and visual studies.”

 


Batman’s Villains and Villainesses: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Arkham’s Souls*

Justin F. Martin, Marco Favaro (Eds.)
Lexington Books
September 2023
Publisher’s website

“While much of the scholarship on superhero narratives has focused on the heroes themselves, Batman’s Villains and Villainesses: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Arkham’s Souls takes into view the depiction of the villains and their lives, arguing that they often function as proxies for larger societal and philosophical themes. Approaching Gotham’s villains from a number of disciplinary backgrounds, the essays in this collection highlight how the villains’ multifaceted backgrounds, experiences, motivations, and behaviors allow for in-depth character analysis across varying levels of social life. Through investigating their cultural and scholarly relevance across the humanities and social sciences, the volume encourages both thoughtful reflection on the relationship between individuals and their social contexts and the use of villains (inside and outside of Gotham) as subjects of pedagogical and scholarly inquiry.”

 


*The ComFor editorial board regrets the lack of diversity in this publication. We endeavour to cover the entire spectrum of comics studies, report in a neutral way and keep the editorial selection process to a minimum. But we are also aware of the problematic structures that shape our academic research environment and that frequently lead to a lower visibility of female comics scholars as well as those with marginalised identities in general. We know that this imbalance is often not intended by the editors / organisers and we do not want to imply this in any way. But nonetheless, we would like to draw attention to it to raise awareness for this problem.

Monitor 74: New Publications on Comic Books

Monitor is an irregularly published overview of publications from the previous six months that may be of relevance to comics studies scholars. The introductory texts are the respective publishers’. Do you have suggestions or information on new releases that have been overlooked and should be introduced on our website? Please let us know via email: redaktion@comicgesellschaft.de.
See previous Monitor posts.


Disability and the Superhero: Essays on Ableism and Representation in Comic Media

Amber E. George (ed.)
Ch. A. Bachmann Verlag
June 2023
Publisher’s website

“This is a collection of essays that analyze the presence of ableism in superhero narratives from television shows, films, and comics. Contributors use critical disability studies, media studies, cultural studies, and other interdisciplinary fields to unveil the misinformation, stigma, and exclusion caused by ableist representations of disability or disability-related experiences. Ableism is unmasked in media franchises such as DC Comics, Marvel, Sesame Street, and more.
These essays go beyond what is currently available in critical disability superhero studies, and explore both the well-known and lesser-known characters including Iron Man, Daredevil, Dr. Strange, Thor, Nick Fury, Jessica Jones, War Machine, Wonder Woman, Dr. Poison, the Joker, Bucky Barnes, Punisher, Rocket and Groot, Luke Cage, Captain America, and Sesame Street’s Super Grover. They also offer insightful intersectional analyses of entire series, films, and shows such as Arrowverse and The Ables.”

 

The Early Reception of Manga in the West

Bildnarrative, Vol. 13

Martin de la Iglesia
Ch. A. Bachmann Verlag
March 2023
Publisher’s website

“Nowadays, manga are ubiquitous not only in their home country Japan but also in the Western world. In some Western countries, they have even surpassed American and European comics in popularity. When did this manga boom start? Many people would think of the late 1990s, when dubbed anime adaptations of manga such as Dragon Ball or Sailor Moon ran on television.
This book, however, explores an earlier wave of manga around the year 1990. It examines what the first translated editions of Kazuo Koike and Gōseki Kojima’s Lone Wolf and Cub and Shōtarō Ishinomori’s Japan Inc. looked like, and how readers in the United States and in Germany reacted towards these manga.
Their impact was still rather limited, but then, this first manga wave culminated in 1988/1991 when Katsuhiro Ōtomo’s manga masterpiece, Akira, was published in English and German, among other languages. Its reception in the West is analysed in great depth in this book, including chapters on the perception of Akira as cyberpunk and its anime adaptation.
Akira opened the floodgates, and in its wake, many more manga titles found their way to American and European readers, including even lengthy but otherwise mediocre series such as Kazuo Koike and Ryōichi Ikegami’s Crying Freeman, the last of the four manga examined in this book. Although manga sales would later soar to greater heights in the 2000s with One Piece, Naruto and others, the first manga wave of ca. 1987–1995 deserves to be remembered for having paved the way.”

 

Drawing from the Archives: Comics Memory in the Contemporary Graphic Novel

Benoît Crucifix
Cambridge UP
July 2023
Publisher’s website

“Following Art Spiegelman’s declaration that ‘the future of comics is in the past,’ this book considers comics memory in the contemporary North American graphic novel. Cartoonists such as Chris Ware, Seth, Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, and others have not only produced some of the most important graphic novels, they have also turned to the history of comics as a common visual heritage to pass on to new readers. This book is a full-length study of contemporary cartoonists when they are at work as historians: it offers a detailed description of how they draw from the archives of comics history, examining the different gestures of collecting, curating, reprinting, forging, swiping, and undrawing that give shape to their engagement with the past. In recognizing these different acts of transmission, this book argues for a material and vernacular history of how comics are remembered, shared, and recirculated over time.”

 

The Rise of the Graphic Novel: Computational Criticism and the Evolution of Literary Value

Cambridge Studies in Graphic Narratives

Alexander Dunst
Cambridge UP
July 2023
Publisher’s website

“Bringing digital humanities methods to the study of comics, this monograph traces the emergence of the graphic novel at the intersection of popular and literary culture. Based on a representative corpus of over 250 graphic novels from the United States, Canada, and Great Britain, it shows how the genre has built on the visual style of comics while adopting selected features of the contemporary novel. This argument positions the graphic novel as a crucial case study for our understanding of twenty-first-century culture. More than simply a niche format, graphic novels demonstrate how contemporary literature reworks elements of genre narrative, reconfiguring rather than abolishing distinctions between high and low. The book also puts forward a new historical periodization for the graphic novel, centered on integration into the literary marketplace and leading to an explosive growth in page length and a diversification of aesthetic styles.”

 

The Cambridge Companion to Comics

Cambridge Companions to Literature

Maaheen Ahmed (ed.)
Cambridge UP
August 2023
Publisher’s website

“The Cambridge Companion to Comics presents comics as a multifaceted prism, generating productive and insightful dialogues with the most salient issues concerning the humanities at large. This volume provides readers with the histories and theories necessary for studying comics. It consists of three sections: Forms maps the most significant comics forms, including material formats and techniques. Readings brings together a selection of tools to equip readers with a critical understanding of comics. Uses examines the roles accorded to comics in museums, galleries, and education. Chapters explore comics through several key aspects, including drawing, serialities, adaptation, transmedia storytelling, issues of stereotyping and representation, and the lives of comics in institutional and social settings. This volume emphasizes the relationship between comics and other media and modes of expression. It offers close readings of vital works, covering more than a century of comics production and extending across visual, literary and cultural disciplines.”

“Familie und Comic”: Volume 1 of “Comic Studies” (de Gruyter)

Familie und ComicThe anthology “Familie und Comic: Kritische Perspektiven auf soziale Mikrostrukturen in grafischen Narrationen” (Family and Comics: Critical Perspectives on Social Microstructures in Graphic Narratives), edited by ComFor members Barbara Margarethe Eggert and Kalina Kupczyńska as well as Véronique Sina, has just been published in print and e-book versions. It contains ten academic essays, also with strong ComFor participation, as well as a comic and various interviews with comic creators and artists. The e-book version should be available via university access.

The volume was produced in the context of the AG Comicforschung and marks the opening of the interdisciplinary publication series “Comic Studies”, which is jointly edited by Juliane Blank, Irmela Krüger-Fürhoff, and Véronique Sina at de Gruyter Verlag: https://www.degruyter.com/serial/csd-b/html?lang=de#overview.

Blurbs:
“As a pop-cultural medium, comics in particular present multifaceted perspectives on contemporary and historical concepts and metaphors of family. The interdisciplinary chapters in this publication critically reflect upon the media-specific, narrative (production) aesthetic, and/or pedagogical potentials and functions comics have to de/construct un/usual concepts of family and family structures in text and image.”

Publisher’s page

Publication “Cripping Graphic Medicine I” (Special Issue of the Journal of Literary & Cultural Disablility Studies)

Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies 17.3ComFor-members Gesine Wegner (TU Dresden) and Dorothee Marx (Universität Kiel) have edited and recently published the first of two special issues of the Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies (17.3, 2023) on the topic “Cripping Graphic Medicine”. Its subtitle is “Negotiating Empathy and the Lived Experience of Disability in and through Comics”.  The forthcoming second issue, “Cripping Graphic Medicine II: Access and Activism at the Crossroads of Intersectionality”, is scheduled for 2024.

Contents:

Dorothee Marx, Gesine Wegner:
Who Sees and Who’s Seen in Graphic Medicine?

Rachael A. Zubal-Ruggieri, Diane R. Wiener:
“Cripping” Graphic Medicine

Andrew Godfrey-Meers:
Cripping Empathy in Graphic Medicine

Maria Bee Christensen-Strynø, Lisbeth Frølunde, Louise Phillips:
Crip Empathography

jt Eisenhauer Richardson, Vicky Grube, Jeff Horwat:
Comic Artists’ Navigation of Trauma, Affect, and Representation

Maite Urcaregui:
Composing Crip Corporealities, or Decomposing Comics, in Dumb and Dancing After TEN

Rachael A. Zubal-Ruggieri, Diane R. Wiener:
“Cripping” Graphic Medicine: Drawing Out the Public Sphere

Continue to “Cripping Graphic Medicine I”

CLOSURE #9.5 / ComFor-Comference 2021 »Coherence in Comics. An Interdisciplinary Approach«* published

CLOSURE #9.5A special-themed issue #9.5 of Closure: Kieler e-Journal für Comicforschung, edited by Elisabeth Krieber (Salzburg), Markus Oppolzer (Salzburg), and Hartmut Stöckl (Salzburg), has just been published: »Coherence in Comics. An Interdisciplinary Approach«. The issue represents the proceedings of the 16the annual conference of ComFor (October 2021, Salzburg). It contains contributions by ComFor-members Elisabeth Krieber, Markus Oppolzer, Lukas R.A. Wilde, Barbara M. Eggert , and Stephan Packard:

Elisabeth Krieber, Markus Oppolzer, and Hartmut Stöckl:
Coherence in Comics. An Interdisciplinary Approach: Über diese Ausgabe

Lukas R.A. Wilde:
Essayistic Comics and Non-Narrative Coherence

Barbara M. Eggert:
Comics as Coherence Machines? Case Studies on the Spectrum of Functions that Comics perform in Museums

J. Scott Jordan und Victor Dandridge, Jr.:
Invincible: Multiscale Coherence in Comics

Mark Hibbett:
Image Quotation of Past Events to Enforce Storyworld Continuity in John Byrne’s Fantastic Four

Amadeo Gandolfo:
Do The Collapse: Final Crisis and the Impossible Coherence of the Superhero Crossover

Stephan Packard:
Inferential Revision in Comics Page Interpretation: A Hermeneutic Approach to Renegotiating Panel Comprehension

Continue to CLOSURE #9.5: »Coherence in Comics. An Interdisciplinary Approach«

*Die ComFor-Redaktion bedauert den Mangel an Diversität in dieser Publikation. Wir sind bestrebt, möglichst neutral über das Feld der Comicforschung in all seiner Breite zu informieren und redaktionelle Selektionsprozesse auf ein Minimum zu beschränken. Gleichzeitig sind wir uns jedoch auch der problematischen Strukturen des Wissenschaftsbetriebs bewusst, die häufig dazu führen, dass insbesondere Comicforscherinnen sowie jene mit marginalisierten Identitäten weniger sichtbar sind. Wir wissen, dass dieses Ungleichgewicht oft nicht der Intention der Herausgeber_innen / Veranstalter_innen entspricht und möchten dies auch nicht unterstellen, wollen aber dennoch darauf aufmerksam machen, um ein Bewusstsein für dieses Problem zu schaffen.

Monitor 72: New Publications on Comic Books

Monitor is an irregularly published overview of publications from the previous six months that may be of relevance to comics studies scholars. The introductory texts are the respective publishers’. Do you have suggestions or information on new releases that have been overlooked and should be introduced on our website? Please let us know via email: redaktion@comicgesellschaft.de.
See previous Monitor posts.


Jewish Comics and Graphic Narratives: A Critical Guide

Matt Reingold
Bloomsbury Academic
December 2022
Publisher’s website

“The most up-to-date critical guide mapping the history, impact, key critical issues, and seminal texts of the genre, Jewish Comics and Graphic Narratives interrogates what makes a work a “Jewish graphic narrative”, and explores the form’s diverse facets to orient readers to the richness and complexity of Jewish graphic storytelling.
Accessible but comprehensive and in an easy-to-navigate format, the book covers such topics as:

  • The history of the genre in the US and Israel – and its relationship to superheroes, Underground Comix, and Jewish literature
  • Social and cultural discussions surrounding the legitimization of graphic representation as sites of trauma, understandings of gender, mixed-media in Jewish graphic novels, and the study of these works in the classroom
  • Critical explorations of graphic narratives about the Holocaust, Israel, the diasporic experience, Judaism, and autobiography and memoir
  • The works of Will Eisner, Ilana Zeffren, James Sturm, Joann Sfar, JT Waldman, Michel Kichka, Sarah Glidden, Rutu Modan, and Art Spiegelman and such narratives as X Men, Anne Frank’s Diary, and Maus

Jewish Comics and Graphic Novels includes an appendix of relevant works sorted by genre, a glossary of crucial critical terms, and close readings of key texts to help students and readers develop their understanding of the genre and pursue independent study.”

 

Perfect Copies: Reproduction and the Contemporary Comic

Shiamin Kwa
Rutger’s University Press
January 2023
Publisher’s website

“Analyzing the way that recent works of graphic narrative use the comics form to engage with the “problem” of reproduction, Shiamin Kwa’s Perfect Copies reminds us that the mode of production and the manner in which we perceive comics are often quite similar to the stories they tell. Perfect Copies considers the dual notions of reproduction, mechanical as well as biological, and explores how comics are works of reproduction that embed questions about the nature of reproduction itself. Through close readings of the comics My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris, The Black Project by Gareth Brookes, The Generous Bosom series by Conor Stechschulte, Sabrina by Nick Drnaso, and Panther by Brecht Evens, Perfect Copies shows how these comics makers push the limits of different ideas of “reproduction” in strikingly different ways. Kwa suggests that reading and thinking about books like these, that push us to engage with these complicated questions, teaches us how to become better readers.”

 

Asian Political Cartoons

John A. Lent
Rutger’s University Press
January 2023
Publisher’s website

“In Asian Political Cartoons, scholar John A. Lent explores the history and contemporary status of political cartooning in Asia, including East Asia (China, Hong Kong, Japan, North and South Korea, Mongolia, and Taiwan), Southeast Asia (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam), and South Asia (Bangladesh, India, Iran, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka).
Incorporating hundreds of interviews, as well as textual analysis of cartoons; observation of workplaces, companies, and cartoonists at work; and historical research, Lent offers not only the first such survey in English, but the most complete and detailed in any language. Richly illustrated, this volume brings much-needed attention to the political cartoons of a region that has accelerated faster and more expansively economically, culturally, and in other ways than perhaps any other part of the world.
Emphasizing the “freedom to cartoon,” the author examines political cartoons that attempt to expose, bring attention to, blame or condemn, satirically mock, and caricaturize problems and their perpetrators. Lent presents readers a pioneering survey of such political cartooning in twenty-two countries and territories, studying aspects of professionalism, cartoonists’ work environments, philosophies and influences, the state of newspaper and magazine industries, the state’s roles in political cartooning, modern technology, and other issues facing political cartoonists.
Asian Political Cartoons encompasses topics such as political and social satire in Asia during ancient times, humor/cartoon magazines established by Western colonists, and propaganda cartoons employed in independence campaigns. The volume also explores stumbling blocks contemporary cartoonists must hurdle, including new or beefed-up restrictions and regulations, a dwindling number of publishing venues, protected vested interests of conglomerate-owned media, and political correctness gone awry. In these pages, cartoonists recount intriguing ways they cope with restrictions—through layered hidden messages, by using other platforms, and finding unique means to use cartooning to make a living.”

 

 

Beowulf in Comic Books and Graphic Novels

Richard Scott Nokes
McFarland
February 2023
Publisher’s website

“The legendary story of Beowulf comes to us in only one medieval manuscript with no illustrations. Modern comic book and graphic novel artists have created visual interpretations of Beowulf for decades, both illustrating and altering the classic story to pull out new themes.
This book examines the growing canon of Beowulf comic books and graphic novels since the 1940s, and shows the remarkable emergence of new traditions—from re-envisioning the medieval look, to creating new plotlines, and even to transforming his identity. While placing Beowulf in a fantastical medieval setting, a techno-dystopia of the future, or modern-day America, artists have appropriated the tale to comment on social issues such as war, environmental issues, masculinity, and consumerism. Whether Beowulf is fighting new monsters or allying with popular comic book superheroes, these artists are creating a new canon of illustration that redefines Beowulf’s place in our culture.”

 

 

Journal Monitor 16: New Publications on Comic Books

The Journal Monitor is a subcategory of the regular Monitor. It is an irregularly published overview of issues of international journals on comics studies as well as special issues on corresponding topics. The introductory texts and/or tables of contents come from the respective websites.
Do you have suggestions or information on new releases that have been overlooked and should be introduced on our website? Please let us know via email: redaktion@comicgesellschaft.de.
See previous Monitor posts.


European Comic Art  16.1

online, subscription
Website

  • Tilmann Altenberg: “Don Quixote Unbound: Intertextuality, Interpictoriality, and Transculturality in Flix’s German Graphic Novel Adaptation (2012)”
  • Jörn Ahrens: “The Graphical Epistemology of Comics via Jeff Lemire’s Gideon Falls
  • Alicia Lambert: “(Mis)Leading the Reader: Decolonising Adventure Comics in Baruti and Cassiau-Haurie’s Le Singe jaune
  • Ylva Lindberg: “The Agency of the Periphery: Changes in Local Comics through Flows of Francophone Bandes dessinées to Sweden, 1950–2020”

Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 14.1 & 2

online, subscription
Website

  • Wajeehah Aayeshah: “Hockey sticks, purple smoke bombs, and empathy: female character representation in Pakistani comics”
  • Parnika Agarwal: “Calvin and Hobbes: satirising work, leisure, imagination and agency within the context of the pervasive forces of capitalism”
  • Jackson Ayres: ‘“A very, very bad mood”: the turn to horror in Alan Moore’s late comics’
  • Jerzy Szyłak, Sebastian Jakub Konefał: “The influence of local and national press on the comic publishing industry in the Polish People’s Republic between 1956 and 1989”
  • Prateek: “Emergency’s children: satire in the hindi comics of Hawaldar Bahadur”
  • Michael Cop, David Large: “‘Words, Words, Words’: Making Comics and Sense of the Three Texts of Hamlet
  • Hanae Kim: “‘I read webtoon every day!’: young adult k-pop fans’ language learning and literacies with korean webcomics”
  • Jonathan M. Bullinger: “Marvel tells / sells its own history: figureheads, promotion, curation, and application, 1982-1987”
  • Janina Wildfeuer, Ielka van der Sluis, Gisela Redeker, Nina van der Velden: “No laughing matter!? Analyzing the Page Layout of Instruction Comics”
  • Robert Aman: “Semi-naked revolutionary: native Americans, colourblind anti-racism and the Pillaging of Latin America in Tumac
  • Sathyaraj Venkatesan, Arya Suresh: “Critique of DSM, medicalisation and graphic medicine”
  • Thomas Hamlyn-Harris: “Double take: ephemera and viewpoint construction in graphic memoir”
  • Sohini Bera, Rajni Singh: “Graphic narratives as history: the emergency period (1975– 1977) in Vishwajyoti Ghosh’s Delhi Calm
  • Shriya Raina: “Corpse geographies in Munnu: a boy from Kashmir: sites of resistance and post-mortem agency”

 

Studies in Comics  13.1-2

online, subscription
Website

  • Denis Dépinoy: “‘Tu te trompes, Fantasio’: Yves Chaland’s decoding and recoding of Spirou
  • Shromona Das: “The perfect victim: Reading trauma and victimhood in rape narratives in Indian comics”
  • Nora Hickey, Amaris Feland Ketcham: “Troubling the sequential image: The poetry comics of Bianca Stone”
  • Benjamin Fraser: “The shape of European jazz: On mute, mutable and pedagogical musical representations”
  • Francesco-Alessio Ursini, Giuseppe Samo: “The purple thread: The reception of Prince as a fictional character in graphic narratives”
  • Greice Schneider, João Senna Teixeira: “Cuteness and everyday humour in Nathan W. Pyle’s Strange Planet
  • Damon Herd: “Introduction: Uncomics”

 

Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society  6.3

online, subscription
Website

  • Rachel Miller, Daniel Worden: “Understanding Comics at 30: An Introduction”Hillary Chute: “’Weirder than That’: Understanding Comics at Thirty”
  • Kate Polak: “Three Ideas”Moritz Fink: “’Cool’ Media Studies: McCloud, McLuhan, and the Popification of the Humanities”
  • Marco d’Alessandro: “Unaframed: A Short Visual Essay”
  • Charles Hatfield: “The Empowered and Disempowered Reader: Understanding Comics against Itself”
  • Caitlin Cass: “Alchemy and Control”
  • Paul Fisher Davies: “What We Do in the Gutters: Or, If Not Transitions, What?”
  • Ken Parille: “Image over Text: ‘Visual Emphasis’ and Understanding Comics”
  • Shreya Sangai, Beena Anirjitha Urumy: “Lines from the Margins: Gond Artists Engage with McCloud”
  • Misha Grifka Wander: “Someone Else’s Icon: Complicating Comics and Identification”
  • Antonija Cavcic: “Contemplating Covid through Understanding Comics: Conveying Meaning with Panel Transitions in Covid-themed Comics”
  • Chris Malone: “Reader Participation in Comics (Through Walking my Dog)”
  • Harriet Hustis: “Understanding McCloud: (En)Countering Closure in the Context of Trauma”
  • Jason DeHart: “Form and Counter-Narratives: Using Understanding Comics with Pre-Service Teachers”

ImageText  13.3

online, open access
Website

  • Brian Olszewski: “The Joke Work of Batman: The Killing Joke”
  • Christopher Younie: “Journey to the West goes Queer”
  • Jake Zawlacki: “Searching for Legitimacy: Spawn, McFarlane, and the Homage Cover”

Monitor 71: New Publications on Comic Books

Monitor is an irregularly published overview of publications from the previous six months that may be of relevance to comics studies scholars. The introductory texts are the respective publishers’. Do you have suggestions or information on new releases that have been overlooked and should be introduced on our website? Please let us know via email: redaktion@comicgesellschaft.de.
See previous Monitor posts.


The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader: Critical Openings, Future Directions

Alison Halsall, Jonathan Warren (Eds.)
University Press of Mississippi
October 2022
publisher’s website

The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader explores the exemplary trove of LGBTQ+ comics that coalesced in the underground and alternative comix scenes of the mid-1960s and in the decades after. Through insightful essays and interviews with leading comics figures, volume contributors illuminate the critical opportunities, current interactions, and future directions of these comics.
This heavily illustrated volume engages with the work of preeminent artists across the globe, such as Howard Cruse, Edie Fake, Justin Hall, Jennifer Camper, and Alison Bechdel, whose iconic artwork is reproduced within the volume. Further, it addresses and questions the possibilities of LGBTQ+ comics from various scholarly positions and multiple geographical vantages, covering a range of queer lived experience. Along the way, certain LGBTQ+ touchstones emerge organically and inevitably—pride, coming out, chosen families, sexual health, gender, risk, and liberation.
Featuring comics figures across the gamut of the industry, from renowned scholars to emerging creators and webcomics artists, the reader explores a range of approaches to LGBTQ+ comics—queer history, gender and sexuality theory, memory studies, graphic medicine, genre studies, biography, and more—and speaks to the diversity of publishing forms and media that shape queer comics and their reading communities.
Chapters trace the connections of LGBTQ+ comics from the panel, strip, comic book, graphic novel, anthology, and graphic memoir to their queer readership, the LGBTQ+ history they make visible, the often still quite fragile LGBTQ+ distribution networks, the coded queer intelligence they deploy, and the community-sustaining energy and optimism they conjure. Above all, The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader highlights the efficacy of LGBTQ+ comics as a kind of common ground for creators and readers.”

 

Manga: A Critical Guide

Bloomsbury Comics Studies

Shige Suzuki, Ronald Stewart
Bloomsbury
October 2022
publisher’s website

“A wide-ranging introductory guide for readers making their first steps into the world of manga, this book helps readers explore the full range of Japanese comic styles, forms and traditions from its earliest texts to the internationally popular comics of the 21st century.
In an accessible and easy-to-navigate format, the book covers:

  • The history of Japanese comics, from influences in early visual culture to the global ‘Manga Boom’ of the 1990s to the present
  • Case studies of texts reflecting the range of themes, genres, forms and creators, including Osamu Tezuka, Machiko Hasegawa and Katsuhiro Otomo
  • Key themes and contexts – from gender and sexuality, to history and censorship
  • Critical approaches to manga, including definitions, biography and reception and global publishing contexts

The book includes a bibliography of essential critical writing on manga, discussion questions for classroom use and a glossary of key critical terms.”

 

Comics and Archeology

Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels

Zena Kamash, Katy Soar, Leen Van Broeck (Eds.)
Palgrave
October 2022
publisher’s website

“This book adds to the scant academic literature investigating how comics transmit knowledge of the past and how this refraction of the past shapes our understanding of society and politics in sometimes damaging ways. The volume comes at these questions from a specifically archaeological perspective, foregrounding the representation and narrative use of material cultures. It fulfils its objectives through three reception studies in the first part of the volume and three chapters by comic creators in the second part. All six chapters aim to grapple with a set of central questions about the power inherent in drawn images of various kinds.”

 

Precarious Youth in Contemporary Graphic Narratives: Young Lives in Crisis

Routledge Advances in Comics Studies

María Porras Sánchez, Gerardo Vilches (Eds.)
Routledge
September 2022
publisher’s website

“This volume explores comics as examples of moral outrage in the face of a reality in which precariousness has become an inherent part of young lives. Taking a thematic approach, the chapters devote attention to the expression and representation of precarious subjectivities, as well as to the economic and professional precarity that characterizes comics creation and production.
An international team of authors, young and senior systematically examines the representation of precarious youth in graphic fiction and autobiographic comics, superheroes and precarity, market issues and spaces of activism and vulnerability. With this structure, the book offers a global perspective and comprehensive coverage of different aspects of a complex and multifaceted field of knowledge, with a special attention to minorities and liminal subjects. The comics analyzed function as examples of “ethical solicitation” that bear witness of the precarious existence younger generations endure, while at the same time creating images that voice their outrage and might move readers to act.
This timely and truly interdisciplinary volume will appeal to comics scholars and researchers in the areas of media and cultural studies, modern languages, education, art and design, communication studies, sociology, medical humanities and more.”

 

Art History for Comics: Past, Present and Potential Futures

Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels

Ian Horton , Maggie Gray
Palgrave
September 2022
publisher’s website

“This book looks at comics through the lens of Art History, examining the past influence of art-historical methodologies on comics scholarship to scope how they can be applied to Comics Studies in the present and future. It unearths how early comics scholars deployed art-historical approaches, including stylistic analysis, iconography, Cultural History and the social history of art, and proposes how such methodologies, updated in light of disciplinary developments within Art History, could be usefully adopted in the study of comics today. Through a series of indicative case studies of British and American comics like Eagle, The Mighty Thor, 2000AD, Escape and Heartbreak Hotel, it argues that art-historical methods better address overlooked aspects of visual and material form. Bringing Art History back into the interdisciplinary nexus of comics scholarship raises some fundamental questions about the categories, frameworks and values underlying contemporary Comics Studies.”

 

Reframing the Perpetrator in Contemporary Comics: On the Importance of the Strange

Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels

Dragoș Manea
Palgrave
August 2022
publisher’s website

“This book foregrounds the figure of the perpetrator in a selection of British, American, and Canadian comics and explores questions related to remembrance, justice, and historical debt. Its primary focus is on works that deliberately estrange the figure of the perpetrator—through fantasy, absurdism, formal ambiguity, or provocative rewriting—and thus allow readers to engage anew with the history of genocide, mass murder, and sexual violence. This book is particularly interested in the ethical space such an engagement calls into being: in its ability to allow us to ponder the privilege many of us now enjoy, the gross historical injustices that have secured it, and the debt we owe to people long dead.”

Journal Monitor 15: New Publications on Comic Books

The Journal Monitor is a subcategory of the regular Monitor. It is an irregularly published overview of issues of international journals on comics studies as well as special issues on corresponding topics. The introductory texts and/or tables of contents come from the respective websites.
Do you have suggestions or information on new releases that have been overlooked and should be introduced on our website? Please let us know via email: redaktion@comicgesellschaft.de.
See previous Monitor posts.


European Comic Art  15.2

online, subscription
Website

    • “Introduction:Counter-Narratives, Retellings and Redrawings”
    • Monalesia Earle, Joe Sutliff Sanders: “Misdirection, Displacement and the Nisse in Hilda and the Black Hound
    •  Cara Takakjian: “An Amalgam of Voices: A Prismatic Approach to Memory and History in Gipi’s Graphic Novels”
    • Benjamin Fraser: “The Poetry of Snails: The Shown, the Intervened and the Signified in Duelo de caracoles (2010) by Sonia Pulido and Pere Joan”
    • Robert Aman: “Ridiculous Empire: Satire and European Colonialism in the Comics of Olivier Schrauwen”
    • Armelle Blin-Rolland: “Towards an Ecographics: Ecological Storylines in Bande Dessinée”

 

Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society  6.2

online, subscription
Website

  • Alexandra Chiasson: “Zooming in on Ben Passmore”
  • Sylvain Lesage, Margaret C. Flinn: “Barbarella: Sexual Revolution or Editorial Revolution?”
  • John A. Walsh: “‘It Was as Much Ours …’: Reader Contributions to Teen Humor Fashion Comics”
  • Natsume Fusanosuke, Jon Holt, Teppei Fukuda: “From the Field: Why Is Manga So Interesting?”
  • Ritesh Babu: “Civilized Monsters: These Savage Shores and the Colonialist Cage”

 

Journal of Perpetrator Research  4.2

Special Issue: “Perpetrators in Comics”

online, open access
Website

  • Laurike in ‘t Veld: “Familial Complicity in Peter Pontiac’s Kraut, Nora Krug’s Belonging, and Serena Katt’s Sunday’s Child”
  • Tatiana Konrad: “The Legacy of American Slavery: Contesting Blackness and Re-envisioning Nationhood in Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation
  • Olga Michael: “Looking at the Perpetrator in Nina Bunjevac’s Fatherland
  • Johannes Schmid: “Cultural Genocide in Joe Sacco’s Paying the Land
  • Mihaela Precup, Dragoș Manea: “The Perpetrator as Punch-line: Hipster Hitler and the Ambiguity of Controversial Humor”
  • Laurike in ‘t Veld, Christine Gundermann, Kees Ribbens, Ewa Stańczyk: Roundtable on “World War II and Holocaust Comics, Perpetrators, and Education”

 

Imago: Zeitschrift für Kunstpädagogik  14

Special Issue: “Grafisches Erzählen”

print, subscription
Website

  • Alexander Schneider/Carolin Führer: “Grafisches Erzählen”
  • Dietrich Grünewald: “Von der Kunst des Comics zur Kunst im Comic”
  • Stefanie Granzow: “Über, mit und durch Comics reden: Bild und Narration intersubjektiv aushandeln”
  • Bastian Haase: “Vom Panel zur Seitenarchitektur:Die Sonntagsseite als didaktisch-methodischer Impulsgeber”
  • Anne Krichel: “‘Und wir staunten und wir lachten, wie wir rückwärts Zeit verbrachten’:Retrogrades Erzählen im Comic Rückwärtsland
  • Nadia Bader: “Charakterdesign in Comics zwischen Einfachheit und Differenziertheit”
  • Jeanette Hoffmann, Caroline R. Wittig: “Zur Zeit- und Raumrezeption in szenischen Lesungen zu grafischen Geschichten”

 

Sane: Sequential Art Narrative in Education  2.7

online, open access
Website

  • David Lucas Jr: “The Textual Gutter: How Gene Luen Yang Redefines the Gutter in Boxers & Saints to Tell a Transnational Tale”
  • Maribeth Nottingham, Barbara J. McClanahan, Howard Atkinson: “Evaluating a Suite of Strategies for Reading Graphic Novels: A Confirmatory Case Study”
  • James O. Barbre III, Justin Carroll, Joshua Tolbert: “Comic Literature and Graphic Novel Uses in History, Literature, Math, and Science”

 

Conference Proceedings “Comics and Agency”

The proceedings of the 15th ComFor Annual Conference (2020) on the topic of “Comics and Agency” have now been published. Edited by Vanessa Ossa, Jan-Noël Thon, and Lukas Wilde, the 350-page volume contains 15 essays by ComFor members and internationally renowned authors.

“Comics & Agency:
This volume aims to intensify the interdisciplinary dialogue on comics and related popular multimodal forms (including manga, graphic novels, and cartoons) by focusing on the concept of medial, mediated, and mediating agency. To this end, a theoretically and methodologically diverse set of contributions explores the interrelations between individual, collective, and institutional actors within historical and contemporary comics cultures. Agency is at stake when recipients resist hegemonic readings of multimodal texts. In the same manner, “authorship” can be understood as the attribution of agency of and between various medial instances and roles such as writers, artists, colorists, letterers, or editors, as well as with regard to commercial rights holders such as publishing houses or conglomerates and reviewers or fans. From this perspective, aspects of comics production (authorship and institutionalization) can be related to aspects of comics reception (appropriation and discursivation), and circulation (participation and canonization), including their potential for transmedialization and making contributions to the formation of the public sphere.”

The volume also kicks off De Gruyter’s new “Comics Studies: Aesthetics, Histories, Practices” series, edited by Jaqueline Berndt, Patrick Noonan, Karin Kukkonen, and Stephan Packard.

The volume can be found here.