Monitor of Publications

MONITOR: NEW PUBLICATIONS ON COMIC BOOKS

Neil Gaiman

Critical Insights:
Neil Gaiman

Joseph M. Sommers (ed.)
Salem Press
300 pages
ISBN 978-1-68217-260-5 (Paperback)
~$ 105,00
December 2016

Publisher’s page
One of the most prolific writers of prose, graphic novels, feature-length films, and television serials, Neil Gaiman is as popular with critics as he is with readers. His works encourage readers to embrace love, fear, pain, pride, and most of the remaining emotional spectrum with an earnest vigor, gentle humor, and honest warmth, the likes of which humble the greats in all media to which he has contributed. Edited by Joseph Michael Sommers of Central Michigan University, this volume contains 14 essays that constitute an interesting mélange thoughts, ruminations, perspectives, and approaches that are as diverse a look at the life and work of Neil Gaiman as any in print today.

The Trauma Graphic Novel

The Trauma Graphic Novel

Andrés Romero-Jódar
Routledge
180 pages
ISBN 978-1-1382-3888-6 (Hardcover)
~£ 88,00
January 2017

Publisher’s page
The end of the twentieth century and the turn of the new millennium witnessed an unprecedented flood of traumatic narratives and testimonies of suffering in literature and the arts. Graphic novels, free at last from long decades of stern censorship, helped explore these topics by developing a new subgenre: the trauma graphic novel. This book seeks to analyze this trend through the consideration of five influential graphic novels in English. Works by Paul Hornschemeier, Joe Sacco, Art Spiegelman, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons will be considered as illustrative examples of the representation of individual, collective, and political traumas. This book provides a link between the contemporary criticism of Trauma Studies and the increasingly important world of comic books and graphic novels.

Superman: The Persistence of an American Icon

The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Graphic Novels,
Second Edition

Francisca Goldsmith
ALA Editions
232 pages
ISBN 978-0-8135-8751-6 (Paperback)
~$ 54,00
February 2017

Publisher’s page
The first edition of this readers’ advisory represented a pioneering effort to provide help and encouragement to librarians diving into this exciting format, and since then the popularity of graphic novels has continued apace. Goldsmith has updated her guide to encompass a bounty of new titles, authors, and styles, ensuring its continued usefulness as a tool for both RA and collection development. Suitable for newbies and hardcore fans alike, this book sketches in the history of graphic novels, tracing their evolution and showing what makes them unique; explores traditional and cutting edge titles most friendly to children, teens, and adults, reflecting the burgeoning and maturing publishing efforts made for each of these audiences; discusses common themes, topics, and the place of diversity in graphic novels; gives in-depth guidance on ways to connect readers to titles they’ll be sure to love; offers ideas for media tie-ins, displays, programming, book clubs, and more; includes annotated bibliographies, with appeal characteristics noted, and multiple indexes to ensure that locating the right graphic novel is a snap; and provides detailed tips for keeping current and aware of new titles and trends.

Watchmen

Cinema Journal 56(2)
In Focus: Watchmen

Blair Davis (ed.)
University of Texas Press
36 pages
ISSN 0009-7101
February 2017

Publisher’s page
In Focus is a regular feature of Cinema Journal in which several short essays examine a case study from multiple perspectives. In addition to writing the introduction, Davis gathered together five scholars (Mark J.P. Wolf, Aaron Taylor, Drew Morton, Kathryn Frank and Dana Polan) to look at Watchmen‘s role within film, media and comics studies, exploring ideas about canonization, world-building, transmedia, adaptation, digital comics, authorship and academia.
Continue to the open access-issue

The Ages of the Justice League

The Ages of the Justice League:
Essays on America’s Greatest Superheroes in Changing Times

Joseph J. Darowski (ed.)
McFarland
220 pages
ISBN 978-1-4766-6225-1 (Paperback)
~$ 19,00
March 2017

Publisher’s page
The first superhero team from the Silver Age of comics, DC’s Justice League has seen many iterations since its first appearance in 1960. As the original comic book continued and spin-off titles proliferated, talented writers, artists and editors adapted the team to appeal to changing audience tastes. This collection of new essays examines more than five decades of Justice League comics and related titles. Each essay considers a storyline or era of the franchise in its historical and social contexts.

Retcon Game

Retcon Game:
Retroactive Continuity and the Hyperlinking of America

Andrew J. Friedenthal
University Press of Mississippi
176 pages
ISBN 978-1-4968-1132-5 (Hardcover)
~$ 65,00
April 2017

Publisher’s page
The superhero Wolverine time travels and changes storylines. On Torchwood, there’s a pill popped to alter the past. The narrative technique of retroactive continuity seems rife lately, given all the world-building in comics. Andrew J. Friedenthal deems retroactive continuity, or “retconning,” as a force with many implications for how Americans view history and culture. In the first book to focus on this subject, Friedenthal regards the editable Internet hyperlink, rather than the stable printed footnote, as the de facto source of information in America today. To embrace retroactive continuity in fictional media means accepting that the past itself is not a stable element, but rather something constantly in contentious flux. Due to retconning’s ubiquity within our media, we have grown familiar with narratives as inherently unstable, a realization that deeply affects how we understand the world.

MONITOR: NEW PUBLICATIONS ON COMIC BOOKS

Chris Ware: Conversations

Chris Ware:
Conversations

Jean Braithwaite (ed.)
University Press of Mississippi
272 pages
ISBN 978-1-4968-0929-2 (Hardcover)
~$ 40,00
November 2016

Publisher’s page
Like Art Spiegelman or Alison Bechdel, Ware stands out as an important crossover artist who has made the wider public aware of comics as literature. His regular New Yorker covers give him a central place in our national cultural conversation. Editor Jean Braithwaite compiles interviews displaying both Ware’s erudition and his quirky self-deprecation. They span Ware’s career from 1993 to 2015, creating a time-lapse portrait of the artist as he matures. Several of the earliest talks are reprinted from zines now extremely difficult to locate. Braithwaite has selected the best broadcasts and podcasts featuring the interview-shy Ware for this volume, including new transcriptions. An interview with Marnie Ware from 2000 makes for a delightful change of pace, as she offers a generous, supremely lucid attitude toward her husband and his work. Candidly and humorously, she considers married life with a genius in the house. Brand-new interviews with both Chris and Marnie Ware conclude the volume.

The 10 Cent War:

The 10 Cent War:
Comic Books, Propaganda, and World War II

Trischa Goodnow and James J. Kimble (eds.)
University Press of Mississippi
240 pages
ISBN 978-1-4968-1030-4 (Hardcover)
~$ 65,00
January 2017

Publisher’s page
The Allied victory in World War II relied on far more than courageous soldiers. Americans on the home front constantly supported the war effort in the form of factory work, war bond purchases, salvage drives, and morale-rallying efforts. Motivating these men, women, and children to keep doing their bit during the war was among the conflict’s most urgent tasks. One of the most overlooked aspects of these efforts involved a surprising initiative―comic book propaganda. The 10 Cent War presents a riveting analysis of how different types of comic books and comic book characters supplied reasons and means to support the war effort. The contributors demonstrate that, free of government control, these appeals produced this overall imperative. The book discusses the role of such major characters as Superman, Wonder Woman, and Uncle Sam along with a host of such minor characters as kid gangs and superhero sidekicks. It even considers novelty and small presses, providing a well-rounded look at the many ways that comic books served as popular propaganda.

Superman: The Persistence of an American Icon

Superman:
The Persistence of an American Icon

Ian Gordon
Rutgers University Press
200 pages
ISBN 978-0-8135-8751-6 (Softcover)
~$ 28,95
January 2017

Publisher’s page
After debuting in 1938, Superman soon became an American icon. But why has he maintained his iconic status for nearly 80 years? And how can he still be an American icon when the country itself has undergone so much change? Superman: Persistence of an American Icon examines the many iterations of the character in comic books, comic strips, radio series, movie serials, feature films, television shows, animation, toys, and collectibles over the past eight decades. Demonstrating how Superman’s iconic popularity cannot be attributed to any single creator or text, comics expert Ian Gordon embarks on a deeper consideration of cultural mythmaking as a collective and dynamic process. He also outlines the often contentious relationships between the various parties who have contributed to the Superman mythos, including corporate executives, comics writers, artists, nostalgic commentators, and collectors.

Reading Lessons in Seeing

Reading Lessons in Seeing:
Mirrors, Masks, and Mazes in the Autobiographical Graphic

Michael A. Chaney
University Press of Mississippi
192 pages
ISBN 9-781-4968-1025-0 (Hardcover)
~$ 65,00
February 2017

Publisher’s page
Literary scholar Michael A. Chaney examines graphic novels to illustrate that in form and function they inform readers on how they ought to be read. His arguments result in an innovative analysis of the various knowledges that comics produce and the methods artists and writers employ to convey them. Theoretically eclectic, this study attends to the lessons taught by both the form and content of today’s most celebrated graphic novels. Chaney analyzes the embedded lessons in comics and graphic novels through the form’s central tropes: the iconic child storyteller and the inherent childishness of comics in American culture; the use of mirrors and masks as ciphers of the unconscious; embedded puzzles and games in otherwise story-driven comic narratives; and the form’s self-re exive propensity for showing its work. Comics reveal the labor that goes into producing them, embedding lessons on how to read the “work” as a whole.

The British Superhero

The British Superhero

Chris Murray
University Press of Mississippi
786 pages
ISBN 9-781-4968-0737-3 (Hardcover)
~$ 65,00
March 2017

Publisher’s page
Chris Murray reveals the largely unknown and rather surprising history of the British superhero. It is often thought that Britain did not have its own superheroes, yet Murray demonstrates that there were a great many in Britain and that they were often used as a way to comment on the relationship between Britain and America. Sometimes they emulated the style of American comics, but they also frequently became sites of resistance to perceived American political and cultural hegemony, drawing upon satire and parody as a means of critique. Murray illustrates that the superhero genre is a blend of several influences and that in British comics, these influences are quite different from those in America, resulting in some contrasting approaches to the figure of the superhero. He identifies the origins of the superhero and supervillain in nineteenth-century popular culture such as the penny dreadfuls and boy’s weeklies and in science fiction writing of the 1920s and 1930s. From the emergence of British superheroes in the 1940s, the advent of “fake” American comics, and the reformatting of reprinted material to the British Invasion of the 1980s, and the pivotal roles in American superhero comics and film production held by British artists today, this book will challenge views about British superheroes and the comics’ creators who fashioned them.

The Secret Origins of Comics Studies

The Secret Origins of Comics Studies

Matthew Smith and Randy Duncan (eds.)
Routledge
302 pages
ISBN 978-1-1388-8451-9 (Hardcover)
~£ 110,00
March 2017

Publisher’s page
In The Secret Origins of Comics Studies, today’s leading comics scholars turn back a page to reveal the founding figures dedicated to understanding comics art. Edited by comics scholars Matthew J. Smith and Randy Duncan, this collection provides an in-depth study of the individuals and institutions that have created and shaped the field of Comics Studies over the past 75 years. From Coulton Waugh to Wolfgang Fuchs, these influential historians, educators, and theorists produced the foundational work and built the institutions that inspired the recent surge in scholarly work in this dynamic, interdisciplinary field. Sometimes scorned, often underappreciated, these visionaries established a path followed by subsequent generations of scholars in literary studies, communication, art history, the social sciences, and more. Giving not only credit where credit is due, this volume both offers an authoritative account of the history of Comics Studies and also helps move the field forward by being a valuable resource for creating graduate student reading lists and the first stop for anyone writing a comics-related literature review.

MONITOR: NEW PUBLICATIONS ON COMIC BOOKS

The Modern Superhero in Film and Television

The Modern Superhero in Film and Television:
Popular Genre and American Culture

Jeffrey A. Brown
Routledge
182 pages
ISBN 978-1-1388-9778-6 (Hardcover)
~£ 85,50
November 2016

Publisher’s page
Hollywood’s live-action superhero films currently dominate the worldwide box-office, with the characters enjoying more notoriety through their feature film and television depictions than they have ever before. This book argues that this immense popularity reveals deep cultural concerns about politics, gender, ethnicity, patriotism and consumerism after the events of 9/11. Superheroes have long been agents of hegemony, fighting for abstract ideals of justice while overall perpetuating the American status quo. Yet at the same time, the book explores how the genre has also been utilized to question and critique these dominant cultural assumptions.

Panel to the Screen

Panel to the Screen:
Style, American Film, and Comic Books during the Blockbuster Era

Drew Morton
University Press of Mississippi
208 pages
ISBN 978-1-4968-0978-0 (Hardcover)
~$ 65,00
November 2016

Publisher’s page
Over the past forty years, American film has entered into a formal interaction with the comic book. Such comic book adaptations as Sin City, 300, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World have adopted components of their source materials’ visual style. The screen has been fractured into panels, the photographic has given way to the graphic, and the steady rhythm of cinematic time has evolved into a far more malleable element. In other words, films have begun to look like comics. Yet, this interplay also occurs in the other direction. In Panel to the Screen, Drew Morton examines this dialogue in its intersecting and rapidly changing cultural, technological, and industrial contexts. Early on, many questioned the prospect of a “low” art form suited for children translating into “high” art material capable of drawing colossal box of ce takes. Now the naysayers are as quiet as the queued crowds at Comic-Cons are massive. Morton provides a nuanced account of this phenomenon by using formal analysis of the texts in a real world context of studio budgets, grosses, and audience reception.

Cultures of Comics Work

Cultures of Comics Work

Casey Brienza and Paddy Johnston (eds.)
Palgrave MacMillan
308 pages
ISBN 978-1-137-55477-2 (Hardcover)
~€ 106,99
December 2016

Publisher’s page
This anthology explores tensions between the individualistic artistic ideals and the collective industrial realities of contemporary cultural production with eighteen all-new chapters presenting pioneering empirical research on the complexities and controversies of comics work. Art Spiegelman. Alan Moore. Osamu Tezuka. Neil Gaiman. Names such as these have become synonymous with the medium of comics. Meanwhile, the large numbers of people without whose collective action no comic book would ever exist in the first place are routinely overlooked. Cultures of Comics Work unveils this hidden, global industrial labor of writers, illustrators, graphic designers, letterers, editors, printers, typesetters, publicists, publishers, distributors, translators, retailers, and countless others both directly and indirectly involved in the creative production of what is commonly thought of as the comic book. Drawing upon diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives, an international and interdisciplinary cohort of cutting-edge researchers and practitioners intervenes in debates about cultural work and paves innovative directions for comics scholarship.

The Last War in Albion Volume 1

The Last War in Albion Volume 1:
The Early Work of Alan Moore and Grant Morrison

Phil Sandifer
Eruditorum Press
786 pages
ISBN 978-1-5404-8218-1 (Paperback)
~$ 22,99
December 2016

Publisher’s page
In the late twentieth century, beneath the surface of Britain’s green and pleasant land, raged a war that spanned the heights of mystical transcendence and the most obscure gutters of popular culture. The stakes were unfathomably vast: the fate of the twenty-first century, the shape of an entire artistic medium, and whether or not several people would make their rent. On one side was Alan Moore, the acclaimed literary genius who would transform comics forever. On the other was Grant Morrison, the upstart punk who never met an idol he didn’t want to knock off its perch. In Volume One of this incredible tale you’ll learn how an ex-drug dealer from the slums of Northampton and a failed rock star from Glasgow made their way into the comics industry and found themselves locked in an artistic rivalry that would shake the very foundations of Britain. Starting from their beginnings writing and drawing comic strips like Captain Clyde and Maxwell the magic Cat and continuing through Moore’s breakout runs on Marvelman and V for Vendetta and explosion onto the US scene with Swamp Thing, it is the fantastically unlikely tale of how the British comics industry came to produce the two greatest wizards of their generation. This is the story of gothic rock and obscenity trials. Of William Blake and William S. Burroughs. Of Hieronymus Bosch and Enid Blyton. This is the story of the Last War in Albion.

Kid Comic Strips

Kid Comic Strips:
A Genre Across Four Countries

Ian Gordon
Palgrave MacMillan
94 pages
ISBN 978-1-137-56197-8 (Hardcover)
~€ 49,99
December 2016

Publisher’s page
This book looks at the humor that artists and editors believed would have appeal in four different countries. Ian Gordon explains how similar humor played out in comic strips across different cultures and humor styles. By examining Skippy and Ginger Meggs, the book shows a good deal of similarities between American and Australian humor while establishing some distinct differences. In examining the French translation of Perry Winkle, the book explores questions of language and culture. By shifting focus to a later period and looking at the American and British comics entitled Dennis the Menace, two very different comics bearing the same name, Kid Comic Strips details both differences in culture and traditions and the importance of the type of reader imagined by the artist.

Comic Connections

Comic Connections:
Analyzing Hero and Identity

Sandra Eckard (ed.)
Rowman & Littlefield
154 pages
ISBN 978-1-4758-2802-3 (Paperback)
~$ 25,00
January 2017

Publisher’s page
Comics are all around campuses everyday, and with students arriving less prepared to tackle basics like reading, writing, and analyzing, this text helps connect what students enjoy to the classroom. Comic Connections: Analyzing Hero and Identity is designed to help teachers from middle school through college find a new strategy that they can use right away as part of their curricular goals. Each chapter has three pieces: comic relevance, classroom connections, and concluding thoughts; this format allows a reader to pick-and-choose where to start. Some readers might want to delve into the history of a comic to better understand characters and their usefulness, while other readers might want to pick up an activity, presentation, or project that they can fold into that day’s lesson.

MONITOR: NEW PUBLICATIONS ON COMIC BOOKS

Muslim Superheroes

Muslim Superheroes:
Comics, Islam, and Representation

A. David Lewis and Martin Lund (eds.)
Harvard University Press
220 pages
ISBN 978-0-6749-7594-1 (Paperback)
~€ 22,50
July 2016

Publisher’s page
The roster of Muslim superheroes in the comic book medium has grown over the years, as has the complexity of their depictions. Muslim Superheroes tracks the initial absence, reluctant inclusion, tokenistic employment, and then nuanced scripting of Islamic protagonists in the American superhero comic book market and beyond. This scholarly anthology investigates the ways in which Muslim superhero characters fulfill, counter, or complicate Western stereotypes and navigate popular audience expectations globally, under the looming threat of Islamophobia. The contributors consider assumptions buried in the very notion of a character who is both a superhero and a Muslim with an interdisciplinary and international focus characteristic of both Islamic studies and comics studies scholarship. Muslim Superheroes investigates both intranational American racial formation and international American geopolitics, juxtaposed with social developments outside U.S. borders. Providing unprecedented depth to the study of Muslim superheroes, this collection analyzes, through a series of close readings and comparative studies, how Muslim and non-Muslim comics creators and critics have produced, reproduced, and represented different conceptions of Islam and Muslimness embodied in the genre characters.

The Child Savage, 1890–2010

Translation and Comics:
Special Issue of TranscUlturAl (8.2)

Chris Reyns-Chikuma and Julie Tarif (eds.)
University of Alberta Press
204 pages
ISSN 1920-0323
November 2016

Publisher’s page
The central position the translation of comics and translated comics have come to occupy in the cultural space call for further study. With this special issue of TranscUlturAl, we are hoping to initiate an interdisciplinary dialogue between “traditional” literary translation studies and audiovisual translation studies on one hand, and between translation studies and comics studies on the other hand. Translation and translation studies can benefit from comics studies in the sense that the latter can open new perspectives about translation (for instance, emphasizing new types of constraints) and help in improving the translation of comics, and it is our belief that translation studies can be beneficial to comics studies, given that it highlights some specificities of the comics medium and art. (taken from the Introduction)

Movie Comics

Movie Comics:
Page to Screen/Screen to Page

Blair Davis
Rutgers University Press
256 pages
ISBN 978-0-8135-7225-3 (Paperback)
~$ 27,95
November 2016

Publisher’s page
Movie Comics is the first book to study the long history of both comics-to-film and film-to-comics adaptations, covering everything from silent films starring Happy Hooligan to sound films and serials featuring Dick Tracy and Superman to comic books starring John Wayne, Gene Autry, Bob Hope, Abbott & Costello, Alan Ladd, and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. With a special focus on the Classical Hollywood era, Blair Davis investigates the factors that spurred this media convergence, as the film and comics industries joined forces to expand the reach of their various brands. While analyzing this production history, he also tracks the artistic coevolution of films and comics, considering the many formal elements that each medium adopted and adapted from the other. As it explores our abiding desire to experience the same characters and stories in multiple forms, Movie Comics gives readers a new appreciation for the unique qualities of the illustrated page and the cinematic moving image.

Deutsche Comicforschung 2017

Jahrbuch Deutsche Comicforschung 2017

Eckart Sackmann (ed.)
Patrimonium
144 pages
ISBN 978-3-89474-293-5 (Hardcover)
~€ 39,00
December 2016

Publisher’s page
Table of content:
– Comics – vom Schimpfwort zum Lehnwort
– Rinaldo Rinaldini als Comic-Held
– Lothar Meggendorfer – der Verwandlungskünstler
– Antisemitische Bildergeschichte der Kaiserzeit: “Das Lied vom Levi”
– Johannes Thiel – Geschichten aus dem Zwergenland
– Die Wespe und die Schwaben von der Donau
– Gerhard Brinkmann: “Mickey Mouse” von 1942
– KASCH – Kurt Ludwig Schmidt
– Wie es knallt und wie es pufft! “Gaby, das Atommädchen”
– “Die spannendste Geschichte unserer Zeit” – die Adenauer-PR
– “Asterix” – ein unbesiegbarer Gallier kommt über den Rhein
– Der 1. Deutsche Comic-Congress Berlin 1973

Captain Marvel and the Art of Nostalgia

Captain Marvel and the Art of Nostalgia

Brian Cremins
University Press of MIssissippi
256 pages
ISBN 978-1-4968-0876-9 (Hardcover)
~$ 65,00
December 2016

Publisher’s page
The saga of Captain Marvel is also that of artist C. C. Beck and writer Otto Binder, one of the most innovative and prolific creative teams working during the Golden Age of comics in the United States. While Beck was the technician and meticulous craftsman, Binder contributed the still, human voice at the heart of Billy’s adventures. Later in his career, Beck, like his friend and colleague Will Eisner, developed a theory of comic art expressed in numerous articles, essays, and interviews. A decade after Fawcett Publications settled a copyright infringement lawsuit with Superman’s publisher, Beck and Binder became legendary, celebrated figures in comic book fandom of the 1960s. What Beck, Binder, and their readers share in common is a fascination with nostalgia, which has shaped the history of comics and comics scholarship in the United States. Billy Batson’s America, with its cartoon villains and talking tigers, remains a living archive of childhood memories, so precious but elusive, as strange and mysterious as the boy’s first visit to the subway tunnel. Taking cues from Beck’s theories of art and from the growing field of memory studies, Captain Marvel and the Art of Nostalgia explains why we read comics and, more significantly, how we remember them and the America that dreamed them up in the first place.

A Brief History of Comic Book Movies

A Brief History of Comic Book Movies

Wheeler Winston Dixon and Richard Graham
Springer
118 pages
ISBN 978-3-319-47183-9 (Hardcover)
~€ 53,49
December 2016

Publisher’s page
A Brief History of Comic Book Movies traces the meteoric rise of the hybrid art form of the comic book film. These films trace their origins back to the early 1940s, when the first Batman and Superman serials were made. The serials, and later television shows in the 1950s and 60s, were for the most part designed for children. But today, with the continuing rise of Comic-Con, they seem to be more a part of the mainstream than ever, appealing to adults as well as younger fans. This book examines comic book movies from the past and present, exploring how these films shaped American culture from the post-World War II era to the present day, and how they adapted to the changing tastes and mores of succeeding generations.

MONITOR: NEW PUBLICATIONS ON COMIC BOOKS

Superwomen

Superwomen:
Gender, Power, and Representation

Carolyn Cocca
Bloomsbury Academic
288 pages
ISBN 978-1-5013-1657-9 (Paperback)
~$ 29,95
September 2016

Publisher’s page
Over the last 75 years, superheroes have been portrayed most often as male, heterosexual, white, and able-bodied. Today, a time when many of these characters are billion-dollar global commodities, there are more female superheroes, more queer superheroes, more superheroes of color, and more disabled superheroes–but not many more. Superwomen investigates how and why female superhero characters have become more numerous but are still not-at-all close to parity with their male counterparts; how and why they have become a flashpoint for struggles over gender, sexuality, race, and disability; what has changed over time and why in terms of how these characters have been written, drawn, marketed, purchased, read, and reacted to; and how and why representations of superheroes matter, particularly to historically underrepresented and stereotyped groups.

The Child Savage, 1890–2010

The Child Savage, 1890–2010:
From Comics to Games

Elisabeth Wesseling (Hrsg.)
Routledge
258 pages
ISBN 978-1-1382-4728-4 (Paperback)
~£ 34,99
September 2016

Publisher’s page
Taking up the understudied relationship between the cultural history of childhood and media studies, this volume traces twentieth-century migrations of the child-savage analogy from colonial into postcolonial discourse across a wide range of old and new media. Older and newer media such as films, textbooks, children’s literature, periodicals, comic strips, children’s radio, and toys are deeply implicated in each other through ongoing ‘remediation’, meaning that they continually mimic, absorb and transform each other’s representational formats, stylistic features, and content. Media theory thus confronts the cultural history of childhood with the challenge of re-thinking change in childhood imaginaries as transformation-through-repetition patterns, rather than as rise-shine-decline sequences. This volume takes up this challenge, demonstrating that one historical epoch may well accommodate diverging childhood repertoires, which are recycled again and again as they are played out across a whole gamut of different media formats in the course of time.

Latinx Comic Book Storytelling

Latinx Comic Book Storytelling:
An Odyssey by Interview

Frederick Luis Aldama (ed.)
San Diego State University Press
270 pages
ISBN 978-1-9385-3792-9 (Paperback)
~$ 24,95
October 2016

Publisher’s page
The US comic’s scene is evolving-along with the rest of the culture-slowly, sometimes painfully, but inexorably towards a greater diversity of readers & creators, of new styles & stories. This book gives us a series of intimate conversations with several generations of Latin@ cartoonists (diverse themselves in their backgrounds and interests) juggling craft and art with heritage and language. These pioneers have their noses to their drawing boards and tablets but they keep their eyes on the larger significance of their work. In this timely and transformative collection of interviews, Aldama brings to life the stories, achievements, and creative process of 29 Latino-and Latina!-comic book artists. Jettisoned to new heights of exploration, this vertiginous journey opens us to a world of breathtaking visual-verbal creativity and the embrace of a resplendently diverse and eager community of readers. Latino comic book storytelling, its characters, and wondrous world-makings vitally transform, renew, and replenish the comic’s field. They are the revolution-and Aldama’s at the frontlines to capture it all.

The Posthuman Body in Superhero Comic

The Posthuman Body in Superhero Comics:
Human, Superhuman, Transhuman, Post/Human

Scott Jeffery
Palgrave MacMillan
264 pages
ISBN 978-1-137-57822-8 (Hardcover)
~€ 85,59
October 2016

Publisher’s page
This book examines the concepts of Post/Humanism and Transhumanism as depicted in superhero comics. Recent decades have seen mainstream audiences embrace the comic book Superhuman. Meanwhile there has been increasing concern surrounding human enhancement technologies, with the techno-scientific movement of Transhumanism arguing that it is time humans took active control of their evolution. Utilising Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of the rhizome as a non-hierarchical system of knowledge to conceptualize the superhero narrative in terms of its political, social and aesthetic relations to the history of human technological enhancement, this book draws upon a diverse range of texts to explore the way in which the posthuman has been represented in superhero comics, while simultaneously highlighting its shared historical development with Post/Humanist critical theory and the material techno-scientific practices of Transhumanism.

El Eternauta, Daytripper, and Beyond

El Eternauta, Daytripper, and Beyond:
Graphic Narrative in Argentina and Brazil

David William Foster
University of Texas Press
174 pages
ISBN 978-1-4773-1085-4 (Hardcover)
~$ 16,72
October 2016

Publisher’s page
El Eternauta, Daytripper, and Beyond examines the graphic narrative tradition in the two South American countries that have produced the medium’s most significant and copious output. Argentine graphic narrative emerged in the 1980s, awakened by Héctor Oesterheld’s groundbreaking 1950s serial El Eternauta. After Oesterheld was “disappeared” under the military dictatorship, El Eternauta became one of the most important cultural texts of turbulent mid-twentieth-century Argentina. Today its story, set in motion by an extraterrestrial invasion of Buenos Aires, is read as a parable foretelling the “invasion” of Argentine society by a murderous tyranny. Because of El Eternauta, graphic narrative became a major platform for the country’s cultural redemocratization. In contrast, Brazil, which returned to democracy in 1985 after decades of dictatorship, produced considerably less analysis of the period of repression in its graphic narratives. In Brazil, serious graphic narratives such as Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá’s Daytripper, which explores issues of modernity, globalization, and cross-cultural identity, developed only in recent decades, reflecting Brazilian society’s current and ongoing challenges. Besides discussing El Eternauta and Daytripper, David William Foster utilizes case studies of influential works—such as Alberto Breccia and Juan Sasturain’s Perramus series, Angélica Freitas and Odyr Bernardi’s Guadalupe, and others—to compare the role of graphic narratives in the cultures of both countries, highlighting the importance of Argentina and Brazil as anchors of the production of world-class graphic narrative.

Re-Constructing the Man of Steel

Re-Constructing the Man of Steel:
Superman 1938–1941, Jewish American History, and the Invention of the Jewish–Comics Connection

Martin Lund
Palgrave MacMillan
215 pages
ISBN 978-3-319-42959-5 (Hardcover)
~€ 94,94
November 2016

Publisher’s page
In this book, Martin Lund challenges contemporary claims about the original Superman’s supposed Jewishness and offers a critical re-reading of the earliest Superman comics. Engaging in critical dialogue with extant writing on the subject, Lund argues that much of recent popular and scholarly writing on Superman as a Jewish character is a product of the ethnic revival, rather than critical investigations of the past, and as such does not stand up to historical scrutiny. In place of these readings, this book offers a new understanding of the Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in the mid-1930s, presenting him as an authentically Jewish American character in his own time, for good and ill.

MONITOR: NEW PUBLICATIONS ON COMIC BOOKS

Rewriting History in Manga

Rewriting History in Manga:
Stories for the Nation

Nissim Otmazgin and Rebecca Suter (eds.)
Palgrave MacMillan
191 pages
ISBN 978-1-137-55478-9 (Hardcover)
~€ 89,99
June 2016

Publisher’s page
This book analyzes the role of manga (Japanese comics) within contemporary Japanese public discourse, and explores its role in propagating new perceptions regarding Japanese history. Through the analysis of a variety of cases studies ranging from nineteenth century magazines to contemporary online comics and fandom, it focuses on the representations and interpretations of history in manga, and clarifies this medium’s interrelation with historical memory and political debate. Stories for the Nation delineates alternative modes of historical memory and expression as they are manifested and contested in manga, and argues for manga’s potential to influence the historical and political views of wide audiences in Japan.

Die Darstellung realer Kriege in Comics

Die Darstellung realer Kriege in Comics

Nina Mahrt
Peter Lang
471 pages
ISBN 978-3-6316-9279-0 (Hardcover)
~€ 84,20
July 2016

Publisher’s page
Bilder spielen eine zentrale Rolle in der medialen Inszenierung und Vermittlung von Kriegen. Die Autorin zeigt, wie Comics, die sich realen Kriegen widmen, bekannte Bilder, Handlungsverläufe und Argumentationen nutzen, umdeuten und vor allem auch visuell umsetzen. Dazu analysiert sie sieben Comics auf wiederkehrende Elemente und je individuelle Themen und Ausprägungen. Dieses Vorgehen macht die Analysen der einzelnen Comics vergleichbar und trägt zugleich der Individualität jedes einzelnen Textes Rechnung. Die textstilistisch pragmatische Herangehensweise berücksichtigt als erstes linguistisches Instrumentarium alle Darstellungsmittel des Comics gleichermaßen

The Rise of Comic Book Movies

The Rise of Comic Book Movies:
From the Pages to the Big Screen

Benny Potter, Dan Rumble, and Jason Keen (eds.)
Barnes and Noble
184 pages
ISBN 978-1-6335-3343-1 (Paperback)
~$ 11,84
July 2016

Publisher’s page
Recent years show a sea change in Hollywood- the biggest movies come from the pages of comic books. These box office successes are driven by fans who love seeing their favorite heroes and villains from comics brought to life on the big screen, from Thor to Superman to Batman and Captain America, Wonder Woman and more. Baddies like Loki, The Joker and Lex Luthor only add to the fun. Welcome to the Golden Age of comic book movies and Comicstorians Benny Potter, Dan Rumbles and Jason Keen are here to help you understand why we these larger-than-life characters have captured the imagination of the world.
When it comes to superheroes of the Silver Screen, nobody knows more than the masterminds behind the wildly popular Comicstorian YouTube channel. This definitive guide to comic book films divulges behind-the-scenes secrets and the hidden history behind these must-see movies including how, after very rocky beginnings, they shot to the top with DC and Marvel as two of the most important franchises in the industry.

Teaching Comics Through Multiple Lenses

Teaching Comics Through Multiple Lenses:
Critical Perspectives

Crag Hill
Routledge
172 pages
ISBN 978-1-1386-4990-3 (Hardcover)
£~ 95,00
August 2016

Publisher’s page
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.

How Superheroes Model Community

How Superheroes Model Community:
Philosophically, Communicatively, Relationally

Nathan Miczo
Rowman & Littlefield
172 pages
ISBN 978-1-4985-1680-8 (Hardcover)
~$ 80,00
August 2016

Publisher’s page
From the perspectives of positive psychology and positive communication, superheroes are often depicted as possessing virtues and serving as inspirational exemplars. However, many of the virtues enumerated as characterizing the superhero (e.g., courage, teamwork, creativity) could just as easily be applied to heroes of other genres. To understand what is unique to the superhero genre, How Superheroes Model Community looks not only to the virtues that animate them, but also to the underlying moral framework that gives meaning to those virtues. The key to understanding their character is that often they save strangers, and they do so in the public sphere. The superhero’s moral framework, therefore, must encompass both the motivation to act to benefit others rather than themselves (especially people to whom they have no relational obligation) and to preserve the public sphere against those who would disrupt it.

Arresting Development

Arresting Development:
Comics at the Boundaries of Literature

Christopher Pizzino
University of Texas Press
245 pages
ISBN 978-1-4773-0977-3 (Hardcover)
~$ 60,00
September 2016

Publisher’s page
Mainstream narratives of the graphic novel’s development describe the form’s “coming of age,” its maturation from pulp infancy to literary adulthood. In Arresting Development, Christopher Pizzino questions these established narratives, arguing that the medium’s history of censorship and marginalization endures in the minds of its present-day readers and, crucially, its authors. Comics and their writers remain burdened by the stigma of literary illegitimacy and the struggles for status that marked their earlier history. Many graphic novelists are intensely aware of both the medium’s troubled past and their own tenuous status in contemporary culture. Arresting Development presents case studies of four key works—Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Charles Burns’s Black Hole, and Gilbert Hernandez’s Love and Rockets—exploring how their authors engage the problem of comics’ cultural standing. Pizzino illuminates the separation of high and low culture, art and pulp, and sophisticated appreciation and vulgar consumption as continual influences that determine the limits of literature, the status of readers, and the value of the very act of reading.

MONITOR: NEW PUBLICATIONS ON COMIC BOOKS

The Routledge Companion to Comics

The Routledge Companion to Comics

Frank Bramlett, Roy T. Cook, and Aaron Meskin (eds.)
Routledge
456 pages
ISBN 978-0-4157-2900-0 (Hardcover)
~£ 150,00
July 2016

Publisher’s page
This cutting-edge handbook brings together an international roster of scholars to examine many facets of comics and graphic novels. Contributor essays provide authoritative, up-to-date overviewsof the major topics and questions within comic studies, offering readers a truly global approach to understanding the field. The Routledge Companion to Comics expertly organizes representative work from a range of disciplines, including media and cultural studies, literature, philosophy, and linguistics. More than an introduction to the study of comics, this book will serve as a crucial reference for anyone interested in pursuing research in the area, guiding students, scholars, and comics fans alike.

The Comics of Hergé

The Comics of Hergé:
When the Lines Are Not So Clear

Joe Sutliff Sanders (ed.)
University Press of Mississippi
192 pages
ISBN 978-1-4968-0726-7
~$ 60,00
July 2016

Publisher’s page
The book opens with Hergé’s aesthetic techniques, including analyses of his efforts to comprehend and represent absence and the rhythm of mundaneness between panels of action. Broad views of his career describe how Hergé navigated changing ideas of air travel, while precise accounts of his life during Nazi occupation explain how the demands of the occupied press transformed his understanding of what a comics page could do. The next section considers a subject with which Hergé was himself consumed: the fraught lines between high and low art. By reading the late masterpieces of the Tintin series, these chapters situate his artistic legacy. A final section considers how the clear line style has been reinterpreted around the world, from contemporary Francophone writers to a Chinese American cartoonist and on to Turkey, where Tintin has been reinvented into something meaningful to an audience Hergé probably never anticipated.

Forging the Past

Forging the Past:
Seth and the Art of Memory

Daniel Marrone
University Press of Mississippi
208 pages
ISBN 978-1-4968-0731-1 (Hardcover)
~$ 60,00
August 2016

Publisher’s page
At once familiar and hard to place, the work of acclaimed Canadian cartoonist Seth evokes a world that no longer exists–and perhaps never existed, except in the panels of long-forgotten comics. Forging the Past offers a comprehensive account of this work and the complex interventions it makes into the past. Moving beyond common notions of nostalgia, Daniel Marrone explores the various ways in which Seth’s comics induce readers to participate in forging histories and memories. Marrone discusses collecting, Canadian identity, New Yorker cartoons, authenticity, artifice, and ambiguity–all within the context comics’ unique structure and texture. Seth’s comics are suffused with longing for the past, but on close examination this longing is revealed to be deeply ambivalent, ironic, and self-aware. Marrone undertakes the most thorough, sustained investigation of Seth’s work to date, while advancing a broader argument about how comics operate as a literary medium.

Heroines of Comic Books and Literature

Heroines of Comic Books and Literature

Maja Bajac-Carter, Norma Jones, and Bob Batchelor (eds.)
Rowman & Littlefield
274 pages
ISBN 978-1-4422-7560-7 (Paperback)
~$ 30,00
August 2016

Publisher’s page
Despite the growing importance of heroines across literary culture—and sales figures that demonstrate both young adult and adult females are reading about heroines in droves, particularly in graphic novels, comic books, and YA literature—few scholarly collections have examined the complex relationships between the representations of heroines and the changing societal roles for both women and men. These engaging and important essays situate heroines within culture, revealing them as tough and self-sufficient females who often break the bounds of gender expectations in places readers may not expect. Analyzing how women are and have been represented in print, this companion volume to Heroines of Film and Television will appeal to scholars of literature, rhetoric, and media as well as to broader audiences that are interested in portrayals of women in popular culture.

Visuelle Satire

Visuelle Satire:
Deutschland im Spiegel politisch-satirischer Karikaturen und Bildergeschichten

Dietrich Grünewald (ed.)
Christian A. Bachmann Verlag
186 pages
ISBN 978-3-941030-88-6 (Paperback)
~€ 29,90
August 2016

Publisher’s page
2015 war es 150 Jahre her, dass die wohl berühmteste Lausbubengeschichte der Weltliteratur, »Max & Moritz«, zum ersten Mal im Buchhandel erhältlich war. Wilhelm Busch, der mit dieser Bildergeschichte seinen großen Durchbruch als Künstler erlebte, stammte aus Wiedensahl im heutigen Landkreis Schaumburg. Zu diesem Anlass widmete man dem bedeutenden Künstler im Schaumburger Land ein großes Jubiläumsjahr mit zahlreichen Veranstaltungen. Teil dieses Jubiläumsjahres war die Fachtagung zur »Visuellen Satire. Deutschland im Spiegel politisch-satirischer Karikaturen und Bildergeschichten« im Stift Obernkirchen.

Denn Wilhelm Busch gilt bis heute vielen Zeichnern als großes Vorbild für ihr eigenes Schaffen und 2015 jährte sich auch zum 25. Mal das Jahr der Deutschen Wiedervereinigung – da lag es nahe, Zeichner und Wissenschaftler aus der neuen und alten Bundesländer einzuladen, um über die politische Satire und Karikatur nach 1945 in den beiden deutschen Staaten und nach 1990 zu diskutieren. Wie lebten und arbeiteten die Zeichner in dieser zweiten deutschen Diktatur? Wo waren die Berührungspunkte mit den Kollegen im Westen Deutschlands? Gibt es einen ostdeutschen und einen westdeutschen Humor? Wie hat sich die Szene nach 1990 verändert? Und welche Debatten über das künstlerische Schaffen werden heute geführt? Wie begegnet man den Vorwürfen rund um »Charlie Hebdo«? Dieser Tagungsband versammelt noch einmal alle Beiträge rund um dieses breite Themenspektrum und liefert Impulse für weitere Diskussionen.

Hokusai’s Lost Manga

Hokusai’s Lost Manga

Katsushika Hokusai and Sarah E. Thompson
MFA Publications, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
248 pages
ISBN 978-0-8784-6826-3 (Hardcover)
~$ 35,00
August 2016

Publisher’s page
A mysterious 1823 advertisement for illustrated books by renowned artist Katsushika Hokusai refers to an otherwise unknown work called Mister Iitsu’s Chicken-Rib Picture Book. According to the ad, the book was conceived in the same year that the final volume of Hokusai’s famous Manga series was supposed to have been published. Many therefore believe that the Chicken-Rib Picture Book was meant to be a continuation of the series, but a published copy of it has never been found. This eclectic and engaging collection of drawings from the peerless Japanese art collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, was likely intended for that lost book. It includes the sort of lively, behind-the-scenes sketches of daily life that have made the Manga series so beloved, as well as imaginatively conceived sea creatures, refined flowers, deities, heroes, and a variety of craftspeople and laborers. Reproduced here in full for the first time as a stand-alone volume, this rare sketchbook of Hokusai drawings makes for delightful fare.

MONITOR: NEW PUBLICATIONS ON COMIC BOOKS

Hellboy's World

Hellboy’s World:
Comics and Monsters on the Margins

Scott Bukatman
University of California Press
280 pages
ISBN 978-0-5202-8804-1 (Paperback)
~$ 24,95
April 2016

Publisher’s page
Hellboy, Mike Mignola’s famed comic book demon hunter, wanders through a haunting and horrific world steeped in the history of weird fictions and wide-ranging folklores. Hellboy’s World shows how our engagement with Hellboy’s world is a highly aestheticized encounter with comics and their materiality. Scott Bukatman’s dynamic study explores how comics produce a heightened “adventure of reading” in which syntheses of image and word, image sequences, and serial narratives create compelling worlds for the reader’s imagination to inhabit. Drawing upon other media—including children’s books, sculpture, pulp fiction, cinema, graphic design, painting, and illuminated manuscripts—Bukatman reveals the mechanics of creating a world on the page. He also demonstrates the pleasurable and multiple complexities of the reader’s experience, invoking the riotous colors of comics that elude rationality and control and delving into shared fictional universes and occult detection, the horror genre and the evocation of the sublime, and the place of abstraction in Mignola’s art. Monsters populate the world of Hellboy comics, but Bukatman argues that comics are themselves little monsters, unruly sites of sensory and cognitive pleasures that exist, happily, on the margins. The book is not only a treat for Hellboy fans, but it will entice anyone interested in the medium of comics and the art of reading.

Canadian Graphic

Canadian Graphic:
Picturing Life Narratives:

Candida Rifkind and Linda Warley (eds.)
WLU Press
320 pages
ISBN 978-1-77112-179-8 (Paperback)
~$ 29,99
May 2016

Publisher’s page
Canadian Graphic: Picturing Life Narratives presents critical essays on contemporary Canadian e role of graphic life narratives in reimagining the national past, including Indigenous–settler relations, both world wars, and Quebec’s Quiet Revolution.

Pioniere des Comic

Pioniere des Comic:
Eine andere Avantgarde

Alexander Braun, Max Hollein, and David Currier (eds.)
Hatje Cantz Verlag
256 pages
ISBN 978-3-7757-4110-1
~€ 35,00
June 2016

Publisher’s page
Comics entstanden um 1897 in Form von farbigen Sonntagsbeilagen in den großen amerikanischen Tageszeitungen. Sie erreichten als erstes bebildertes Massenmedium zig Millionen Leser pro Tag und setzten sich sofort an die Spitze der Unterhaltungsindustrie. Lange wurde übersehen, wie innovativ und experimentell die frühen Comic-Pioniere waren und dass sich ihre Arbeiten häufig auf Augenhöhe mit der künstlerischen Avantgarde der Zeit befanden. Winsor McCay nahm ab 1905 den Surrealismus vorweg, so wie George Herriman in Krazy Kat ab 1913 Aspekte des Absurden Theaters etablierte. Cliff Sterretts Szenarien der späten 1920er-Jahre erinnern an expressionistische Stummfilme, während Frank O. King mit Gasoline Alley das Erzählen in Echtzeit probierte. Lyonel Feininger nicht zu vergessen, der 1906/07 mit zwei Comicserien seinen Weg zur künstlerischen Unabhängigkeit beschritt.

Frank Miller's Daredevil and the Ends of Heroism

Frank Miller’s Daredevil and the Ends of Heroism

Paul Young
Rutgers University Press
256 pages
ISBN 978-0-8135-6381-7 (Paperback)
~$ 27,95
June 2016

Publisher’s page
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, writer-artist Frank Miller turned Daredevil from a tepid-selling comic into an industry-wide success story, doubling its sales within three years. Lawyer by day and costumed vigilante by night, the character of Daredevil was the perfect vehicle for the explorations of heroic ideals and violence that would come to define Miller’s work. Frank Miller’s Daredevil and the Ends of Heroism is both a rigorous study of Miller’s artistic influences and innovations and a reflection on how his visionary work on Daredevil impacted generations of comics publishers, creators, and fans. Paul Young explores the accomplishments of Miller the writer, who fused hardboiled crime stories with superhero comics, while reimagining Kingpin (a classic Spider-Man nemesis), recuperating the half-baked villain Bullseye, and inventing a completely new kind of Daredevil villain in Elektra. Yet, he also offers a vivid appreciation of the indelible panels drawn by Miller the artist, taking a fresh look at his distinctive page layouts and lines.

Visualizing Jewish Narrative

Good Grief! Children and Comics: A Collection of Companion Essays

Michelle Ann Abate and Joe Sutliff Sanders (eds.)
The Ohio State University Libraries
141 pages
DOI: 10.18061/1811/77539
Free Access
June 2016

Publisher’s page
With original essays examining everything from Little Nemo to Calvin and Hobbes, from Batman to the Lumberjanes, from Bone to Maus, this collection of companion essays is your online introduction to the larger questions and contexts of the groundbreaking new exhibit at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum (part of the Ohio State University Libraries).

Manga Vision

Manga Vision:
Cultural and Communicative Perspectives

Sarah Pasfield-Neofitou and Cathy Sell (eds.), art by Queenie Chan
Monash University Publishing
302 pages
ISBN 978-1-925377-06-4 (Paperback)
~$ 49,95
June 2016

Publisher’s page
Manga Vision examines cultural and communicative aspects of Japanese comics, drawing together scholars from Japan, Australia and Europe working in areas as diverse as cultural studies, linguistics, education, music, art, anthropology, and translation, to explore the influence of manga in Japan and worldwide via translation, OEL manga and fan engagement. The volume includes a mix of theoretical, methodological, empirical and professional practice-based chapters, examining manga from both academic and artistic perspectives. Manga Vision also provides the reader with a multimedia experience, featuring original artwork by Australian manga artist Queenie Chan, cosplay photographs, and an online supplement offering musical compositions inspired by manga, and downloadable manga-related teaching resources.

Special Journal-Issue “Mediality and Materiality of Contemporary Comics”

Mediality_and_Materiality_small

On August 16, a special-themed issue of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics (7.3) 
has been published on the topic “Mediality and Materiality of Contemporary Comics”.
The issue is based on the Workshop of the same name, organzied by the Comics Studies Working Group (AG Comicforschung) of the German Society for Media Studies (Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaft) that took place from April 24-26, 2015, at the University of Tübingen (an English conference report was given by Christian A. Bachmann and Stephan Packard).
Additional contributions are based on the Tübingen Winter Schools “Transmedial Worlds in Convergent Media Culture” (February 24-28, 2014) and “Transmedial Narratology: Theories and Methods” (February 23-26, 2016).

Not only the guest editors Jan-Noël Thon and Lukas R.A. Wilde are members of ComFor but also some of the contributors, Christina Meyer, Daniel Stein and Markus Oppolzer.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: mediality and materiality of contemporary comics
Jan-Noël Thon / Lukas R.A. Wilde

Understanding comics’ mediality as an actor-network: some elements of translation in the works of Brian Fies and Dylan Horrocks
Sebastian Bartosch

‘Posing for all the characters in the book’: the multimodal processes of production in Alison Bechdel’s relational autobiography ‘Are You My Mother?’
Anne Rüggemeier

Reaching an audience: the publication history of David Hine’s ‘Strange Embrace’

Markus Oppolzer

‘Mummified objects’: superhero comics in the digital age
Daniel Stein

Medial transgressions: comics – sheet music – theatre – toys
Christina Meyer

Wandering the panels, walking through media: zombies, comics, and the post-apocalyptic world
Bernard Perron

Continue to the publication

MONITOR: New Publications on Comic Books

Gus Dirks

Gus Dirks:
Käfer, Kunst & Kummer

Tim Eckhorst
Christian A. Bachmann
102 pages
ISBN 978-3-941030-23-7 (Paperback)
~€ 16,00
May 2016
Publisher’s page
Gus Dirks, der jüngere Bruder von Rudolph Dirks, dem Zeichner der Katzenjammer Kids, wird um 1900 bekannt als Zeichner von Bugville. Tim Eckhorst erzählt Dirks Leben von der Auswanderung der Eltern in die USA bis zu seinem Suizid 1902, der seinem Leben ein frühzeitiges Ende setzte.

Novel Perspectives on German-Language Comics Studies

Novel Perspectives on German-Language Comics Studies:
History, Pedagogy, Theory

Lynn M. Kutch (ed.)
Rowman & Littlefield
300 pages
ISBN 978-1-4985-2622-7 (Hardcover)
~$ 95,00
June 2016
Publisher’s page
Novel Perspectives on German-Language Comics Studies: History, Pedagogy, Theory gathers an international team of contributors from two continents whose innovative scholarship demonstrates a regard for comics and graphic novels as works of art in their own right. The contributions serve as models for further research that will continue to define the relationship between comics and other traditional “high art” forms, such as literature and the visual arts. Novel Perspectives on German-Language Comics Studies is the first English-language anthology that focuses exclusively on the graphic texts of German-speaking countries. In its breadth, this book functions as an important resource in a limited pool of critical works on German-language comics and graphic novels. The individual chapters differ significantly from one another in methodology, subject matter, and style. Taken together, however, they present a cross-section of comics and graphic novel scholarship being performed in North America and Europe today. Moreover, they help to secure a place for these works in a globalized culture of comics. This volume’s contributors have helped create a new critical language within which this rapidly expanding medium can be read and interpreted.

The Greatest Comic Book of All Time

The Greatest Comic Book of All Time:
Symbolic Capital and the Field of American Comic Books

Bart Beaty and Benjamin Woo (eds.)
Palgrave MacMillan
156 pages
ISBN 978-1-137-56196-1 (Hardcover)
~€ 52,73
April 2016
Publisher’s page
Bart Beaty and Benjamin Woo work to historicize why it is that certain works or creators have come to define the notion of a “quality comic book,” while other works and creators have been left at the fringes of critical analysis.

Graphic Borders

Graphic Borders:
Latino Comic Books Past, Present, and Future

Frederick Luis Aldama and Christopher González (eds.)
University of Texas Press
316 pages
ISBN 978-1-4773-0915-5 (Paperback)
~$ 29,95
April 2016
Publisher’s page
Graphic Borders presents the most thorough exploration of comics by and about Latinos currently available. Thirteen essays and one interview by eminent and rising scholars of comics bring to life this exciting graphic genre that conveys the distinctive and wide-ranging experiences of Latinos in the United States. The contributors’ exhilarating excavations delve into the following areas: comics created by Latinos that push the boundaries of generic conventions; Latino comic book author-artists who complicate issues of race and gender through their careful reconfigurations of the body; comic strips; Latino superheroes in mainstream comics; and the complex ways that Latino superheroes are created and consumed within larger popular cultural trends. Taken as a whole, the book unveils the resplendent riches of comics by and about Latinos and proves that there are no limits to the ways in which Latinos can be represented and imagined in the world of comics.

Visualizing Jewish Narrative

Visualizing Jewish Narrative:
Jewish Comics and Graphic Novels

Derek Parker Royal (ed.)
Bloomsbury Academy
320 pages
ISBN: 9-781-4742-4881-5 (Hardcover)
~ £64,99
May 2016
Publisher’s page
Examining a wide range of comics and graphic novels – including works by creators such as Will Eisner, Leela Corman, Neil Gaiman, Art Spiegelman, Sarah Glidden and Joe Sacco – this book explores how comics writers and artists have tackled major issues of Jewish identity and culture. With chapters written by leading and emerging scholars in contemporary comic book studies, Visualizing Jewish Narrative highlights the ways in which Jewish comics have handled such topics as: Biography, autobiography, and Jewish identity; Gender and sexuality; Genre – from superheroes to comedy; The Holocaust; The Israel-Palestine conflict; Sources in the Hebrew Bible and Jewish myth.

The Mythology of the Superhero

The Mythology of the Superhero

Andrew R. Bahlmann
Mc Farland
216 pages
ISBN 978-1-4766-6248-0 (Paperback)
~$ 35,00
April 2016
Publisher’s page
Superheroes have been an integral part of popular society for decades and have given rise to a collective mythology familiar in popular culture worldwide. Though scholars and fans have recognized and commented on this mythology, its structure has gone largely unexplored. This book provides a model and lexicon for identifying the superhero mythos. The author examines the myth in several narratives—including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Green Arrow and Beowulf—and discusses such diverse characters as Batman, Wolverine, Invincible and John Constantine.