Tag Archives: Monitor

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.

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.

MONITOR: NEW PUBLICATIONS ON COMIC BOOKS

The Journal of Comics and Culture

The Journal of Comics and Culture, Vol. 1

Jonathan Gray (ed.)
Pace University Press
226 pages
ISBN 978-0-9619518-5-6
~$ 32,00
April 2016
Publisher’s page
The Journal of Comics and Culture studies the comic and the rapidly evolving medium of the graphic novel and its connection to the wider world of popular culture. Original monographs, research, history, book reviews, and analysis reflect the innovative creative talents in the field, ground-breaking works, and how comics and the graphic novel both reflect and inform American culture. In the past 40 years comics have moved from occupying a decidedly lowbrow niche at the margins of pop culture to the center of the popular and critical imagination. Comics—a catch-all term that encompasses monthly comic books, graphic novels and web comics—are embedded in, relate to and comment upon other forms of media like film, painting, and the novel.

The Caped Crusade

The Caped Crusade:
Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture

Glen Weldon
Simon & Schuster
336 pages
ISBN 978-1-47675-669-1
~$ 26,00
March 2016
Publisher’s page
Since his creation, Batman has been many things: a two-fisted detective; a planet-hopping gadabout; a campy Pop-art sensation; a pointy-eared master spy; and a grim and gritty ninja of the urban night. For more than three quarters of a century, he has cycled from a figure of darkness to one of lightness and back again; he’s a bat-shaped Rorschach inkblot who takes on the various meanings our changing culture projects onto him. How we perceive Batman’s character, whether he’s delivering dire threats in a raspy Christian Bale growl or trading blithely homoerotic double-entendres with partner Robin on the comics page, speaks to who we are and how we wish to be seen by the world. It’s this endlessly mutable quality that has made him so enduring. In The Caped Crusade, with humor and insight, Glen Weldon, book critic for NPR and author of Superman: The Unauthorized Biography, lays out Batman’s seventy-eight-year cultural history and shows how he has helped make us who we are today and why his legacy remains so strong.

Marvel Comics into Film

Marvel Comics into Film;
Essays on Adaptations Since the 1940s

Matthew J. McEniry, Robert Moses Peaslee and Robert G. Weiner (eds.)
McFarland
280 pages
ISBN 978-0-7864-4304-8
~$ 35,00
March 2016
Publisher’s page
Marvel Studios’ approach to its Cinematic Universe—beginning with the release of Iron Man (2008)—has become the template for successful management of blockbuster film properties. Yet films featuring Marvel characters can be traced back to the 1940s, when the Captain America serial first appeared on the screen. This collection of new essays is the first to explore the historical, textual and cultural context of the larger cinematic Marvel universe, including serials, animated films, television movies, non–U.S. versions of Marvel characters, films that feature characters licensed by Marvel, and the contemporary Cinematic Universe as conceived by Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios. Films analyzed include Transformers (1986), Howard the Duck (1986), Blade (1998), Planet Hulk (2010), Iron Man: Rise of Technovore (2013), Elektra (2005), the Conan the Barbarian franchise (1982–1990), Ultimate Avengers (2006) and Ghost Rider (2007).

Exploring Canadian Identities in Canadian Comics

Canadian Review of Comparative Literature (43.1):
Exploring Canadian Identities in Canadian Comics

Chris Reyns-Chikuma and Gail de Vos (eds.)
University of Alberta
193 pages
ISSN: 1913-9659
March 2016
Publisher’s page
Canadian comic artists are well known beyond our borders from Joe Shuster, the creator of “Superman”—who, like Hal Foster, the re-creator of “Tarzan”, was born in Canada but left early for the US, to contemporary award winning comics artists such as Seth, Chester Brown, Guy Delisle, and Julie Doucet who often remain in Canada to create their works. (Continue to the Introduction)

No Laughing Matter

No Laughing Matter:
Visual Humor in Ideas of Race, Nationality, and Ethnicity

Angela Rosenthal, David Bindman and Adrian W. B. Randolph (eds.)
University Press of New England
328 pages
ISBN 978-1-61168-821-4
~€ 45,00
December 2015
Publisher’s page
In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, this collection—which gathers scholars in the fields of race, ethnicity, and humor—seems especially urgent. Inspired by Denmark’s Muhammad cartoons controversy, the contributors inquire into the role that racial and ethnic stereotypes play in visual humor and the thin line that separates broad characterization as a source of humor from its power to shock or exploit. The authors investigate the ways in which humor is used to demean or give identity to racial, national, or ethnic groups and explore how humor works differently in different media, such as cartoons, photographs, film, video, television, and physical performance.

Comics as Scholarship

Digital Humanities Quarterly (9.4):
Comics as Scholarship

Roger Todd Whitson (ed.)
Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO)
7 Contributions
Open access
December 2015
Publisher’s page
As you explore the diverse works included in this collection, we invite you particularly to consider the scholarly process that is on display and the opportunities we have in the digital humanities to embrace and refine these processes. Each work represents the different strengths of its author(s) in modality, use of original and remixed imagery, and textual methods. These works only display a small section of what is possible in the broad realm that can be analyzed as sequential art or comics. The history of humanities computing, broadly construed, is filled with multimodal works: however, we are still at our infancy in truly building spaces that are receptive to new methods, with systems of peer review that encourage innovation and experimentation. The challenges we faced in constructing this issue are a reminder that while the academic essay and monograph are entrenched structures with strong institutional support, the scholarly multimedia text is still emerging. (Continue to the Introduction)

Monitor: New Publications on Comic Books

Disability in Comic Books and Graphic Narratives.

Disability in Comic Books and Graphic Narratives

Chris Foss, Jonathan W. Gray and Zach Whalen (Hrsg.)
Palgrave MacMillan
216 pages
ISBN 978-1-137-50111-0
~$ 84,99
February 2016
Publisher’s page
As there has yet to be any substantial scrutiny of the complex confluences a more sustained dialogue between disability studies and comics studies might suggest, Disability in Comic Books and Graphic Narratives aims through its broad range of approaches and focus points to explore this exciting subject in productive and provocative ways.

Openness of Comics

Openness of Comics. Generating Meaning within Flexible Structures

Maaheen Ahmed
University Press of Mississippi
224 pages
ISBN 978-1-49680-593-5
~$ 60,00
April 2016
Publisher’s page
Never before have comics seemed so popular or diversified, proliferating across a broad spectrum of genres, experimenting with a variety of techniques, and gaining recognition as a legitimate, rich form of art. Maaheen Ahmed examines this trend by taking up philosopher Umberto Eco’s notion of the open work of art, whereby the reader–or listener or viewer, as the case may be–is offered several possibilities of interpretation in a cohesive narrative and aesthetic structure. Ahmed delineates the visual, literary, and other medium-specific features used by comics to form open rather than closed works, methods by which comics generate or limit meaning as well as increase and structure the scope of reading into a work.

Reading Art Spiegelman

Reading Art Spiegelman

Philip Smith
Routledge
148 pages
ISBN 978-1-138956-76-6
~£ 90,90
February 2016
Publisher’s page
The horror of the Holocaust lies not only in its brutality but in its scale and logistics; it depended upon the machinery and logic of a rational, industrialised, and empirically organised modern society. The central thesis of this book is that Art Spiegelman’s comics all identify deeply-rooted madness in post-Enlightenment society. Spiegelman maintains, in other words, that the Holocaust was not an aberration, but an inevitable consequence of modernisation. In service of this argument, Smith offers a reading of Spiegelman’s comics, with a particular focus on his three main collections: Breakdowns (1977 and 2008), Maus (1980 and 1991), and In the Shadow of No Towers (2004). He draws upon a taxonomy of terms from comic book scholarship, attempts to theorize madness (including literary portrayals of trauma), and critical works on Holocaust literature.

Women and Jewish American Identity in Contemporary Graphic Memoirs

“How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?”
Women and Jewish American Identity in Contemporary Graphic Memoirs

Tahneer Oksman
Columbia University Press
296 pages
ISBN 978-0-231172-75-2
~€ 30,00
February 2016
Publisher’s page
American comics reflect the distinct sensibilities and experiences of the Jewish American men who played an outsized role in creating them, but what about the contributions of Jewish women? Focusing on the visionary work of seven contemporary female Jewish cartoonists, Tahneer Oksman draws a remarkable connection between innovations in modes of graphic storytelling and the unstable, contradictory, and ambiguous figurations of the Jewish self in the postmodern era. Oksman isolates the dynamic Jewishness that connects each frame in the autobiographical comics of Aline Kominsky Crumb, Vanessa Davis, Miss Lasko-Gross, Lauren Weinstein, Sarah Glidden, Miriam Libicki, and Liana Finck.

The Joker

The Joker. A Serious Study of the Clown Prince of Crime

Robert Moses Peaslee und Robert G. Weiner (eds.)
University Press of Mississippi
288 pages
ISBN 978-1-4968-0781-6
~€ 30,00
February 2016
Publisher’s page
Along with Batman, Spider-Man, and Superman, the Joker stands out as one of the most recognizable comics characters in popular culture. While there has been a great deal of scholarly attention on superheroes, very little has been done to understand supervillains. This is the first academic work to provide a comprehensive study of this villain, illustrating why the Joker appears so relevant to audiences today. Batman’s foe has cropped up in thousands of comics, numerous animated series, and three major blockbuster feature films since 1966. Actually, the Joker debuted in DC comics Batman 1 (1940) as the typical gangster, but the character evolved steadily into one of the most ominous in the history of sequential art. Batman and the Joker almost seemed to define each other as opposites, hero and nemesis, in a kind of psychological duality. Scholars from a wide array of disciplines look at the Joker through the lens of feature films, video games, comics, politics, magic and mysticism, psychology, animation, television, performance studies, and philosophy. As the first volume that examines the Joker as complex cultural and cross-media phenomenon, this collection adds to our understanding of the role comic book and cinematic villains play in the world and the ways various media affect their interpretation. Connecting the Clown Prince of Crime to bodies of thought as divergent as Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche, contributors demonstrate the frightening ways in which we get the monsters we need.

Investigating Lois Lane

Investigating Lois Lane. The Turbulent History of the Daily Planet’s Ace Reporter

Tim Hanley
Chicago review Press
288 pages
ISBN 978-1-613-73332-5
~$ 18,95
March 2016
Publisher’s page
In a universe full of superheroes, Lois Lane has fought for truth and justice for over 75 years on page and screen without a cape or tights. From her creation by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in 1938 to her forthcoming appearance in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice in 2016, from helming her own comic book for twenty-six years to appearing in animated serials, live-action TV shows, and full-length movies, Lois Lane has been a paragon of journalistic integrity and the paramour of the world’s strongest superhero. But her history is one of constant tension. From her earliest days, Lois yearned to make the front page of the Daily Planet, but was held back by her damsel-in-distress role. When she finally became an ace reporter, asinine lessons and her tumultuous romance with Superman dominated her storylines for decades and relegated her journalism to the background. Through it all, Lois remained a fearless and ambitious character, and today she is a beloved icon and an inspiration to many. Though her history is often troubling, Lois’s journey, as revealed in Investigating Lois Lane, showcases her ability to always escape the gendered limitations of each era and of the superhero genre as a whole.

Monitor: New Publications on Comic Books

Reading Graphic Novels.

Reading Graphic Novels.
Genre and Narration

Achim Hescher
De Gruyter
219 pages
ISBN 978-3-11-044594-7
~€ 69,95
February 2016
Publisher’s page
Distinguishing the graphic novel from other types of comic books has presented problems due to the fuzziness of category boundaries. Against the backdrop of prototype theory, the author establishes the graphic novel as a genre whose core feature is complexity, which again is defined by seven gradable subcategories: 1) multilayered plot and narration, 2) multireferential use of color, 3) complex text-image relation, 4) meaning-enhancing panel design and layout, 5) structural performativity, 6) references to texts/media, and 7) self-referential and metafictional devices. Regarding the subcategory of narration, the existence of a narrator as known from classical narratology can no longer be assumed. In addition, conventional focalization cannot account for two crucial parameters of the comics image: what is shown (point of view, including mise en scène) and what is seen (character perception). On the basis of François Jost’s concepts of ocularization and focalization, this book presents an analytical framework for graphic novels beyond conventional narratology and finally discusses aspects of subjectivity, a focal paradigm in the latest research. It is intended for advanced students of literature, scholars, and comics experts.

Metamedialität und Materialität im Comic

Metamedialität und Materialität im Comic. Zeitungscomic – Comicheft – Comicbuch

Christian A. Bachmann
Bachmann Verlag
290 pages
ISBN 978-3-941030-65-7
~€ 39,90
February 2016
Publisher’s page
Wie alle Veröffentlichungen unterliegen Comics medialen Bedingungen, die sich direkt und indirekt auf ihre Ausdrucksmöglichkeiten auswirken. So präsentiert sich der Zeitungsstrip auf der Seite als Ganzes, während das Comicheft längere zusammenhängende Bildsequenzen auf Seiten auf- und verteilt, die die Kulturpraxis des Blätterns voraussetzen. Das Buch erscheint als dreidimensionales Objekt, das Comics außer gewisser sozialer Implikationen auch weitreichende gestalterische Möglichkeiten eröffnet. Comicautorinnen und -autoren reflektieren diese Bedingungen und machen sie nicht selten zum Gegenstand metamedialer Werke. Dabei werden die materiellen Eigenschaften der Trägermedien oftmals nicht nur thematisiert, sondern selbst zu Zeichen in einem hybriden semiotischen Gefüge. Raues Papier, ungewöhnliche Heftformate und bedruckte Buchdeckelkanten sind dann nicht bloß dekoratives Beiwerk oder gar paratextuelle Beliebigkeiten, sondern Elemente ästhetischer Strategien, die eines Zugangs jenseits der etablierten Interpretationsansätze bedürfen.

Comic-Pioniere

Comic-Pioniere. Die deutschen Comic-Künstler der 1950er Jahre

Reginald Rosenfeldt
Bachmann Verlag
294 pages
ISBN 978-3-941030-63-3
~€ 25,00
February 2016
Publisher’s page
Die Comics verdanken ihre ungeheure Beliebtheit in den Nachkriegsjahren einigen wenigen Talenten. Nie mehr war das Angebot der Bildergeschichten so vielfältig wie in den 1950er und 1960er Jahren, denn es erfüllte den Hauptpart der trivialen Unterhaltungsmedien. Die Ausnahmekünstler, deren Biografien in diesem Buch dargestellt sind, schufen nicht nur bis heute unvergessene Werke und Figuren, sondern legten damit den Grundstein für die spätere Entwicklung des Comics in Deutschland. Vorgestellt werden Klaus Dill, Johannes Eduard Hegenbarth (Hannes Hegen), Wilhelm Hermann ›Bob‹ Heinz, Walter Kellermann, Willi Kohlhoff, Roland Kohlsaat, Helmut Nickel, Manfred Schmidt und Hansrudi Wäscher.

Comiczeichnen

Comiczeichnen. Figurationen einer ästhetischen Praxis

Lino Wirag
Bachmann Verlag
276 pages
ISBN 978-3-941030-67-1
~€ 36,00
February 2016
Publisher’s page
Comiczeichnen ist eine kreative Praxis, in der hochspezialisierte körperlich-zeichnerische und intellektuell-kreative Fähigkeiten und Techniken zusammenspielen. Die Comicgeschichte hat immer wieder einzigartige Zeugnisse dieser Kulturtechnik hinterlassen: Skizzen, Studien, Skripte, getuschte Originalseiten und natürlich digitale Daten.
Wie aber sind diese Spuren der ästhetischen Produktion zu lesen? Und wie können kreative Praxisprozesse überhaupt beschrieben werden? Damit beschäftigt sich die Comicentwurfsforschung, deren Aufgaben und Herausforderungen im vorliegenden Band erstmals skizziert werden. Darüber hinaus untersucht das Buch verschiedene Figurationen des Comiczeichnens, an denen sichtbar wird, welche metaphorischen, narrativen oder diagrammatischen Verfahren aufgesucht werden, um komplexe Praktiken wie das Comiczeichnen zu kommunizieren. Dabei werden Kreativitäts-, Handlungs- und Erkenntnistheorie zu einem neuartigen Blick auf Produktionsästhetik verbunden. In Exkursen untersucht der Band außerdem die Ästhetik des Comicentwurfs aus einer phänomenologisch inspirierten Perspektive und erläutert die sozioökonomische Situation zeitgenössischer Comicproduzenten. Die zahlreichen Abbildungen gestatten dabei einen Blick in die Werkstätten von namhaften Comiczeichnern wie Hergé, Chris Ware, Art Spiegelman oder Flix.

The New Mutants

The New Mutants. Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics

Ramzi Fawaz
NYU Press
368 pages
ISBN 978-1-479-82308-6
~$ 29,00
January 2016
Publisher’s page
In The New Mutants, Ramzi Fawaz draws upon queer theory to tell the story of these monstrous fantasy figures and how they grapple with radical politics from Civil Rights and The New Left to Women’s and Gay Liberation Movements. Through a series of comic book case studies – including The Justice League of America, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, and The New Mutants –alongside late 20th century fan writing, cultural criticism, and political documents, Fawaz reveals how the American superhero modeled new forms of social belonging that counterculture youth would embrace in the 1960s and after. The New Mutants provides the first full-length study to consider the relationship between comic book fantasy and radical politics in the modern United States.

Disaster Drawn

Disaster Drawn. Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form

Hillary L. Chute
Harvard University Press
376 pages
ISBN 978-0-67450-451-6
~€ 35,00
January 2016
Publisher’s page
In hard-hitting accounts of Auschwitz, Bosnia, Palestine, and Hiroshima’s Ground Zero, comics display a stunning capacity to bear witness to trauma. Investigating how hand-drawn comics has come of age as a serious medium for engaging history, Disaster Drawn explores the ways graphic narratives by diverse artists, including Jacques Callot, Francisco Goya, Keiji Nakazawa, Art Spiegelman, and Joe Sacco, document the disasters of war. Hillary L. Chute explains how the form of comics—its collection of frames—lends itself to historical narrative. By interlacing multiple temporalities over the space of the page or panel, comics can place pressure on conventional notions of causality. Aggregating and accumulating frames of information, comics calls attention to itself as evidence. Disaster Drawn demonstrates why, even in the era of photography and film, people understand hand-drawn images to be among the most powerful forms of historical witness.

Monitor: New Publications on Comic Books

Comic – Film – Gender

Comic – Film – Gender
Zur (Re-)Medialisierung von Geschlecht im Comicfilm

Véronique Sina
Transcript
304 pages
ISBN 978-3-8376-3336-8
~€ 34,99
February 2016
Publisher’s page
Welche Rolle spielt die Kategorie Gender für die Konstitution von Comic und Film? Véronique Sina geht dieser Frage anhand ausgewählter Comic- und Filmbeispiele wie Frank Millers »Sin City«, Enki Bilals »Immortel (ad vitam)« oder Matthew Vaughns »Kick-Ass« nach. Auf Basis einer detailreichen, vergleichenden Analyse beider Medien entwickelt sie das Konzept des performativen Comicfilms und verdeutlicht dabei gleichzeitig, wie sich Comic, Film und Gender wechselseitig generieren und produktiv aufeinander einwirken. Mit dieser Fokussierung auf die reziproke Beziehung der Performativität von Gender sowie der Medialität des Performativen leistet die Studie einen wichtigen Beitrag zu den Gender-Media Studies.

The Visual Narrative Reader

The Visual Narrative Reader

Neil Cohn (ed.)
Bloomsbury
375 pages
ISBN 978-1-47257-790-0
~£ 75.00
January 2016
Publisher’s page
Sequential images are as natural at conveying narratives as verbal language, and have appeared throughout human history, from cave paintings and tapestries right through to modern comics. Contemporary research on this visual language of sequential images has been scattered across several fields: linguistics, psychology, anthropology, art education, comics studies, and others. Only recently has this disparate research begun to be incorporated into a coherent understanding. In The Visual Narrative Reader, Neil Cohn collects chapters that cross these disciplinary divides from many of the foremost international researchers who explore fundamental questions about visual narratives.

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Monitor: New Publications on Comic Books

 

Comics und Graphic Novels. Eine Einführung

Comics und Graphic Novels
Eine Einführung

Julia Abel and Christian Klein (eds.)
J.B. Metzler
344 pages
ISBN 978-3-476-02553-1
~€ 24,95
December 2015
Publisher’s page 
Diese Einführung liefert einen Überblick über die historisch-kulturellen, theoretischen und analytischen Dimensionen der Beschäftigung mit Comics und Graphic Novels und ist dabei gleichermaßen systematisch wie praxisbezogen ausgerichtet. So informieren ausgewiesene Experten in Einzelbeiträgen etwa über medientheoretische Aspekte, Fragen der besonderen Produktion, Distribution und Rezeption von Comics, über zentrale Genres und ihre Klassiker und stellen ein handhabbares Instrumentarium zur Comic-Analyse vor. Abgerundet wird der Band durch Ausführungen zu Web-Comics und zu Institutionen der Comic-Forschung, durch ein Glossar und kommentierte Hinweise zur Fachliteratur bei jedem Beitrag.

With contributions of the ComFor-membersJochen Ecke, Barbara Eder, Lukas Etter, Ole Frahm, Björn Hammel, Matthias Harbeck, Marie Schröer and Daniel Stein.

Identitätsentwürfe comiczeichnender Jugendlicher

Identitätsentwürfe comiczeichnender Jugendlicher

Katharina Küstner
Kopaed
279 Seiten
ISBN 978-3-86736-141-5
~$ 19,80
December 2015
Publisher’s page
Der Comic ist für die Jugendlichen eine Kunstform, in der eine experimentelle Identitätssuche stattfinden kann, die in ganz konkreten Interaktionen inszeniert wird. In ihren fiktionalen narrativen Entwürfen und in der »Logik der Bilder« gestalten und variieren sie lebensweltliche Zusammenhänge. Im Comic kann einer identitären Suchbewegung mit der gezeichneten Bildgeschichte Ausdruck verliehen werden. Dabei zeugen die Arbeiten der Jugendlichen von einer Auseinandersetzung mit medialen oder fiktiven Vorbildern. Durch Zuspitzung, Karikierung oder Ironisierung werden Figuren und Situationen charakterisiert und Identitätsentwürfe auch über die Gestaltung von Alteritäten entwickelt. Selbstpositionierungen werden in den Zeichnungen erprobt und in den Rollenentwürfen der Charaktere des Comics ausgehandelt. Die Szene der Comiczeichner_innen wird dabei zur sekundären Sozialisationsinstanz für die Jugendlichen

Continue Reading: Four more publications