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

---

Latinx Comics Studies: Critical and Creative Crossings

Fernanda Díaz-Basteris, Maite Urcaregui (Hgs.)
Rutgers University Press
April 2025
Verlagsseite

„Latinx Comics Studies: Critical and Creative Crossings offers an intersectional and interdisciplinary approach to analyzing Latinx studies and comics studies. The book draws together groundbreaking critical essays, practical pedagogical reflections, and original and republished short comics. The works in this collection discuss the construction of national identity and memory, undocumented narratives, Indigenous and Afro-Latinx experiences, multiracial and multilingual identities, transnational and diasporic connections, natural disasters and unnatural colonial violence, feminist and queer interventions, Latinx futurities, and more. Together, the critical and creative works in this collection begin to map out the emerging and evolving field of Latinx comics studies and to envision what might be possible in and through Latinx comics.
This collection moves beyond simply cataloguing and celebrating Latinx representation within comics. It examines how comics by, for, and about Latinx peoples creatively and conceptually experiment with the very boundaries of “Latinx” and portray the diverse lived experiences therein.“

 

Comics and Women’s Mental Health: Five Stories

Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels

Jeanne-Marie Viljoen
Palgrave Macmillan
September 2025
Verlagsseite

„This book discusses five recent, hand-drawn, comics memoirs of women’s mental health experiences, not easily captured in words alone. It deals with a range of mental health experiences that are not simply diagnoseable mental disorders, and do not always stem from visible physical conditions (heavy feelings, loneliness, postpartum depression, grief, schizophrenia and suicide). Yet, by also considering the formal qualities of these stories, it is able to focus on embodied aspects of experience, inflecting these with perspectives from a range of women of various ages, sexualities, genders, races and cultures. This book demonstrates how comics are an effective, interdisciplinary means of communicating women’s mental health and wellbeing.“

 

Comics of the Anthropocene: Graphic Narrative at the End of Nature

José Alaniz
University Press of Mississippi
Juni 2025
Verlagsseite

„Since the first Earth Day in 1970, how have US comics artists depicted the human-caused destruction of the natural world? How do these representations manifest in different genres of comics like superheroes, biography, underground comix, and journalism? What resources unique to the comics medium do they bring to their tasks? How do these works resonate with the ethical and environmental issues raised by global conversations about the anthropogenic sixth mass extinction and climate change? How have comics mourned the loss of nature over the last five decades? Are comics “ecological objects,” in philosopher Timothy Morton’s parlance?
Weaving together insights from comics studies, environmental humanities, critical animal studies, and affect studies to answer these questions, Comics of the Anthropocene: Graphic Narrative at the End of Nature explores the representation of animals, pollution, mass extinctions, and climate change in the Anthropocene Era, our current geological age of human-induced environmental transformation around the globe.
Artists and works examined in Comics of the Anthropocene include R. Crumb, Don McGregor et al.’s Black Panther, Jack Kirby’s Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth, the comics of the Pacific Northwest, and Stephen Murphy and Michael Zulli’s landmark alternative series The Puma Blues. This book breaks new ground in confronting our most daunting modern crisis through a discussion of how graphic narrative has uniquely addressed the ecology issue.“

 

La bande dessinée pluriculturelle et plurilingue: Sprachwissenschaftliche, fachdidaktische und kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven

Anke Grutschus, Karoline Heyder, Beate Kern, Marie Schröer (Hgs.)
Ch. A. Bachmann
September 2025
Verlagsseite

„Der Band versammelt sprach- und kulturwissenschaftliche wie fremdsprachendidaktische Perspektiven auf mehrsprachige und plurikulturelle Comics.
L’ouvrage rassemble des perspectives sur la bande dessinée plurilingue et pluriculturelle provenant de la linguistique, des sciences culturelles ainsi que de la didactique des langues étrangères.“

 

Back to Black: Jules Feiffer’s Noir Trilogy

Critical Graphics

Fabrice Leroy
Rutgers University Press
Mai 2025
Verlagsseite

„The legendary American cartoonist and author Jules Feiffer has enjoyed a long and varied career, working on everything from illustrating The Phantom Tollbooth to writing the screenplay for the film Popeye. But some of his most innovative work came very late in his career, with a trio of graphic novels he composed in his eighties: Kill My Mother (2014), Cousin Joseph (2016), and The Ghost Script (2018).
Back to Black provides the first full-length critical analysis of this trilogy, exploring how it pays homage to the iconography and themes of film noir through constant graphic experimentation and a striking reinvention of Feiffer’s distinctive style. Fabrice Leroy shows how Feiffer deftly alternates between dramatic and satirical tones as he plays with the conventions of noir to provide a caustic yet moving commentary on mid-twentieth-century American life. Through close readings of each novel in the trilogy, he examines Feiffer’s singular depiction of the central political issues in the United States from the Great Depression to the 1950s, which still resonate today: unionization struggles, cinematic propaganda, McCarthyism, the American Dream, immigration, antisemitism, civil rights, and gender discrimination. Placing the noir trilogy into the context of Feiffer’s long career, Back to Black demonstrates how he offers a loving pastiche of the genre without losing his unique voice or critical edge.“

 

Chester Brown

Biographix

Frederik Byrn Køhlert
University Press of Mississippi
März 2025
Verlagsseite

„Best known for his alternative comics, Chester Brown (b. 1960) is one of the most acclaimed and influential cartoonists of the last half century. This first biography provides a critical account of Brown’s life and career, highlighting his role in the evolving comics landscape and tracing his journey from self-publishing minicomics on the streets of Toronto to creating award-winning graphic novels.
Characterized by often minimalist art and unconventional themes, comics such as Yummy Fur, Ed the Happy Clown, I Never Liked You, Louis Riel, and Paying for It have consistently pushed boundaries and confronted taboos. Chester Brown offers unique insight into Brown’s creative process as well the scope of his work and its larger cultural contexts. Organized chronologically, the book provides a full account of the artist’s career, beginning with his failed attempts to break into superhero comics and ending with discussions of his most recent work, in which he blends autobiography with political views on sex work and religion.
The book also examines Brown’s extensive authorial revisions and considers how he has deployed both these and an increasingly voluminous amount of paratextual material in the service of creating a highly distinctive authorial persona that in turn cannot help but influence how we encounter and read his work. Chester Brown pulls back the curtain on this pioneering artist and emphasizes the inseparability of Brown’s art and life, including the myriad ways they have informed each other across the last four decades of comics history.“

 

Comics des Mittelalters – Mittelaltercomics: Vom Spruchband zur Sprechblase

Populäres Mittelalter

Marion Darilek, Matthias Däumer (Hgs.)
Transcript
Mai 2025
Verlagsseite

„Comics sind ein zentrales Medium der Mittelalterrezeption – aber auch mittelalterliche Artefakte weisen bereits comicartige Strukturen auf. Während Comics in der Literaturwissenschaft und Kunstgeschichte längst etabliert sind, fehlt es bislang an mediävistischen Studien, die Mittelalter und Mittelalterrezeption zusammendenken. Ausgehend von der historisch offenen Definition des Comics als ›sequenzielle Kunst‹ analysieren die Beiträger*innen aus Kunstgeschichte, Literaturwissenschaft und -didaktik zum einen ›Comics des Mittelalters‹ und zum anderen ›Mittelaltercomics‹. Dabei zeigen sie, dass Bildgeschichten mehr sind als popularisierende Adaptionen des geschriebenen Wortes – vom Spruchband bis zur Sprechblase, für Forschende wie für Comic-Begeisterte.“

 

Comics Beyond Text and Image: On the Substance of Visual Narration

Routledge Advances in Comics Studies

Benjamin Fraser
Routledge
September 2025
Verlagsseite

„Comics Beyond Text and Image conceptualizes comics as “bodies,” exploring the substance and the many movements and expressions of comics first and foremost in terms of corporeality.
The book centers on the metaphor of the comics body as a way of opening up our understandings of what comics do. It begins from the position that narrative in comics is corporeal, expressed in and through the visual bodies into which the page can be divided analytically, and from the interaction of the human body with the comics body. Drawing on the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, the author argues for the primary role of visual narration over textual narration, develops a theory of the comics text as a cohesive and variegated cartography, and shows how thought is expressed in the extensive space of the comics page. This theory is then applied in snapshots of individual comics works that each in their own way continue the philosophical discussions of embodiment.
This book moves beyond traditional modes of narration or narrative and will appeal to students and scholars of comics studies, as well as to those thinking about visual narrative more broadly, and to scholars of Spinoza and Deleuze.“

 

Comics and Catharsis: Exploring Graphic Narratives of Trauma and Healing

Jordan Tronsgard (Hg.)
University Press of Mississippi
August 2025
Verlagsseite

„Comics and Catharsis: Exploring Graphic Narratives of Trauma and Healing explores the idea that trauma and healing hold an imbalance in many forms of literature—especially in the world of comics. Whether it be war-based, national, physical, or sexual trauma, this volume looks at a wide variety of trauma and the psychological pain and devastation that arise during and—crucially for the question of trauma narratives—following the events as the psychological (and often physical) wounds are processed.
Essayists in the collection engage with questions of how comics process trauma through depictions and receptions. Viewing trauma through the lens of comics such as Maus, Persepolis, and Fun Home, as well as works by comics writers who are little known or unknown outside their communities, contributors analyze how trauma is used in artistic style, writing, and overall storytelling. Together, the essays in Comics and Catharsis show how people who have suffered trauma often flock to these works to find a way to acknowledge and process their own suffering.“

 

The Political Imagination in Spanish Graphic Narrative

Routledge Advances in Comics Studies

Xavier Dapena, Joanne Britland (Hgs.)
Routledge
April 2025
Verlagsseite

„In a spirit of community and collective action, this volume offers insights into the complexity of the political imagination and its cultural scope within Spanish graphic narrative through the lens of global political and social movements.
Developed during the critical years of the COVID-19 pandemic and global lockdown, the volume and its chapters reflect the interdisciplinary nature of the comic. They employ a cultural studies approach with different theoretical frameworks ranging from debates within comics studies, film and media theory, postcolonialism, feminism, economics, multimodality, aging, aesthetics, memory studies, food studies, and sound studies, among others. Scholars and students working in these areas will find the book to be an insightful and impactful resource.“

 

The Visionary Art of Franco-Belgian Comics, 1930s to 1960s

Studies in European Comics and Graphic Novels

Hugo Frey, Maaheen Ahmed (Hgs.)
Leuven University Press
September 2025
Verlagsseite

„Exhibition catalogue ‘Visionary Comics: The collection of Alain Van Passen’, Comic Art Museum – Brussels, 16.09.25 – 07.12.25

Hidden within the millions of panels and magazine pages collected by Alain Van Passen, a devoted Belgian comics collector active from the earliest days of the comics clubs, lies a long-forgotten history of vibrant, surrealist, and even ‘visionary’ images. His pristine collection, built over decades of searching and exchanging comics, offers unprecedented insight into the diverse trajectories of twentieth-century popular publishing. Focusing on comics magazines published between 1935 and 1965, this catalogue reveals a ‘lost world’ of French and Belgian comics, as well as the translations and reworkings of American, British and Italian strips. Ten concise and colourful chapters introduce readers to the zany and fascinating pages and panels across genres such as humour, science fiction, history and adventure. Shedding light on often-forgotten or little-known artists, this volume traces a counter-history of French-language comics. Richly illustrated with largely unseen material, it offers the reader an introduction to the visionary art of French-language comics.“

 

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

---

Medieval Spaces in Comics: Affect and Ideology

Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels

Elizabeth Allyn Woock
Palgrave Macmillan
November 2024
Verlagsseite

„This book proposes a conceptual framework for analyzing and discussing narrative space in comics. Building on Mieke Bal’s phenomenological approach to cultural analysis (2002), Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space (1996), and Geraint D’Arcy’s use of the mise en scène to describe space in the comics format (2020), this book layers in a nuanced approach to the depiction of medieval environments through affect theory and poetics to interrogate the staging of ideas which are associated with the medieval period. Considering the action, setting, and story – as well as affect, atmosphere, and mood – medieval space is contextualized as an ethically complex poetic image. This book also explores the communicative possibilities of the comics format, and seeks to show rather than just tell the methodologies of space in comics-based research through illustrating key sections of the text.“

 

Innovations in Digital Comics: A Popular Revolution

Elements in Publishing and Book Culture

Francesca Benatti
Cambridge University Press
Oktober 2024
Verlagsseite

„Le premier ouvrage scientifique traçant une histoire des créatrices de bandes dessinées pour une (re)valorisation du matrimoine.
Peut-on encore raconter l’histoire de la bande dessinée sans parler des femmes qui y ont contribué ? Pourtant, jusqu’à tout récemment encore, les « Maîtres du neuvième art » étaient des hommes, occultant ainsi l’apport des créatrices.
L’ambition de cet ouvrage est de restituer aux créatrices de BD la place qui leur revient, et de repenser l’histoire du neuvième art en s’attachant à des trajectoires, des sujets et des œuvres silenciés. S’appuyant sur les recherches menées par le groupe de travail « Les Bréchoises » en 2020-2022, le livre offre de multiples ressources permettant de dégager les contours d’un matrimoine de la BD en Europe et dans les Amériques, depuis le XIXe siècle jusqu’à la période contemporaine. Consacré à l’évolution esthétique, discursive, politique et genrée, il met ainsi en lumière le travail des coloristes, dessinatrices, éditrices et scénaristes ayant contribué à ce médium. Leur présence dans le champ professionnel de la BD en France, en Espagne, au Canada, aux États-Unis, en Allemagne, en Argentine, au Mexique, au Brésil et en Belgique constitue un héritage vaste et complexe dont les composantes, contrairement aux idées reçues, se comptent par centaines. Dès lors, l’ouvrage invite à relire l’histoire de cette forme d’expression dans une approche inclusive et transversale qui traverse les siècles et les espaces.“

 

Singular Sensations: A Cultural History of One-Panel Comics in the United States

Michelle Ann Abate
Rutgers University Press
September 2024
Verlagsseite

„What do The Family Circus, Ziggy, and The Far Side have in common? They are all single-panel comics, a seemingly simple form that cartoonists have used in vastly different ways.
Singular Sensations is the first book-length critical study to examine this important but long-neglected mode of cartoon art. Michelle Ann Abate provides an overview of how the American single-panel comic evolved, starting with Thomas Nast’s political cartoons and R.F. Outcault’s groundbreaking Yellow Kid series in the nineteenth century. In subsequent chapters, she explores everything from wry New Yorker cartoons to zany twenty-first-century comics like Bizarro. Offering an important corrective to the canonical definition of comics as “sequential art,” Abate reveals the complexity, artistry, and influence of the single-panel art form.
Engaging with a wide range of historical time periods, sociopolitical subjects, and aesthetic styles, Singular Sensations demonstrates how comics as we know and love them would not be the same without single-panel titles. Abate’s book brings the single-panel comic out of the margins and into the foreground.“

 

British Newspaper Strips: A Contextual History

Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels

Adam Twycross
Palgrave Macmillan
August 2024
Verlagsseite

„This book explores the history and development of the British daily newspaper strip. It considers such strips within their political, commercial and societal contexts and fills in a crucial section of publishing history that has been largely overlooked by both comics and newspaper studies to date. Beginning with an examination of the role of the image within British publishing in the final decades of the nineteenth century, the book moves on to explore the arrival and development of the first daily strips. It considers the links that bound these strips to surrounding cultural forms, their relationship to their host newspapers, and their position within the wider structures of the emerging popular press. Subsequent chapters cover a range of topics including the impact of the world wars, the anti-comics campaigns of the 1940s and 50s, and how changes to British publishing and wider society shaped the newspaper strips of the final decades of the twentieth century. Culminating with a discussion of the way in which strips became established within the broadsheet press from the 1960s, the book builds to provide a detailed overview of the twentieth century development of this most neglected cultural form.“

 

Critical Approaches to Horror Comic Books: Red Ink in the Gutter

Routledge Advances in Comics Studies

By John Darowski, Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns (Hgs.)
Routledge
August 2024
Verlagsseite

„This volume explores how horror comic books have negotiated with the social and cultural anxieties framing a specific era and geographical space.
Paying attention to academic gaps in comics’ scholarship, these chapters engage with the study of comics from varying interdisciplinary perspectives, such as Marxism; posthumanism; and theories of adaptation, sociology, existentialism, and psychology. Without neglecting the classical era, the book presents case studies ranging from the mainstream comics to the independents, simultaneously offering new critical insights on zones of vacancy within the study of horror comic books while examining a global selection of horror comics from countries such as India (City of Sorrows), France (Zombillénium), Spain (Creepy), Italy (Dylan Dog), and Japan (Tanabe Gou’s Manga Adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft), as well as the United States.
One of the first books centered exclusively on close readings of an under-studied field, this collection will have an appeal to scholars and students of horror comics studies, visual rhetoric, philosophy, sociology, media studies, pop culture, and film studies. It will also appeal to anyone interested in comic books in general and to those interested in investigating intricacies of the horror genre.“

 

Petrochemical Fantasies: The Art and Energy of American Comics

Daniel Worden
Ohio State University Press
August 2024
Verlagsseite

„In Petrochemical Fantasies, Daniel Worden reveals the entwined history of comics and fossil fuels in the United States. From the 1840s to the present, comics have depicted the power, pollution, and rapid expansion of energy systems—especially the explosive growth of coal and oil. In the 1930s, some of the first comic books were the gas station giveaways Gulf Funny Weekly and Standard Oil Comics. And in recent years, comics have become one of the major sites for visualizing life after oil, a striking reversal of the medium’s early boosterism.
Surveying the work of acclaimed artists such as Nell Brinkley, George Herriman, Jack Kirby, Winsor McCay, and R. F. Outcault and recovering little-known works, Worden advances a new history of American comics in the Anthropocene. From late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century editorial cartoons and superhero comics that visualize our modern energy culture to contemporary comics grappling with climate crises, Petrochemical Fantasies places comics, environmental humanities, and energy studies in conversation with each other to unearth the crucial but overlooked history of comics’ place in US energy culture.“

 

Construire un Matrimoine de la BD: Créations, mobilisations et transmissions des femmes dans le neuvième art, en Europe et en Amérique

Marys Renné Hertiman, Camille de Singly (Hgs.)
Les presses du réel
Juni 2024
Verlagsseite

„Le premier ouvrage scientifique traçant une histoire des créatrices de bandes dessinées pour une (re)valorisation du matrimoine.
Peut-on encore raconter l’histoire de la bande dessinée sans parler des femmes qui y ont contribué ? Pourtant, jusqu’à tout récemment encore, les « Maîtres du neuvième art » étaient des hommes, occultant ainsi l’apport des créatrices.
L’ambition de cet ouvrage est de restituer aux créatrices de BD la place qui leur revient, et de repenser l’histoire du neuvième art en s’attachant à des trajectoires, des sujets et des œuvres silenciés. S’appuyant sur les recherches menées par le groupe de travail « Les Bréchoises » en 2020-2022, le livre offre de multiples ressources permettant de dégager les contours d’un matrimoine de la BD en Europe et dans les Amériques, depuis le XIXe siècle jusqu’à la période contemporaine. Consacré à l’évolution esthétique, discursive, politique et genrée, il met ainsi en lumière le travail des coloristes, dessinatrices, éditrices et scénaristes ayant contribué à ce médium. Leur présence dans le champ professionnel de la BD en France, en Espagne, au Canada, aux États-Unis, en Allemagne, en Argentine, au Mexique, au Brésil et en Belgique constitue un héritage vaste et complexe dont les composantes, contrairement aux idées reçues, se comptent par centaines. Dès lors, l’ouvrage invite à relire l’histoire de cette forme d’expression dans une approche inclusive et transversale qui traverse les siècles et les espaces.“

 

From Gum Wrappers to Richie Rich: The Materiality of Cheap Comics

Neale Barnholden
University Press of Mississippi
Juni 2024
Verlagsseite

„Between the 1930s and the invention of the internet, American comics reached readers in a few distinct physical forms: the familiar monthly stapled pamphlet, the newspaper comics section, bubblegum wrappers, and bound books. From Gum Wrappers to Richie Rich: The Materiality of Cheap Comics places the history of four representative comics—Watchmen, Uncle Scrooge, Richie Rich, and Fleer Funnies—in the larger contexts of book history, children’s culture, and consumerism to understand the roles that comics have played as very specific kinds of books. While comics have received increasing amounts of scholarly attention over the past several decades, their material form is a neglected aspect of how creators, corporations, and readers have constructed meaning inside and around narratives.
Neale Barnholden traces the unusual and surprising histories of comics ranging from the most acclaimed works to literal garbage, analyzing how the physical objects containing comics change the meaning of those comics. For example, Carl Barks’s Uncle Scrooge comics were gradually salvaged by a fan-driven project, an evolution that is evident when considering their increasingly expensive forms. Similarly, Watchmen has been physically made into the epitome of “prestigious graphic novel” by the DC Comics corporation. On the other hand, Harvey Comics’ Richie Rich is typically misunderstood as a result of its own branding, while Fleer Funnies uses its inextricable association with bubblegum to offer unexpectedly sophisticated meanings. Examining the bibliographical histories of each title, Barnholden demonstrates how the materiality of consumer culture suggests meanings to comics texts beyond the narratives.“

 

Cartoons and Antisemitism: Visual Politics of Interwar Poland

Ewa Stańczyk
University Press of Mississippi
Juni 2024
Verlagsseite

„Antisemitic caricatures had existed in Polish society since at least the mid-nineteenth century. But never had the devastating impacts of this imagery been fully realized or so blatantly apparent than on the eve of the Second World War. In Cartoons and Antisemitism: Visual Politics of Interwar Poland, scholar Ewa Stańczyk explores how illustrators conceived of Jewish people in satirical drawing and reflected on the burning political questions of the day. Incorporating hundreds of cartoons, satirical texts, and newspaper articles from the 1930s, Stańczyk investigates how a visual culture that was essentially hostile to Jews penetrated deep and wide into Polish print media. In her sensitive analysis of these sources, the first of this kind in English, the author examines how major satirical magazines intervened in the ongoing events and contributed to the racialized political climate of the time.
Paying close attention to the antisemitic tropes that were both local and global, Stańczyk reflects on the role of pictorial humor in the transmission of visual antisemitism across historical and geographical borders. As she discusses the communities of artists, publishers, and political commentators who made up the visual culture of the day, Stańczyk tells a captivating story of people who served the antisemitic cause, and those who chose to oppose it.“

Écouter la bande dessinée

Benoît Glaude
Les Impressions Nouvelles
Mai 2024
Verlagsseite

„Lire une bande dessinée c’est tout à la fois la regarder, la manipuler, la sentir… et l’entendre, même dans une soi-disant « lecture silencieuse ».
Mais avez-vous déjà entendu raconter une bande dessinée à voix haute ? Ceux qui lisent parfois des livres à des enfants se douteront qu’il ne s’agit pas d’une expérience hors du commun. À côté de la lecture partagée, on connaît des fictions sonores jouées à plusieurs voix, avec musiques et bruitages, adaptées de bandes dessinées. Du 78 tours à la Lunii, en passant par le livre-disque, un certain nombre d’objets de la culture enfantine rendent ces expériences audio réitérables à volonté.
Aujourd’hui, les séries audio en streaming et les dramatiques radio en podcasts, comme les lectures publiques lors de festivals, performent la bande dessinée pour des publics de tout âge. Tandis que le son cherche sa place dans la bande dessinée numérique, la bande dessinée trouve la sienne dans l’offre florissante des livres et séries audio.
Cet ouvrage propose d’écouter ces mises en voix, en se plongeant dans leur histoire, des années 1930 à nos jours.“

Shaolin Brew: Race, Comics, and the Evolution of the Superhero

Troy D. Smith
University Press of Mississippi
Mai 2024
Verlagsseite

„Shaolin Brew: Race, Comics, and the Evolution of the Superhero looks at how the comic book industry developed from a white perspective and how minority characters were and are viewed through a stereotypical white gaze. Further, the book explores how voices of color have launched a shift in the industry, taking nonwhite characters who were originally viewed through a white lens and situating them outside the framework of whiteness. The financial success of Blaxploitation and Kung Fu films in the early 1970s led to major comics publishers creating, for the first time, Black and Asian superhero characters who headlined their own comics. The introduction of Black and Asian main characters, who previously only served as guest stars or sidekicks, launched a new kind of engagement between comics companies and minority characters and readers. However, scripted as they were by white writers, these characters were mired in stereotypes.
Author Troy D. Smith focuses on Asian, Black, and Latinx representation in the comic industry and how it has evolved over the years. Smith explores topics that include Orientalism, whitewashing, Black respectability politics, the model minority myth, and political controversies facing fandoms. In particular, Smith examines how fans take the superheroes they grew up with—such as Luke Cage, Black Lightning, and Shang Chi—and turn them into the characters they wished they had as children. Shaolin Brew delves into the efforts of fans of color who urged creators to make these characters more realistic. This refining process increased as more writers and artists of color broke into the industry, bringing their own perspectives to the characters. As many of these characters transitioned from page to screen, a new generation of writers, artists, and readers have cooperated to evolve one-dimensional stereotypes into multifaceted, dynamic heroes.“

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

---

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

Amber E. George (Hg.)
Ch. A. Bachmann Verlag
Juni 2023
Verlagsseite

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

 

The Early Reception of Manga in the West

Bildnarrative, Bd. 13

Martin de la Iglesia
Ch. A. Bachmann Verlag
März 2023
Verlagsseite

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

 

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

Benoît Crucifix
Cambridge UP
Juli 2023
Verlagsseite

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

 

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

Cambridge Studies in Graphic Narratives

Alexander Dunst
Cambridge UP
Juli 2023
Verlagsseite

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

 

The Cambridge Companion to Comics

Cambridge Companions to Literature

Maaheen Ahmed (Hg.)
Cambridge UP
August 2023
Verlagsseite

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

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

---

Jewish Comics and Graphic Narratives: A Critical Guide

Matt Reingold
Bloomsbury Academic
Dezember 2022
Verlagsseite

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

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

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

 

Perfect Copies: Reproduction and the Contemporary Comic

Shiamin Kwa
Rutger’s University Press
Januar 2023
Verlagsseite

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

 

Asian Political Cartoons

John A. Lent
Rutger’s University Press
Januar 2023
Verlagsseite

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

 

 

Beowulf in Comic Books and Graphic Novels

Richard Scott Nokes
McFarland
Februar 2023
Verlagsseite

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