Comics & Graphic Novels

Canadian Graphic: Picturing Life Narratives presents critical essays on contemporary Canadian cartoonists working in graphic life narrative, from confession to memoir to biography. The contributors draw on literary theory, visual studies, and cultural...

Alan Moore, the idiosyncratic, controversial and often shocking writer of such works as Watchmen, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and V for Vendetta, remains a benchmark for readers of comics and graphic novels. This collection investigates the...

A great deal of scholarship has focused on Joss Whedon's television and film work, which includes Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, The Cabin in the Woods and The Avengers. But Whedon's work in the world of comics has...

Since the creation of the comic book, cases of legal conflict and confusion have often arisen where concepts such as public domain, unincorporated entities and moral rights are involved. As a result, comics creators are frequently concerned about...

One of the most popular comic strips of the 1950s and the first to reference politics of the day, Walt Kelly's Pogo took on Joe McCarthy before the controversial senator was a blip on Edward R. Murrow's radar. The strip's satire was so biting, it was...

Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz insisted good ol' Charlie Brown and his friends were neither "great art" nor "significant." Yet Schulz's acclaimed daily comic strip--syndicated in thousands of newspapers over five decades--brilliantly mirrored...

This is the first overview of cartoon art in this important cultural nexus of Asia. The eight chapters provide historical and present-day overviews of cartoons and comics in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and sociocultural...

The essays in this collection discuss how comics and graphic narratives can be useful primary texts and learning tools in college and university classes across different disciplines. There are six sections: American Studies, Ethnic Studies, Women's...

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...

The first superhero team from the Silver Age of comics, DC's Justice League has seen many iterations since its first appearance in 1960. As the original comic book continued and spin-off titles proliferated, talented writers, artists and editors...

The whaling bark Progress was a New Bedford ship transformed into a whaling museum for Chicago's 1893 world's fair. Traversing waterways across North America, the whaleship enthralled crowds from Montreal to Racine. Her ultimate fate, however, was to be...

With the incredibly long history of Batman and associated comics, it is unusual for something new to come along and grab a new generation's attention. That is exactly what happened in 1992 when young fans were introduced to Harley Quinn, a strange and...

In 2002, Vertigo/DC Comics published the first issue of Bill Willingham's Fables. The series imagined the lives of fairly tale figures-Snow White, the Big Bad Wolf, Cinderella and the ubiquitous Prince Charming, among many others-as they made new lives...

The Incredible Hulk is one of the earliest Marvel Comics superheroes. Through the decades, the character and his narrative elements--the causes of Bruce Banner's transformations, the Hulk's strength, intelligence and skin color, the stories' tone,...

Billionaire industrialist, cold warrior, weapons designer, alcoholic, philanthropist, Avenger-Tony Stark, alter-ego of Marvel Comics' Iron Man, has played many roles in his five decades as a superhero. From his 1963 comics debut in Tales of Suspense to...

The Ages of the Avengers: Essays on Earth's Mightiest Heroes in Changing Times examines stories from one of Marvel Comic's most popular franchises in light of the contemporary cultures when those comic books originally produced. With essays that address...

The X-Men comic book franchise is one of the most popular of all time and also one of the most intriguing to critically analyse. With storylines that often contain overt social messages within its "mutant metaphor," X-Men is often credited with having...

This historical and critical survey looks at horror comics from the Golden Age of the 40s, through the Silver Age of the 60s, up until the early 80s - the end of the Bronze Age. Included are the earliest series, like American Comics Group's Adventures...

This collection of new essays looks carefully at the broad spectrum of Neil Gaiman's work and how he interacts with feminism. Sixteen diverse essays from Gaiman scholars and fans alike examine highlights from Gaiman's graphic novels, short stories,...

From 1985 to 1995, the syndicated comic strip Calvin and Hobbes followed the antics of a precocious six-year-old boy and his sardonic stuffed tiger. At the height of its popularity, the strip ran in more than 2,400 newspapers and generated a fan base...

Sequential art combines the visual and the narrative in a way that readers have to interpret the images with the writing. Comics make a good fit with education because students are using a format that provides active engagement. This collection of...

From his first comic-book appearance in 1939 through his many incarnations on the big screen, the archetypal superhero known as The Batman has never been far from the American consciousness. The character shaped the way we read comics and graphic...

Ever since the first appearances of Superman and Batman in comic books of the late 1930s, superheroes have been a staple of the popular culture landscape. Though initially created for younger audiences, superhero characters have evolved over the years,...

Redrawing the Historical Past examines how multiethnic graphic novels portray and revise U.S. history. This is the first collection to focus exclusively on the interplay of history and memory in multiethnic graphic novels. Such interplay enables a new...

Fans and scholars have long regarded the 1980s as a significant turning point in the history of comics in the United States, but most critical discussions of the period still focus on books from prominent creators such as Frank Miller, Alan Moore, and...

Fans and scholars have long regarded the 1980s as a significant turning point in the history of comics in the United States, but most critical discussions of the period still focus on books from prominent creators such as Frank Miller, Alan Moore, and...

Best known for her Eisner Award-winning graphic novels, Exit Wounds and The Property, Rutu Modan's richly colored compositions invite readers into complex Israeli society, opening up a world too often defined only by news headlines. Her strong female...

Contributions by Jose Alaniz, Ian Blechschmidt, Paul Fisher Davies, Zanne Domoney-Lyttle, David Huxley, Lynn Marie Kutch, Julian Lawrence, Liliana Milkova, Stiliana Milkova, Kim A. Munson, Jason S. Polley, Paul Sheehan, Clarence Burton Sheffield Jr., and...

Reframing Disability in Manga analyzes popular Japanese manga published from the 1990s to the present that portray the everyday lives of adults and children with disabilities in an ableist society. It focuses on five representative conditions currently...

Contributions by Eric Bain-Selbo, Jeremy Barris, Maria Botero, Manuel "Mandel" Cabrera Jr., David J. Leichter, Ian MacRae, Alfonso Munoz-Corcuera, Corry Shores, and Jarkko S. TuusvuoriIn a follow-up to Comics as Philosophy, international contributors...

Contributions by Michelle Ann Abate, William S. Armour, Alison Bechdel, Jennifer Camper, Tesla Cariani, Matthew Cheney, Hillary Chute, Edmond (Edo) Ernest dit Alban, Ramzi Fawaz, Margaret Galvan, Justin Hall, Lara Hedberg, Susanne Hochreiter, Sheena C...

While many American superheroes have multiple powers and complex gadgets, the Flash is simply fast. This simplicity makes his character easily comprehendible for all audiences, whether they are avid comic fans or newcomers to the genre, and in turn he...

Peter Kuper (b. 1958), one of America's leading cartoonists, has created work recognized around the world. His art has graced the pages and covers of numerous magazines and newspapers, including Time, Newsweek, the New Yorker, Harper's, Mother Jones, the...

Contributions by Bart Beaty, Jenny Blenk, Ben Bolling, Peter E. Carlson, Johnathan Flowers, Antero Garcia, Dale Jacobs, Ebony Flowers Kalir, James Kelley, Susan E. Kirtley, Frederik Byrn Kohlert, John A. Lent, Leah Misemer, Johnny Parker II, Nick...

This collection of new essays explores various ways of reading, interpreting and using digital comics. Contributors discuss comics made specifically for web consumption, and also digital reproductions of print-comics. Written for those who may not be...

Although the suggestion that graphic narrative represents an important literary form still causes debate in academic circles, in recent years comics scholarship has emerged into wider contexts. This collection considers various literary approaches to...

Across generations and genres, comics have imagined different views of the future, from unattainable utopias to worrisome dystopias. These presaging narratives can be read as reflections of their authors' (and readers') hopes, fears and beliefs about the...

Ed Brubaker (b. 1966) has emerged as one of the most popular, significant figures in art comics since the 1990s. Most famous as the man who killed Captain America in 2007, Brubaker's work on company-owned properties such as Batman and Captain America and...

In 1977, Dave Sim (b. 1956) began to self-publish Cerebus, one of the earliest and most significant independent comics, which ran for 300 issues and ended, as Sim had planned from early on, in 2004. Over the run of the comic, Sim used it as a springboard...

The Comics of Charles Schulz collects new essays on the work of the creator of the immensely popular Peanuts comic strip. Despite Schulz's celebrity, few scholarly books on his work and career have been published. This collection serves as a foundation...