"WITH GREAT POWER THERE MUST ALSO COME -- GREAT RESPONSIBILITY!"

Stan Lee, "Spider-Man!" Amazing Fantasy No. 15 (Sept. 1962)

Sunday, August 6, 2017

CFP Comics and Authorship (Spec Issue of Authorship) (8/31/17)

An intriguing call for papers:

CFP: Comics and Authorship (Authorship 6.2) - Deadline Extended!
Announcement published by Maaheen Ahmed on Wednesday, July 12, 2017
https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/186830/cfp-comics-and-authorship-authorship-62-deadline-extended

Type: Call for Papers
Date: August 31, 2017


CFP Authorship special issue:

Comics and Authorship


The comic, recently legitimized through the graphic novel phenomenon while remaining anchored in popular culture, can provide unique insights into issues surrounding authorship. Although comics scholarship has explored autobiographical comics and the strategies for self-fashioning of individual canonized comics artists and writers, the complex and mutating concept of comic book authorship remains by and large overlooked.

Analyses of the changing notions of authorship, their contextualization and implications - aesthetic, political, economic - across different comics genres and formats can provide answers to key questions, such as:
  • How do different techniques and styles mold conceptions of the author?
  • Who is the author in large franchises and studio collaborations?
  • What are the claims to authorship of vital but often overlooked mediators such as letterers and inkers?
  • How do conceptions of authorship vary with publishing format (serial comic book, graphic novel, syndicated comic strip, self-published fanzine)?

In this special issue dedicated to comics, the open-access journal Authorship seeks to specify the range and potential of the terrain covered by comics and authorship through bringing together papers on the following, broad aspects:
  • Roles encompassed by the notion of authorship in comics (writer, artist, letterer, inker, penciller)
  • Differences in constructions of authorship across formats, genres, cultures and history
  • Self-creation of author (and auteur) personas through paratextual elements
  • Self-reflection on authorship in comics, cartoons and graphic novels
  • Issues of authorship raised by adaptations of comics in other media such as novels and films.

Please send articles (ca. 5000 words) to Maaheen Ahmed (ahmedmaaheen@gmail.com) by 31 August 2017. The issue will be published in December 2017.



Author guidelines can be consulted here (but please send submissions via e-mail to the address mentioned above).
Contact Email:
ahmedmaaheen@gmail.com

Tuesday, August 1, 2017

Spider-Man: Season One Revisited

Marvel's Season One series was established (like DC's Earth One series) to present more contemporary origins of its classic characters. Cullen Bunn's Spider-Man: Season One (2012) is a worthy attempt at reworking (and expanding) the hero's origin from Amazing Fantasy No. 15. To start, Bunn focuses much of the story on the perspective of our young hero, and we get a really good sense of Peter Parker here and all of the motivations that make him become Spider-Man, first as an entertainer and later as a hero. We also have a much more developed relationship between Peter and his Uncle Ben, so readers really feel for Peter when Ben is killed. Finally, Bunn gives us two Spider-Foes, both the Vulture and J. Jonah Jameson. The Vulture is very much the classic character we've come to know over the years, but Bunn adds some nuances to JJJ that really make him someone we want to hate.

Further details on the graphic novel can be found on Marvel's website at http://marvel.com/comics/issue/39689/spider-man_season_one_2011_1.