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

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

Monday, June 8, 2020

Worth Reading: DC's Batman: Last Knight on Earth

I usually post short reviews to Amazon; this summer, I thought I'd try some blog posts.

Batman: Last Knight on Earth
https://www.dccomics.com/graphic-novels/batman-last-knight-on-earth-2019/batman-last-knight-on-earth

Billed as "The Last BATMAN Story Ever Told...," Snyder and Capullo's series Batman: Last Knight on Earth (now collected in a hardcover edition) builds on their last arc of the New 52's Batman series.

Batman: Last Knight on Earth positions a new Batman/Bruce Wayne to rise to become a hero in a potential future of the DCU. It is a bleak world (rather like DCeased and Justice League Dark: Apokolips War), but there is a lot of hope in the end (and some intriguing use of the Joker character).

See below for DC's teaser trailer for the series:



Thursday, March 19, 2020

CFP Futures of Cartoons Past: The Cultural Politics of X-Men: The Animated Series (Edited Collection) (6/30/2020)

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS — Futures of Cartoons Past: The Cultural Politics of X-Men: The Animated Series (Edited Collection)


deadline for submissions:
June 30, 2020

full name / name of organization:
Nicholas E. Miller

contact email:
nemiller@valdosta.edu


FUTURES OF CARTOONS PAST: THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF X-MEN: THE ANIMATED SERIES

Edited by Jeremy M. Carnes, Margaret Galvan, and Nicholas E. Miller.

Collection under Advance Contract with the University Press of Mississippi.

This volume will collect new scholarship on X-Men: The Animated Series (1992-1997), providing scholars and fans with an overdue assessment of the series from perspectives in comics studies, fan studies, and media studies. While the 90s have often been viewed as a “regressive” era for comics by creators and scholars alike (e.g. Trina Robbins), this collection carefully examines the complicated cultural politics of X-Men: The Animated Series across disciplines such as animation studies, childhood studies, comics studies, culture studies, fashion studies, gender and sexuality studies, media studies, and visual art. This collection will not only serve as a foundation for future scholarship on the animated series, but also on the transmedial landscapes of X-Men narratives specifically and “Saturday cartoons” more broadly. In addition to scholarly essays, we invite the contribution of original comics, zines, or transcripts of relevant interviews and podcasts.

Contributors may choose to consider (but are certainly not limited to) the following topics and issues in relation to X-Men: The Animated Series:


  • Historical considerations of the series—including nostalgia and the legacy of 1990s comics culture
  • Transmedia and adaptation—including considerations of technologies such as coloring and animation
  • Artistic considerations related to costuming, design, fashion, merchandising and the music in/of the series
  • Representation and mutant metaphors—including issues of race, ethnicity, indigeneity, gender, sexuality, disability, class, etc.
  • Youth culture, girlhood studies and other considerations related to audience engagement
  • Reception studies, fan studies, and the importance of fan fiction, fan art, and other types of paratexts
  • Post- futures and the potential failures of the series—including the postcolonial, the posthuman, etc.


Please submit CVs and 300-word abstracts to Nicholas E. Miller at nemiller@valdosta.edu. Final essays will be limited to 6000 words. Questions and inquiries before the deadline are welcome.

ABSTRACTS DUE:
JUNE 30, 2020

NOTICE OF ACCEPTANCE:
JULY 30, 2020

COMPLETED ESSAYS DUE:
DECEMBER 15, 2020


Last updated October 8, 2019


Monday, March 16, 2020

IJoCA Fall/Winter 2019

The latest number of the International Journal of Comic Art is now available to subscribers and for purchase at http://www.ijoca.net/.

Full contents from the IJoCA Blog are as follows:

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMIC ART
Vol. 21, No. 2 Fall/Winter 2019
Editor's Notes
John A. Lent
1

Encrumbed by the Signifying Monkey: Con Men, Cackling Clowns, and the Exigencies of Desire in the Comics of Robert Crumb
Andrew Perry
4

Initial Investigation of Political Cartoons and Illustrations in the Anti-Extradition Bill Protest in Hong Kong
Justin, Chiu-tat Wong
47

War, Romance, and Everyday Life in Beirut's Emerging Alt-Comix Scene
Jonathan Guyer
74

Invisible, Unseeing, Alienated: Mexico and William S. Burroughs in Bernardo Fernandez's Uncle Bill
Ryan Prout
91

Underground Cartoonists Exhibit in the Soviet Union, 1990
Gilbert Shelton
115

Italian Underground, The Secret Life of ltalian Comics, 1968-1978
Simone Castaldi
123

The Intrigue Surrounding China's Ink Wash Painting Animation
John A. Lent and Xu Ying
149

Patriarchal Ideology in Kenya's Editorial Cartoons: A Cultural Studies Approach
Joseph N. Nyanoti
169

Out the Window: Illustrating the Realities of Alzheimer's in Paco Roca's Arrugas
Janis Be Breckenridge
Devyani Gupta
178

I'm Blackety Black Y'all: Conventions of the Superhero in the CW's "Black Lightning"
Haley Hulan
202

The Geek Culture in the Urban Environment: The Comics' Characters in Cranio's Graffiti
Joiio Batista Freitas Cordosa
Evandro Gabriel Izidoro Merli
Lucas Scavone
221

Portraying Social Issues: A Heuristic Study of Contemporary Cartoons in India
Mrinal Chatterjee
234

Becoming a Man: The Allure of Muscular Masculinity in Manga by Ikki Kajiwara
Noboru Tomonari
243

Generative Comics: Introduction and Analysis
Malik Nairat and Palle Dahlstedt
268

"Ao Correr da Pena"--"With a Stroke of the Pen" Drawing Vila Franca De Xira and Its People
Marlene Pohle
295

Commentary
I Have Much To Tell You: Reflections on Cartoonists Zapiro and Khalid Albaih
Louise C. Larsen
315

An Interview with M. Thomas Inge
Brian Baynes
331

My Father, Mi Gu, A Masterful Cartoonist
Zhu Yaozhou
Translated by Xu Ying
354

Japan's Country Image: Perceptions of Filipino Early Generations and Anime University Student-Viewers
Joanna Luisa B. Obispo
370

The Skull and the Elephant: The Significance of The Punisher in American Political Eras
Cord Scott
397

Remembrances
13 Major Blows to the World of Comic Art
John A. Lent
411

The Printed Word
John A. Lent
440

Book Reviews
Carlotta Vacchelli
Radmila Stetlcova
John A. Lent
Catherine E. Corder
Stephen Connor
John A. Lent
Xu Ying
444

Exhibition and Media Reviews
Edited by Mike Rhode
468

Exhibition Reviews
Mike Rhode
Mike Rhode
Carli Spina
473

Correction
496

Portfolio
497

Wednesday, March 4, 2020

CFPs MLA 2021 in Toronto

The MLA's Comics and Graphic Narrative Forum has three active calls for papers for the 2021 meeting in Toronto.

Full details can be accessed via the links that follow:

MLA 2021 Special Session CFP: Comics and Graphic Narratives for Young Audiences (Deadline: 03/10/20): https://graphicnarratives.org/2020/02/19/mla-2021-special-session-cfp-comics-and-graphic-narratives-for-young-audiences-deadline-03-10-20/.

MLA 2021 Special Session CFP: Decolonizing Comics and/as Activism (Deadline: 03/15/20): https://graphicnarratives.org/2020/02/19/mla-2021-special-session-cfp-decolonizing-comics-and-as-activism-deadline-03-15-20/.

MLA 2021 Guaranteed Session CFP: New Flashpoints in Comics History (Deadline: 03/15/20):  https://graphicnarratives.org/2020/02/19/mla-2021-guaranteed-session-cfp-new-flashpoints-in-comics-history-deadline-03-15-20/.

 

 

IJoCA Spring/Summer 2019

Catching up again.

Here are the contents for the International Journal of Comic Art Vol. 21, No. 1 for Spring/Summer 2019 as posted on the IJoCA site (http://www.ijoca.net/new/sub3_past.html#vol21no1).

It is a massive issue totaling 840 pages and can be purchased from the publisher at http://www.ijoca.net/new/sub4_subscript.html. Subscriptions are also available at the same link.




Ronald Stewart 

Itō Hirobumi’s Nose: Syphilis in Early 20th Century Japanese Cartoons


Paul M. Malone 

“You Are Leaving the French Sector”: Flix’s Spirou in Berlin and the Internationalization of German Comics


Anton Kannemeyer 

As I Please: A Personal Reflection on Censorship


Annabelle Cone 

The “Bobo” (bourgeois-bohème) as Post-Modern Figure? Gentrification and Globalization in Dupuy and Berberian’s Monsieur Jean and Boboland


Tania Pérez-Cano

Graphic Testimonies of the Balsero Crisis of 1994: Narratives of Cuban Detainees at the Guantánamo Naval Base


Ana Merino 

Comics Reinventing Creativity in the Museum: Some Thoughts about the Show “Viñetas Desbordadas/Overflowing Panels”


Jon Holt 

Ishii Takashi, Beyond 1979: Ero Gekiga Godfather, GARO Inheritor, or Shōjo Manga Artist?


Daniel F. Yezbick 

Of Bears, Birds, and Barks: Animetaphoric Antagonism and Animalscéant Anxieties within Dell Funny Animal Franchise Comics


John A. Lent 

Wang Ning, Beijing Total Vision Culture Spreads Co. Ltd., and the Transnationalization of Chinese Comic Books


Alvaro Alemán and Eduardo Villacís 

Pointed Language: Reading Paola Gaviria’s Virus Tropical (2009) from the Perspective of the Visual Protocols of the Graphic Novel


Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste 

On Butterflies, Viruses, and Visas: Comics and the Perils of Diasporic Imagined Communities


Anu Sugathan 

The City and the Medium of Comics: Depiction of Urban Space in Sarnath Banerjee’s Corridor and The Barn Owl’s Wondrous Capers


Dietrich Grünewald (Translated by Christina Little)

Crossing Borders: Graphic Novels Quoting Art


Kent Worcester

That Chameleon Quality: An Interview with R. Sikoryak


Sara Dallavalle 

Popular Format and Auteur Format in Italian Comics. The Case of Magnus


Sam Cannon and Hugo Hinojosa Lobos 

Chile’s Military Dictatorship and Comics as Alternative Methods of Memorialization: Critical Approaches from Contemporary Chilean Graphic Novels


Leila Sadegh Beigi 

Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and Embroideries: A Graphic Novelization of Sexual Revolution across Three Generations of Iranian Women


Mathieu Li-Goyette 

A Sublime in Tension Around Alexandre Fontaine Rousseau and Francis Desharnais’ Les Premiers Aviateurs


Michelle Ann Abate 

“They’re Quite Strange in the Larval Stage”: Children and Childhood in Gary Larson’s “The Far Side”


Magnus Nilsson 

Marxism Across Media: Characterization and Montage in Variety Artwork’s Capital in Manga


Debarghya Sanyal 

The Desi Archie: Selling India’s America to America’s India


Sina Shamsavari

Gay Male Porno Comics: Genre, Conventions, and Challenges


Anno Moyoco Yasuko Akiyama 

Ambitious Women in Male Manga Magazines: Sakuran and Hataraki-Man


Aimee Vincent 

“Hey Kids, Patriarchy!”: Satire and Audience on the Back Covers of Bitch Planet


Chad A. Barbour

The Fine Art of Genocide: Underground Comix and U.S. History as Horror Story


John Darowski

Superman’s Remediation of Mid-20th Century American Identity


Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste 

A Matter of Affect: Illustrated Responses to the Immigration Debacle


Bi Keguan (Edited by Bi Weimin) (Translated by Xu Ying)

Random Notes of the Editorial Office of China’s Manhua Magazine


Chu Der-Chung (Zola Zu) with John A. Lent (Translation by Xu Ying)85

The Chus: A Family Teeming with Cartoonists


Alvaro Alemán and Eduardo Villacís 

TFaith in Comics: Ex-voto Religious Offerings and Comic Art


Barbara Zocal Da Silva 

Translated Hispano-American Comics in Brazil


Conversation with Jan Ziolkowski and Ariana Chaivaranon 

An Afternoon with R. O. Blechman


John Gardner 

Kennedy Conspiracy Comics: ¡en Español!


Michela Canepari 

The Myth of Frankensteinfrom Mary Shelley to Gris Grimly: Some Intersemiotic and Ideological Issues


The Best We Could Do: A Mini-Symposium

Isabelle Martin 

The Role of Water in the Construction of Refugee Subjectivity in Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do


Debarghya Sanyal 

A Burden of Tales: Memories, Trauma, and Narratorial Legacies in The Best We Could Do and Munnu


Francesca Lyn 

The Fragmentary Body: Traumatic Configurations in Autobiographical Comics by Women of Color


A. David Lewis 

A Graphic Medicine Prescription


Pioneers in Comics Scholarship

Kosei Ono 

My Life with American Comics: How It Started


Shefali Elizabeth Mathew 

Nature of Reality in the Graphic: “Calvin and Hobbes”


Introduced by Jochen Garcke 

The Mindset of a Professional Exhibition Curator


Remembrances

Licia Citti 

One Life, Many Loves: Dario Mogno’s Passion for Cinematography, Publishing, Comics, and Cuba


John A. Lent 

The Printed Word


Shawn Gilmore; David Kunzle 

Review Essays


Jean-Paul Gabilliet 

Exhibition Review Essay


Rachel Kunert-Graf; Stephen Connor; Kirsten Møllegaard; John A. Lent; Maite Urcaregui

Book Reviews


Carli Spina 

Exhibition and Media Reviews (edited by Mike Rhode)


Correction


Tuesday, March 3, 2020

NeMLA Update

Here are the full details of the Saving the Day roundtable for NeMLA later this week. 




Northeast Modern Language Association 51st Annual Convention, 5-8 March 2020
Marriott Copley Place, Boston, Massachusetts

Saturday, Mar 7, Track 18, 04:45-06:00        
Location: HYANNIS (Media Equipped)



18.17 Saving the Day: Accessing Comics in the 21st Century (Roundtable)
Organized by Michael A. Torregrossa, Independent Scholar, and Carl B. Sell, Oklahoma Panhandle State University. 

Chair: Michael Torregrossa, Independent Scholar
Cultural Studies and Media Studies & Pedagogy & Professional

"Krazy in the Klassroom: Teaching Early Newspaper Comics" Jonathan Najarian, Boston University
Teaching early twentieth-century newspaper comics presents a unique challenge: not only is there an incredible wealth of content to sift through, many of the most famous cartoon characters of the period—Krazy Kat, the Yellow Kid, the Katzenjammer Kids—were products of a material print culture that is quickly disappearing. This talk will sample some of the excellent online resources available for instructors wishing to introduce newspaper comics into their classroom, including the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum website, digitalcomicmuseum.com, and the excellent Yellow Kid website hosted by the University of Virginia. I also plan to contrast online resources with traditional print resources such as those published by Sunday Press and Taschen, with an eye towards understanding how the internet has at once facilitated and complicated how we introduce early comics to our students. For while the internet has democratized access to many comics that would be otherwise forgotten, it has also further removed us from the print and material context in which this work was originally received.

Jon Najarian received his PhD from Boston University in 2019. He is currently at work on a book manuscript titled The Intermedial Era: Literary and Pictorial Narrative from Modernism to Comics, which proposes a new context for understanding the rise of the graphic novel by linking the development of comics as a form to the multimedia experiments of modernist writing. He has published articles on Thomas Pynchon, the philosophy of Stanly Cavell, and the current state of comics studies.


"Finding Frankensteins (and Other Illustrated Classics): Resources for Research and Teaching" Michael Torregrossa, Independent Scholar
In 2012, I took a graduate-level seminar at Rhode Island College devoted to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and its afterlife in popular culture. We were assigned to do a short research paper, and, being a life-long, reader of comics I eventually settled on a paper looking at how the text has been adapted onto the comics page. Eight years, four conference papers, and one on-campus address later, I am still fascinated by the vitality of Shelley’s characters in the comics medium and the variety of forms her story has taken in comics over the course of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The focus of this presentation will be on the various online tools (such as The Grand Comics Database, Comics Vine, the catalog of Lone Star Comics, and fan-made comics resources) available for locating and cataloging representations of Frankenstein in the comics as well new ways (like comiXology, Marvel Unlimited, and DC Universe) to access these texts. I’ll also comment on some of the ways I’ve used these material in my research and teaching and additional resources for tracking discussions of these works. All of these approaches can be applied to any literary text that has been adapted into the comics medium.

Michael A. Torregrossa is a graduate of the Medieval Studies program at the University of Connecticut (Storrs) and works as an adjunct instructor in English in both Rhode Island and Massachusetts. His research interests include adaptation, comics and comic art, Frankensteiniana, monsters, and science fiction. Michael has presented papers on these topics at regional, national, and international conferences. He is also active in the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association and is currently its Monsters and the Monstrous Area Chair, but he previously served as its Fantastic (Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror) Area Chair, a position he held from 2009-2018.


"Pirate Booty: Scholars and Scanned Comics" Charles Henebry, Boston University
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, fan culture embraced digitization, with the result that a wealth of rare comics became widely available, from Action Comics 1 to the full run of Alan Moore's Miracleman in Eclipse. This has been a boon to scholarship, since the original issues were generally scanned complete with letters pages, editor's notes and vintage advertisements for plastic soldiers, all elements of the historical original that tend to be left out from reprints—as well as from official Marvel and DC online editions. This leaves scholars in a quandary, dependent on pirated intellectual property. 

Charles W. Henebry received his doctorate in English literature from New York University in 2003. Originally a student of emblems — Elizabethan comic-books, roughly speaking — he has for the past ten years focused his scholarship on the four-color world of superheroes, from the genesis of Superman’s costume change to the impact of the 1960s antiwar movement on Iron Man. He is the author of seven articles in Greenwood Publishing Group’s 2014 Comics Through Time encyclopedia and long-form essays in The Ages of Iron Man, The Ages of the Justice League, and The Ages of the Flash—as well as the forthcoming Ages of the Black Panther.


"Affordability, Access, & Flexibility in Teaching Comics in the 21st Century" Lance Eaton, University of Massachusetts Boston
This contribution will explore and discuss a different approach to considering access and pedagogy when teaching courses on comics and other similar courses where costs to learning materials can easily skyrocket.  The approach recenters the focus of what is being taught about comics while offering up a playlist of readings that students can choose from to read in preparation for any given class along with clear identification of what materials are attainable through the library.  Leveraging such communal resources means that students come to class having to demonstrate how they take course concepts and learnings and apply them to individual readings. While initially, it has the potential to look a bit chaotic, it also gives students lots of opportunities to provide something unique and distinct about their learning pathway and what they get to read and analyze, thereby increasing their interest and development throughout the course.  

Lance Eaton is an Instructional Designer and Faculty Development Specialist at Brandeis University.  He teaches literature, popular culture, comics, and other interdisciplinary courses at North Shore Community College and Southern New Hampshire University.  He also is the Executive Secretary for the Northeast Popular Culture Association.  He has presented at local, regional, and national conferences on teaching and learning in online environments, hybrid flexible pedagogy, universal design for learning, OER, and open pedagogy.  He writes for several magazines and websites.  He is currently working on his PhD in Higher Education with a focus on academic piracy of research literature.


"Graphic Medicine Online" A. David Lewis, MCPHS University
Publications, lectures, classes, and conferences on Graphic Medicine (i.e. the study and use of comics in terms of medical, health, or patient experience) are amassing monthly, but less known are the number of digital resources also growing in frequency and accessibility. First, there is the Graphic Medicine site itself, largely the origin point for the Anglophone contingent of these scholars, followed by the Annals of Graphic Medicine, original health-related comics hosted by the Annals of Internal Medicine and the American College of Physicians. Independent online magazine The Nib produces award-winning non-fiction comics on the state of healthcare in America, and numerous Graphic Medicine creators (e.g. Rachel Lindsay, Dr. Mike Natter, etc.) work in digital-first channels.
Beyond the scholarship, reportage, and new art, software utilizing Graphic Medicine is now on the rise, with apps like Jumo Health AR (and Medikidz), ‘Flo, and the numerous print comics repurposed (and sometimes augmented) for smartphone and computer monitors. Gatekeepers and barriers are becoming all the more reduced with these digital and online options; moreover, perhaps unlike other moments in Comics Studies, the field of Graphic Medicine appears particularly welcoming of such tech among its discourse and implementation.

A. David Lewis is an Instructor and Program Coordinator in the School of Healthcare Business at MCPHS University. In addition to being an established comics writer, editor, and comics studies scholar, he is also the founder of the Graphic Medicine library collection at his university and a national lecturer on the topic of comics and healthcare, medical education, and patient narratives. His 2014 book on the superhero genre and audience negotiation of personal of identity & selfhood was nominated for that year's Eisner Awards in "Best Scholarly/Academic Work," and his co-edited book Digital Death with Christopher M. Moreman received the 2015 Ray and Pat Browne Award for Best Edited Collection in Popular and American Culture.


"Educating the Total Nerd: Resources for Using the Products of Fandom in the Classroom" Michael Dittman, Butler County Community College
While the popularity of comic book movies has largely reinforced the dichotomy of the creator/reader passive relationship, educators can enrich their classrooms by examining and integrating the active role fans take in producing material which runs parallel in canon but sometimes surpasses in quality.  With the expansion of the comic fan base beyond the traditional white male coded perception and the latency of the comic corporations in diversifying their products and characters, fans have taken it upon themselves to create representation.  This idea of finding and situating one’s identity into the larger culture through its products is a useful one to explore, especially in the composition classroom.  Educators who familiarize themselves with the word of fan product can use these tools to help to move their classrooms beyond the more passive classroom reading and discussion of comics to a higher level of cognition including synthesis and creation. 
This brief, informal presentation focuses on both finding and identifying repositories of fan product to be used in the classroom and the resources available to incorporate the creation of fandom texts into the classroom.  Among other resources, gathering models from repositories such as CBR’s “Comic Book Idol” and Comic Art Network, the vast collection of fanfilms on both YouTube and Vimeo, and the collections of fanfic on Movellas and wattpad will be highlighted.  The use of how-to guides like “FanFiction for Literacy” and “Popculture Classroom” as well as others in curriculum planning will be presented. 

Michael Dittman is an associate professor of English at Butler County Community College.  His comic book and comic art reviews have appeared in CBR, International Journal of Comic Art, and others.  His comic fandom scholarship has appeared in Works and Days and other journals.  His books include Jack Kerouac, The Beat Generation, Three Days in Pittsburgh, and the novel Small Brutal Incidents.