3 New/Recent Books from McFarland

Comics as a Nexus of Cultures: Essays on the Interplay of Media, Disciplines and International Perspectives

Edited by Mark Berninger Jochen Ecke and Gideon Haberkorn
Series Editors Donald E. Palumbo and C.W. Sullivan III
ISBN 978-0-7864-3987-4
29 photos, notes, filmographies, bibliographies, index
308pp. softcover 2010
Price: $39.95


Description
These essays from various critical disciplines examine how comic books and graphic narratives move between various media, while merging youth and adult cultures and popular and high art. The articles feature international perspectives on comics and graphic novels published in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Portugal, Germany, Turkey, India, and Japan. Topics range from film adaptation, to journalism in comics, to the current manga boom.


Table of Contents

Introduction      1

INTERMEDIAL
1. Spatializing the Movie Screen: How Mainstream Cinema Is Catching Up on the Formal Potentialities of the Comic Book Page      7
Jochen Ecke
2. The Marvel Universe on Screen: A New Wave of Superhero Movies?      21
Andreas Rauscher
3. From Trauma Victim to Terrorist: Redefining Superheroes in Post–9/11 Hollywood      33
Dan A. Hassler-Forest
4. “Picture This”: Disease and Autobiographic Narration in the Graphic Novels of David B and Julie Doucet      45
Jonas Engelmann
5. Novel-Based Comics      60
Paul Ferstl
6. In the Art of the Beholder: Comics as Political Journalism      70
Dirk Vanderbeke

INTERNATIONAL
7. The Carrefour of Practice: Québec BD in Transition      85
Michel Hardy-Vallée
8. The Use of Allusion in Apitz and Kunkel’s Karl Comics      99
Sandra Martina Schwab
9. Cultural Specifics of a Scottish Comic: Oor Wullie      108
Anne Hoyer
10. Memento Mori: A Portuguese Style of Melancholy      116
Mario Gomes and Jan Peuckert
11. Otherness and the European as Villain and Antihero in American Comics      127
Georg Drennig
12. 2000AD: Understanding the “British Invasion” of American Comics      140
Ben Little
13. Whatever Happened to All the Heroes? British Perspectives on Superheroes      153
Karin Kukkonen and Anja Müller-Wood
14. A Cornerstone of Turkish Fantastic Films: From Flash Gordon to Baytekin      164
Meral Özç nar
15. From Capes to Snakes: The Indianization of the American Superhero      175
Suchitra Mathur
16. The Roving Eye Meets Traveling Pictures: The Field of Vision and the Global Rise of Adult Manga      187
Holger Briel
17. Kawaii vs. Rorikon: The Reinvention of the Term Lolita in Modern Japanese Manga      211
Dinah Zank
18. Mangascape Germany: Comics as Intercultural Neutral Ground      223
Paul M. Malone

INTERDISCIPLINARY
19. Workshop I: Toward a Toolbox of Comics Studies      237
Karin Kukkonen and Gideon Haberkorn
20. Workshop II: Comics in School      245
Mark Berninger
21. Workshop III: Teaching Comics and Literary Studies—Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess’ “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”      253
Mark Berninger
22. Workshop IV: Teaching Comics and Film Studies—Ang Lee’s The Hulk (USA 2003)      265
Andreas Rauscher
23. Comic Linguistics: Comics and Cartoons in Academic Teaching      274
Christina Sanchez

About the Contributors      283
Index      287


About the Authors
Mark Berninger is a lecturer on British Studies in the department of English and Linguistics at Johannes Gutenberg-Universitat in Mainz, Germany. He has published widely on contemporary drama. Research associate Jochen Ecke is an accomplished film critic and comic expert. Gideon Haberkorn is in the department of English and Linguistics British Studies at Johannes Gutenberg-Universitat in Mainz, Germany. Donald E. Palumbo is a professor of English at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. He lives in Greenville. C.W. Sullivan III is in the English department at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina.

Graphic Novels and Comics in Libraries and Archives: Essays on Readers, Research, History and Cataloging

Edited by Robert G. Weiner 

Forewords by Elizabeth Figa and Derek Parker Royal; Afterword by Stephen Weiner

ISBN 978-0-7864-4302-4 

12 illustrations, 16 charts, notes, bibliographies, index

288pp. softcover (7 x 10) 2010

Price: $45.00

Description

To say that graphic novels, comics, and other forms of sequential art have become a major part of popular culture and academia would be a vast understatement. Now an established component of library and archive collections across the globe, graphic novels are proving to be one of the last kinds of print publications actually gaining in popularity.

Full of practical advice and innovative ideas for librarians, educators, and archivists, this book provides a wide-reaching look at how graphic novels and comics can be used to their full advantage in educational settings. Topics include the historically tenuous relationship between comics and librarians; the aesthetic value of sequential art; the use of graphic novels in library outreach services; collection evaluations for both American and Canadian libraries; cataloging tips and tricks; and the swiftly growing realm of webcomics.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments      vii
Foreword by Elizabeth Figa      1
Foreword by Derek Parker Royal      3
Introduction (Robert G. Weiner)      5

Part One: History
1. A Librarian’s Guide to the History of Graphic Novels
ALICIA HOLSTON      9
2. Manga in Japanese Libraries: A Historical Overview
DAVID HOPKINS      17
3. How Librarians Learned to Love the Graphic Novel
AMY KISTE NYBERG      26

Part Two: School Libraries
4. The Development of a School Library Graphic Novel Collection
HEIDI K. HAMMOND      41
5. Balancing Popular High-Circulation Works with Works of Merit in Elementary School Library Collections
DIANA P. MALISZEWSKI      47

Part Three: Public Libraries
6. Creative Shelving: Placement in Library Collections
AMY HARTMAN      52
7. Graphic Novels at Los Angeles Public
RACHEL KITZMANN      63
8. Teen-Led Revamp
ERICA SEGRAVES      68

Part Four: Academic Libraries
9. Selection and Popular Culture in Large Academic Libraries: Taking the Temperature of Your Research Community
CHARLOTTE CUBBAGE      72
10. Maus Goes to College: Graphic Novels on Reserve at an Academic Library
ANNE-MARIE DAVIS      81
11. The Library After Dark: The Promotion of Collections and Services
GWEN EVANS      87
12. So Many Options, So Little Money: Building a Selective Collection for the Academic Library
LIORAH ANNE GOLOMB      101
13. The Spinner Rack in the Big Red and Ivory Tower: Establishing a Comics and Graphic Novels Collection at the University of
Nebraska–Lincoln
RICHARD GRAHAM      111
14. Comic Art Collection at the Michigan State University Libraries
RANDALL W. SCOTT      123
15. Interview with Randall W. Scott
NICHOLAS YANES AND ROBERT G. WEINER      127

Part Five: State Libraries/Archives
16. The Perils of Doctor Strange: Preserving Pennsylvania-Centered Comics at the State Library of Pennsylvania
WILLIAM T. FEE      131

Part Six: Audiences
17. Graphic Novels and the Untapped Audience
RUTH BOYER      141
18. Comic Relief in Libraries: Motivating Male Adolescent Readers
KAREN GAVIGAN      145
19. “Forty-one-year-old female academics aren’t supposed to like comics!” The Value of Comic Books to Adult Readers
SARAH ZIOLKOWSKA AND VIVIAN HOWARD      154
20. Graphics Let Teens OWN the Library
CHRISTIAN ZABRISKIE      167

Part Seven: Nomenclature and Aesthetics
21. The Only Thing Graphic Is Your Mind: Reconstructing the Reference Librarian’s View of the Genre
AMANDA STEGALL-ARMOUR      177
22. What’s in a Name: Nomenclature and Libraries
FRANCISCA GOLDSMITH      185
23. The Ontology of Art and What Libraries Should Buy
RUTH TALLMAN AND JASON SOUTHWORTH      192

Part Eight: Meta-Comics/Webcomics
24. Meta-Comics and Libraries: Should Libraries Buy Them?
ADAM J. NOBLE      202
25. Webcomics and Libraries
AMY THORNE      209

Part Nine: Cataloging
26. Cataloging and Problems with Dewey: Creativity, Collaboration and Compromise
LAUREL TARULLI      213
27. An Example of an In-House Cataloging System
ROBERT G. WEINER      222

Part Ten: Evaluation of Collections
28. Drawing Comics into Canadian Libraries
RACHEL COLLINS      226
29. Graphic Novel Holdings in Academic Libraries
ERIC WERTHMANN      242

Afterword by Stephen Weiner      260
About the Contributors      263
Index      267

About the Author

Robert G. Weiner is humanities librarian at Texas Tech University. His works have been published in the Journal of Popular Culture, Public Library Quarterly, Journal of American Culture, International Journal of Comic Art and Popular Music and Society. He lives in Lubbock, Texas.



Watchmen as Literature: A Critical Study of the Graphic Novel

Sara J. Van Ness
ISBN 978-0-7864-4475-5
15 illustrations, notes, bibliography, index
219pp. softcover 2010
Price: $35.00

Description
Watchmen has been hailed as the quintessential graphic novel and has spawned a body of literary criticism since its 1986 initial appearance in installments. This work explores the graphic novel’s reception in both popular and scholarly arenas and how the conceptual relationship between images and words affects the reading experience. Other topics include heroism as a stereotype, the hero’s journey, the role of the narrator, and the way in which the graphic layout manipulates the reader’s perception of time and space.


Table of Contents

Acknowledgments      v
Preface      1

1. Invading the Ivory Tower      5
2. I^^@ge$ & Wo(r)d$      23
3. A Language All Its Own      46
4. The Watchmen      61
5. Parallel Histories      77
6. Hooded Honor      101
7. Not So Black and White      120
8. Faceless Heroes      145
9. Measuring Up: Zack Snyder’s Watchmen      171

Closing Remarks      190
Chapter Notes      191
Works Cited      197
Selected Annotated Bibliography of Watchmen Scholarship and Related Resources      203
Index      209

About the Author
Sara J. Van Ness is a graduate student at Monmouth University in New Jersey.

New film: 30 Days of Night: Dark Days

30 Days of Night: Dark Days, the original video sequel to the feature film 30 Days of Night, is set to be released next Tuesday, 5 Oct. The film is based on the graphic novel of the same title that continues the story of Stella Olemaun, a survivor of a vampire assault on the town of Barrow, Alaska. In Dark Days, Stella tells her story to the world and joins forces with a band of vampire hunters based in Los Angeles as they seek out Lilith, the vampire queen.



Also coming soon to DVD: Iron Man 2, Jonah Hex, Scott Pilgrim, Batman/Superman: Apocalypse, and Superman/Shazam: The Return of Black Adam.

New/recent from Continuum

From Continuum's website:


Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and his Revolutionary Comic Strip
by Nevin Martell


Imprint: Continuum
Pub. date: 19 Aug 2010
ISBN: 9781441106858
272 Pages, paperback
$15.95


Description:
For ten years, Calvin and Hobbes was one the world's most beloved comic strips. And then, on the last day of 1995, the strip ended. Its mercurial and reclusive creator, Bill Watterson, not only finished the strip but withdrew entirely from public life.
In Looking for Calvin and Hobbes, Nevin Martell sets out on a very personal odyssey to understand the life and career of the intensely private man behind Calvin and Hobbes. Martell talks to a wide range of artists and writers (including Dave Barry, Harvey Pekar, and Brad Bird) as well as some of Watterson’s closest friends and professional colleagues, and along the way reflects upon the nature of his own fandom and on the extraordinary legacy that Watterson left behind. This is as close as we're ever likely to get to one of America's most ingenious and intriguing figures - and it’s the fascinating story of an intrepid author’s search for him, too.


Table of Contents:

Prologue

1. Working on a Dream

2. Making Friends

3. Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

4. A Boy And His Tiger

5. Calvin in Wonderland

6. Welcome to the Machine

7. This is How You Disappear

8. Under the Influence

9. There and Back Again

10. The Future is Always Uncertain

Epilogue


Nevin Martell is the author of Standing Small: A Celebration of 30 Years of the LEGO Minifigure, Dave Matthews Band: Music for the People and Beck: The Art of Mutation. He is a Contributing Editor at Filter magazine and his music journalism has appeared in Paste, Giant, Men’s Health, High Times, and Flaunt, as well as online at RollingStone.com. Currently, he lives with his wife in Washington, DC, where he writes full time. You can find him online at www.nevinmartell.com.

Secret Identity Crisis: Comic Books and the Unmasking of Cold War America
by Matthew J. Costello

Imprint: Continuum
Pub. date: 01 Mar 2009
ISBN: 9780826429988
288 Pages, paperback
$26.95


Description:
   What Cold War-era superheroes reveal about American society and foreign policy
   Physicist Bruce Banner, caught in the nuclear explosion of his experimental gamma bomb, is transformed into the rampaging green monster, the Hulk. High school student Peter Parker, bitten by an irradiated spider, gains its powers and becomes Spiderman. Reed Richards and his friends are caught in a belt of cosmic radiation while orbiting the Earth in a spacecraft and are transformed into the Fantastic Four. While Stan Lee suggests he clung to the hackneyed idea of radioactivity in creating Marvel’s stable of superheroes because of his limited imagination, radiation and the bomb are nonetheless the big bang that spawned the Marvel universe.
   The Marvel superheroes that came to dominate the comic book industry for most of the last five decades were born under the mushroom cloud of potential nuclear war that was a cornerstone of the four-decade bipolar division of the world between the US and USSR. These stories were consciously set in this world and reflect the changing culture of cold War (and post-cold War) America. Like other forms of popular entertainment, comic books tend to be very receptive to cultural trends, reflect them, comment on them, and sometimes inaugurate them.
   Secret Identity Crisis follows the trajectory of the breakdown of the cold War consensus after 1960 through the lens of superhero comic books. Those developed by Marvel, because of their conscious setting in the contemporary world, and because of attempts to maintain a continuous story line across and within books, constitute a system of signs that reflect, comment upon, and interact with the American political economy. This groundbreaking new study focuses on a handful of titles and signs that specifically involve political economic codes, including Captain America, The Invincible Iron Man, Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, The Incredible Hulk to reveal how the American self was transformed and/or reproduced during the late Cold War and after.


Table of Contents:

Introduction

1. The Cold War and the Forging of the Liberal Consensus

2. 1961-68: The Enemy Without

3. 1969-76: The Enemy Within

4. 1977-85: Retreat into Privacy

5. 1986-96: Betrayal in the Mirror

6. 1996-2007: The New World Order

7. Civil War and the Death of Captain America

Bibliography


Matthew J. Costello, PhD, is Professor of Political Science at Saint Xavier University, Chicago.

Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, and the Creation of the Superhero
by Danny Fingeroth
foreword by Stan Lee


Imprint: Continuum
Pub. date: 01 Nov 2008
ISBN: 9780826430144
216 Pages, paperback
$19.95


Description:
   In Disguised as Clark Kent, Danny Fingeroth--a long-time executive in the comics business who wrote and edited Spider-Man as well as other famous lines for Marvel--reflects on the phenomenon of the heavily Jewish elements that, consciously or not, went into the creation of the superhero.
   Centering on questions of Jewish identity, which is historically about the push and pull toward and away from that very identity, Disguised as Clark Kent brings valuable insight into the fantasies that fuel our imaginations and entertainment industry, as well as many significant and often hidden aspects of our society.

Table of Contents: [NB These do not match the published version]

Foreword by Stan Lee

Introduction: My Country ‘tis of Me

Chapter 1: Coming to Terms: What’s So Jewish About Superheroes, Anyway?

Chapter 2: Superhero Genesis: Who He Is and How He Came to Be

Chapter 3: A Stranger among Us: The Birth of Superman

Chapter 4: A Great Multitude: Batman and Beyond

Chapter 5: Doctor of Doom: Frederic Wertham’s Superhero Complex

Chapter 6: Rebuilding the Temple: The Silver Age of Comics

Chapter 7: Why Are These Heroes Different?: The Marvel Revolution

Chapter 8: Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself: The X-Men and the ‘70s

Chapter 9: As a Matter of Fact, I Am Jewish: The Modern Age

Chapter 10: Unto the Next Generation: The Jewish Superhero Future

Bibliography

Index

As former Group Editor of Marvel Comics's Spider-Man line, Danny Fingeroth became intimately familiar with the key elements of superhero mythology. He is exceptionally well versed in just what it takes to breathe life into these characters. Fingeroth is currently the creator and editor of Write Now magazine. He lives in New York City with his wife, sons, and 30,000 comic books.

Graven Images: Religion in Comic Books & Graphic Novels
edited by A. David Lewis
edited by Christine Hoff Kraemer


Imprint: Continuum
Pub. date: 14 Oct 2010
ISBN: 9780826430267
336 Pages, paperback
$34.95


Description: 
   Comic books have increasingly become a vehicle for serious social commentary and, specifically, for innovative religious thought. Practitioners of both traditional religions and new religious movements have begun to employ comics as a missionary tool, while humanists and religious progressives use comics’ unique fusion of text and image to criticize traditional theologies and to offer alternatives. Addressing the increasing fervor with which the public has come to view comics as an art form and Americans' fraught but passionate relationship with religion, Graven Images explores with real insight the roles of religion in comic books and graphic novels.
   In essays by scholars and comics creators, Graven Images observes the frequency with which religious material—in devout, educational, satirical, or critical contexts—occurs in both independent and mainstream comics. Contributors identify the unique advantages of the comics medium for religious messages; analyze how comics communicate such messages; place the religious messages contained in comics books in appropriate cultural, social, and historical frameworks; and articulate the significance of the innovative theologies being developed in comics.

Table of Contents: 

Foreword: Looking for God in the Gutter
Douglas Rushkoff (Creator, Testament; The New School)

Introduction
Christine Hoff Kraemer (Cherry Hill Seminary) and A. David Lewis (Boston University), editors

NEW INTERPRETATIONS

The Devil’s Reading: Revenge and Revelation in American Comics
Aaron Ricker Parks (McGill University)

London (& the Mind) as Sacred-Desecrated Place in Alan Moore’s From Hell
Emily Taylor Merriman (San Francisco State University)

Drawing Contracts: Will Eisner’s Legacy
Laurence Roth (Susquehanna University)

Catholic American Citizenship: Prescriptions for Children from Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact (1946-1963)
Anne Blankenship (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

Gold Plates, Inked Pages: The Authority of the Graphic Novel
G. St. John Stott (Arab American University, Jenin)

Comics and Religion: Theoretical Connections
Darby Orcutt (North Carolina State University)

Killing the Graven God: Visual Representations of the Divine in Comics
Andrew Tripp (Boston University)

Echoes of Eternity: Hindu Reincarnation Motifs in Superhero Comic Books
Saurav Mohapatra (Creator, India Authentic)

The Christianizing of Animism in Manga and Anime: American Translations of Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
Eriko Ogihara-Schuck (Dortmund University of Technology)

RESPONSE & REBELLION

On Preacher (Or, the Death of God in Pictures)
Mike Grimshaw, University of Canterbury

Superman Graveside: Superhero Salvation beyond Jesus
A. David Lewis (Creator, The Lone and Level Sands)

“The Apocalypse of Adolescence”: Use of the Bildungsroman and Superheroic Tropes in Mark Millar & Peter Gross’s Chosen
Julia Round (Bournemouth University)

From God Nose to God’s Bosom, Or How God (and Jack Jackson) Began Underground Comics
Clay Kinchen Smith (Santa Fe College)

A Hesitant Embrace: Comic Books and Evangelicals
Kate Netzler (Independent Scholar)

Narrative and Pictorial Dualism in Persepolis and the Emergence of Complexity
Kerr Houston, (Maryland Institute College of Art)

POSTMODERN RELIGIOSITY
Machina Ex Deus: Perennialism in Comics
G. Willow Wilson (Creator, Cairo)

Conversion to Narrative: Magic as Religious Language in Grant Morrison’s Invisibles
Megan Goodwin (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

“The Magic Circus of the Mind”: Alan Moore’s Promethea and the Transformation of Consciousness through Comics
Christine Hoff Kraemer (Cherry Hill Seminary) and J. Lawton Winslade (DePaul University)

Religion and Artesia / Religion in Artesia
Mark Smylie (Creator, Artesia)

Present Gods, Absent Believers in Sandman
Emily Ronald (Boston University)

Tell Tale Visions: The Erotic Theology of Craig Thompson’s Blankets
Steve Jungkeit (Yale University)

Selected Bibliography

Appendices


A. David Lewis is a national lecturer in Comics Studies, an award-winning graphic novelist, and a PhD candidate in Religion and Literature at Boston University.

Christine Hoff Kraemer holds a PhD in Religion and Literature from Boston University and is Department Chair of Nature, Deity, and Inspiration at Cherry Hill Seminary, South Carolina.

Comics and the City: Urban Space in Print, Picture and Sequence
edited by Jörn Ahrens
edited by Arno Meteling

Imprint: Continuum
Pub. date: 11 Mar 2010
ISBN: 9780826440198
288 Pages, paperback
$24.95

Description:

   Comics emerged parallel to, and in several ways intertwined with, the development of modern urban mass societies at the turn of the 20th century. On the one hand, urban topoi, self-portrayals, forms of urban cultural memories, and variant readings of the city (strolling, advertising, architecture, detective stories, mass phenomena, street life, etc.) are all incorporated into comics. On the other hand, comics have unique abilities to capture urban space and city life because of their hybrid nature, consisting of words, pictures, and sequences. These formal aspects of comics are also to be found within the cityscape itself: one can see the influence of comic book aesthetics all around us today.
   With chapters on the very earliest comic strips, and on artists as diverse as Alan Moore, Carl Barks, Will Eisner and Jacques Tardi, Comics and the City is an important new collection of international scholarship that will help to define the field for many years to come.

Table of Contents:

Jörn Ahrens and Arno Meteling: Introduction


I. History, Comics, and the City

1. Jens Balzer: “Hully Gee, I’m a Hieroglyphe” – Mobilizing the Gaze and the Invention of Comics in New York City, 1895

2. Ole Frahm: Every Window Tells a Story: Remarks on the Urbanity of Early Comic Strips

3. Anthony Enns: The City as Archive in Jason Lutes’ Berlin


II. Retrofuturistic and Nostalgic Cities

4. Henry Jenkins: “The Tomorrow that Never Was” – Retrofuturism in the Comics of Dean Motter

5. Stefanie Diekmann: Remembrance of Things to Come: François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters’ Cities of the Fantastic

6. Michael Cuntz: Paris au pluriel: Depictions of the French Capital in Jacques Tardi’s Comic Book Writing


III. Superhero Cities

7. William Uricchio: The Batman’s Gotham City™: Story, Ideology, Performance

8. Arno Meteling: A Tale of Two Cities: Politics, and Superheroics in Starman and Ex Machina

9. Anthony Lioi: The Radiant City: New York as Ecotopia in Promethea, Book V

10. Jason Bainbridge: “I am New York” – Spider-Man, New York City, and the Marvel Universe


IV. Locations of Crime

11. Greg M. Smith: Will Eisner, Vaudevillian of the Cityscape

12. Björn Quiring: “A Fiction That We Must Inhabit” – Sense Production in Urban Spaces According to Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell

13. Jörn Ahrens: The Ordinary Urban: 100 Bullets and the Clichés of Mass Culture


V. The City-Comic as a Mode of Reflection

14. André Suhr: Seeing the City through a Frame: Marc-Antoine Mathieu’s Acquefacques-Comics

15. Andreas Platthaus: Calisota or Bust: Duckburg vs. Entenhausen in the Comics of Carl Barks

16. Thomas Becker: Enki Bilal’s Woman Trap: Reflections on Authorship under the Shifting Boundaries between Order and Terror in the Cities



Jörn Ahrens teaches cultural sociology at Giessen University, Germany.

Arno Meteling teaches literature at the Westfalian Wilhelms-University Muenster in Germany.

The Power of Comics: History, Form and Culture

by Randy Duncan

by Matthew J. Smith

Imprint: Continuum

Pub. date: 01 Jul 2009

ISBN: 9780826429360

360 Pages, paperback

$24.95 

Description:

A comprehensive introduction to the comic arts

From the introduction by Paul Levitz

“If ever there was a medium characterized by its unexamined self-expression, it’s comics. For decades after the medium’s birth, it was free of organized critical analysis, its creators generally disinclined to self-analysis or formal documentation. The average reader didn’t know who created the comics, how or why . . . and except for a uniquely destructive period during America’s witch-hunting of the 1950s, didn’t seem to care. As the medium has matured, however, and the creativity of comics began to touch the mainstream of popular culture in many ways, curiosity followed, leading to journalism and eventually, scholarship, and so here we are.”

   The Power of Comics is the first introductory textbook for comic art studies courses. Lending a broader understanding of the medium and its communication potential, it provides students with a coherent and comprehensive explanation of comic books and graphic novels, including coverage of their history and their communication techniques, research into their meanings and effects and an overview of industry practices and fan culture.

   Co-authors Randy Duncan and Matthew J. Smith draw on their own years of experience teaching comics studies courses and the scholarly literature across several disciplines to create a text with the following features:

• Discussion questions for each chapter

• Activities to engage readers

• Recommended reading suggestions

• Over 150 illustrations

• Bibliography

• Glossary

   The Power of Comics deals exclusively with comic books and graphic novels. One reason for this focus is that no one text can hope to do justice to both strips and books; there is simply too much to cover. Preference is given to comic books because in their longer form, the graphic novel, they have the greatest potential for depth and complexity of expression. As comic strips shrink in size and become more inane in content, comic books are becoming a serious art form.

Table of Contents:

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1: Defining Comic Books as a Medium

Chapter 2: History of Comic Books, Part 1: Developing a Medium

Chapter 3: History of Comic Books, Part 2: The Maturation of the Medium

Chapter 4: The Comic Book Industry

Chapter 5: The Comic Book Creators

Chapter 6: Creating the Story

Chapter 7: Experiencing the Story

Chapter 8: The Comic Book Readers

Chapter 9: Comic Book Genres: Classifying Comics

Chapter 10: Comic Book Genres: The Superhero Genre

Chapter 11: Comic Books and Ideology

Chapter 12: Researching Comic Books

Chapter 13: Comics Culture Around the World

Glossary

Bibliography

Dr. Randy Duncan is a co-founder the Comic Arts Conference, the nation’s first annual academic conference devoted solely to the study of comics. He also wrote the entries on Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Will Eisner and other comics-related topics for the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture.

Dr. Matthew J. Smith is associate professor and chair of Communication at Wittenberg University where he regularly teaches comics arts courses. In 2009, Wittenberg's Alumni Association recognized him with its Distinguished Teaching Award.

CFP: Comics Get Medieval 2011 (12/1/10; PCA 4/20-23/11 San Antonio)

THE COMICS GET MEDIEVAL 2011: 

A CELEBRATION IN ANTICIPATION OF THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF PRINCE VALIANT

CALL FOR PAPERS (PCA: SAN ANTONIO, TX 4/20-23/11)

SPECIAL SESSIONS OF THE COMICS & COMIC ART AREA

ORGANIZED BY MICHAEL A. TORREGROSSA AND JASON TONDRO 

PROPOSALS DUE TO ORGANIZERS BY 1 DECEMBER 2010

Celebrating our sixth year in 2011, proposals are now being considered for inclusion at “The Comics Get Medieval 2011,” a series of panels and roundtables sponsored by the Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages and to be hosted by the Comics & Comic Art Area of the Popular Culture Association (PCA) for the 2011 Joint Conference of the National Popular Culture and American Culture Associations to be held from 20-23 April 2011 at the San Antonio Marriott Rivercenter & Riverwalk Hotels, 101 Bowie Street , San Antonio,TX 78205.

The goal of these sessions is to foster communication between medievalists, comics scholars, and specialists in popular culture studies in general.  The organizers define “medieval comics” as any aspect of the comics medium (panel cartoons, comic strips, comics books, comics albums, band dessinée, graphic novels, manga, webcomics, comics to film/film to comics, etc.) that feature medieval themes either in stories set during the Middle Ages or in stories presenting some element of the medieval in the post-medieval era.  We are also interested in papers looking at medieval comics from a pedagogical perspective.

Completed papers should be delivered in 15-20 minutes (depending on the number of presenters). All proposals will also be considered for inclusion in an essay collection to be edited by the panel organizers beginning in late 2011.  (Individuals only interested in submitting for the collection should also send proposals by 1 December 2010 deadline and indicate their preference in the email.)

In addition, a select list of potential topics and a bibliographic guide to medieval comics will appear as part of THE MEDIEVAL COMICS PROJECT web site available at and THE ARTHUR OF THE COMICS website available at , both organized by the Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages.

No later that 1 December 2010, interested individuals (who must be members of PCA or ACA or join for 2011) should submit full contact information (name, address, phone/cell, and email), titles, and abstracts of 300-500 words to the sessions’ organizers, who will then forward them to area chair. Address all inquiries and proposals to the organizers at the following address:  and include “Comics Get Medieval 2011” in the subject line.