The Oxford Handbook of Comic Book Studies (OXFORD HANDBOOKS SERIES)

The Oxford Handbook of Comic Book Studies examines the history and evolution of the visual narrative genre from a global perspective. The Handbook brings together readable, jargon-free essays written by established and emerging scholars from diverse geographic, institutional, gender, and national backgrounds. Cover Comic Book Studies Copyright Contents Contributors Our World Republic of Comics: An Introduction Works Cited Part I: Is a Comic? Chapter 1: What Kind of Studies Is Comics Studies? Notes Works Cited Chapter 2: Why There Is No “Language of Comics” What is Language in the First Place? Types of Language Natural Languages Artificial Languages Language Acquisition and Modalities Standard Languages and Dialects Multilingual Comics and Translations Language as Social Interaction Politeness and Politeness Strategies Speech Act Theory Conversation If Comics Aren’t Language, Then What Are They? Note Works Cited Dictionaries Consulted Chapter 3: In Box: Rethinking Text in the Digital Age Reading the Speech Bubble Reading “Speech Bubble” On Reading and Being Close Works Cited Chapter 4: What Else Is a Comic?: Between Bayeux and Beano Processions Curtains Staircase Calendars Wheels Decks Works Cited Chapter 5: Reading Spaces: The Politics of Page Layout Sequence versus Space Fundamental Studies of Page Layout The Location of Space Fun Home: Home on the Grid Baddawi: Weaving between the Lines Red: A Haida Deconstruction of the Book Politicizing Art . . . of the Page Works Cited Chapter 6: Comics as Art Notes Works Cited Chapter 7: The Cartoon on the Comics Page: A Phenomenology Line: Creatorship and Otherness Shape: Iconicity as Specificity Construction: Visible Parts, Indivisible Whole Character: Signifier as Referent Value: Aura through Reproduction Relation: Hyper-Exteriority and Hyper-Interiority Perspective: Between Planar Grid and Curved Surface Sequence: Variation as Validation Notes Works Cited Chapter 8: All By Myself: Single-Panel Comics and the Question of Genre Party of One: Single-Panel Comics in US Comics History Single and Fabulous: One-Panel Comics as Comics Note Works Cited Chapter 9: Drawing, Redrawing, and Undrawing Drawing Redrawing Undrawing Notes Works Cited Part II: Comics as Social Commentary and Response to Sociopolitical Realities Chapter 10: Bakhtinian Laughter and Recent Political Editorial Cartoons Gado’s Doodled Humanity Laughs at Epic Corruption to Produce Contemporaneity Doaa El-Adl’s Woman as the Individual of the Comic’s Inquiry into Danger and Threat Bonil’s Marked Figureheads as Crowned Sacrifices and De-Crowned Statuary Notes Works Cited Chapter 11: Columbia and the Editorial Cartoon Notes Works Cited Chapter 12: Efficacy of Social Commentary through Cartooning Works Cited Chapter 13: Radical Graphics: Australian Second-Phase Comics Australian Academic Studies of Comics, 1950–1970 Reconstructing Australian Comics History Comix Go Underground Alternative Comics and Comics Fandom Pushing Genre Boundaries Radical (Re)education Works Cited Chapter 14: Self-Regulation and Self-Censorship: Comics Creators in Czechoslovakia and Communist Eastern Bloc Join the Cause—Join the Czech Youth Union Distrust the Balloons Meek and Submissive Comics of 1948–1989 Some Other Self-Censoring Strategies A Call for More Nuanced Interpretation Notes Works Cited Chapter 15: This Is Who I Am: Hybridity and Materiality in Comics Memoir Reclaiming Hybridity Materiality Works Cited Chapter 16: Auto/biographics and Graphic Histories Made for the Classroom: Logicomix and Abina and the Important Men Introduction: Comics in the Classroom Auto/biographics and the Learning Objectives of Disciplines Central Features of Auto/biographics The Formal Features of Visual/Textual Interfaces, or Visual Literacy The Ethics of Auto/Biographical Reading Explicitly Pedagogical Comics: Abina and the Important Men Comics Implicitly for Classroom Use: Logicomix Concluding Questions Notes Works Cited Chapter 17: Ambiguity in Parallel: Visualizing History in Boxersand Saints Note Works Cited Part III: key Issues Incomics Chapter 18: Irony, Ethics, and Lyric Narrative in Miriam Engelberg’s Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person Engelberg’s Ironies and Their Ethical Dimensions Engelberg’s Lyric-Narrative Hybrid and Its Ending Notes Works Cited Chapter 19: Animals in Graphic Narrative Note Works Cited Chapter 20: The Diversionary Art of Zeina Abirached in Le piano oriental The Art of Crossing the Affrontier in the Graphic Novel1 Le Déhanchement Le Tricotage The Detour of Fiction At Home in the Languages and Images of Multicultural Comics Notes Works Cited Chapter 21: Disco, Derby, andDrag: The Queer Politics of Marvel’s Dazzler Queer Reading Practices and Their Discontents Grace Jones and the Disco Origins of Alison Blaire “Going Gaga”: Fame, Excess, and the Politics of Visibility “The Beast in the Closet”: Strange Heterosexualities and Weird Romance “Femme” Fatale: Derby Culture and the “Un-Queering” of Dazzler Yas (Drag) Queen: Punk Aesthetics and the Dazzler Thor Ali the Ally: Mutant Pride and the Limits of Solidarity Notes Works Cited Chapter 22: The Replacements: Ethnicity, Gender, and Legacy Heroes in Marvel Comics White Men with Power All-New, All-Different Being Replaced Works Cited Chapter 23: Hammer in Hand: Feminist Community Building in Jason Aaron’s Thor Notes Works Cited Chapter 24: When Feminism Went to Market Issues in Feminist Anthology Comics of the 1980s and ’90s “Be an Action Girl”: Feminist Collecting, Curating, and Community Building in the Comics Marketplace In the Archives with Action Girl: The Afterlives of Feminist Comics Works Cited Chapter 25: Children in Comics: Between Education and Entertainment, Conformity and Agency Fluid Media Contexts and Changing Readerships Struwwelpeter’s Far-Reaching Influence Commercialized Kids The Beano: Stereotyping and Queering, Companionship, and Education Works Cited Chapter 26: I’m Not a Kid. I’m aShark!: Identity Fluidity in Noelle Stevenson’s Young-Adult Graphic Novels Notes Works Cited Part IV: Comic Book Transcreations Chapter 27: Forgetting at the Intersection of Comics and the Multimodal Novel: James Sie’s Still Life Las Vegas Anamorphosis, or, the Poetics of Remembering That Is Also Forgetting Visuality and Tellability in Sie’s Model of Forgetting Notes Works Cited Chapter 28: My Favorite Thing Is Monsters: The Socially Engaged Graphic Novel as a Platform for Intersectional Feminism Form and Structure: The Diary of a Precocious Werewolf-Detective Rewriting Histories of Genocide: Maus as Foundational Intertext Fun Home: Queering the Bildungsroman Persepolis: Race, Gender, and Migration Notes Works Cited Chapter 29: Paper or Plastic? Mapping theTransmedial Intersections of Comics and Action Figures Of Wood, Rubber, China, and Chalk: Character Toys, Comic-Book Thrills, and the Prehistory of the Action Figure Dress Your Own Adventure: Postwar Gender-Performing Toys The Play’s a Thing: Star Wars and High-Concept Franchise Toys Redub Revolution: Action-Figured Comics and Toys in the 1990s Retro Paradiso: New Forms, Global Markets, and Variant Futures The Stuff That Dupes Are Made Of? Notes Works Cited Chapter 30: Transformative Architectures in Postcolonial Hong Kong Comics Hong Kong Comics An Introduction to Harbor Heroes Hybridity Character: Buildings/Robots Hybrid Themes: Politics and Nostalgia Parody Notes Works Cited Chapter 31: Adaptation and Racial Representation in Dell/Gold Key TV Tie-ins History of Dell and Gold Key Comics Methodology Style Social and Cultural Issues Lingering Questions Notes Works Cited Chapter 32: Candy and Drugs for Dinner Rat Queens, Genre, and Our Aesthetic Categories Genre and Aesthetics in Comics Criticism Fantasy and Comics: Contextualizing Rat Queens Rat Queens and Our Aesthetic Categories Coda: Image, Industry, and Aesthetics Notes Works Cited Chapter 33: Non-Compliants, Brimpers, and She-Romps: Bitch Planet, Sex Criminals, and Their Publics Feminist Exploitation? Comic-Book Publics How Bitching Might Change Things Notes Works Cited Chapter 34: Literary Adaptations in Comics and Graphic Novels Adaptation and the F-Word: Fidelity A Very Short History of Literary Adaptations in Comics and Graphic Novels Two (and a Half) Basic Tendencies of Literary Adaptation? The Resistance to Literary Adaptations Note Works Cited Part V: Comic Book Studies Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow Chapter 35: Comics Studies in America: The Making of a Field of Scholarship? Methodology The Five Books and Pre-2000 Works on Comics The Five Books and Post-2000 Works on Comics 142 Works and Top “Twenties”: The Ins and Outs of Comics Scholarship Notes Works Cited Chapter 36: Next Issue: Anticipation and Promise in Comics Studies An Opening Caveat A Snapshot of What Is Being Studied Emerging Areas of Study The Potential for Cross-Fertilization The Need for Institutional Infiltration Toward a Cause Works Cited Chapter 37: Comics Studies as Interdiscipline Comics Studies: The State of the Field Comics Studies and Self-Reflection Book History: Comic Books as Texts, Objects, and Sites of Transaction Overview of the 1976 Project The 1976 Project: Comic Books as Texts The 1976 Project: Comic Books as Material Objects The 1976 Project: Comic Books as Sites of Transaction Notes Works Cited Chapter 38: Comics Studies as Practitioner-Scholar Works Cited Index Comic book studies has developed as a solid academic discipline, becoming an increasingly vibrant field in the United States and globally. A growing number of dissertations, monographs, and edited books publish every year on the subject, while world comics represent the fastest-growing sector of publishing. The Oxford Handbook of Comic Book Studies looks at the field systematically, examining the history and evolution of the genre from a global perspective. This includes a discussion of how comic books are built out of shared aesthetic systems such as literature, painting, drawing, photography, and film. The Handbook brings together readable, jargon-free essays written by established and emerging scholars from diverse geographic, institutional, gender, and national backgrounds. In particular, it explores how the term'global comics'has been defined, as well the major movements and trends that will drive the field in the years to come. Each essay will help readers understand comic books as a storytelling form grown within specific communities, and will also show how these forms exist within what can be considered a world system of comics. Comic book studies has developed as a solid academic discipline, becoming an increasingly vibrant field in the United States and globally. A growing number of dissertations, monographs, and edited books publish every year on the subject, while world comics represent the fastest-growing sector of publishing. The Oxford Handbook of Comic Book Studies looks at the field systematically, examining the history and evolution of the genre from a global perspective. This includes a discussion of how comic books are built out of shared aesthetic systems such as literature, painting, drawing, photography, and film. The Handbook brings together readable, jargon-free essays written by established and emerging scholars from diverse geographic, institutional, gender, and national backgrounds. In particular, it explores how the term global comics has been defined, as well the major movements and trends that will drive the field in the years to come. Each essay will help readers understand comic books as a storytelling form grown within specific communities, and will also show how these forms exist within what can be considered a world system of comics.