Reference, guides and reviews Books

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...

From the Golden Age of the 1940s, 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 into the Unknown and Prize Comics' Frankenstein, and...

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...

In December 1977, struggling Canadian comic book artist Dave Sim self-published the first issue of Cerebus the Aardvark, a Conan the Barbarian satire featuring a foul-tempered, sword-wielding creature trapped in a human world. Over the next 26 years,...

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...

"Boys' love," a male-male homoerotic genre written primarily by women for women, enjoys global popularity and is one of the most rapidly growing publishing niches in the United States. It is found in manga, anime, novels, movies, electronic games, and...

Few scholars nursed on the literary canon would dispute that knowledge of Western literature benefits readers and writers of the superhero genre. This analysis of superhero comics as Romance literature shows that the reverse is true--knowledge of the...

This volume represents the current state of research on picture books and other adjacent hybrid forms of　visual/verbal texts such as comics, graphic novels, and book apps, with a particular focus on texts produced for and　about young people. When Perry...

In recent years, graphic novels have gained a renewed interest from a host of scholars in a diverse range of fields, including rhetoric and writing, media studies, literary studies, visual communication, graphic arts, and art history. While many of these...

Peter David, award-winning writer of comic books, novels, television, films and video games, has boatloads of stories to tell about his 30-year career. Whether it was attending George Takei's wedding, being described as Will Smith's bodyguard, or...

For decades, Marvel Comics' superhero group the Avengers have captured the imagination of millions, whether in comics, multi-billion dollar grossing films or video games. Similar to the chronology of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Avengers video...

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United...

A common misconception is that professors who use popular culture and fantasy in the classroom have abandoned the classics, yet in a variety of contexts--high school, college freshman composition, senior seminars, literature, computer science,...

WILLIAM SCHOELL is the author of many books on pop culture, film and the performing arts, as well as biographies. His film and pop culture books include Comic Book Heroes of the Screen; The Nightmare Never Ends: The Official History of Freddy Kruger and...

Joe R. Lansdale (b. 1951), the award-winning author of such novels as Cold in July (1989) and The Bottoms (2000), as well as the popular Hap and Leonard series, has been publishing novels since 1981. Lansdale has developed a tremendous cult audience...

Contributions by José 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...

Contributions by Jerold J. Abrams, José Alaniz, John Carey, Maurice Charney, Peter Coogan, Joe Cruz, Phillip Lamarr Cunningham, Stefan Danter, Adam Davidson-Harden, Randy Duncan, Stephen Graham Jones, Richard Hall, Richard Heldenfels, Alberto...

Contributions by Michelle Ann Abate, Leah Anderst, Alissa S. Bourbonnais, Tyler Bradway, Natalja Chestopalova, Margaret Galvan, Judith Kegan Gardiner, Katie Hogan, Jonathan M. Hollister, Yetta Howard, Katherine Kelp-Stebbins, Don L. Latham, Vanessa...

<Amid the controversy surrounding immigration and border control, the work of California cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz (b. 1964) has delivered a resolute Latino viewpoint. Of Mexican descent, Alcaraz fights for Latino rights through his creativity, drawing...

<p>Over the past forty years, American film has entered into a formal interaction with the comic book. Such comic book adaptations as <i>Sin City</i>, <i>300</i>, and <i>Scott Pilgrim vs. the World</i> have...

Chris Murray reveals the largely unknown and rather surprising history of the British superhero. It is often thought that Britain did not have its own superheroes, yet Murray demonstrates that there were a great many in Britain and that they were often...

Contributions by Georgiana Banita, Lan Dong, Ann D�Orazio, Kevin C. Dunn, Alexander Dunst, Jared Gardner, Edward C. Holland, Isabel Macdonald, Brigid Maher, Ben Owen, Rebecca Scherr, Maureen Shay, Marc Singer, Richard Todd Stafford, and �yvind V�gnesThe...

Superman rose from popular culture �comic books, newspaper strips, radio, television, novels, and movies� but people have so embraced the character that he has now becomepart of folklore. This transition from popular to folk culture signals the...

<p>Literary scholar Michael A. Chaney examines graphic novels to illustrate that in form and function they inform readers on how they ought to be read. His arguments result in an innovative analysis of the various knowledges that comics produce and...

<Superheroes such as Superman and Spider-Man have spread all over the world. As this edited volume shows, many national cultures have created or reimagined the idea of the superhero, while the realm of superheroes now contains many icons whose...

The 1940s saw the birth of many enduring superheroes like Superman, Batman, Captain America and Captain Marvel. Outside of the superhero genre, the golden age of comics also featured a host of lesser-known, evil-fighting action figures, and this book...

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United...

At the end of the 1990s, on both sides of the United States, several gangs associated with Taiwan and Japan launched a fierce tracking battle in secret to obtain two treasure maps of cultural relics. They used various methods of deception, solicitation,...

A new theoretical framework that critiques many of the assumptions of comics studiesIt has become an axiom in comic studies that "comics is a language, not a genre." But what exactly does that mean, and how is discourse on the form both aided and...

Contributions by Lawrence Abrams, Dorian L. Alexander, Max Bledstein, Peter Cullen Bryan, Stephen Connor, Matthew J. Costello, Martin Flanagan, Michael Fuchs, Michael Goodrum, Bridget Keown, Kaleb Knoblach, Christina M. Knopf, Martin Lund, Jordan Newton,...

Monsters seem inevitably linked to humans and not always as mere opposites. Maaheen Ahmed examines good monsters in comics to show how Romantic themes from the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries persist in today's popular culture. Comics...

Through the combination of text and images, comic books offer a unique opportunity to explore deep questions about aesthetics, ethics, and epistemology in nontraditional ways. The essays in this collection focus on a wide variety of genres, from...

This book offers the first multidisciplinary analysis of the "wordless novels" of American woodcut artist and illustrator Lynd Ward (1905-1985), who has been enormously influential in the development of the contemporary graphic novel. The study examines...

This book, first published in 1980, is a guide to the major forces in the subculture of science fiction. It analyses the history of the field and the related developments, for instance the Bomb, that have shaped the literature. It examines the complex of...

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...

A record of turbulent times in which the comics became the trusted platform to attack the status quo in ItalyExploring an overlooked era of Italian history roiled by domestic terrorism, political assassination, and student protests, Drawn and Dangerous:...

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United...

"A valuable and comprehensive survey of an enormous subject."--Paul Goldman, author of Reading Victorian Illustration, 1855-1875: Spoils of the Lumber Room"A marvelous overview of how and why illustrations became an integral part of Victorian fiction...

Spider-Man. Batman. The X-Men. The Fantastic Four. Comic books and the characters they have spawned have become twenty-first-century mythology. Greg Garrett helps us see the profound depth that can be found in the glossy, fast-paced, and often violent...

See Dragon Ball with new eyes. This book is your cultural tour guide to Dragon Ball, the world’s most recognized anime and manga series.Over 12 years in development, Dragon Ball Culture is a 7 Volume analysis of your favorite series. You will go on...

No history of comics could fairly rank the milestones without first acknowledging the millstones. Who knew that iconic artists such as Jack Kirby, Bill Ward, and writer Otto Binder once conjured racist and sexist depictions of Wonder Woman, Li’l...

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, Alison Halsall, Lara Hedberg, Susanne...

The superhero Wolverine time travels and changes storylines. On Torchwood, there's a pill popped to alter the past. The narrative technique of retroactive continuity seems rife lately, given all the world-building in comics. Andrew J. Friedenthal...

This blank comic book is perfect for kids as well as adults. Hours can be spent on creativity - telling stories, designing pictures - translating ideas into pictures and words. Practising the art of creating comics.This workbook has 150 blank pages with...

In this comprehensive textbook, editors Matthew J. Brown, Randy Duncan, and Matthew J. Smith offer students a deeper understanding of the artistic and cultural significance of comic books and graphic novels by introducing key theories and critical...