Alternative Comics

Author: Charles Hatfield
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1604735872
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 199

Book Description
In the 1980s, a sea change occurred in comics. Fueled by Art Spiegel- man and Françoise Mouly's avant-garde anthology Raw and the launch of the Love & Rockets series by Gilbert, Jaime, and Mario Hernandez, the decade saw a deluge of comics that were more autobiographical, emotionally realistic, and experimental than anything seen before. These alternative comics were not the scatological satires of the 1960s underground, nor were they brightly colored newspaper strips or superhero comic books. In Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature, Charles Hatfield establishes the parameters of alternative comics by closely examining long-form comics, in particular the graphic novel. He argues that these are fundamentally a literary form and offers an extensive critical study of them both as a literary genre and as a cultural phenomenon. Combining sharp-eyed readings and illustrations from particular texts with a larger understanding of the comics as an art form, this book discusses the development of specific genres, such as autobiography and history. Alternative Comics analyzes such seminal works as Spiegelman's Maus, Gilbert Hernandez's Palomar: The Heartbreak Soup Stories, and Justin Green's Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary. Hatfield explores how issues outside of cartooning-the marketplace, production demands, work schedules-can affect the final work. Using Hernandez's Palomar as an example, he shows how serialization may determine the way a cartoonist structures a narrative. In a close look at Maus, Binky Brown, and Harvey Pekar's American Splendor, Hatfield teases out the complications of creating biography and autobiography in a substantially visual medium, and shows how creators approach these issues in radically different ways.

Below Critical Radar

Author: Teal Triggs
Publisher: Codex
ISBN:
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 128

Book Description
The move from the underground to the mainstream by many fanzines and underground comics has been largely ignored by the mainstream media. These writings consider how and why this has occurred and the relationship between reader and producer.

Mid-Life

Author: Joe Ollmann
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
ISBN: 1770465790
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 100

Book Description
Mid-Life is the story of a forty-year-old man, John, who becomes a father again with his much-younger second wife which results in a slow, painful attack by flowered baby bags and front facing baby carriers on his former virility and self identity. John always believed that age is a state of mind, however, his adult daughters, baby son, energetic wife, stressful job, house full of cats, and flabby body complete with bloated stomach and sagging bosom all lead John reluctantly to admit that he is having a midlife crisis. The crisis drives John to yell at his wife, pick fights with his daughters and miss deadlines at work that put his job on the line. John takes solace from the stress of everyday life with a seemingly harmless infatuation with the pretty children's performer Sherry Smalls who sings adoringly to him directly from his son's DVD. Sherry, meanwhile, is equally desperate to find a distraction in life. Her path to rock stardom has been rudely overtaken by a semi-successful but completely loathsome gig as a children’s performer. It pays the bills, and a Saturday-morning television show is on the horizon—that is, if she is able to fire her alcoholic on-again, off-again boyfriend/bandmate. As their lives snowball, John’s infatuation turns into obsession and a haphazard, fateful e-mail leads to a necessary reality check that neither John nor Sherry may have wanted, but that both will surprisingly welcome.

The Hernandez Brothers

Author: Enrique García
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822982927
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Book Description
This study offers a critical examination of the work of Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez, Mexican-American brothers whose graphic novels are highly influential. The Hernandez brothers started in the alt-comics scene, where their 'Love and Rockets' series quickly gained prominence. They have since published in more mainstream venues but have maintained an outsider status based on their own background and the content of their work. Enrique Garcia argues that the Hernandez brothers have worked to create a new American graphic storytelling that, while still in touch with mainstream genres, provides a transgressive alternative from an aesthetic, gender, and ethnic perspective. The brothers were able to experiment with and modify these genres by taking advantage of the editorial freedom of independent publishing. This freedom also allowed them to explore issues of ethnic and gender identity in transgressive ways. Their depictions of latinidad and sexuality push against the edicts of mainstream Anglophone culture, but they also defy many Latino perceptions of life, politics, and self-representation. The book concludes with an in-depth interview with Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez that touches on and goes beyond the themes explored in the book.

Spawn #300

Author: Todd McFarlane
Publisher: Image Comics
ISBN:
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 76

Book Description
SPAWN MAKES HISTORY! With this 300th issue, SPAWN becomes the longest-running independent series in comic book history. To celebrate, legendary artists TODD McFARLANE and GREG CAPULLO return with ALL-NEW interior pencils, with additional art provided by JASON SHAWN ALEXANDER, J. SCOTT CAMPBELL, and JEROME Opeña, a cavalcade of celebratory covers, and additional writing by SCOTT SNYDER! And next month, RECORDS WILL BE BROKEN with SPAWN #301! Retailers: see order form for incentives.

Distinctive Styles and Authorship in Alternative Comics

Author: Lukas Etter
Publisher: de Gruyter
ISBN: 9783110693522
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Distinctive Styles and Authorship in Alternative Comics addresses the benefits and limits of analyses of style in alternative comics. It offers three close readings of works serially published between 1980 and 2018 - Art Spiegelman's Maus, Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For, and Jason Lutes' Berlin - and discusses how artistic style may influence the ways in which readers construct authorship.

The Superhero Reader

Author: Charles Hatfield
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1617038032
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 342

Book Description
With contributions from Will Brooker, Jeffrey A. Brown, Scott Bukatman, John G. Cawelti, Peter Coogan, Jules Feiffer, Charles Hatfield, Henry Jenkins, Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence, Gerard Jones, Geoff Klock, Karin Kukkonen, Andy Medhurst, Adilifu Nama, Walter Ong, Lorrie Palmer, Richard Reynolds, Trina Robbins, Lillian Robinson, Roger B. Rollin, Gloria Steinem, Jennifer Stuller, Fredric Wertham, and Philip Wylie Despite their commercial appeal and cross-media reach, superheroes are only recently starting to attract sustained scholarly attention. This groundbreaking collection brings together essays and book excerpts by major writers on comics and popular culture. While superhero comics are a distinct and sometimes disdained branch of comics creation, they are integral to the development of the North American comic book and the history of the medium. For the past half-century, they have also been the one overwhelmingly dominant market genre. The sheer volume of superhero comics that have been published over the years is staggering. Major superhero universes constitute one of the most expansive storytelling canvases ever fashioned. Moreover, characters inhabiting these fictional universes are immensely influential, having achieved iconic recognition around the globe. Their images and adventures have shaped many other media, such as film, videogames, and even prose fiction. The primary aim of this reader is twofold: first, to collect in a single volume a sampling of the most sophisticated commentary on superheroes, and second, to bring into sharper focus the ways in which superheroes connect with larger social, cultural, literary, aesthetic, and historical themes that are of interest to a great many readers both in the academy and beyond.

Tunnels

Author: Rutu Modan
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
ISBN: 177046560X
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 287

Book Description
When a great antiquities collector is forced to donate his entire collection to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Nili Broshi sees her last chance to finish an archaeological expedition begun decades earlier—a dig that could possibly yield the most important religious artifact in the Middle East. Motivated by the desire to reinstate her father’s legacy as a great archaeologist after he was marginalized by his rival, Nili enlists a ragtag crew—a religious nationalist and his band of hilltop youths, her traitorous brother, and her childhood Palestinian friend, now an archaeological smuggler. As Nili’s father slips deeper into dementia, warring factions close in on and fight over the Ark of the Covenant! Backed by extensive research into this real-world treasure hunt, Rutu Modan sets her affecting novel at the center of a political crisis. She posits that the history of biblical Israel lies in one of the most disputed regions in the world, occupied by Israel and contested by Palestine. Often in direct competition, Palestinians and Israelis dig alongside one another, hoping to find the sacred artifact believed to be a conduit to God. Two-time Eisner Award winner Rutu Modan’s third graphic novel, Tunnels, is her deepest and wildest yet. Potent and funny, Modan reveals the Middle East as no westerner could. Ishai Mishory is a longtime New York City—and newly Bay Area—based translator and sometimes illustrator. He is currently conducting research for a PhD dissertation on 16th century Italian printing.

The Best American Comics 2014

Author: Bill Kartalopoulos
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0544104269
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 405

Book Description
“It’s the perfect book to pick up to restore your faith in comics or help show infinite diversity in infinite combinations on display on paper using the world’s greatest artform.” — Comics Bulletin The Best American Comics showcases the work of both established and up-and-coming contributors and highlights both fiction and nonfiction — from graphic novels, pamphlet comics, newspapers, magazines, minicomics, and the Web — to make a unique, stunning collection. Frank Miller (Sin City, 300) called guest editor Scott McCloud “just about the smartest guy in comics.”

Heroes of the Comics

Author: Drew Friedman
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
ISBN: 1606997319
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 185

Book Description
Featuring over 80 full-color portraits of the pioneering legends of American comic books, including publishers, editors and artists from the industry’s birth in the ’30s, through the brilliant artists and writers of behind EC Comics in the ’50s. All lovingly rendered and chosen by Drew Friedman, a cartooning legend in his own right. Featuring subjects popular and obscure, men and women, as well as several pioneering African-American artists. Each subject features a short essay by Friedman, who grew up knowing many of the subjects included (as the son of writer Bruce Jay Friedman), including Stan Lee, Harvey Kurtzman, Will Eisner, Mort Drucker, Al Jaffee, Jack Davis, Will Elder, and Bill Gaines. More names you might recognize: Barks, Crumb, Wood, Wolverton, Frazetta, Siegel & Shuster, Kirby, Cole, Ditko, Werthem… it’s a Hall of Fame of comic book history from the man BoingBoing.com call “America’s greatest living portrait artist!”