Comics & Graphic Novels @ Cal State LA

Since the graphic novel rose to prominence half a century ago, it has become one of the fastest growing literary/artistic genres, generating interest from readers globally. The Cambridge Companion to the Graphic Novel examines the evolution of comic books into graphic novels and the distinct development of this art form both in America and around the world. This Companion also explores the diverse subgenres often associated with it, such as journalism, fiction, historical fiction, autobiography, biography, science fiction and fantasy. Leading scholars offer insights into graphic novel adaptations of prose works and the adaptation of graphic novels to films; analyses of outstanding graphic novels, like Maus and The Walking Man; an overview which distinguishes the international graphic novel from its American counterpart; and analyses of how the form works and what it teaches, making this book a key resource for scholars, graduate students and undergraduate students alike.

How is it that comic books-the once reviled form of lowbrow popular culture-are now the rage for Hollywood blockbusters, the basis for bestselling video games, and the inspiration for literary graphic novels? InDemanding Respect, Paul Lopes immerses himself in the discourse and practices of this art and subculture to provide a social history of the comic book over the last 75 years. Lopes analyzes the cultural production, reception, and consumption of American comic books throughout history. He charts the rise of superheroes, the proliferation of serials, and the emergence of graphic novels.Demanding Respectexplores how comic books born in the 1930s were perceived as a "menace" in the 1950s, only to later become collectors' items and eventually "hip" fiction in the 1980s through today. Using a theoretical framework to examine the construction of comic book culture-the artists, publishers, readers and fans-Lopes explains how and why comic books have captured the public's imagination and gained a fanatic cult following.

The term "graphic novel" was first coined in 1964, but it wouldn't be broadly used until the 1980s, when graphic novels such as Watchmen and Maus achieved commercial success and critical acclaim. Dreaming the Graphic Novel examines how notions of the graphic novel began to coalesce in the 1970s, a time of great change for American comics, with declining sales of mainstream periodicals, the arrival of specialty comics stores, and (at least initially) a thriving underground comix scene. As Paul demonstrates, the question of what makes a text a 'graphic novel' was the subject of fierce debate among fans, creators, and publishers, inspiring arguments about the literariness of comics that are still taking place among scholars today.

It took a few years of false starts, but now it's official: the graphic novel form is the fastest growing new area in publishing. Stephen Weiner (author of The 101 Best Graphic Novels), grabs hold of this rising meteor to offer his readers a historical tour of this format with a bit of background on comics as a whole.

This essay collection examines the theory and history of graphic narrative - realized in various different formats, including comic strips, comic books, and graphic novels - as one of the most interesting and versatile forms of storytelling in contemporary media culture. The contributions assembled in this volume test the applicability of narratological concepts to graphic narrative, examine aspects of graphic narrative beyond the 'single work,' consider the development of particular narrative strategies within individual genres, and trace the forms and functions of graphic narrative across cultures. Analyzing a wide range of texts, genres, and narrative strategies from both theoretical and historical perspectives, the international group of scholars gathered here offers state-of-the-art research on graphic narrative in the context of an increasingly postclassical and transmedial narratology.

Multicultural Comics: From Zap to Blue Beetle is the first comprehensive look at comic books by and about race and ethnicity. The thirteen essays tease out for the general reader the nuances of how such multicultural comics skillfully combine visual and verbal elements to tell richly compelling stories that gravitate around issues of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality within and outside the U.S. comic book industry. Among the explorations of mainstream and independent comic books are discussions of the work of Adrian Tomine, Grant Morrison, and Jessica Abel as well as Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan’s The Tomb of Dracula; Native American Anishinaabe-related comics.

In The Origins of Comics: From William Hogarth to Winsor McCay, Thierry Smolderen presents a cultural landscape whose narrative differs in many ways from those presented by other historians of the comic strip. Rather than beginning his inquiry with the popularly accepted "sequential art" definition of the comic strip, Smolderen instead wishes to engage with the historical dimensions that inform that definition. His goal is to understand the processes that led to the twentieth-century comic strip, the highly recognizable species of picture stories that he sees crystallizing around 1900 in the United States. Featuring close readings of the picture stories, caricatures, and humoristic illustrations of William Hogarth, Rodolphe Töpffer, Gustave Doré, and their many contemporaries, Smolderen establishes how these artists were immersed in a very old visual culture in which images--satirical images in particular--were deciphered in a way that was often described as hieroglyphical.

These 15 essays investigate comic books and graphic novels, beginning with the early development of these media. The essays also place the work in a cultural context, addressing theory and terminology, adaptations of comic books, the superhero genre, and comic books and graphic novels that deal with history and nonfiction. By addressing the topic from a wide range of perspectives, the book offers readers a nuanced and comprehensive picture of current scholarship in the subject area.

The Thing. Daredevil. Captain Marvel. The Human Fly. Drawing on DC and Marvel comics from the 1950s to the 1990s and marshaling insights from three burgeoning fields of inquiry in the humanities--disability studies, death and dying studies, and comics studies--José Alaniz seeks to redefine the contemporary understanding of the superhero. Beginning in the Silver Age, the genre increasingly challenged and complicated its hypermasculine, quasi-eugenicist biases through such disabled figures as Ben Grimm/The Thing, Matt Murdock/Daredevil, and the Doom Patrol. Alaniz traces how the superhero became increasingly vulnerable, ill, and mortal in this era. He then proceeds to a reinterpretation of characters and series--some familiar (Superman), some obscure (She-Thing). These genre changes reflected a wider awareness of related body issues in the postwar United States as represented by hospice, death with dignity, and disability rights movements. The persistent highlighting of the body's "imperfection" comes to forge a predominant aspect of the superheroic self.

It 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 hindered by thinking of it in linguistic terms? In Comics and Language, Hannah Miodrag challenges many of the key assumptions about the "grammar" and formal characteristics of comics, and offers a more nuanced, theoretical framework that she argues will better serve the field by offering a consistent means for communicating critical theory in the scholarship.

Autobiography is one of the most dynamic and quickly-growing genres in contemporary comics and graphic narratives. In Serial Selves, Frederik Byrn Køhlert examines the genre's potential for representing lives and perspectives that have been socially marginalized or excluded. With a focus on the comics form's ability to produce alternative and challenging autobiographical narratives, thematic chapters investigate the work of artists writing from perspectives of marginality including gender, sexuality, disability, and race, as well as trauma. Interdisciplinary in scope and attuned to theories and methods from both literary and visual studies, the book provides detailed formal analysis to show that the highly personal and hand-drawn aesthetics of comics can help artists push against established narrative and visual conventions, and in the process invent new ways of seeing and being seen. As the first comparative study of how comics artists from a wide range of backgrounds use the form to write and draw themselves into cultural visibility, Serial Selves will be of interest to anyone interested in the current boom in autobiographical comics, as well as issues of representation in comics and visual culture more broadly.

Superhero comics reckon with issues of corporeal control. And while they commonly deal in characters of exceptional or superhuman ability, they have also shown an increasing attention and sensitivity to diverse forms of disability, both physical and cognitive. The essays in this collection reveal how the superhero genre, in fusing fantasy with realism, provides a visual forum for engaging with issues of disability and intersectional identity (race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality) and helps to imagine different ways of being in the world. Working from the premise that the theoretical mode of the uncanny, with its interest in what is simultaneously known and unknown, ordinary and extraordinary, opens new ways to think about categories and markers of identity, Uncanny Bodies explores how continuums of ability in superhero comics can reflect, resist, or reevaluate broader cultural conceptions about disability.

Examining the deep philosophical topics addressed in superhero comics, authors Gavaler and Goldberg read plot lines for the complex thought experiments they contain and analyze their implications as if the comic authors were philosophers. Reading superhero comic books through a philosophical lens reveals how they experiment with complex issues of morality, metaphysics, meaning, and medium. Given comics' ubiquity and influence directly on (especially young) readers--and indirectly on consumers of superhero movies and video games--understanding these deeper meanings is in many ways essential to understanding contemporary popular culture. The result is an entertaining and enlightening look at superhero dilemmas.

Children choose their heroes more carefully than we think. From Pokémon to the rapper Eminem, pop-culture icons are not simply commercial pied pipers who practice mass hypnosis on our youth. Indeed, argues the author of this lively and persuasive paean to the power of popular culture, even trashy or violent entertainment gives children something they need, something that can help both boys and girls develop in a healthy way. Drawing on a wealth of true stories, many gleaned from the fascinating workshops he conducts, and basing his claims on extensive research, including interviews with psychologists and educators, Gerard Jones explains why validating our children's fantasies teaches them to trust their own emotions and build stronger selves.

In Between Pen and Pixel: Comics, Materiality, and the Book of the Future, Aaron Kashtan argues that paying attention to comics helps us understand the future of the book. Debates over the future of the book tend to focus on text-based literature, particularly fiction. However, because comics make the effects of materiality visible, they offer a clearer demonstration than prose fiction of how the rise of digital reading platforms transforms the reading experience. Comics help us see the effects of alterations in features such as publication design and typography, whereas in print literature, such transformations often go unnoticed.

Graphic novels have never received more attention and legitimation from scholars, but new canons and new critical discourses have created tensions within a field built on the populist rhetoric of cultural studies. As a result, comics studies has begun to cleave into distinct camps based primarily in cultural or literary studies that attempt to dictate the boundaries of the discipline or else resist disciplinarity itself. The consequence is a growing disconnect in the ways that comics scholars talk to each other or, more frequently, do not talk to each other or even acknowledge each other's work. Breaking the Frames: Populism and Prestige in Comics Studies surveys the current state of comics scholarship, interrogating its dominant schools, questioning their mutual estrangement, and challenging their propensity to champion the comics they study.

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 mainstream superhero comics, to graphic novels of social realism, to European adventure classics. Included among the contributions are essays on existentialism in Daniel Clowes's graphic novel Ghost World, ecocriticism in Paul Chadwick's long-running Concrete series, and political philosophies in Hergé's perennially popular The Adventures of Tintin. Modern political concerns inform Terry Kading's discussion of how superhero comics have responded to 9/11 and how the genre reflects the anxieties of the contemporary world.

Ethics in the Gutter: Empathy and Historical Fiction in Comics explores an often-overlooked genre of graphic narratives: those that fictionalize historical realities. While autographics, particularly those that place the memoirist in the context of larger cultural conversations, have been the objects of sustained study, fictional graphic narratives that--as Linda Hutcheon has put it--both "enshrine and question" history are also an important area of study. By bringing narratology and psychological theory to bear on a range of graphic narratives, Kate Polak seeks to question how the form utilizes point of view and the gutter as ethical tools that shape the reader's empathetic reactions to the content.  This book's most important questions surround how we receive and interpret representations of history, considering the ways in which what we think we know about historical atrocities can be at odds with the convoluted circumstances surrounding violence.

Cultures of War in Graphic Novels examines the representation of small-scale and often less acknowledged conflicts from around the world and throughout history. The contributors look at an array of graphic novels about conflicts such as the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901), the Irish struggle for national independence (1916-1998), the Falkland War (1982), the Bosnian War (1992-1995), the Rwandan genocide (1994), the Israel-Lebanon War (2006), and the War on Terror (2001-).

First appearing in 1963, The Uncanny X-Men had a rough start, lasting until 1970 when the comic book was canceled due to low sales. Following a relaunch in 1975, however, it found new popularity thanks to intricate scripting by Chris Claremont and the artwork of John Byrne. Within a few years, The Uncanny X-Men was one of Marvel Comics' best-selling series and over the decades it became one of the most successful and popular franchises in comic book history. Spin-off titles, mini-series, multimedia adaptations, and a massively expanded cast of characters followed. One of the reasons for the success of X-Men is its powerful "mutant metaphor," which enhances the stories with cultural significance and the exploration of themes such as societal prejudice and discrimination. In X-Men and the Mutant Metaphor: Race and Gender in the Comic Books, Joseph J. Darowski thoroughly analyzes The Uncanny X-Men, providing its historical background and dividing the long-running series into distinct eras. Each chapter examines the creators and general plot lines, followed by a closer analysis of the principal characters and key stories. The final chapter explores the literal use of race and gender rather than the metaphorical or thematic ways such issues have been addressed. This analysis includes insights gained from interviews with several comic book creators, and dozens of illustrations from the comic book series. Of particular significance are statistics that track the race and gender of every X-Men hero, villain, and supporting character. By delving into the historical background of the series and closely examining characters and stories, X-Men and the Mutant Metaphor illuminates an important popular culture phenomenon.

For nearly forty years, from his earliest work in underground Arts Lab projects to his latest work as author of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Lost Girls, Moore has pushed the boundaries like few others, ranging from farce and high comedy to the dark, grim work that epitomised the comics revolution of the late eighties. This book examines the recurring themes and how Moore's work has evolved over the years from his early comic work in Captain Britain and 2000 AD, through milestone series like V for Vendetta, Marvelman, Swamp Thing and Watchmen, to his current genre-stretching work. On the way Moore has written definitive stories of America's greatest superheroes Batman and Superman, penned some of the most widely read graphic novels of all time, and helped turn comics into an indispensible art form.

Traces the history of racial caricature and the ways that Black cartoonists have turned this visual grammar on its head. Revealing the long aesthetic tradition of African American cartoonists who have made use of racist caricature as a black diasporic art practice, Rebecca Wanzo demonstrates how these artists have resisted histories of visual imperialism and their legacies. Moving beyond binaries of positive and negative representation, many black cartoonists have used caricatures to criticize constructions of ideal citizenship in the United States, as well as the alienation of African Americans from such imaginaries. The Content of Our Caricature urges readers to recognize how the wide circulation of comic and cartoon art contributes to a common language of both national belonging and exclusion in the United States. Historically, white artists have rendered white caricatures as virtuous representations of American identity, while their caricatures of African Americans are excluded from these kinds of idealized discourses. Employing a rich illustration program of color and black-and-white reproductions, Wanzo explores the works of artists such as Sam Milai, Larry Fuller, Richard "Grass" Green, Brumsic Brandon Jr., Jennifer Cruté, Aaron McGruder, Kyle Baker, Ollie Harrington, and George Herriman, all of whom negotiate and navigate this troublesome history of caricature. The Content of Our Caricature arrives at a gateway to understanding how a visual grammar of citizenship, and hence American identity itself, has been constructed.

The first book-length study to address Moore's significance to the Gothic, this volume is also the first to provide in-depth analyses of his spoken-word performances, poetry and prose, as well as his comics and graphic novels. The essays collected here identify the Gothic tradition as perhaps the most significant cultural context for understanding Moore's work, providing unique insight into its wider social and political dimensions as well as addressing key theoretical issues in Gothic Studies, Comics Studies and Adaptation Studies. Scholars, students and general readers alike will find fresh insights into Moore's use of horror and terror, homage and parody, plus allusion and adaptation. The international list of contributors includes leading researchers in the field and the studies presented here enhance the understanding of Moore's works while at the same time exploring the ways in which these serve to advance a broader appreciation of Gothic aesthetics.

In this book, Charles Hatfield examines the artistic legacy of one of America's true comic book giants. He analyzes the development of Kirby's cartooning technique, his use of dynamic composition, the recurring themes and moral ambiguities in his work, his eventual split from Lee, and his later work as a solo artist. Against the backdrop of Kirby's earlier work in various genres, Hand of Fire examines the peak of Kirby's career, when he introduced a new sense of scope and sublimity to comic book fantasy.

This project strives not only to record the contributions of African American artists, but also to place them in full historical context. Revealed chronologically, these cartoons offer an invaluable perspective on American history of the black community during pivotal moments, including the Great Migration, race riots, the Great Depression, and both World Wars. Many of the greatest creators have already died, so Jackson recognizes the stakes in remembering them before this hidden yet vivid history is irretrievably lost.

Will Eisner (1917-2005) is universally considered the master of comics storytelling, best known for The Spirit, his iconic newspaper comic strip, and A Contract With God, the first significant graphic novel. This seminal work from 1978 ushered in a new era of personal stories in comics form that touched every adult topic from mortality to religion and sexuality, forever changing the way writers and artists approached comics storytelling. Noted historian Paul Levitz celebrates Eisner by showcasing his most famous work along­side unpublished and rare materials from the family archives. Also included are original interviews with creators such as Jules Feiffer, Art Spiegelman, Scott McCloud, Jeff Smith, Denis Kitchen, and Neil Gaiman--all of whom knew Eisner and were inspired by his work to create their own graphic novels for a new generation of readers.

In Grant Morrison: Combining the Worlds of Contemporary Comics, author Marc Singer examines how Morrison uses this fusion of styles to intervene in the major political, aesthetic, and intellectual challenges of our time. His comics blur the boundaries between fantasy and realism, mixing autobiographical representation and cultural critique with heroic adventure. They offer self-reflexive appraisals of their own genres while they experiment with the formal elements of comics. Perhaps most ambitiously, they challenge contemporary theories of language and meaning, seeking to develop new modes of expression grounded in comics' capacity for visual narrative and the fantasy genres' ability to make figurative meanings literal.

The Comics of Charles Schulz collects new essays on the work of the creator of the immensely popular Peanuts comic strip. Despite Schulz's celebrity, few scholarly books on his work and career have been published. This collection serves as a foundation for future study not only of Charles Schulz (1922-2000) but, more broadly, of the understudied medium of newspaper comics. Schulz's Peanuts ran for a half century, during which time he drew the strip and its characters to express keen observations on postwar American life and culture. As Peanuts' popularity grew, Schulz had opportunities to shape the iconography, style, and philosophy of modern life in ways he never could have imagined when he began the strip in 1950. Edited by leading scholars Jared Gardner and Ian Gordon, this volume ranges over a spectrum of Schulz's accomplishments and influence, touching on everything from cartoon aesthetics to the marketing of global fast food. Philosophy, ethics, and cultural history all come into play. Indeed, the book even highlights Snoopy's global reach as American soft power.

Jack Kirby created or co-created some of comic books' most popular super heroes, including Captain America, The X-Men, The Hulk, The Fantastic Four, The Mighty Thor, Darkseid, and The New Gods. More significantly, he created much of the visual language for fantasy and adventure comics. There were comics before Kirby, but for the most part their page layout, graphics, and visual dynamic aped what was being done in syndicated newspaper strips. Almost everything that was different about comic books began in the 1940s on the drawing table of Jack Kirby. This is his story by one who knew him well--Mark Evanier. First issued in 2008, Kirby: King of Comics was the first overview of the legendary comic book creator's career. It is now available in a smaller, more affordable package, revised and expanded for Kirby's centennial.  

Animated by the stories of some of the last century's most charismatic and conniving artists, writers, and businessmen, Men of Tomorrow brilliantly demonstrates how the creators of the superheroes gained their cultural power and established a crucial place in the modern imagination. "This history of the birth of superhero comics highlights three pivotal figures. The story begins early in the last century, on the Lower East Side, where Harry Donenfeld rises from the streets to become the king of the 'smooshes'-soft-core magazines with titles like French Humor and Hot Tales. Later, two high school friends in Cleveland, Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, become avid fans of 'scientifiction,' the new kind of literature promoted by their favorite pulp magazines.

Winner of the 2014 Will Eisner Award for Best Scholarly/Academic Work. Bringing together contributors from a wide-range of critical perspectives, Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation is an analytic history of the diverse contributions of Black artists to the medium of comics. Covering comic books, superhero comics, graphic novels and cartoon strips from the early 20th century to the present, the book explores the ways in which Black comic artists have grappled with such themes as the Black experience, gender identity, politics and social media. Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation introduces students to such key texts as: The work of Jackie Ormes Black women superheroes from Vixen to Black Panther Aaron McGruder's strip The Boondocks

When many think of comic books the first thing that comes to mind are caped crusaders and spandex-wearing super-heroes. Perhaps, inevitably, these images are of white men (and more rarely, women). It was not until the 1970s that African American superheroes such as Luke Cage, Blade, and others emerged. But as this exciting new collection reveals, these superhero comics are only one small component in a wealth of representations of black characters within comic strips, comic books, and graphic novels over the past century.  The Blacker the Ink is the first book to explore not only the diverse range of black characters in comics, but also the multitude of ways that black artists, writers, and publishers have made a mark on the industry. Organized thematically into "panels" in tribute to sequential art published in the funny pages of newspapers, the fifteen original essays take us on a journey that reaches from the African American newspaper comics of the 1930s to the Francophone graphic novels of the 2000s. Even as it demonstrates the wide spectrum of images of African Americans in comics and sequential art, the collection also identifies common character types and themes running through everything from the strip The Boondocks to the graphic novel Nat Turner.  Though it does not shy away from examining the legacy of racial stereotypes in comics and racial biases in the industry, The Blacker the Ink also offers inspiring stories of trailblazing African American artists and writers.

Keeping It Unreal: Comics and Black Queer Fantasy is an exploration of how fantasies of Black power and triumph fashion theoretical, political, and aesthetic challenges to--and respite from--white supremacy and anti-Blackness. It examines representations of Blackness in fantasy-infused genres: superhero comic books, erotic comics, fantasy and science-fiction genre literature, as well as contemporary literary "realist" fiction centering fantastic conceits. Darieck Scott offers a rich meditation on the relationship between fantasy and reality, and between the imagination and being, as he weaves his personal recollections of his encounters with superhero comics with interpretive readings of figures like the Black Panther and Blade, as well as theorists such as Frantz Fanon, Eve Sedgwick, Leo Bersani, Saidiya Hartman, and Gore Vidal. Keeping It Unreal represents an in-depth theoretical consideration of the intersections of superhero comics, Blackness, and queerness, and draws on a variety of fields of inquiry. Reading new life into Afrofuturist traditions and fantasy genres, Darieck Scott seeks to rescue the role of fantasy and the fantastic to challenge, revoke, and expand our assumptions about what is normal, real, and markedly human.

Black Women in Sequence takes readers on a search for women of African descent in comics subculture. From the 1971 appearance of the Skywald Publications character "the Butterfly" - the first Black female superheroine in a comic book - to contemporary comic books, graphic novels, film, manga, and video gaming, a growing number of Black women are becoming producers, viewers, and subjects of sequential art. As the first detailed investigation of Black women's participation in comic art, Black Women in Sequence examines the representation, production, and transnational circulation of women of African descent in the sequential art world. In this groundbreaking study, which includes interviews with artists and writers, Deborah Whaley suggests that the treatment of the Black female subject in sequential art says much about the place of people of African descent in national ideology in the United States and abroad.

Adilifu Nama is an Associate Professor at California State University Northridge. He is the author of the award-winning Black Space: Imagining Race in Science Fiction Film, the first book length examination of the topic. Throughout his books, various articles, and presentations, Nama has explored how race and media intersect in television, film, and hip-hop music with a critical eye toward contextualizing black representation along with black racial formation.

Grand in its scope, Asian Comics dispels the myth that, outside of Japan, the continent is nearly devoid of comic strips and comic books. Relying on his fifty years of Asian mass communication and comic art research, during which he traveled to Asia at least seventy-eight times and visited many studios and workplaces, John A. Lent shows that nearly every country had a golden age of cartooning and has experienced a recent rejuvenation of the art form. As only Japanese comics output has received close and by now voluminous scrutiny, Asian Comics tells the story of the major comics creators outside of Japan. Lent covers the nations and regions of Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. Organized by regions of East, Southeast, and South Asia, Asian Comics provides 178 black-and-white illustrations and detailed information on comics of sixteen countries and regions--their histories, key creators, characters, contemporary status, problems, trends, and issues. One chapter harkens back to predecessors of comics in Asia, describing scrolls, paintings, books, and puppetry with humorous tinges, primarily in China, India, Indonesia, and Japan.

The global circulation of comics, manga, and other such visual mediums between North America and Asia produces transnational meanings no longer rooted in a separation between "Asian" and "American." Drawing New Color Lines explores the culture, production, and history of contemporary graphic narratives that depict Asian Americans and Asians. It examines how Japanese manga and Asian popular culture have influenced Asian American comics; how these comics and Asian American graphic narratives depict the "look" of race; and how these various representations are interpreted in nations not of their production. By focusing on what graphic narratives mean for audiences in North America and those in Asia, the collection discusses how Western theories about the ways in which graphic narratives might successfully overturn derogatory caricatures are themselves based on contested assumptions; and illustrates that the so-called odorless images featured in Japanese manga might nevertheless elicit interpretations about race in transnational contexts.

Manga from the Floating World is the first full-length study in English of the kibyōshi, a genre of woodblock-printed comic book widely read in late-eighteenth-century Japan. By combining analysis of the socioeconomic and historical milieus in which the genre was produced and consumed with three annotated translations of works by major author-artist Santō Kyōden (1761-1816) that closely reproduce the experience of encountering the originals, Adam Kern offers a sustained close reading of the vibrant popular imagination of the mid-Edo period. The kibyōshi, Kern argues, became an influential form of political satire that seemed poised to transform the uniquely Edoesque brand of urban commoner culture into something more, perhaps even a national culture, until the shogunal government intervened. Based on extensive research using primary sources in their original Edo editions, the volume is copiously illustrated with rare prints from Japanese archival collections. It serves as an introduction not only to the kibyōshi but also to the genre's readers and critics, narratological conventions, modes of visuality, format, and relationship to the modern Japanese manga and to the popular literature and wit of Edo. Filled with graphic puns and caricatures, these entertaining works will appeal to the general reader as well as to the more experienced student of Japanese cultural history--and anyone interested in the global history of comics, graphic novels, and manga.

While most US-based comics studies anthologies tend to neglect race, Beyond the Icon brings it to the foreground through an analysis of the vibrant and growing body of graphic narratives by Asian North American creators in the twenty-first century. By demonstrating how the forms and styles of the comics genre help depict Asian Americans as nuanced individuals in ways that words alone may not, Beyond the Icon makes the case for comics as a crucial artistic form in Asian American cultural production--one used to counter misrepresentations and myths, rewrite official history, and de-exoticize the Asian American experience. An interdisciplinary team of contributors offers exciting new readings of key texts, including Ms. Marvel, George Takei's They Called Us Enemy, Thi Bui's The Best We Could Do, Gene Luen Yang and Sonny Liew's The Shadow Hero, works by Adrian Tomine and Jillian Tamaki, and more, to uncover the ways in which Asian American comics authors employ graphic narratives to provide full and complex depictions of Asian diasporic subjects and intervene in the wider North American consciousness.