Download or read book Considering Watchmen Poetics Property Politics written by Andrew Hoberek and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-31 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen has been widely hailed as a landmark in the development of the graphic novel. It was not only aesthetically groundbreaking but also anticipated future developments in politics, literature, and intellectual property. Demonstrating a keen eye for historical detail, Considering Watchmen gives readers a new appreciation of just how radical Moore and Gibbons’s blend of gritty realism and formal experimentation was back in 1986. The book also considers Watchmen’s place in the history of the comics industry, reading the graphic novel’s playful critique of superhero marketing alongside Alan Moore’s public statements about the rights to the franchise. Andrew Hoberek examines how Moore and Gibbons engaged with the emerging discourses of neoconservatism and neoliberal capitalism, ideologies that have only become more prominent in subsequent years. Watchmen’s influences on the superhero comic and graphic novel are undeniable, but Hoberek reveals how it has also had profound effects on literature as a whole. He suggests that Watchmen not only proved that superhero comics could rise to the status of literature—it also helped to inspire a generation of writers who are redefining the boundaries of the literary, from Jonathan Lethem to Junot Díaz. Hoberek delivers insight and analysis worthy of satisfying serious readers of the genre while shedding new light on Watchmen as both an artistic accomplishment and a book of ideas.
Download or read book Considering Watchmen written by Andrew Hoberek and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-31 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen has been widely hailed as a landmark in the development of the graphic novel. It was not only aesthetically groundbreaking but also anticipated future developments in politics, literature, and intellectual property. Demonstrating a keen eye for historical detail, Considering Watchmen gives readers a new appreciation of just how radical Moore and Gibbons’s blend of gritty realism and formal experimentation was back in 1986. The book also considers Watchmen’s place in the history of the comics industry, reading the graphic novel’s playful critique of superhero marketing alongside Alan Moore’s public statements about the rights to the franchise. Andrew Hoberek examines how Moore and Gibbons engaged with the emerging discourses of neoconservatism and neoliberal capitalism, ideologies that have only become more prominent in subsequent years. Watchmen’s influences on the superhero comic and graphic novel are undeniable, but Hoberek reveals how it has also had profound effects on literature as a whole. He suggests that Watchmen not only proved that superhero comics could rise to the status of literature—it also helped to inspire a generation of writers who are redefining the boundaries of the literary, from Jonathan Lethem to Junot Díaz. Hoberek delivers insight and analysis worthy of satisfying serious readers of the genre while shedding new light on Watchmen as both an artistic accomplishment and a book of ideas.
Download or read book Poetics of Politics written by Sebastian M. Herrmann and published by Universitätsverlag Winter. This book was released on 2015-04-22 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume proposes the ‘poetics of politics’ as an analytic angle to interrogate contemporary cultural production in the United States. As recent scholarship has observed, American literature and culture around the turn of the millennium, while still deeply informed by the textual self-consciousness of postmodernism, are marked by a rekindled interest in matters of social concern. This revived interest in politics is frequently read as a ‘grand epochal transition.’ Sidestepping such a logic of periodization, this book points to the interplay between the textual and the political as a dynamic – always locally specific – that affords unique insights into the characteristics of the contemporary moment. The sixteen case studies in this book explore this interplay across a wide range of media, genres, and modes. Together, they make visible a broad cultural concern with negotiating social relevance and textual self-awareness that permeates and structures contemporary US (popular) culture.
Download or read book Comics and Graphic Novels written by Julia Round and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-09-22 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing an overview of the dynamic field of comics and graphic novels for students and researchers, this Essential Guide contextualises the major research trends, debates and ideas that have emerged in Comics Studies over the past decades. Interdisciplinary and international in its scope, the critical approaches on offer spread across a wide range of strands, from the formal and the ideological to the historical, literary and cultural. Its concise chapters provide accessible introductions to comics methodologies, comics histories and cultures across the world, high-profile creators and titles, insights from audience and fan studies, and important themes and genres, such as autobiography and superheroes. It also surveys the alternative and small press alongside general reference works and textbooks on comics. Each chapter is complemented by list of key reference works.
Download or read book Never Ending Watchmen written by Will Brooker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-09-07 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What began with Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' landmark graphic novel, Watchmen (1987) is no longer a single story, but rather a cross-platform, multi-media franchise, including a role-playing game and video game, a motion comic, a Zack Snyder movie, and a series of comic book prequels and sequels, as well as a prestige HBO TV series. Will Brooker explores the way that Watchmen expanded over time from the mid-1980s to the present day, drawing on theories of adaptation, intertextuality and deconstruction to argue that each addition subtly changes our understanding of the original. Does it matter whether these adaptations are 'faithful'? Can they ever be, as they cross over into another medium? How does each version enter a dialogue with the others? And as Damon Lindelof's series ran parallel to an entirely distinct comic book Watchmen sequel, Doomsday Clock, how do readers and viewers make sense of these conflicting narratives? Can we relate the unstable, shifting stories of Watchmen to our contemporary climate of post-truth, where we have to weigh up contradictory versions of the facts and decide which we believe?
Download or read book Mysterious Travelers written by Zack Kruse and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2021-02-01 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Steve Ditko (1927–2018) is one of the most important contributors to American comic books. As the cocreator of Spider-Man and sole creator of Doctor Strange, Ditko made an indelible mark on American popular culture. Mysterious Travelers: Steve Ditko and the Search for a New Liberal Identity resets the conversation about his heady and powerful work. Always inward facing, Ditko’s narratives employed superhero and supernatural fantasy in the service of self-examination, and with characters like the Question, Mr. A, and Static, Ditko turned ordinary superhero comics into philosophic treatises. Many of Ditko’s philosophy-driven comics show a clear debt to ideas found in Ayn Rand’s Objectivism. Unfortunately, readers often reduce Ditko’s work to a mouthpiece for Rand’s vision. Mysterious Travelers unsettles this notion. In this book, Zack Kruse argues that Ditko’s philosophy draws on a complicated network of ideas that is best understood as mystic liberalism. Although Ditko is not the originator of mystic liberalism, his comics provide a unique window into how such an ideology operates in popular media. Examining selections of Ditko’s output from 1953 to 1986, Kruse demonstrates how Ditko’s comics provide insight into a unique strand of American thought that has had a lasting impact.
Download or read book Alan Moore written by Jackson Ayres and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-03-25 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A complete guide to the comics work of the writer Alan Moore, this book helps readers explore one of the genre's most important, compelling and subversive writers. In an accessible and easy-to-navigate format, the book covers: · Moore's comics career – from his early work in 2000AD to his breakthrough graphic novels and his later battles with the industry · Moore's major works – including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Saga of the Swamp Thing and Promethea · Key themes and contexts – from Moore's subversion of the superhero genre and metafictional techniques to his creative collaborations and battles with the industry for creator control · Critical approaches to Moore's work The book includes a bibliography of critical work on Moore and discussion questions for classroom use.
Download or read book The DC Comics Universe written by Douglas Brode and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2022-08-02 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As properties of DC comics continue to sprout over the years, narratives that were once kept sacrosanct now spill over into one another, synergizing into one bona fide creative Universe. Intended for both professional pop culture researchers and general interest readers, this collection of essays covers DC Universe multimedia, including graphic novels, video games, movies and TV shows. Each essay is written by a recognized pop culture expert offering a distinct perspective on a wide variety of topics. Even though many of the entries address important social themes like gender and racism, the book is not limited to these topics. Also included are more lighthearted essays for full verisimilitude, including analyses of long forgotten or seemingly marginal aspects of the DC Extended Universe, as well as in-depth and original interpretations of the most beloved characters and their relationships to one another. Highly accessible and approachable, this work provides previously unavailable in-roads that create a richer comprehension of the ever-expanding DC Universe.
Download or read book After Midnight written by Drew Morton and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2022-10-21 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contributions by Apryl Alexander, Alisia Grace Chase, Brian Faucette, Laura E. Felschow, Lindsay Hallam, Rusty Hatchell, Dru Jeffries, Henry Jenkins, Jeffrey SJ Kirchoff, Curtis Marez, James Denis McGlynn, Brandy Monk-Payton, Chamara Moore, Drew Morton, Mark C. E. Peterson, Jayson Quearry, Zachary J. A. Rondinelli, Suzanne Scott, David Stanley, Sarah Pawlak Stanley, Tracy Vozar, and Chris Yogerst Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen fundamentally altered the perception of American comic books and remains one of the medium’s greatest hits. Launched in 1986—“the year that changed comics” for most scholars in comics studies—Watchmen quickly assisted in cementing the legacy that comics were a serious form of literature no longer defined by the Comics Code era of funny animal and innocuous superhero books that appealed mainly to children. After Midnight: “Watchmen” after “Watchmen” looks specifically at the three adaptations of Moore and Gibbons’s Watchmen—Zack Snyder’s Watchmen film (2009), Geoff Johns’s comic book sequel Doomsday Clock (2017), and Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen series on HBO (2019). Divided into three parts, the anthology considers how the sequels, especially the limited series, have prompted a reevaluation of the original text and successfully harnessed the politics of the contemporary moment into a potent relevancy. The first part considers the various texts through conceptions of adaptation, remediation, and transmedia storytelling. Part two considers the HBO series through its thematic focus on the relationship between American history and African American trauma by analyzing how the show critiques the alt-right, represents intergenerational trauma, illustrates alternative possibilities for Black representation, and complicates our understanding of how the mechanics of the show’s production can impact its politics. Finally, the book’s last section considers the themes of nostalgia and trauma, both firmly rooted in the original Moore and Gibbons series, and how the sequel texts reflect and refract upon those often-intertwined phenomena.
Download or read book Out of a Gray Fog written by Claudia Franziska Bruhwiler and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-08-19 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “As to Europe—keep it in a gray, ominous, evil fog.”—Ayn Rand (1905–1982) thus commented on the role of Europe in her key novel, Atlas Shrugged (1957). The same could be said of the way Europe features in her own biography and in the general perception of her persona. Even though Rand was born in pre-revolutionary Russia, she is nowadays considered anAmerican phenomenon, whose reach ends at the Atlantic shore. This book lifts the "gray fog" cast over her relationship with Europe, retracing the changing perception of the continent in both her fiction and thought. Her apparent lack of success with European readers is often explained by allegedly different reading tastes. However, a look at her publication history and reception shows that many factors played a role why her work found fewer European than US readers. Finally, an archipelago of European readers and admirers emerges which is testament to Rand's impact on European art and politics.
Download or read book The Other 1980s written by Brannon Costello and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2021-06-02 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fans and scholars have long regarded the 1980s as a significant turning point in the history of comics in the United States, but most critical discussions of the period still focus on books from prominent creators such as Frank Miller, Alan Moore, and Art Spiegelman, eclipsing the work of others who also played a key role in shaping comics as we know them today. The Other 1980s offers a more complicated and multivalent picture of this robust era of ambitious comics publishing. The twenty essays in The Other 1980s illuminate many works hailed as innovative in their day that have nonetheless fallen from critical view, partly because they challenge the contours of conventional comics studies scholarship: open-ended serials that eschew the graphic-novel format beloved by literature departments; sprawling superhero narratives with no connection to corporate universes; offbeat and abandoned experiments by major publishers, including Marvel and DC; idiosyncratic and experimental independent comics; unusual genre exercises filtered through deeply personal sensibilities; and oft-neglected offshoots of the classic “underground” comics movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The collection also offers original examinations of the ways in which the fans and critics of the day engaged with creators and publishers, establishing the groundwork for much of the contemporary critical and academic discourse on comics. By uncovering creators and works long ignored by scholars, The Other 1980s revises standard histories of this major period and offers a more nuanced understanding of the context from which the iconic comics of the 1980s emerged.
Download or read book The Novel as Network written by Tim Lanzendörfer and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-09-23 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Novel as Network: Forms, Ideas, Commodities engages with the contemporary Anglophone novel and its derivatives and by-products such as graphic novels, comics, podcasts, and Quality TV. This collection investigates the meaning of the novel in the larger system of contemporary media production and (post-)print culture, viewing the novel through the lens of actor network theory as a node in the novel network. Chapters underscore the deep interconnection between all the aspects of the novel, between the novel as a (literary) form, as an idea, and as a commodity. Bringing together experts from American, British, and Postcolonial Studies, as well as Book, Publishing, and Media Studies, this collection offers a new vantage point to view the novel in its multifaceted expressions today.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to the Graphic Novel written by Stephen E. Tabachnick and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-03 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Neoliberalism and Contemporary Literary Culture written by Mitchum Huehls and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2017-09-19 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neoliberalism and Contemporary Literary Culture is essential reading for anyone invested in the ever-changing state of literary culture.
Download or read book Liberalism and American Literature in the Clinton Era written by Ryan M. Brooks and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-06-30 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that a new, post-postmodern aesthetic emerges in the 1990s as American writers grapple with the triumph of free-market politics.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to John F Kennedy written by Andrew Hoberek and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-27 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge Companion to John F. Kennedy explores the creation, and afterlife, of an American icon.
Download or read book Practices of Speculation written by Jeanne Cortiel and published by transcript Verlag. This book was released on 2020-12-31 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers innovative ways to think about speculation at a time when anticipation of catastrophe in an apocalyptic mode is the order of the day and shapes public discourse on a global scale. It maps an interdisciplinary field of investigation: the chapters interrogate hegemonic ways of shaping the present through investments in the future, while also looking at speculative practices that reveal transformative potential. The twelve contributions explore concrete instances of envisioning the open unknown and affirmative speculative potentials in history, literature, comics, computer games, mold research, ecosystem science and artistic practice.
