Download or read book Of Comics and Men written by Jean-Paul Gabilliet and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2013-03-25 with total page 595 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in France and long sought in English translation, Jean-Paul Gabilliet's Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic Books documents the rise and development of the American comic book industry from the 1930s to the present. The book intertwines aesthetic issues and critical biographies with the concerns of production, distribution, and audience reception, making it one of the few interdisciplinary studies of the art form. A thorough introduction by translators and comics scholars Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen brings the book up to date with explorations of the latest innovations, particularly the graphic novel. The book is organized into three sections: a concise history of the evolution of the comic book form in America; an overview of the distribution and consumption of American comic books, detailing specific controversies such as the creation of the Comics Code in the mid-1950s; and the problematic legitimization of the form that has occurred recently within the academy and in popular discourse. Viewing comic books from a variety of theoretical lenses, Gabilliet shows how seemingly disparate issues—creation, production, and reception—are in fact connected in ways that are not necessarily true of other art forms. Analyzing examples from a variety of genres, this book provides a thorough landmark overview of American comic books that sheds new light on this versatile art form.

Download or read book Comics Ad Men written by Steven Brower and published by Fantagraphics Books. This book was released on 2019-12-04 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comics and modern American advertising exploded into the public conscious at much the same time in the early 20th century. Collected now for the first time, the comics, cartoons, and illustrations from the OTHER career of comics creators Jack Davis, Al Capp, John Romita, Mort Meskin, Ross Andru, Sheldon Moldoff, Neal Adams, Noel Sickles, Stan Drake, Joe Simon, Basil Wolverton, Dik Browne, Clifford McBride, Hank Ketcham, Lou Fine, Daniel Clowes, and many more.

Download or read book Rat Queens 1 written by Kurtis Wiebe and published by Image Comics. This book was released on 2013-09-25 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who are the Rat Queens? A pack of booze-guzzling, death-dealing battle maidens-for-hire, and they're in the business of killing all gods' creatures for profit. It's also a darkly comedic fantasy series starring Hannah the Rockabilly Elven Mage, Violet the Hipster Dwarven Fighter, Dee the Atheist Human Cleric and Betty the Hippy Hobbit Thief. This modern spin on an old school genre is a violent monster-killing epic that is like Buffy meets Tank Girl in a Lord of the Rings world on crack!

Download or read book Invisible Men The Trailblazing Black Artists of Comic Books written by Ken Quattro and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2020-12-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hear the riveting stories of Black artists who drew--mostly covertly behind the scenes--superhero, horror, and romance comics in the early years of the industry. The life stories of each man's personal struggles and triumphs are represented as they broke through into a world formerly occupied only by whites. Using primary source material from World War II-era Black newspapers and magazines, this compelling book profiles pioneers like E.C. Stoner, a descendant of one of George Washington's slaves, who became a renowned fine artist of the Harlem Renaissance and the first Black artist to draw comic books. Perhaps more fascinating is Owen Middleton who was sentenced to life in Sing Sing. Middleton's imprisonment became a cause célèbre championed by Will Durant, which led to Middleton's release and subsequent comics career. Then there is Matt Baker, the most revered of the Black artists, whose exquisite art spotlights stunning women and men, and who drew the first groundbreaking Black comic book hero, Vooda! The book is gorgeously illustrated with rare examples of each artist's work, including full stories from mainstream comic books from rare titles like All-Negro Comics and Negro Heroes, plus unpublished artist's photos. Invisible Men features Ken Quattro's impeccable research and lean writing detailing the social and cultural environments that formed these extraordinary, yet invisible, men!

Download or read book X Men and the Mutant Metaphor written by Joseph J. Darowski and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-04-10 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Origins of Comics written by Thierry Smolderen and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2014-03-25 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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. Across eight chapters, he acutely points out how the effect of the printing press and the mass advent of audiovisual technologies (photography, audio recording, and cinema) at the end of the nineteenth century led to a new twentieth-century visual culture. In tracing this evolution, Smolderen distinguishes himself from other comics historians by following a methodology that explains the present state of the form of comics on the basis of its history, rather than presenting the history of the form on the basis of its present state. This study remaps the history of this influential art form.

Download or read book The Best of Comix Book written by Denis Kitchen and published by Dark Horse Comics. This book was released on 2013 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1974, legendary Marvel Comics publisher Stan Lee approached underground pioneer Denis Kitchen and offered a way for them to collaborate. Their resulting series was called Comix Book and featured work by many of the top underground cartoonists including Joel Beck, Kim Deitch, Justin Green, Harvey Pekar, Trina Robbins, Art Spiegelman (first national appearance of Maus), Skip Williamson, and S. Clay Wilson. The Best of Comix Book showcases 150-pages of classic underground comix (printed on newsprint, as they originally appeared), many never before reprinted.

Download or read book The New Mutants written by Ramzi Fawaz and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2016-01-22 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2017 The Association for the Studies of the Present Book Prize Finalist Mention, 2017 Lora Romero First Book Award Presented by the American Studies Association Winner of the 2012 CLAGS Fellowship Award for Best First Book Project in LGBT Studies How fantasy meets reality as popular culture evolves and ignites postwar gender, sexual, and race revolutions. In 1964, noted literary critic Leslie Fiedler described American youth as “new mutants,” social rebels severing their attachments to American culture to remake themselves in their own image. 1960s comic book creators, anticipating Fiedler, began to morph American superheroes from icons of nationalism and white masculinity into actual mutant outcasts, defined by their genetic difference from ordinary humanity. These powerful misfits and “freaks” soon came to embody the social and political aspirations of America’s most marginalized groups, including women, racial and sexual minorities, and the working classes. In The New Mutants, Ramzi Fawaz draws upon queer theory to tell the story of these monstrous fantasy figures and how they grapple with radical politics from Civil Rights and The New Left to Women’s and Gay Liberation Movements. Through a series of comic book case studies—including The Justice League of America, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, and The New Mutants—alongside late 20th century fan writing, cultural criticism, and political documents, Fawaz reveals how the American superhero modeled new forms of social belonging that counterculture youth would embrace in the 1960s and after. The New Mutants provides the first full-length study to consider the relationship between comic book fantasy and radical politics in the modern United States.

Download or read book The Future of Comics the Future of Men written by Geoff Klock and published by . This book was released on 2014-12-25 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Matt Fraction, Gabriel Ba, and Fabio Moon's Casanova is a stylish adventure about a sexy, amoral, universe-hopping, time-traveling, science-fiction spy caught in a war between militaristic E.M.P.I.R.E. and the decadent and villainous W.A.S.T.E., led by a be-suited and bandaged cackling madman in sunglasses. But beneath its pop surface, Casanova is doing more. It challenges the corporate-driven comic book production model, in which Disney and Time Warner own all the major superheroes. And it critiques the vision of masculinity, limited and damaging, that informs so much of modern superhero comics and movies. From Sequart Organization. More info at http: //sequart.org

Download or read book Comic Book History of Comics written by Fred Van Lente and published by IDW Publishing. This book was released on 2012-06-20 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time ever, the inspiring, infuriating, and utterly insane story of comics, graphic novels, and manga is presented in comic book form! The award-winning Action Philosophers team of Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey turn their irreverent-but-accurate eye to the stories of Jack Kirby, R. Crumb, Harvey Kurtzman, Alan Moore, Stan Lee, Will Eisner, Fredric Wertham, Roy Lichtenstein, Art Spiegelman, Herge, Osamu Tezuka - and more! Collects Comic Book Comics #1-6.

Download or read book The System of Comics written by Thierry Groensteen and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2007 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The System of Comics by Thierry Groensteen translated by Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen. This edition of Thierry Groensteen's The System of Comics makes available in English a groundbreaking work on comics by one of the medium's foremost scholars. In this book, originally published in France in 1999, Groensteen ranges broadly through the history of comics to explain clearly the subtle, complex workings of the medium and its unique way of combining visual, verbal, spatial, and chronological expressions. The System of Comics uses examples from a wide variety of countries including the United States, England, Japan, France, and Argentina. It describes and analyzes the properties and functions of speech and thought balloons, panels, strips, and pages to examine methodically and insightfully the medium's fundamental processes. From this, Groensteen develops his own coherent, overarching theory of comics, a "system" that he builds on existing studies of the "word and image" paradigm while adding innovative approaches of his own. Examining both meaning and appreciation, the book provides a wealth of ideas that will challenge the way scholars approach the study of comics. By emphasizing not simply "storytelling techniques" but also the qualities of the printed page and the reader's engagement, the book's approach is broadly applicable to all forms of interpreting this evolving art. Thierry Groensteen is a comics scholar born in Brussels, Belgium, the founding publisher of Editions de l'An 2, and the curator of the Angouleme Comics Museum in Angouleme, France. Bart Beaty is associate professor of communication and culture at the University of Calgary. Nick Nguyen is an archivist at Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa, Ontario.

Download or read book Your Life in Comics written by Bill Zimmerman and published by Free Spirit Pub. This book was released on 2010 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An activity and comic book for boys allowing them to fill in the bubbles and complete the stories from their own lives.

Download or read book Man of Two Worlds written by Julius Schwartz and published by Harper Paperbacks. This book was released on 2000-06-20 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before there was Superman or Batman, before Ray Bradbury or Harlan Ellison ever picked up a pen, before there were science-fiction fans and conventions, there was Julius Schwartz -- a man who would have an indelible effect on all this and more. One of the inventors of science-fiction fandom in the thirties and publisher of the first SF "fanzine" (one of its early subscribers was Superman's cocreator Jerry Siegel), Julius Schwartz became the world's first SF specialty literary agent while still in his teens. During the "Golden Age" of science fiction, he represented a distinguished roster of authors, including H. P. Lovecraft, Alfred Bester, Robert Bloch, and Ray Bradbury. But that was only the first chapter in Schwartzs amazing career, for he is also one of the most influential editors in comic-book history. Besides working on both the Superman and Batman character she created much of the mythology we now take for granted. Schwartz was also responsible for revitalizing nearly every important DC Comics character, highlighted by the mighty Justice League of America, in what has since become known as comics' beloved "Silver Age." Over more than forty years, Schwartz captained such blazing talents of the comics industry as Bob Kane, Bill Finger, Curt Swan, Neal Adams, Denny O'Neil, Alan Moore, and many others. Here, in "Julie's" own words, is a behind-the-scenes look at a life spent having fun and making sure readers did, too -- the incredible story of a true hero of American pop culture.

Download or read book American Comic Book Chronicles The 1990s written by Keith Dallas and published by Two Morrows Publishing. This book was released on 2021-03-23 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1990s was the decade when Marvel Comics sold 8.1 million copies of an issue of the X-Men, saw its superstar creators form their own company, cloned Spider-Man, and went bankrupt. It was when Superman died, Batman had his back broken, and the runaway success of Neil Gaiman's Sandman led to DC Comics' Vertigo line of adult comic books. It was the decade of gimmicky covers, skimpy costumes, and mega-crossovers. But most of all, the 1990s was the decade when companies like Image, Valiant and Malibu published million-selling comic books before the industry experienced a shocking and rapid collapse! These are just a few of the events chronicled in this exhaustive, full-color hardcover.

Download or read book The Winter Men written by Brett Lewis and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kris Kalenov left the Russian army and his old unit behind, or so he thought. Now the Winter Men want Kris back to find a missing girl who also happens to be a stolen weapon.

Download or read book Thor by Walt Simonson Omnibus written by and published by Marvel. This book was released on 2017-10-17 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considered by many to be the greatest run on Thor ever, Walt Simonson's classic tales of the God of Thunder are collected here - completely remastered from the original artwork and newly colored by Steve Oliff ! And there are too many timeless tales to count: The Casket of Ancient Winters! The death of Odin! The origins of Asgard! The sacrifice of the Executioner! Thor as a frog! The Mutant Massacre! The curse of Hela! The debut of Thor's body armor! Guest-starring Beta Ray Bill, Nick Fury and the Avengers! Featuring the threats of Fafnir the dragon, Loki, Lorelei, Malekith the Dark Elf, Surtur, Hela, the Titanium Man, Kurse, Zaniac, the Marauders, the Absorbing Man, Fin Fang Foom, the Destroyer and the Midgard Serpent! COLLECTING: THOR 337-355, 357-369, 371-382; BALDER THE BRAVE 1-4

Download or read book Unstable Masks written by Sean Guynes and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Contextualizes the history of race within comic books and the fundamental whiteness observed in American superhero narratives from the late 1930s to the present"--