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Openness of Comics

Author: Maaheen Ahmed

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2016-04-13

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1496805941

Never before have comics seemed so popular or diversified, proliferating across a broad spectrum of genres, experimenting with a variety of techniques, and gaining recognition as a legitimate, rich form of art. Maaheen Ahmed examines this trend by taking up philosopher Umberto Eco's notion of the open work of art, whereby the reader--or listener or viewer, as the case may be--is offered several possibilities of interpretation in a cohesive narrative and aesthetic structure. Ahmed delineates the visual, literary, and other medium-specific features used by comics to form open rather than closed works, methods by which comics generate or limit meaning as well as increase and structure the scope of reading into a work. Ahmed analyzes a diverse group of British, American, and European (Franco-Belgian, German, Finnish) comics. She treats examples from the key genre categories of fictionalized memoirs and biographies, adventure and superhero, noir, black comedy and crime, science fiction and fantasy. Her analyses demonstrate the ways in which comics generate openness by concentrating on the gaps essential to the very medium of comics, the range of meaning ensconced within words and images as well as their interaction with each other. The analyzed comics, extending from famous to lesser known works, include Will Eisner's The Contract with God Trilogy, Jacques Tardi's It Was the War of the Trenches, Hugo Pratt's The Ballad of the Salty Sea, Edmond Baudoin's The Voyage, Grant Morrison and Dave McKean's Arkham Asylum, Neil Gaiman's Sandman series, Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell, Moebius's Arzach, Yslaire's Cloud 99 series, and Jarmo Mäkilä's Taxi Ride to Van Gogh's Ear.

Part of It

Author: Ariel Schrag

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2018-11-13

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 1328972461

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Ariel Schrag, a critically-acclaimed memoirist and screenwriter, takes us on a painfully funny tour of her formative years, from her childhood in Berkeley to her mid-twenties in Brooklyn, exploring what it means to connect to others when you don’t yet know who you are—when you want to be “part of it” but the “it” changes daily. We meet hippie babysitters, mean girls, best friends, former friends, prom dates, girlfriends, sex ed students, and far too many LensCrafters sales associates. These frank, irreverent, and honest comics revel in the uncomfortable—occasionally cringe-inducing—moments from our early years that end up wiring us as people. Part of It further cements Ariel Schrag as “one of the best pure storytellers...in any medium” (Comics Journal).

Monstrous Imaginaries

Author: Maaheen Ahmed

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2019-12-16

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 1496825306

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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 monsters, questioning the distinction between human and monster, self and other, are valuable conduits of Romantic inclinations. Engaging with Romanticism and the many monsters created by Romantic writers and artists such as Mary Shelley, Victor Hugo, and Goya, Ahmed maps the heritage, functions, and effects of monsters in contemporary comics and graphic novels. She highlights the persistence of recurrent Romantic features through monstrous protagonists in English- and French-language comics and draws out their implications. Aspects covered include the dark Romantic predilection for ruins and the sordid, the solitary protagonist and his quest, nostalgia, the prominence of the spectacle as well as excessive emotions, and above all, the monster’s ambiguity and rebelliousness. Ahmed highlights each Romantic theme through close readings of well-known but often overlooked comics, including Enki Bilal's Monstre tetralogy, Jim O'Barr's The Crow, and Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, as well as the iconic comics series Alan Moore's Swamp Thing and Mike Mignola's Hellboy. In blurring the otherness of the monster, these protagonists retain the exaggeration and uncontrollability of all monsters while incorporating Romantic characteristics.

Open Earth

Author: Sarah Mirk

Publisher: Oni Press

Published: 2018-09-26

Total Pages: 122

ISBN-13:

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p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Calibri; color: #000000} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} Rigo is a young woman of her time: specifically, the time just after the collapse of Earth. After living her whole life on a small space station orbiting the planet, the cultural norms and rules of her Californian parents are just history to her. In between work shifts at the station air farm, Rigo explores her own desires, developing openly polyamorous relationships with her friends and crewmates. When she starts to feel one of those relationships change, however, Rigo must balance her new feelings with the stability of her other relationships, as well as the hard-earned camaraderie of a small crew floating in the vastness of space. But, as the ship motto goes, "Honesty keeps us alive."

The American Comic Book Industry and Hollywood

Author: Alisa Perren

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-05-20

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1844579433

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The American Comic Book Industry and Hollywood traces the evolving relationship between the American comic book industry and Hollywood from the launch of X-Men, Spider-Man, and Smallville in the early 2000s through the ascent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Arrowverse, and the Walking Dead Universe in the 2010s. Perren and Steirer illustrate how the American comic book industry simultaneously has functioned throughout the first two decades of the twenty-first century as a relatively self-contained business characterized by its own organizational structures, business models, managerial discourses, production cultures, and professional identities even as it has remained dependent on Hollywood for revenue from IP licensing. The authors' expansive view of the industry includes not only a discussion of the “Big Two,” Marvel/Disney and DC Comics/Time Warner, but also a survey of the larger comics ecosystem. Other key industry players, including independent publishers BOOM! Studios, IDW, and Image, digital distributor ComiXology, and management-production company Circle of Confusion, all receive attention. Drawing from interviews, fieldwork, archival research, and trade analysis, The American Comic Book Industry and Hollywood provides a road map to understanding the operations of the comic book industry while also offering new models for undertaking trans- and inter-industrial analysis.

Graphic History

Author: Richard Iadonisi

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2012-11-30

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 144384358X

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When it comes to recounting history, issues arise as to whose stories are told and how reliable is the telling. This collection of fourteen essays explores the unique ways in which graphic novels can aid us in addressing those issues while shedding new light on a variety of texts, including those by canonical North American and European writers Art Spiegelman (Maus, In the Shadow of No Towers), Alan Moore (From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), Frank Miller (The Dark Knight Returns), Chris Ware (Jimmy Corrigan), Chester Brown (Louis Riel), and Harvey Pekar. Recognizing the global appeal of graphic novels, this collection also provides a fresh look at history seen through the eyes of canonical non-Western writers Marjane Starapi (Persepolis) and Yoshihiro Tatsumi (A Drifting Life) and the highly vexed relationship of the West and the Middle East. The array of contributors (from the fields of art, literature, history, and cultural studies) is matched by the array of theoretical perspectives and by the depth and breadth of subjects, ranging from the sixteenth century voyages of Sebastian Cabot to Jack the Ripper, from the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 to lynching in the early twentieth-century American South, and from post-war Japan to the fall of the Shah in Iran.

The Art of Living

Author: Grant Snider

Publisher: Abrams

Published: 2022-04-05

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13: 1647002494

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A humorous, uplifting look at mindfulness, from beloved illustrator Grant Snider “Find a quiet spot away from all distraction / Listen to your breath / Watch your thoughts float past you / Forget the obligations of today / Try not to consider your eventual decay / Let yourself drift away / Arise, connected with the Earth / Awakened to the Universe.” In The Art of Living, cartoonist Grant Snider, author of The Shape of Ideas and I Will Judge You by Your Bookshelf, has created an all-new collection of one- and two-page comics that map his inner thoughts, poetic observations, and frequent failures at living mindfully. With both humor and a touch of reality, The Art of Living centers on mindfulness, but also empathy, relaxation, gratitude, and awareness—evergreen subjects that are more important and relevant now than ever. With a striking package, The Art of Living is an extension of the themes of Snider’s first two books—which explored the creative process and the love of reading—and is the perfect gift for those in a need of reflection, commiseration, hope, and a little extra self-care. Above all, Snider's cartoons will inspire and encourage a more thoughtful way of experiencing the world.

Openness and Idealism: Soviet Posters

Author:

Publisher: Skira

Published: 2021-12-14

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 9788857245645

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A revelatory compendium on the reinvention of Soviet poster art under Glasnost As we approach the 30th anniversary of the dissolution of the USSR, this publication looks back at the rich history of Soviet art from the USSR's final chapter: the colorful and radical posters of Glasnost. Ushered in by Mikhail Gorbachev, Glasnost (translating as "openness" or "transparency") was a movement that allowed for artistic and open-minded alternatives to the state-endorsed Social Realism. Within this movement, posters became the primary vehicles for confronting the history of the USSR from the vantage of its impending dissolution. The book features approximately 212 reproductions of posters from the Martha H. and J. Speed Carroll Collection, as well as essays by Russian history scholar Andy Willimott and art historian Pepe Karmel, and an introduction by J. Speed Carroll. Also included are three interviews with Russian artists who produced some of the posters pictured, conducted by Russian translator Bela Shayevich.