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"Comic books, strips, etc. History and criticism"
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Comics art
In this fascinating survey, acclaimed author Paul Gravett considers the vast output of comics culture from the late 19th century to today, tracing international lines of influence and examining major themes in contemporary comics.
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Contemporary Comics Storytelling
What if fairy-tale characters lived in New York City? What if a superhero knew he was a fictional character? What if you could dispense your own justice with one hundred untraceable bullets? These are the questions asked and answered in the course of the challenging storytelling inFables,Tom Strong, and100 Bullets, the three twenty-first-century comics series that Karin Kukkonen considers in depth in her exploration of how and why the storytelling in comics is more than merely entertaining.
Applying a cognitive approach to reading comics in all their narrative richness and intricacy,Contemporary Comics Storytellingopens an intriguing perspective on how these works engage the legacy of postmodernism-its subversion, self-reflexivity, and moral contingency. Its three case studies trace how contemporary comics tie into deep traditions of visual and verbal storytelling, how they reevaluate their own status as fiction, and how the fictional minds of their characters generate complex ethical thought experiments. At a time when the medium is taken more and more seriously as intricate and compelling literary art, this book lays the groundwork for an analysis of the ways in which comics challenge and engage readers' minds. It brings together comics studies with narratology and literary criticism and, in so doing, provides a new set of tools for evaluating the graphic novel as an emergent literary form.
eBook
The philosophy of comics : what they are, how they work, and why they matter
\"This book advances the field of comics studies by attending to some of its most notable problems. It begins with what comics are: a treatment of the history of comics, the contrast between comics and cartoons, the tenuous place of comics in the art world, and what it is to be a comic in the first place. It turns next to how comics work: what the fundamental media that compose comics are, how they push comics towards specific kinds of representation and expression; how comics are related to film, non-graphic literature, and theatre; and what those relations tell us about the possibility of adapting comics into other media. Finally, it takes up why comics matter: what the value of particular comics is and what makes some comics better than others; why comics have been the objects of longstanding cultural condemnation and censorship; and lastly, whether the treatment that comics have received is merited\"-- Provided by publisher.
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The System of Comics
This edition of Thierry Groensteen'sThe System of Comicsmakes 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 explains clearly the subtle, complex workings of the medium and its unique way of combining visual, verbal, spatial, and chronological expressions. The author explores the nineteenth-century pioneer Rodolphe Töpffer, contemporary Japanese creators, George Herriman's Krazy Kat, and modern American autobiographical comics.
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 both builds on existing studies of the \"word and image\" paradigm and adds 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 and translator in Brussels, Belgium. He is the author ofLa bande dessinée: Une littérature graphiqueandLa construction de la cage, among other books. 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.
eBook
Comics and Narration
This book is the follow-up to Thierry Groensteen's ground-breakingThe System of Comics, in which the leading French-language comics theorist set out to investigate how the medium functions, introducing the principle of iconic solidarity, and showing the systems that underlie the articulation between panels at three levels: page layout, linear sequence, and nonsequential links woven through the comic book as a whole. He now develops that analysis further, using examples from a very wide range of comics, including the work of American artists such as Chris Ware and Robert Crumb. He tests out his theoretical framework by bringing it up against cases that challenge it, such as abstract comics, digital comics and sh?jo manga, and offers insightful reflections on these innovations.
In addition, he includes lengthy chapters on three areas not covered in the first book. First, he explores the role of the narrator, both verbal and visual, and the particular issues that arise out of narration in autobiographical comics. Second, Groensteen tackles the question of rhythm in comics, and the skill demonstrated by virtuoso artists in intertwining different rhythms over and above the basic beat provided by the discontinuity of the panels. And third he resets the relationship of comics to contemporary art, conditioned by cultural history and aesthetic traditions but evolving recently as comics artists move onto avant-garde terrain.
eBook
Mangasia : the definitive guide to Asian comics
\"An exhaustive and visually engaging account, Mangasia charts the evolution of manga from its roots in late nineteenth-century Japan through the many and varied forms of comics, cartoons and animation created throughout Asia for more than one hundred years. World authority on comic art Paul Gravett details the evolving meanings of the myths and legends told and retold by manga artists of every decade and reveals the development and cross pollination of ideas between manga artists throughout Asia. He explores the explosion of creativity in manga after the Second World War and highlights how creators have responded to political events since 1950 in the form of propaganda, criticism, and commentary in manga magazines, comics, and books. With infographics, maps, timelines, and reproductions from Japan, China, Taiwan, North Korea, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, this book is the first to explain the significance of key themes, the meanings of embodied myths and the connections between various manga traditions.\"-- Provided by publisher.
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The poetics of slumberland
In The Poetics of Slumberland, Scott Bukatman celebrates play, plasmatic possibility, and the life of images in cartoons, comics, and cinema. Bukatman begins with Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland to explore how and why the emerging media of comics and cartoons brilliantly captured a playful, rebellious energy characterized by hyperbolic emotion, physicality, and imagination. The book broadens to consider similar \"animated\" behaviors in seemingly disparate media—films about Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, and Vincent van Gogh; the musical My Fair Lady and the story of Frankenstein; the slapstick comedies of Jerry Lewis; and contemporary comic superheroes—drawing them all together as the purveyors of embodied utopias of disorder.
eBook
From Comic Strips to Graphic Novels
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.
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