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A Comic Aesthetic

Liam Burke

in The Comic Book Film Adaptation: Exploring Modern Hollywood's Leading Genre

The Golden Age of Comic Book Filmmaking saw filmmakers engaging with the language of comics with unprecedented enthusiasm, often by utilizing the control offered by digital technologies. Bullet-time, ... More

The Golden Age of Comic Book Filmmaking saw filmmakers engaging with the language of comics with unprecedented enthusiasm, often by utilizing the control offered by digital technologies. Bullet-time, which was innovated for The Matrix as a means to approximate the limitless discourse time of comics, probably proliferated most widely. However, there were many further efforts to adapt the language of comics to cinema. For instance, filmmakers often went beyond ready-made equivalents in their desire to create comic book-like panels and transitions, visualize sound, and bring previously specific codes to the screen. The enthusiasm for the comic language, coupled with the plasticity of the digital film image, even led to a measure of comic book graphiation seeping into cinema. Although many of these techniques did not enjoy the success of bullet-time, collectively they testify to a concerted effort to achieve a comic aesthetic, which has served to enrich the expressivity of mainstream cinema.Less

The Comic Book Movie Genre

Liam Burke

in The Comic Book Film Adaptation: Exploring Modern Hollywood's Leading Genre

The comic book film adaptation trend ushered in by X-Men in 2000 soon developed into a full-fledged genre. Chapter Two charted the development of this genre and probed its boundaries. Identifying the ... More

The comic book film adaptation trend ushered in by X-Men in 2000 soon developed into a full-fledged genre. Chapter Two charted the development of this genre and probed its boundaries. Identifying the conventions of these films, the chapter defined the comic-book movie as a genre that follows a vigilante or outsider character engaged in a form of revenge narrative, and is pitched at a heightened reality with a visual style marked by distinctly comic book imagery. Refining earlier genre models with a bacterial growth analogy, the development of this genre was plotted and its next phase was predicted.Less

Fans, Fidelity, and the Grammar of Value

Liam Burke

in The Comic Book Film Adaptation: Exploring Modern Hollywood's Leading Genre

Comic book fandom has long been a participatory culture. As comic book characters made the transition to film, the fans, eschewing media boundaries, began effectively applying their collaborative ... More

Comic book fandom has long been a participatory culture. As comic book characters made the transition to film, the fans, eschewing media boundaries, began effectively applying their collaborative traditions to cinema. This process became more intensive and far-reaching in the digital age. Consequently, filmmakers, many of whom initially adopted a protectionist stance, have chosen to (or been forced to) recognize the merits of comic book publishing practices. In recent years, this has led to a refocusing of marketing campaigns, the development of new production practices, greater fidelity between texts, as well as a number of other strategies that position fans at the center of comic book adaptation production.Less

“Jesus Was Not a Weak Fairy”: Chick Tracts and the Visual Culture of Evangelical Fear

Jason C. Bivins

in Religion of Fear: The Politics of Horror in Conservative Evangelicalism

The first of the book's four case studies examines the long‐standing cartoon ministry of Californian Jack Chick. Situating Chick's work in the history of the comics genre and in the visual culture of ... More

The first of the book's four case studies examines the long‐standing cartoon ministry of Californian Jack Chick. Situating Chick's work in the history of the comics genre and in the visual culture of American religions, this chapter explores the specific narrative structures of Chick's political vision alongside the particular demons he portrays in his graphic art. The chapter also includes a detailed biography of Chick, a history of American comics, and a close reading of the Chick canon. The chapter concludes by documenting Chick's sense of social decline and religious fear, themes that acquire power as the Religion of Fear develops over time.Less

Introduction

Liam Burke

in The Comic Book Film Adaptation: Exploring Modern Hollywood's Leading Genre

This Introduction traces the history of today’s comic book film adaptation trend back to the earliest days of cinema with Louis Lumière’s 1895 film L’Arroseur Arrosé. It outlines the scope of the ... More

This Introduction traces the history of today’s comic book film adaptation trend back to the earliest days of cinema with Louis Lumière’s 1895 film L’Arroseur Arrosé. It outlines the scope of the book and establishes key terms. This section also identifies where this project fits in the field of adaptation studies. Specifically, it argues that a study of the comic book film adaptation is well positioned to traverse the research quagmires of the past and move the study of adaptation into new and more productive territory.Less

The Future of the Comic Book Movie

Liam Burke

in The Comic Book Film Adaptation: Exploring Modern Hollywood's Leading Genre

This final section summarizes the key points raised in the book, while anticipating the future of the comic book movie.

External Consecration

Jean-Paul Gabilliet

in Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic Books

This chapter examines the external consecration of comic books in France and the United States in order to demonstrate the specificity of the legitimizing mechanisms of comics in the North American ... More

This chapter examines the external consecration of comic books in France and the United States in order to demonstrate the specificity of the legitimizing mechanisms of comics in the North American context, as well as the heteronomy of the comics field in Europe. It considers praise for comics through analogy with the consecrated arts and looks at the rise of comic book original pages as a new segment of the art market. It also discusses the historiography of comics and the impact of popular culture as a new area of study in American universities and concludes with an evaluation of the possibility of a “scientific” discourse on comics that is not only detached from the stigma of fannish subjectivity but also accepted in the circles of academic publishing.Less

Love & Death

Susan G. Davis

in Dirty Jokes and Bawdy Songs: The Uncensored Life of Gershon Legman

After his break with Kinsey, Legman aimed to make a place for himself among New York City intellectuals as a full-time writer and editor on topics of sex. Between 1946 and 1948, he was at work ... More

After his break with Kinsey, Legman aimed to make a place for himself among New York City intellectuals as a full-time writer and editor on topics of sex. Between 1946 and 1948, he was at work drafting Love & Death, a series of essays on the effects of censorship and repression on American culture. Love & Death was an early foray into the criticism of mass culture and an early content analysis of comic books, detective fiction, and stereotypes of women in mass culture. In it Legman argued that the repression of sex in mass culture inevitably led to a sick and violent society. This chapter shows Legman developing and circulating his essays among New York’s writers and editors, unpacks his negative critique of mass culture, and presents the responses of some of his prominent readers. Although the book was rejected by several dozen publishers, Legman got attention for his views. Through Fredric Wertham, one of the principal psychiatrists in New York City, Legman gave a public lecture on psychoanalytic approaches to comic books. Also discussed is Legman’s marriage to his first wife, Beverley Keith, and the salons they held at their tiny house in the Bronx.Less

The Business of Comic Books

Jean-Paul Gabilliet

in Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic Books

For publishers, selling copies of their publications has always been more important than advancing the status of comics as an art form. This commercial concern was what made comic books a pillar of ... More

For publishers, selling copies of their publications has always been more important than advancing the status of comics as an art form. This commercial concern was what made comic books a pillar of the mass periodical industry in North America until the beginning of the 1960s. Comics magazines, distributed at the start of the 1930s wherever periodicals were sold, benefited from a large-scale visibility that accounted for its initial success as well as its subsequent failure. In North America, the survival of comic books was tied to a much greater degree on their sales than on their advertising receipts. This chapter examines the business of comic books, from advertising to distribution, both traditional and direct market. It also looks at the crisis suffered by the comic book industry that began in 1993 and ended in 1996, along with the business of comic book specialty stores and their synergy with publishers.Less

Calls for Censorship

Jean-Paul Gabilliet

in Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic Books

This chapter examines the censorship of comic books in America. It begins by looking at the hysteria of 1948–1950, which focused on crime comics and the ordinances aimed at curbing their ... More

This chapter examines the censorship of comic books in America. It begins by looking at the hysteria of 1948–1950, which focused on crime comics and the ordinances aimed at curbing their dissemination. It then turns to the campaign of the period 1952–1954, this time against war comics and horror comics, and the hearings conducted by the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on juvenile delinquency chaired by Senator Robert Hendrickson. It also considers the main arguments advanced by the intellectuals in the debate regarding comic book censorship by analyzing three books published between 1949 and 1954: Gershon Legman’s Love and Death: A Study in Censorship, Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent, and Geoffrey Wagner’s Parade of Pleasure: A Study of Popular Iconography in the USA. In addition, the chapter analyzes Frank Tashlin’s 1955 film Artists and Models, which tackles the comic book controversy, and concludes with a discussion of contemporary arguments against comic books, along with the identity-building function of freedom of speech.Less

Shakespeare and The Comic Book

Michael P. Jensen

in The Edinburgh Companion to Shakespeare and the Arts

This chapter first reviews that comics have ever been envisaged as a pedagogical tool in the teaching of literature. It also explains the choices about dialogue and visuals in comics based on ... More

This chapter first reviews that comics have ever been envisaged as a pedagogical tool in the teaching of literature. It also explains the choices about dialogue and visuals in comics based on Shakespeare's plays, and the differences and points of contact between comics in their British, American and Japanese incarnations. Many of Shakespeare's plays were made into comic books for the first time. Moreover, the critical issues surrounding translating Shakespeare's language into modern English are elaborated. Manga Shakespeare has been embraced by Japan. The books are used to teach Shakespeare to Japanese students. Comic book writers have used Shakespeare's cultural familiarity to plot teenage romance stories, funny animal stories, ghost stories and superhero stories. Some writers have quoted, paraphrased or alluded to Shakespeare to craft the structure and tone of their comic books, but use these quotations, paraphrases and allusions in very different ways.Less

Domestication, Dysfunction, and the Rise of Superhero Fandom

Aldo J. Regalado

in Bending Steel: Modernity and the American Superhero

This chapter examines the anti-comics crusade of the 1950s. Rooted in the ethos of an atomic modernity in which the suburban home was thought of as a vanguard against internal and external threats, ... More

This chapter examines the anti-comics crusade of the 1950s. Rooted in the ethos of an atomic modernity in which the suburban home was thought of as a vanguard against internal and external threats, this mainstream movement identified the comic book industry as a threat to children and hence to the nation's virtue and security. Superheroes were accused of undermining gender norms, atomizing families, promoting violent and antisocial behavior, subverting democracy, and otherwise making Americans more susceptible to the values of a capitalist economy run amok. As a result of the success of the anti-comics crusade, comic book companies reworked their characters, stripping superheroes of their more transgressive qualities and making them conform to Cold War consensus culture. The chapter concludes by studying how baby boomer aficionados of the superhero genre organized themselves into fan communities and reactivated the superhero's anti-modern potential during the 1960s as part of a broader rebellion against consensus culture.Less

The Readers

Jean-Paul Gabilliet

in Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic Books

Readership is a reflection of the legitimation of comic books not only in terms of consumption preferences relative to mass cultural media forms, but also in terms of the general public’s perception ... More

Readership is a reflection of the legitimation of comic books not only in terms of consumption preferences relative to mass cultural media forms, but also in terms of the general public’s perception of comic books. Legitimation is closely coupled with the “visibility” of a media, if visibility is defined by the occurrence of allusions to it in larger media discourses. Paradoxically, comic books enjoyed the greatest visibility during the period 1945–1955, when they were the targets of all kinds of censorship. This chapter focuses on the readers of comic books by tackling the question of knowing who read comics. It looks at comics readers during the Great Depression, the Golden Age of comic books, the impact of television on comic book reading, the emergence of underground comics along with an adolescent-adult readership, and the composition of comic book readership in the 1980s.Less

Internal Consecration

Jean-Paul Gabilliet

in Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic Books

As a complex social process, cultural legitimation is difficult to observe because its various modalities refer to distinct realities. Legitimation is an intricate mechanism that can be broken down ... More

As a complex social process, cultural legitimation is difficult to observe because its various modalities refer to distinct realities. Legitimation is an intricate mechanism that can be broken down into three modalities that function in relation to one another: visibility, recognition, and legitimacy. The legitimation of any cultural practice requires effects of consecration, that is, phenomena that “confirm” its accession to the dominant cultural hierarchy. This chapter examines how comics and comic books are inscribed in America’s cultural and social fields. It discusses the mechanisms and agents of internal consecration within the comic book field: the prizes, the specialty magazines, the fans, and the conventions. It also describes the second wave of comics fandom, the impetus of which came from a small group of adult science fiction fans who used to enjoy comic books in their childhood and whose interest was revived by DC Comics’s resurrection of the superhero genre in the late 1950s.Less

Whether We Want Them or Not: Building an Aesthetic of Children’s Digital Comics

Joe Sutliff Sanders

in Graphic Novels for Children and Young Adults: A Collection of Critical Essays

This chapter provides an overview of the state of the field of digital comics for young readers today, especially in the context of the critical and aesthetic fears and hopes offered in the first ... More

This chapter provides an overview of the state of the field of digital comics for young readers today, especially in the context of the critical and aesthetic fears and hopes offered in the first reactions to the potential of the field. The central question is simply whether these comics take advantage of the available artistic tools to help their books succeed in their artistic goals or whether they produce stories that might as well have been told in the familiar boxes of paper comics. It is argued that most publishers are still anxious about digital comics because these comics have not yet proved themselves as a commodity at least as reliable as paper comics. And that is the case because consumers are not yet committed to reading comics in any medium other than paper. Creators have made little attempt to seize the artistic potential of digital comics when writing for children, but there is impressive reason to hope that the future holds promise.Less

Introduction: Superhumans in America

Ramzi Fawaz

in New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics

The introduction describes the origin of the American superhero in the late 1930s as a fantasy figure that linked a belief in the limitless possibilities of technological progress with liberal ... More

The introduction describes the origin of the American superhero in the late 1930s as a fantasy figure that linked a belief in the limitless possibilities of technological progress with liberal notions of justice and the rule of law. In the 1960s and after, superheroes were presented as mutants or biological “freaks,” and thus increasingly came to represent the aspirations and interests of a variety of minorities and social outcasts. This transformation was accompanied by comic books’ increasing attention to global and cosmic scales of social conflict, a heightened interaction between creators and readers that allowed the latter to be active participants in shaping the form and content of superhero stories, and those stories’ absorption of radical left-wing political ideals. These transformations composed a “comic book cosmopolitics,” an ethos defined by a democratic investment in cross-cultural communication and globe-spanning projects for political freedom. This ethos was grounded in the use of fantasy—or imaginative forms of world making and creative invention—to depict superhuman bodies that deviated from traditional ideals of bodily perfection and normative gender or ability as desirable and pleasurable. This project made fantasy itself a tool in promoting new progressive and left-wing ideals in the United States.Less

From the Nineteenth to the Twentieth Century: The Frontier Mythos in Comics Adaptations

Chad A. Barbour

in From Daniel Boone to Captain America: Playing Indian in American Popular Culture

Chapter three follows the lineage of frontier and Western fantasies from the nineteenth century to the twentieth via the comic book adaptations of novels like The Last of the Mohicans and comic ... More

Chapter three follows the lineage of frontier and Western fantasies from the nineteenth century to the twentieth via the comic book adaptations of novels like The Last of the Mohicans and comic depictions of frontier figures like Boone and Girty. Following in the line of late-nineteenth century dime novels and early twentieth century film, comic books inherited many of the tropes and conventions of the Western and frontier genres, including those of the white Indian and playing Indian. Multiple adaptations of The Last of the Mohicans, from the 1940s to the 2000s, testify to that story's persistent appeal. In the 1950s, a flurry of Boone comics demonstrates his popularity as an American hero while engaging in many of the themes and cultural implications that are essential to this book's focus.Less

The Creators

Jean-Paul Gabilliet

in Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic Books

The comic book industry lives in a universe of complex professional trajectories involving several thousand individuals ranging from artists, cartoonists, and writers to employees of publishing ... More

The comic book industry lives in a universe of complex professional trajectories involving several thousand individuals ranging from artists, cartoonists, and writers to employees of publishing houses. There is no typical career path in the comic book industry; comics artists may work in newspaper comics, animation, illustration, advertising, or even writing, whereas writers may find themselves in newspapers, magazines, radio, television, cinema, or literature. This chapter describes a succession of generations of comics creators by analyzing the history of the comic book industry as it has been represented by the creators themselves and their activities. It looks at four generations of creators: the pioneers such as Jack Kirby and Stan Lee; the postwar creators, including Carmine Infantino and Steve Ditko; the third generation that included Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams; and the fourth generation that included Dave Sim and the brothers Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez. The chapter also considers four professional associations: the Society of Comic Book Illustrators, the Academy of Comic Book Arts, the United Cartoon Workers of America, and the Comic Creators Guild.Less