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“From the Top, Stupid!”: The Li’l Tomboy Comic Book Series, Female Juvenile Delinquency, and the Comics Code

Michelle Ann Abate

in Funny Girls: Guffaws, Guts, and Gender in Classic American Comics

Chapter Five explores the rich and interesting but critically neglected Li'l Tomboy comic book series.Released by Charlton Comics from 1956 through 1960, the series did far more than simply challenge ... More

Chapter Five explores the rich and interesting but critically neglected Li'l Tomboy comic book series.Released by Charlton Comics from 1956 through 1960, the series did far more than simply challenge traditional female gender roles in the 1950s; it also challenged the newly established Comics Code.In numerous issues, the title character engages in behaviors that could easily be regarded as delinquent:she commits petty theft, intentionally destroys private property, and sasses adult authority figures, including police officers.Moreover, Li'l Tomboy engages in these activities not simply under the watchful eye of the Comics Code Authority, but, astoundingly, with their official seal of approval.During a time when the censors employed by the Authority office were at their most powerful and restrictive, Li'l Tomboy engaged in antics that far exceeded those that had been forbidden in other publications.Accordingly, this chapter tells the story of how, with the creation of Li'l Tomboy, Charlton Publications demonstrated that postwar gender conformity could be resisted and, even more significantly, so too could the Comics Code.Less

The Comic Stripped and Ash Canned: A Review Essay

Albert Boime

in Comic Art in Museums

This 1972 essay by UCLA art history professor Albert Boime services as a review of the exhibition The Art of the Comic Strip (University of Maryland, 1971), a social art history of artists working in ... More

This 1972 essay by UCLA art history professor Albert Boime services as a review of the exhibition The Art of the Comic Strip (University of Maryland, 1971), a social art history of artists working in comic strips, magazine illustration, editorial comics, and the Ash Can School fine art movement, and the crossover between these artists. This essay includes commentary on High art versus Low art, comics as art, and the Vietnam War.Less

Comics and Figurative Narration: What Pierre Couperie Contributed

Antoine Sausverd

in Comic Art in Museums

This chapter contains a new translation of the 2014 article by the French comics scholar Antoine Sausverd exploring Pierre Couperie’s role in the founding of the French intellectual comics fan ... More

This chapter contains a new translation of the 2014 article by the French comics scholar Antoine Sausverd exploring Pierre Couperie’s role in the founding of the French intellectual comics fan group SOCERLID; details about the 1967 Musee des Arts Decoratifs exhibit ‘Bande dessinée et figuration narrative’ and its influential catalog ‘A History of the Comic Strip,’ and Couperie’s disdain for Roy Lichtenstein.Less

‘The Guts of the Living’: Auden and Spender in the 1930s

Michael O'Neill

in The All-Sustaining Air: Romantic Legacies and Renewals in British, American, and Irish Poetry since 1900

This chapter discusses the poetry of W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender, exploring the complicated response of both to the Romantic bequest. The first section focuses on a variety of texts by Auden, ... More

This chapter discusses the poetry of W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender, exploring the complicated response of both to the Romantic bequest. The first section focuses on a variety of texts by Auden, including his Letter to Lord Byron, in order to bring out the intricately post-Romantic nature of his voice in his Thirties poetry. The section examines early poems such as ‘Who stands, the crux left of the watershed’ for their evidence of thwarted post-Romantic longing, as well as later poems such as ‘In memory of W. B. Yeats’ for the ways in which Auden reinvents for the modern age a poetry akin to the Romantics' in its concern to be both undidactic and ‘A way of happening’. Auden's practice in Letter to Lord Byron is compared with Byron's comic mode, and a mixture of admiration and necessary distance in Auden's view of Byron is discovered. The second section looks at Spender's attempts to preserve a Romantic lyric voice in the modern age; it compares, for example, his poem ‘Moving through the silent crowd’ with Blake's ‘London’, and sees his poetry voicing doubts about poetry of a kind inaugurated by the Romantics.Less

Comic Connoisseurs

David Deitcher

in Comic Art in Museums

This chapter includes a 1984 article by art historian David Deitcher criticizing The Comic Art Show (Whitney, 1983) and the show catalog edited by John Carlin and Sheena Wagstaff. Deitcher explains: ... More

This chapter includes a 1984 article by art historian David Deitcher criticizing The Comic Art Show (Whitney, 1983) and the show catalog edited by John Carlin and Sheena Wagstaff. Deitcher explains: “A recent exhibition devoted to the complex, often antagonistic relation between comic strips and modern art submitted the comics to a paradigm of excellence derived from a fine art tradition, thereby reinforcing rather than reducing the familiar distinction between high and popular culture.”Less

Masters of High and Low: Exhibitions in Dialogue

Kim A. Munson (ed.)

in Comic Art in Museums

This is a brief interstitial introduction by art historian Kim A. Munson explaining the importance of and interaction between two blockbuster exhibitions featuring comics, High and Low: Modern Art, ... More

This is a brief interstitial introduction by art historian Kim A. Munson explaining the importance of and interaction between two blockbuster exhibitions featuring comics, High and Low: Modern Art, Popular Culture (MoMA, 1990) and Masters of American Comics (Hammer & Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2005). This chapter discusses The Comic Art Show (Whitney, 1983), Jonah Kinigstein’s satirical cartoons about the NY art world, and the critical and public dialogue surrounding both High and Low and Masters, which has shaped many of the comics exhibitions that followed. This chapter tracks the team of comics advocates that organized The Comic Art Show (John Carlin, Art Spiegelman, Brian Walker, and Ann Philbin), their reactions to High and Low and the production of Masters of American Comics in response.Less

Introduction

Thierry Groensteen

in Comics and Narration

The System of Comics, a French-language book published in 1999 and translated in English in 2007, offers a theoretical explanation of the foundations of the language of comics. It shows how the ... More

The System of Comics, a French-language book published in 1999 and translated in English in 2007, offers a theoretical explanation of the foundations of the language of comics. It shows how the principle of iconic solidarity can be applied to three major operations: breakdown, page layout, and braiding. It also describes the formal apparatus through which meaning is produced to show how aesthetic and semantic considerations are interwoven. This book follows up on the theoretical propositions put forward in The System of Comics, first by expounding on the basic concepts of iconic solidarity, sequence, and modes of reading comics. It also revisits themes such as regular page layout or the threshold of narrativity while addressing new ones, from children’s books to digital comics, manga, and abstract comics. In addition, the book examines the issue of rhythm and that of narration, as well as the relationship between comics and contemporary art. It cites examples from virtuoso American comics artists like Chris Ware, Art Spiegelman, and David Mazzucchelli.Less

Towards a Byzantine Theory of the Comic?

Aglae Pizzone

in Greek Laughter and Tears: Antiquity and After

This chapter tackles the question of laughter and humour from a theoretical perspective. Rather than map out the Byzantine ‘comic landscape’ by resorting to modern theorisations, it looks at Greek ... More

This chapter tackles the question of laughter and humour from a theoretical perspective. Rather than map out the Byzantine ‘comic landscape’ by resorting to modern theorisations, it looks at Greek medieval humour and laughter from within, in the attempt to single out elements of a Byzantine theory of the comic. Recent scholarship has gone some way towards dismantling the prejudice that there was no room for laughter in Byzantine society, combing the sources for tangible evidence of humour and jokes, or focusing on the scant traces for the survival of genres such as mimes and satires. Less reflection has been devoted to understanding how the Byzantines construed, conceptualised and justified comic features of discourse. Patristic and devotional texts, frowning upon laughter and humour, have taken the lion’s share of attention. This chapter sheds light on the other side of the coin, concentrating on secular texts used for educational purposes in middle Byzantine literature (rhetorical handbooks and commentaries), aiming to unravel the function that the Byzantines assigned to laughter, irony and humour in their literary production. Four major areas are explored, crucial to the deployment and legitimation of the comic in Byzantium: psychology, rhetorical display, didacticism and narrative.Less

Naturals

Matthew Bevis

in Wordsworth's Fun

The Borderers was Wordsworth’s apprenticeship in the dark arts of foolery. The question of whether the poet was to be the agent provocateur or the representative of his public, its unconscious or its ... More

The Borderers was Wordsworth’s apprenticeship in the dark arts of foolery. The question of whether the poet was to be the agent provocateur or the representative of his public, its unconscious or its conscience, continued to be a source of agitated fun for him, and the question is complicated by the sociopolitical commitments that helped to shape Lyrical Ballads. One of the poet’s avatars for the Fool was the balladeer or minstrel himself, and this chapter uncovers the awkward, persistent presence of the Fool in Lyrical Ballads. In particular, the chapter offers a sustained reading of "Simon Lee," a poem that offers a key (or a clue) to the bewilderment that the Fool inspires in him.Less

Genius in a Box

Alexi Worth

in Comic Art in Museums

This chapter includes a 2017 article by artist and art critic Alexi Worth wherein he reviews two exhibitions centered on the work of the “King of Comics” Jack Kirby: Comic Book Apocalypse: The ... More

This chapter includes a 2017 article by artist and art critic Alexi Worth wherein he reviews two exhibitions centered on the work of the “King of Comics” Jack Kirby: Comic Book Apocalypse: The Graphic World of Jack Kirby at California State University Northridge and What Nerve! Alternative Figures in American Art, 1960 to the Present at Rhode Island School of Design Museum. This chapter focuses on the relationship between comics and Pop Art, discussing the use of Kirby’s cover for Young Romance #26 in Richard Hamilton’s groundbreaking Pop Art collage Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing (1956) and Kirby’s place in art history. This chapter discusses Dream Machine,Kirby’s dynamic drawing style and influences, and the twists and turns of his career at Marvel Comics.Less

Deep Time and Vast Place: Visualizing Land/Water Relations across Time and Space in Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection

Jeremy M. Carnes (ed.)

in Graphic Indigeneity: Comics in the Americas and Australasia

Jeremy M. Carnes analyzes how formal design (layout and gutters, for instance) can be strategically used by Indigenous creators to convey a cosmic, trans-Indigenous knowledge system.

How Low Can You Go?

John Carlin

in Comic Art in Museums

This chapter includes a 1990 review of MoMA’s High and Low: Modern Art, Popular Culture by cultural entrepreneur John Carlin, co-curator of The Comic Art Show (Whitney, 1983) and curator of Masters ... More

This chapter includes a 1990 review of MoMA’s High and Low: Modern Art, Popular Culture by cultural entrepreneur John Carlin, co-curator of The Comic Art Show (Whitney, 1983) and curator of Masters of American Comics (Hammer, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2005).  This chapter discusses the differences between fine art and pop culture,the importance of excluded topics like jazz, video, and film, and how pop culture is environmental. Carlin explains: “Pop culture is ugly, rude, sexist, racist and politically naive. Fine art is obscure, elitist, misogynist and has no politics. Obviously they were made for each other.”Less

Excerpt from “The Sun God and the Dark Knight”¹

Grant Morrison

in The Supervillain Reader

This essay reprints the Code of the Comics Magazine Association of America (1954), otherwise known as the “Comics Code,” because it directly impacts the characterization of villains in comics for ... More

This essay reprints the Code of the Comics Magazine Association of America (1954), otherwise known as the “Comics Code,” because it directly impacts the characterization of villains in comics for generations. Fredric Wertham and his 1954 book Seduction of the Innocentvilified comics as being the cause of juvenile delinquency. As a result of outcry from parents and other civic groups, congressional hearings were held to talk about the content in horror and crime comics. Rather than wait for government intervention, the comics’ industry created the Comics Code to make sure that comics were published with non-offensive content.Less

After the Wall II: The Fall and Rise of an Educational System

John Rodden

in Repainting the Little Red Schoolhouse: A History of Eastern German Education, 1945-1995

In the fall of 1990, a hit movie comedy opened to packed houses in eastern German theaters. Go, Trabi, Go!—the producers gave the film an English title—celebrated with rollicking Weltschmerz the ... More

In the fall of 1990, a hit movie comedy opened to packed houses in eastern German theaters. Go, Trabi, Go!—the producers gave the film an English title—celebrated with rollicking Weltschmerz the misadventures of Georg, a hapless baby-blue Trabant 601—whose jinxed capers make him the undeniable screen successor to Herbie, the Disney VW Beetle of the 1960s. Georg stalls pitifully on the Autobahn, is shorn of his bumper in Munich traffic, is robbed of all four tires by pranksters during a camping stop, and even gets mistaken for scrap near an auto junkyard, an obvious metaphor for the DDR running out of gas—as it lurches toward unity. Go, Trabi, Go! begins with DDR German teacher Udo Struutz deciding to fulfill a long-deferred dream: his first journey to the West will be to travel from his hellhole hometown of industrial Bitterfield, the dirtiest city in all of Eastern Europe, to balmy Naples, thereby tracing the footsteps of his beloved Goethe, whose Italian Journey recorded his own (less quixotic) southern pilgrimage from Weimar in the 1780s. Herr Struutz packs his wife and daughter into little Georg, a family member for 20 years whom Herr Struutz lovingly wipes down with his own washcloth. “See Naples and Die!” scrawls Herr Struutz on Georg’s trunk, recalling Goethe’s clarion call to self-actualization: “Sterbe und werde!” (“die and become!”). The adventure turns out to be a story of Innocent Ossis Abroad and their psychological collision with the West. Numerous scenes in Go, Trabi, Go! allude to the region’s plight: putt-putting along on the Autobahn, little Georg strains to do his maximum speed of 60 mph as contemptuous Mercedes-Benzes, Porsches, and BMWs fly by; broken-down in Bavaria, Georg costs the Struutz family a steep (an outrageously inflated) price for repair, which the intrepid socialist entrepreneurs earn by charging curious Bavarians DM 5 for a “Trabi Peep Show” and a five-minute joy ride in Georg. Reassuringly, the Struutz family eventually does reach its destination, albeit with the accident-prone but indomitable Georg—now minus his top—as a breezy convertible. Less

Realists: ‘The Movement’, Kingsley Amis, David Lodge

Stefan Collini

in Common Writing: Essays on Literary Culture and Public Debate

A new generation of writers in the 1950s was seen as reacting against both the literary romanticism of their predecessors and the dominant class associations of the literary world. This chapter ... More

A new generation of writers in the 1950s was seen as reacting against both the literary romanticism of their predecessors and the dominant class associations of the literary world. This chapter examines the group of writers known as ‘the Movement’, especially the poetry of Philip Larkin and the novels of Kingsley Amis. It reconsiders Amis’s career and the difficulty of doing justice to his combination of originality and offensiveness. It then assesses the work and career of David Lodge, often seen as the successor to both Graham Greene and Kingsley Amis, with particular emphasis on the autobiographical character of so much of his writing.Less

Epilogue: Tragedy and Modernity, Closing Thoughts

Michael Silk

in Tragedy and the Idea of Modernity

The significant impact of tragedy on modernity includes a wide and diffuse influence on ‘ideas’, beyond philosophy in the strict sense. A prime example is the role of what J. P. Stern subsumed under ... More

The significant impact of tragedy on modernity includes a wide and diffuse influence on ‘ideas’, beyond philosophy in the strict sense. A prime example is the role of what J. P. Stern subsumed under the heading of ‘the dear purchase’ in modern German literature and thought. Conversely, we should insist on the value of German philosophical theories (especially Hegel’s and Nietzsche’s), but also the importance of Shakespeare and Racine, alongside the Greeks, for the understanding of tragedy itself. Among modern concepts, ‘the tragic’ needs to be seen to belong to a wider cluster that includes the sublime, irony, pathos, and humour; and assessment of the tragic world view and its impact should be set against those associated with the comic and the tragicomic—not least because of the common modern perception that tragicomedy is itself distinctively modern.Less