Comics as Philosophy

Comics as Philosophy Review

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Comics as Philosophy Feature

Through the combination of text and images, comic books offer a unique opportunity to explore deep questions about aesthetics, ethics, and epistemology in non-traditional ways. The essays in this collection focus on a wide variety of genres, from mainstream superhero comics, to graphic novels that exercise social realism, to European adventure classics.

Included among the contributions are essays on the existentialist ethos present in Daniel Clowes’s graphic novel Ghost World, ecocriticism in Paul Chadwick’s long-running Concrete series, and the inherent political philosophies espoused in Hergé’s perennially popular The Adventures of Tintin. Modern political concerns inform Terry Kading’s "Drawn into 9/11: But Where Have All the Superheroes Gone?," which discusses how superhero comics have responded to 9/11, and how the concerns of the genre reflect the anxieties of the contemporary world.

Along with comics themselves, essayists explore the issues surrounding the development and appreciation of the medium. Amy Kiste Nyberg examines the rise of the Comics Code, using it as a springboard for discussing the ethics of censorship and child protection in America. Stanford W. Carpenter’s "Truth Be Told: Authorship and the Creation of the Black Captain America" uses interviews, memos, and other documents to analyze how a team of Marvel artists and writers re-imagined the origin of one of Marvel’s most iconic superheroes. Throughout, essayists in Comics as Philosophy show how well the form can be used by its artists and its interpreters as a means of philosophical inquiry.

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Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean

Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean Review

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Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean Feature

Suddenly, comics are everywhere: a newly matured art form, filling bookshelves with brilliant, innovative work and shaping the ideas and images of the rest of contemporary culture. In Reading Comics, critic Douglas Wolk shows us why this is and how it came to be. Wolk illuminates the most dazzling creators of modern comics-from Alan Moore to Alison Bechdel to Dave Sim to Chris Ware-and introduces a critical theory that explains where each fits into the pantheon of art. Reading Comics is accessible to the hardcore fan and the curious newcomer; it is the first book for people who want to know not just what comics are worth reading, but also the ways to think and talk and argue about them.

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Alan Moore: Comics as Performance, Fiction as Scalpel (Great Comics Artists Series)

Alan Moore: Comics as Performance, Fiction as Scalpel (Great Comics Artists Series) Review

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Alan Moore: Comics as Performance, Fiction as Scalpel (Great Comics Artists Series) Feature

Eclectic British author Alan Moore (b. 1953) is one of the most acclaimed and controversial comics writers to emerge since the late 1970s. He has produced a large number of well-regarded comic books and graphic novels while also making occasional forays into music, poetry, performance, and prose.

In Alan Moore: Comics as Performance, Fiction as Scalpel, Annalisa Di Liddo argues that Moore employs the comics form to dissect the literary canon, the tradition of comics, contemporary society, and our understanding of history. The book considers Moore's narrative strategies and pinpoints the main thematic threads in his works: the subversion of genre and pulp fiction, the interrogation of superhero tropes, the manipulation of space and time, the uses of magic and mythology, the instability of gender and ethnic identity, and the accumulation of imagery to create satire that comments on politics and art history.

Examining Moore's use of comics to scrutinize contemporary culture, Di Liddo analyzes his best-known works--Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta, Watchmen, From Hell, Promethea, and Lost Girls. The study also highlights Moore's lesser-known output, such as Halo Jones, Skizz, and Big Numbers, and his prose novel Voice of the Fire. Alan Moore: Comics as Performance, Fiction as Scalpel reveals Moore to be one of the most significant and distinctly postmodern comics creators of the last quarter-century.

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Comics, Manga, and Graphic Novels: A History of Graphic Narratives

Comics, Manga, and Graphic Novels: A History of Graphic Narratives Review

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Comics, Manga, and Graphic Novels: A History of Graphic Narratives Feature

Graphic narrative art is a fascinating phenomenon that emerged centuries ago with the expansion of literacy and the publication industry. The earliest example of a repeating comic character dates back to the late 1700s. By following the growth of print technology in Europe and Asia, it is possible to understand how and why artists across cultures developed different strategies for telling stories with pictures.

This book is much more than a history of graphic narrative across the globe. It examines broader conceptual developments that preceded the origins of comics and graphic novels; how those ideas have evolved over the last century and a half; how literacy, print technology, and developments in narrative art are interrelated; and the way graphic narratives communicate culturally significant stories. The work of artists such as William Hogarth, J. J. Grandville, Willhem Busch, Frans Masereel, Max Ernst, Saul Steinberg, Henry Darger, and Larry Gonick are discussed or depicted.

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