The Rise of the American Comics Artist: Creators and Contexts

by Paul Williams (Editor), James Lyons (Editor)

Overview

Contributions by David M. Ball, Ian Gordon, Andrew Loman, Andrea A. Lunsford, James Lyons, Ana Merino, Graham J. Murphy, Chris Murray, Adam Rosenblatt, Julia Round, Joe Sutliff Sanders, Stephen Weiner, and Paul Williams

Starting in the mid-1980s, a talented set of comics artists changed the American comic book industry forever by introducing adult sensibilities and aesthetic considerations into popular genres such as superhero comics and the newspaper strip. Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986) and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen (1987) revolutionized the former genre in particular. During this same period, underground and alternative genres began to garner critical acclaim and media attention beyond comics-specific outlets, as best represented by Art Spiegelman's Maus. Publishers began to collect, bind, and market comics as “graphic novels,” and these appeared in mainstream bookstores and in magazine reviews.

The Rise of the American Comics Artist: Creators and Contexts brings together new scholarship surveying the production, distribution, and reception of American comics from this pivotal decade to the present. The collection specifically explores the figure of the comics creator—either as writer, as artist, or as writer and artist—in contemporary US comics, using creators as focal points to evaluate changes to the industry, its aesthetics, and its critical reception. The book also includes essays on landmark creators such as Joe Sacco, Art Spiegelman, and Chris Ware, as well as insightful interviews with Jeff Smith (Bone), Jim Woodring (Frank) and Scott McCloud (Understanding Comics). As comics have reached new audiences, through different material and electronic forms, the public's broad perception of what comics are has changed. The Rise of the American Comics Artist surveys the ways in which the figure of the creator has been at the heart of these evolutions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781604737936
Publisher:	University Press of Mississippi
Publication date:	11/11/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Paul Williams is teaching fellow in English at the University of Exeter. His work has been published in the European Journal of American Culture, Science Fiction Studies, Journal of Transatlantic Studies, the European Journal of American Studies, and Science Fiction Film and Television. James Lyons is senior lecturer in film at the University of Exeter. He is author of Selling Seattle: Representing Contemporary Urban America and coeditor (with John Plunkett) of Multimedia Histories: From the Magic Lantern to the Internet and (with Marc Jancovich) Quality Popular Television.
James Lyons is senior lecturer in film at the University of Exeter. He is author of Selling Seattle: Representing Contemporary Urban America and coeditor (with John Plunkett) of Multimedia Histories: From the Magic Lantern to the Internet and (with Marc Jancovich) Quality Popular Television.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: In the Year 3794 Paul Williams James Lyons xi

I Marketing Creators

1 How the Graphic Novel Changed American Comics Stephen Weiner 3

2 "Is this a book? " DC Vertigo and the Redefinition of Comics in the 1990s Julia Round 14

3 Signals from Airstrip One: The British Invasion of Mainstream American Comics Chris Murray 31

Interview Jeff Smith 46

II Demo-Graphics: Comics and Politics

4 State of the Nation and the Freedom Fighters Arc Graham J. Murphy 57

5 Critique, Caricature, and Compulsion in Joe Sacco's Comics Journalism Adam Rosenblatt Andrea A. Lunsford 68

III Artists or Employees?

6 Too Much Commerce Man? Shannon Wheeler and the Ironies of the "Rebel Cell" James Lyons 90

7 Comics Against Themselves: Chris Ware's Graphic Narratives as Literature David M. Ball 103

Interview Jim Woodring 124

IV Creative Difference: Comics Creators and Identity Politics

8 Questions of "Contemporary Women's Comics" Paul Williams 135

9 Theorizing Sexuality in Comics Joe Sutliff Sanders 150

10 Feminine Latin/o American Identities on the American Alternative Landscape: From the Women of Love and Rockets to La Perdida Ana Merino 164

V Authorizing Comics: How Creators Frame the Reception of Comic Texts

11 Making Comics Respectable: How Maws Helped Redefine a Medium Ian Gordon 179

12 "A Purely American Tale": The Tragedy of Racism and Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth as Great American Novel Paul Williams 194

13 "That Mouse's Shadow": The Canonization of Spiegelman's Maus Andrew Loman 210

Interview Scott McCloud 235

Contributors 243

Index 247