Comic Book Century

Comic Book Century
Author: Stephen Krensky
Publisher: Twenty-First Century Books
Total Pages: 116
Release: 2008-01-01
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 0822566540

Uses newspaper articles, historical overviews, and personal interviews to explain the history of American comic books and graphic novels.

Comic Book Culture

Comic Book Culture
Author: Ron Goulart
Publisher: Collectors Press, Inc.
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2000
Genre: Comic book covers
ISBN: 1888054387

A history of American comic books told almost entirely through reprinted comic book covers.

The Superhero Multiverse

The Superhero Multiverse
Author: Lorna Piatti-Farnell
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2021-11-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1793624607

The Superhero Multiverse focuses on the evolving meanings of the superhero icon in 21st-century film and popular media, with an emphasis on re-adapting, re-imagining, and re-making. With its focus on multimedia and transmedia transformations, The Superhero Multiverse pivots on two important points: firstly, it reflects on the core concerns of the superhero narrative—including the relationship between ‘superhero comics’ and ‘superhero films’, the comics roots of superhero media, matters of canon and hybridity, and issues of recycling and stereotyping in superhero films and media texts. Secondly, it considers how these intersecting textual and cultural preoccupations are intrinsic to the process of remaking and re-adapting superheroes, and brings attention to multiple ways of materializing these iconic figures in our contemporary context.

Comic Book Nation

Comic Book Nation
Author: Bradford W. Wright
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2003-10-17
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780801874505

A history of comic books from the 1930s to 9/11.

Pulp Empire

Pulp Empire
Author: Paul S. Hirsch
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2024-06-05
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 0226829464

Winner of the Popular Culture Association's Ray and Pat Browne Award for Best Book in Popular or American Culture In the 1940s and ’50s, comic books were some of the most popular—and most unfiltered—entertainment in the United States. Publishers sold hundreds of millions of copies a year of violent, racist, and luridly sexual comics to Americans of all ages until a 1954 Senate investigation led to a censorship code that nearly destroyed the industry. But this was far from the first time the US government actively involved itself with comics—it was simply the most dramatic manifestation of a long, strange relationship between high-level policy makers and a medium that even artists and writers often dismissed as a creative sewer. In Pulp Empire, Paul S. Hirsch uncovers the gripping untold story of how the US government both attacked and appropriated comic books to help wage World War II and the Cold War, promote official—and clandestine—foreign policy and deflect global critiques of American racism. As Hirsch details, during World War II—and the concurrent golden age of comic books—government agencies worked directly with comic book publishers to stoke hatred for the Axis powers while simultaneously attempting to dispel racial tensions at home. Later, as the Cold War defense industry ballooned—and as comic book sales reached historic heights—the government again turned to the medium, this time trying to win hearts and minds in the decolonizing world through cartoon propaganda. Hirsch’s groundbreaking research weaves together a wealth of previously classified material, including secret wartime records, official legislative documents, and caches of personal papers. His book explores the uneasy contradiction of how comics were both vital expressions of American freedom and unsettling glimpses into the national id—scourged and repressed on the one hand and deployed as official propaganda on the other. Pulp Empire is a riveting illumination of underexplored chapters in the histories of comic books, foreign policy, and race.

Comic Book History of Comics

Comic Book History of Comics
Author: Fred Van Lente
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2012-06-20
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1613774540

For the first time ever, the inspiring, infuriating, and utterly insane story of comics, graphic novels, and manga is presented in comic book form! The award-winning Action Philosophers team of Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey turn their irreverent-but-accurate eye to the stories of Jack Kirby, R. Crumb, Harvey Kurtzman, Alan Moore, Stan Lee, Will Eisner, Fredric Wertham, Roy Lichtenstein, Art Spiegelman, Herge, Osamu Tezuka - and more! Collects Comic Book Comics #1-6.

American Comics: A History

American Comics: A History
Author: Jeremy Dauber
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 593
Release: 2021-11-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 0393635619

The sweeping story of cartoons, comic strips, and graphic novels and their hold on the American imagination. Comics have conquered America. From our multiplexes, where Marvel and DC movies reign supreme, to our television screens, where comics-based shows like The Walking Dead have become among the most popular in cable history, to convention halls, best-seller lists, Pulitzer Prize–winning titles, and MacArthur Fellowship recipients, comics shape American culture, in ways high and low, superficial, and deeply profound. In American Comics, Columbia professor Jeremy Dauber takes readers through their incredible but little-known history, starting with the Civil War and cartoonist Thomas Nast, creator of the lasting and iconic images of Uncle Sam and Santa Claus; the golden age of newspaper comic strips and the first great superhero boom; the moral panic of the Eisenhower era, the Marvel Comics revolution, and the underground comix movement of the 1960s and ’70s; and finally into the twenty-first century, taking in the grim and gritty Dark Knights and Watchmen alongside the brilliant rise of the graphic novel by acclaimed practitioners like Art Spiegelman and Alison Bechdel. Dauber’s story shows not only how comics have changed over the decades but how American politics and culture have changed them. Throughout, he describes the origins of beloved comics, champions neglected masterpieces, and argues that we can understand how America sees itself through whose stories comics tell. Striking and revelatory, American Comics is a rich chronicle of the last 150 years of American history through the lens of its comic strips, political cartoons, superheroes, graphic novels, and more. FEATURING… • American Splendor • Archie • The Avengers • Kyle Baker • Batman • C. C. Beck • Black Panther • Captain America • Roz Chast • Walt Disney • Will Eisner • Neil Gaiman • Bill Gaines • Bill Griffith • Harley Quinn • Jack Kirby • Denis Kitchen • Krazy Kat • Harvey Kurtzman • Stan Lee • Little Orphan Annie • Maus • Frank Miller • Alan Moore • Mutt and Jeff • Gary Panter • Peanuts • Dav Pilkey • Gail Simone • Spider-Man • Superman • Dick Tracy • Wonder Wart-Hog • Wonder Woman • The Yellow Kid • Zap Comix … AND MANY MORE OF YOUR FAVORITES!

Comic Books and American Cultural History

Comic Books and American Cultural History
Author: Matthew Pustz
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2012-02-23
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1441172629

A highly original collection of essays, demonstrating how comic books can be used as primary sources in the teaching and understanding of American history.

Comic Books and the Cold War, 1946-1962

Comic Books and the Cold War, 1946-1962
Author: Chris York
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2014-01-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0786489472

Conventional wisdom holds that comic books of the post-World War II era are poorly drawn and poorly written publications, notable only for the furor they raised. Contributors to this thoughtful collection, however, demonstrate that these comics constitute complex cultural documents that create a dialogue between mainstream values and alternative beliefs that question or complicate the grand narratives of the era. Close analysis of individual titles, including EC comics, Superman, romance comics, and other, more obscure works, reveals the ways Cold War culture--from atomic anxieties and the nuclear family to communist hysteria and social inequalities--manifests itself in the comic books of the era. By illuminating the complexities of mid-century graphic novels, this study demonstrates that postwar popular culture was far from monolithic in its representation of American values and beliefs.

Electric Century

Electric Century
Author: Mikey Way
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 67
Release: 2021-11-23
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1940878411

Johnny Ashford, former sitcom-star, drives drunk through a storefront andgets tossed in jail. His aspiring actress girlfriend bails him out and he begins seeing a hypnotherapist, who sends him to his "happy place": 1980's Atlantic City, where he relives his childhood on the boardwalk and the Electric Century casino, hardly noticing shadowy specters all around. His addiction shifts from alcohol to his hypnotic trips to the boardwalk. When his girlfriend winds up there, Johnny has to figure out how to save their lives and escape the Electric Century ...