A Comics Studies Reader

December 15, 2008
While such critically acclaimed graphic novels as Art Spiegelmans Maus (1986, 1991), Chris Wares Jimmy Corrigan (2000), and Alison Bechdels Fun Home(2006) established the artistic legitimacy of comics, academic comics scholarship has thriven apace. The 28 essays Heer and Worcester collect reflect the various approaches to writing about comics taken by writers in the burgeoning discipline. Those include the historical in pieces on nineteenth-century graphic storyteller Rodolphe Tpffer and other progenitors of the medium; the formal in esoteric pieces on the craft and art of comics, covering such aspects as the verbal-visual blend of words and pictures, the ways artists indicate panel sequencing, and sound representation in Japanese manga; and the critical-analytic in considerations of seminal works by Ware, Spiegelman, and others. Most of the essays focus on American comics, but several examine works from Japan, Mexico, and France, where scholars have deemed comics the ninth art. The contributions range in readability from totally accessible to highly rarefied and borderline pedantic. Still, altogether they attest to the artistic importance of a long-neglected medium.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)