Group items tagged

Prof discusses a new course on Comics and Graphic Novels. Focus is on history and cultural background.

Interesting comment about whether or not superhero comics qualify as literature.

From Lori Lynn Taniguchi: I consider Penny Arcade to be a singular phenomenon: not only is it a wildly popular comic on gamer culture with heavy "bromance" language, vulgarity and shock value, but it is also an unparalleled business venture. Not even the very rare self-sufficient webcomics online can boast a huge, yearly gaming expo in Seattle and an immensely successful charity for sick children in St. Jude hospitals. The writer and artist have created not only an entertaining webcomic, but have grown themselves into a culture icon with lasting and far-reaching influence, all with an aw-shucks-gamer-next-door quality.

From Lori Lynn Taniguchi: Out of the all american webcomics which are modeled directly off of the Japanese manga influence, Megatokyo has got to be the most famous. Fred Gallegher has accomplished what many of us in our mary-jane ways have always wanted: to accummulate an adoring audience to our art and story which places us and our friends in the world we love so much, we want to be seen INHABITING it. His art was not very good to start, but with persistence, and some kind of viral popularity, his skills have substantially improved, and his patently shoujo-manga storylines became a trademark. I think the main character is probably very sympathetic to many men who feel bewildered and fascinated and ultimately manipulated by women. Add in a little gamer culture and technology, and you're appealing to pretty distinct kind of guy. Personally, I think the storyline's a little harem-style to be really original. But the fact remains that I believe it to really be the culmination of a lot of desires in webcomics at the time.

Includes definitions, general info, history and culture, games, genre explanations, etc, regarding anime.

Home of the work-group building GNARP, based currently in an online Collaboratory of the Department of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. Features posts for discussion on various topics relating to graphic narratives such as graphic novels, manga and comics, as well as tools for interaction between members of the collaboratory. Contact the founder of this Diigo group for more information or to join the effort to pool the exciting scholarship being done on graphic narratives and its explosion in current pop culture.

Table of Contents, Introduction, and excerpts from The Best American Comics Criticism 2010 (Fantagraphics). Whether you choose to call them "comics lit," "graphic novels," or just "thick comic books," book-length narratives told in words and pictures confidently elbowed their way into the cultural spotlight in the first decade of this new millennium - beginning with the simultaneous 2001 release of Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth and Daniel Clowes' David Boring, and continuing on through ground-breaking and best-selling works such as Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, Robert Crumb's Genesis, Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, and Joe Sacco's Palestine. This renaissance in turn brought forth a chorus of critical commentary that not only addressed these recent works, but also initiated a much-needed look back at the previous century's neglected and forgotten masterpieces. This chorus, as presented in The Best American Comics Criticism, comprises both criticism (Douglas Wolk on Frank Miller and Will Eisner, Robert C. Harvey on Fun Home, Donald Phelps on Steve Ditko and Phoebe Gloeckner) and history (David Hajdu on the 1950s comic-book burnings, Jeet Heer on Gasoline Alley, Ben Schwartz on Little Orphan Annie, Gerard Jones on the birth of the comic-book business), as well as revelatory peer-on-peer essays by novelists (Jonathan Franzen on Peanuts, John Updike on James Thurber) and cartoonists (Chris Ware on Rodolphe Töpffer, Clowes on Mad's Will Elder, and Seth on John Stanley).