American Comics: A History
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- 10,99 €
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- 10,99 €
Publisher Description
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!
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Columbia professor Dauber (Jewish Comedy) covers the entire landscape of American comics in this outstanding encyclopedic survey intelligently analyzing how "comics have shaped wars and inspired movements" and even "conquered pop culture." The roots of today's blockbuster movies date back centuries, but the author focuses on the American experience, which began with the late 19th-century cartoonist Thomas Nast, whose lampooning of the corrupt Tammany Hall was so scathing that he was offered what would today be a multimillion-dollar payoff to stop. Dauber uses Nast to underscore how the medium is replete with erasures that for decades have left creators either ignored or robbed of credit (Nast's wife, Sarah, for instance, wrote most of the most-memorable captions for her spouse's art). Other themes recur throughout the 150 years he chronicles in thrilling detail—including the medium's troubling history of racist and sexist depictions "perpetuated by an overwhelmingly white, male body of cartoonists"; the invention of superheroes, the backlash against comics as supposed corrupting influences on the young, and the expansion of the types of genres depicted in comics beyond action, adventure, and sci-fi. In doing so, he skillfully charts "the story of a changing American audience... American ideals and American anxieties... a perfect vehicle for addressing contemporary issues." It's a thorough—and thoroughly entertaining—work.