ABSTRACT

In this comprehensive textbook, editors Matthew J. Brown, Randy Duncan, and Matthew J. Smith offer students a deeper understanding of the artistic and cultural significance of comic books and graphic novels by introducing key theories and critical methods for analyzing comics.

Each chapter explains and then demonstrates a critical method or approach, which students can then apply to interrogate and critique the meanings and forms of comic books, graphic novels, and other sequential art. Contributors introduce a wide range of critical perspectives on comics, including disability studies, parasocial relationships, scientific humanities, queer theory, linguistics, critical geography, philosophical aesthetics, historiography, and much more.

As a companion to the acclaimed Critical Approaches to Comics: Theories and Methods, this second volume features 19 fresh perspectives and serves as a stand-alone textbook in its own right. More Critical Approaches to Comics is a compelling classroom or research text for students and scholars interested in Comics Studies, Critical Theory, the Humanities, and beyond.

part I|2 pages

Viewpoint

chapter 1|13 pages

Critical Theory

7Celebrating the Rich, Individualistic Superhero 1

chapter 2|17 pages

Postcolonial Theory

Writing and Drawing Back (and Beyond) in Pappa in Afrika and Pappa in Doubt

chapter 3|11 pages

Critical Race Theory

Applying Critical Race Theory to Black Panther: World of Wakanda

chapter 4|13 pages

Queer Theory

Queer Comics Queering Continuity: The Unstoppable Wasp and the Fight for a Queer Future

chapter 5|14 pages

Disability Studies

Disrupting Representation, Representing Disruption

chapter 6|13 pages

Critical Geography

Brotherman and Big City: A Commentary on Superhero Geography

chapter 7|15 pages

Utopianism

The Utopia Conundrum in Matt Hawkins and Raffaele Ienco’s Symmetry

part II|2 pages

Expression

chapter 8|14 pages

New Criticism

105Ordered Disorder in Jaime Hernandez’ “Flies on the Ceiling”

chapter 9|15 pages

Psychoanalytic Criticism

Visual Pathography as a Means of Constructing Identity: Narrating Illness in David Small’s Stitches

chapter 10|11 pages

Autographics

Autographics and Miriam Katin’s We Are on Our Own and Letting It Go

chapter 11|15 pages

Linguistics

Comics Conversations as Data in Swedish Comic Strips

chapter 12|15 pages

Philosophical Aesthetics

Comics and/as Philosophical Aesthetics

chapter 13|14 pages

Burkean Dramatistic Analysis

An Echo of Diversity: Dramatistic Analysis of Comics

part III|2 pages

Relationships

chapter 14|15 pages

Adaptation

191From Mason & Dixon by Pynchon to Miller & Pynchon by Maurer

chapter 15|15 pages

Transmedia Storytelling

Hyperdiegesis, Narrative Braiding, and Memory in Star Wars Comics

chapter 16|12 pages

Parasocial Relationship Analysis

“Like Losing a Friend”: Fans’ Emotional Distress After the Loss of a Parasocial Relationship

chapter 17|13 pages

Historiography

Incorporating Comic Books into Historical Analysis: Historiographical Cross-Reference and Wonder Woman

chapter 18|15 pages

BAKHTINIAN Dialogics

Comics Dialogics: Seeing Voices in The Vision

chapter 19|14 pages

Scientific Humanities

The Scientific Origins of Wonder Woman