ABSTRACT

This book is part of a nuanced two-volume examination of the ways in which violence in comics is presented in different texts, genres, cultures and contexts.

Representing Acts of Violence in Comics raises questions about depiction and the act of showing violence, and discusses the ways in which individual moments of violence develop, and are both represented and embodied in comics and graphic novels. Contributors consider the impact of gendered and sexual violence, and examine the ways in which violent acts can be rendered palatable (for example through humour) but also how comics can represent trauma and long lasting repercussions for both perpetrators and victims.

This will be a key text and essential reference for scholars and students at all levels in Comics Studies, and Cultural and Media Studies more generally.

chapter |16 pages

Introduction

part |52 pages

Depiction

chapter 1|18 pages

Picturing National and Personal Acts of Violence

Modes of Depiction in Barefoot Gen

chapter 2|18 pages

Bloody Murder in the Bible

Graphic Representations of the ‘First Murder’ in Biblical Comics

chapter 3|16 pages

A Balancing Act

Didactic Spectacle in Jack Jackson’s ‘Nits Make Lice’ and Slow Death Comix

part |34 pages

Embodiment

chapter 4|20 pages

Seeing (in) Red

‘Thick’ Violence in Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas’s Red: A Haida Manga

part |48 pages

Gendered and Sexual Violence

chapter 8|22 pages

The Risks of Representation

Making Gender and Violence Visible in The Ballad of Halo Jones

chapter 9|11 pages

Unmaking the Apocalypse

Pain, Violence, Torture and Weaponising the Black, Female Body