ABSTRACT

The Routledge Companion to Gender and Sexuality in Comic Book Studies is a comprehensive, global, and interdisciplinary examination of the essential relationship between Gender, Sexuality, Comics, and Graphic Novels.

A diverse range of international and interdisciplinary scholars take a closer look at how gender and sexuality have been essential in the evolution of comics, and how gender and sexuality in comics demand that we re-frame and re-view comics history. Chapters cover a wide array of intersectional topics including Queer Underground and Alternative comics, Feminist Autobiography, re-drawing disability, Latina testimony, and re-evaluating the critical whiteness and masculinity of superheroes in this first truly global reference text to gender and sexuality in comics.

Comics have always been an important place for the radical exploration of feminist and non-binary sexualities and identities, and the growth of non-normative comic book traditions as a field of inquiry makes this an essential text for upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates, and researchers studying Comics Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, Literary Studies, and Cultural Studies.

chapter |12 pages

Gender and sexuality in comics

The told, untold stories

part I|93 pages

Interrogating restrictive frames

chapter 1|13 pages

Translating masculinity

The significance of the frontier in American superheroes 1

chapter 2|14 pages

Black boys and black girls in comics

An affective and historical mapping of intertwined stereotypes

chapter 3|12 pages

Pocket-sized pornography

Representations of sexual violence and masculinity in Tijuana Bibles

chapter 4|12 pages

The comic strip in advertising

Persuasion, gender, sexuality

chapter 5|12 pages

Real men choose vasectomy

Questioning and redefining Mexican national masculinity in Los supermachos, from Rius to anonymous authors

chapter 7|16 pages

“Is that a monster between your legs or are ya just happy to see me?”

Sex, subjectivity, and the superbody in the Marvel Swimsuit Special

part II|60 pages

Ethnoracial queer and feminist space clearing gestures

chapter 8|10 pages

Life out loud in the closet

The grotesque as Latinx imagination in Cristy C. Road’s Spit and Passion

chapter 9|15 pages

Graphic (narrative) presentations of violence against Indigenous women

Responses to the MMIW crisis in North America

chapter 10|15 pages

From “accidental” autobiography to comics activism

Tracing the development of an Andalusian-Chinese feminism in the work of comics artist Quan Zhou

chapter 11|18 pages

Plea deal compounds

Black women’s anger in “the system” of Bitch Planet

part III|87 pages

Back to the future

chapter 12|12 pages

Panels of innocence and experience

Reading sexual subjectivity through horror comics

chapter 13|15 pages

Teenage biology 101

Serializing a queer girlhood in Ariel Schrag’s Potential

chapter 15|15 pages

A comics Écriture Féminine

Anke Feuchtenberger’s feminist graphic expression 1

chapter 16|12 pages

“I’m trapped in here!”

Gender performativity and affect in Emma Ríos’s I.D.

chapter 17|14 pages

Empirical looking

Situating the multiple elements of Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout as vehicles for articulating a place for women in science

part IV|107 pages

Counterpublics

chapter 18|17 pages

From anodyne animals to filthy beasts

Defying and defiling safety, sanctity, and sexual suppression in underground animal comics

chapter 20|12 pages

“Part of something bigger”

Ms./Captain Marvel 1

chapter 21|13 pages

Higher, further, faster baby!

The feminist evolution of Carol Danvers from comics to film

chapter 22|19 pages

Female fans, female creators, and female superheroes

The semiotics of changing gender dynamics

chapter 23|12 pages

Public-facing feminisms

Subverting the lettercol in Bitch Planet

chapter 24|11 pages

“I’d like everything that’s bad for me!” 1

Tank Girl’s cracks in patriarchal pop culture

chapter 25|10 pages

Falling in or stepping out

Little red formation as agentic gender construction in Lumberjanes

part V|93 pages

Worldly interventions

chapter 26|10 pages

“A revelation not of the flesh, but of the mind”

Performing queer textuality in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home

chapter 27|15 pages

BLOOD, or

Gender and nation in the contemporary Polish comic

chapter 28|13 pages

My grandmother collects memories

Gender and remembrance in Hispanic graphic narratives

chapter 29|15 pages

Feminist riots and gay giants

The Mayo Feminista and cultural context of contemporary Queer Chilean comics

chapter 30|11 pages

Questioning obscenity

The place of “pussy” in manga and the world

chapter 31|12 pages

See him, see her, see Xir

LGBTQ visibility in shōnen manga at the turn of the century

chapter 32|15 pages

An age of sparkle and drama

Exploring gender identities and cultural narratives in 1970s shōjo manga

part VI|89 pages

Queer and feminist intermedial textures

chapter 33|10 pages

Representing the extreme end-point of sexual violence

Ethical strategies in Phoebe Gloeckner’s La Tristeza

chapter 34|14 pages

The people upstairs

Space, memory, and the queered family in My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris 1

chapter 35|20 pages

Fat bats, postpunks, and ice witches

Afrogoth and the undead music of Militia Vox and the comix of Calyn Pickens Rich

chapter 37|9 pages

My life with toys

An academic Esai into the queer multipurposing of toys as interrupted by the author’s life

chapter 38|21 pages

“Bobby…you’re gay”

Marvel’s Iceman, performativity, continuity, and queer visibility