A sweeping new history of American comics traces the rise of characters caught in a Manichaean struggle between good and evil.
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When Art Spiegelman wrote the introduction (below) to a collection of vintage Marvel super-heroes, a passing negative reference to Trump was enough for the publishers to jettison the quality introduction.
Created in New York by Jewish immigrants, the first comic book superheroes were mythic saviours who could combat the Nazi threat. They speak to the dark politics of our times
In a culture that favors stories that revolve around men, women are too frequently treated as disposable asides who exist solely to further a male hero’s narrative arc. They are, literally in this description, things to be given to or taken away from male heroes.
Once the provenance of teens, counterculturalists or authors who were fans, comics are now entrenched in academic discourse in what the essayist calls, "the theorizing of a kind of artistic poetics." The book under review ably looks at nonfiction comics as apt reflections on modern social ills.
The study of comic books has emerged in the last decade or so as a serious academic discipline. And it's about time. It's not news to many people that the stories and art found in these little magazines are not only entertaining; they also contain interesting, and sometimes profound, social content. Kent Worcester looks at three new books on Wonder Woman, the comic that emerged during World War II and was an early harbinger of feminist ideas.
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There is a major retrospective of Art Spiegelman's Life that runs through March 23 at the the Jewish Museum in New York City. I caught up with the esteemed artist to talk about life after Maus, his rejected New Yorker covers, and how Mad magazine shattered Norman Rockwell's America.
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