This book examines the early history of the graphic novel in the 1970s, after the term was coined but before this art form achieved popular success and critical acclaim. Unearthing a treasure trove of fanzines, adverts, and unpublished letters, it gives readers an exciting inside look at a pivotal moment in the development of the graphic novel.
Winner of the Best Book Award in Comics History from the Grand Comics Database Honorable Mention, 2019-2020 Research Society for American Periodicals Book Prize The term “graphic novel” was first coined in 1964, but it wouldn’t be broadly used until the 1980s, when graphic novels such as Watchmen and Maus achieved commercial success and critical acclaim. What happened in the intervening years, after the graphic novel was conceptualized yet before it was widely recognized? Dreaming the Graphic Novel examines how notions of the graphic novel began to coalesce in the 1970s, a time of great change for American comics, with declining sales of mainstream periodicals, the arrival of specialty comics stores, and (at least initially) a thriving underground comix scene. Surveying the eclectic array of long comics narratives that emerged from this fertile period, Paul Williams investigates many texts that have fallen out of graphic novel history. As he demonstrates, the question of what makes a text a ‘graphic novel’ was the subject of fierce debate among fans, creators, and publishers, inspiring arguments about the literariness of comics that are still taking place among scholars today. Unearthing a treasure trove of fanzines, adverts, and unpublished letters, Dreaming the Graphic Novel gives readers an exciting inside look at a pivotal moment in the art form’s development.
In another time, The Dark Crystal - a source of Balance and Truth in the Universe - was shattered, dividing the world into two factions. Now, as the convergence of the three suns approaches, the Crystal must be healed, or darkness will reign forwvermore!
Coming of age in rural 1930s America with X-ray vision, the power to stop bullets, and the ability to fly isn't exactly every boy's story. So just how did Clark Kent, a shy farmer's son, grow up to be the Man of Steel? Follow young Clark's whirlwind journey from Kansas to New York City's Daily Planet. This ace reporter is not the only person leading a double life in a teeming metropolis, just the only one able to leap tall buildings in a single bound--a skill that comes in handy when battling powerful criminal masterminds like scheming Lex Luthor and fascist robots. But can Clark's midwestern charm save the day and win the heart of stunning, seen-it-all newspaperwoman Lois Lane? Or is that a job for Superman?
A must-have collection for comics fans and creators everywhere, packed with interviews and original comics by today’s foremost graphic novelists. Respected anthologist Leonard S. Marcus turns his literary microscope to the world of comics, which has lately morphed and matured at a furious pace. Powerful influences from manga to the movies to underground comix have influenced the thirteen artists and writers interviewed in these pages to create their own word-and-picture narratives. Here are their moving, funny, inspirational stories: true tales from the crucible of creative struggles that led each to become a master of one of today’s most vibrant art forms. The book also contains an original graphic short on the common theme of “the city" from each of the artists, a mini-comic set in a cityscape of their choosing—present-day, historical, or imaginary. Featuring interviews with: Harry Bliss Catia Chien Geoffrey Hayes Kazu Kibuishi Hope Larson Danica Novgorodoff Matt Phelan Dave Roman Mark and Siena Cherson Siegel James Sturm Sara Varon Gene Luen Yang
Follows the adventures of Zayne Carrick, one lone Padawan who becomes a fugitive hunted by his own Masters for the charge of murdering every one of his fellow Jedi-in-training and his desperate race to clear his name.
Meet Hilda - explorer, adventurer, avid sketchbook-keeper and friend to every creature in the valley! Well ... almost every creature... Hilda and her mum have settled into their new home in the city of Trolberg and our heroine is trying to fit into this new and very different way of life. Though she's made a new friend, the city is vast and unfamiliar and, as night falls, both Hilda and her mum are lost in the bustling Bird Parade, desparate to reunite. Will this concrete labyrinth ever feel quite like home?
Taran is desperate for adventure. Being a lowly Assistant Pig-Keeper just isn't exciting. That is, until the magical pig, Hen Wen, disappears and Taran embarks on a death-defying quest to save her from the evil Horned King. His perilous adventures bring Taran many new friends: an irritable dwarf, an impulsive bard, a strange hairy beast and the hot-headed Princess Eilonwy. Together, they face many dangers, from the deathless Cauldron-Born warriors, dragons, witches and the terrifying Horned King himself. Taran learns much about his identity, but the mysterious Book of Three is yet to reveal his true destiny. "Lloyd Alexander is the true High King of fantasy." - Garth Nix
Beautiful mutants, vagabond scuba divers, lovers with disordered gorilla hearts: These poetry comics place the lyric and the grotesque, the elegant and the despondent, side by side in one emotionally intense panel after another. At the vanguard of a movement that embraces our increasingly visual culture and believes poetry has an essential place therein, Bianca Stone redefines how we think about poetry, what we expect from comics, and how we interpret our own lives. Although reminiscent of illuminations by William Blake, Thomas Phillips's A Humument, and more recent visual-poetic hybrids by Mary Ruefle and Matthea Harvey, Stone's comics feature a mixture of dreamy expression and absurdist wit that is entirely her own. Her watercolor panels are filled with anthropomorphic horses and baffled ballerinas that guide the reader through the poet's graphic dreamscape: "I was moving like a monsoon through a forest. I was thinking about where I saw myself in two thousand years... And where I saw myself was a tiny subspace ripple sliding through the corridors with a plastic horse in my hand." This book, its own small universe, erases genre distinctions between the visual and the literary, and offers readers a poetic vision of artistic possibilities.
