In the less than eight decades since Superman's debut in 1938, comic book superheroes have become an indispensable part of American society and the nation's dominant mythology. They represent America's hopes, dreams, fears, and needs. As a form of popular literature, superhero narratives have closely mirrored trends and events in the nation. This study views American history from 1938 to 2010 through the lens of superhero comics, revealing the spandex-clad guardians to be not only fictional characters but barometers of the place and time in which they reside. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.
Celebrate illustrator-writer Howard Chaykin's life and works through a career spanning zine that encompasses his life, controversies, and biographical interview that starts when he was born in 1950 through his childhood reading comic books and watching films during the 1960s, his training under Gil Kane, Wally Wood and Neal Adams in the late 1960s through the early 1970s, his early work at Marvel, DC, Atlas/Seaboard, Byron Preiss, Heavy Metal and on into American Flagg! for First Comics, as well as The Shadow, Time Square, Blackhawk, Black Kiss, Cyberella with Don Cameron, his television career including the 1990s Flash TV show, Legend with Russ Heath, Hawkgirl with Walt Simonson, his more recent Marvel career in 2012, Black Kiss 2, the controversy surrounding the Divided States of Hysteria, and finally his ode to comic history, Hey Kids! Comics!
An America sundered. An America enraged. An America terrified. An America shattered by greed and racism, violence and fear, nihilism and tragedy and that's when everything really goes to hell. Collects THE DIVIDED STATES OF HYSTERIA #1-6
The comic book universe is adventurous, mystifying, and filled with heroes, villains, and cosplaying Comic-Con attendees. This book by one of Wired magazine's art directors traverses the graphic world through a collection of pie charts, bar graphs, timelines, scatter plots, and more. Super Graphic offers readers a unique look at the intricate and sometimes contradictory storylines that weave their way through comic books, and shares advice for navigating the pages of some of the most popular, longest-running, and best-loved comics and graphic novels out there. From a colorful breakdown of the DC Comics reader demographic to a witty Venn diagram of superhero comic tropes and a Chris Ware sadness scale, this book charts the most arbitrary and monumental characters, moments, and equipment of the wide world of comics. Plus, this is the fixed format version, which includes high-resolution images.
From the team behind The Comic Book History of Comics comes the perfect companion piece telling the story of the triumphs and tragedies of the filmmakers and beloved animated characters of the past century and a half—essential for hardcore fans of the medium and noobies alike! It's all here, from Aardman to Zoetrope, Disney to Miyazaki, Hanna-Barbera to Pixar, and everything in-between! Begin in the early 1900s with J. Stuart Blackton and the first American cartoon, Winsor McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur, and Felix the Cat! Find out about Margaret Winkler, the most powerful person in early animation, and Walt Disney, who revolutionizes cartoons with sound and color! Discover how Fleischer Studios teaches us to sing "Boop-boop-a-doop" and eat our spinach, and how Warner Bros' Looney Toons rivaled Disney's Silly Symphonies! Plus, icons of animation including Hanna-Barbera, Huckleberry Hound, The Flintstones, and Ruby-Spears; the Plastic Age of toy-based TV shows including G.I. Joe, Transformers, and He-Man; and the new Golden Age of TV animation launched by The Simpsons! And go abroad to France with Émile Cohl's dynamic doodles in Fantasmagorie; to Japan, where the Imperial Navy debuts the first full-length anime as propaganda, Divine Sea Warriors, and Osamu Tezuka conquers TV as he conquered manga; and to Argentina, which beat out Snow White for the first feature length animated movie by two decades! And finally, Jurassic Park and the computer animation revolution! Post-Little Mermaid Disney, Pixar, and Studio Ghibli conquer the world! If you’ve ever wanted to know more about the history of animation but were afraid to ask, this book is especially for you!
HEY KIDS! COMICS! takes its cue from nearly a century of turbulence and triumph, despair and drama in the comics racket. Artists and writers, con men and clowns, ganefs and gangsters create the foundations of today's biggest entertainment businessÑor at least the tail that wags the dog. Some of it really happened, and the names have been changed to protect the innocent and guilty Éalthough in the end, everyone was guilty of something. Collects HEY KIDS! COMICS! #1-5
For the first time ever, the inspiring, infuriating, and utterly insane story of comics, graphic novels, and manga is presented in comic book form! The award-winning Action Philosophers team of Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey turn their irreverent-but-accurate eye to the stories of Jack Kirby, R. Crumb, Harvey Kurtzman, Alan Moore, Stan Lee, Will Eisner, Fredric Wertham, Roy Lichtenstein, Art Spiegelman, Herge, Osamu Tezuka - and more! Collects Comic Book Comics #1-6.
The first history of modern costumed-hero comic books, from the start of the Silver Age in 1956 up to today. Focusing on DC and Marvel Comics, the story begins with the efforts of DC to revitalize such Golden Age heroes as the Flash, Superman, and Green Lantern in the wake of the anti-comic furor of the early 1950s. The authors cover the science fiction rage of the late 1950s, the birth of the experimental Marvel Comics Group in 1961, the emergence of such classic Marvel characters as the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, the "camp" craze set off by the "Batman" TV show in 1966, and the socially conscious and politically relevant comics of the early 1970s. Later chapters describe the slump of the mid-1970s, as the medium lost touch with its young readers, followed by the comics' resurgence of the 1980s, as many new companies help DC and Marvel to extend the boundaries of the field with innovation, daring, and a new sophistication. Factually thorough and written in a lively, narrative style, this history includes behind-the-scenes glimpses at the men who wrote, drew, and published the comics, the impact of their creations on the fans, and critical assessments of the works themselves. Illustrated throughout with examples of comic book art, The Comic Book Heroes will inform and entertain both the hardcore fan and the casual reader of this most popular of American mediums.
