Comics as a Nexus of Cultures

These essays from various critical disciplines examine how comic books and graphic narratives move between various media, while merging youth and adult cultures and popular and high art. The articles feature international perspectives on comics and graphic novels published in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Portugal, Germany, Turkey, India, and Japan. Topics range from film adaptation, to journalism in comics, to the current manga boom.

Mark Berninger teaches in the department of English at Otto-Friedrich University in Bamberg, Germany. He has published widely on contemporary drama and comics.
Jochen Ecke is a lecturer at the University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany. He has published extensively on popular culture, particularly U.S. and British mainstream comic books.
Gideon Haberkorn is in the department of English and Linguistics British Studies at Johannes Gutenberg-Universitat in Mainz, Germany. He has published a number of articles on popular culture topics.

Edited by Mark Berninger Jochen Ecke and Gideon Haberkorn. Series Editors Donald E. Palumbo and C.W. Sullivan III
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 308
Bibliographic Info: 29 photos, notes, filmographies, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2010
pISBN: 978-0-7864-3987-4
eISBN: 978-0-7864-5587-4
Imprint: McFarland
Series: Critical Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy

Introduction      1

INTERMEDIAL

1. Spatializing the Movie Screen: How Mainstream Cinema Is Catching Up on the Formal Potentialities of the Comic Book Page (Jochen Ecke)      7

2. The Marvel Universe on Screen: A New Wave of Superhero Movies? (Andreas Rauscher)      21

3. From Trauma Victim to Terrorist: Redefining Superheroes in Post–9/11 Hollywood (Dan A. Hassler-Forest)      33

4. “Picture This”: Disease and Autobiographic Narration in the Graphic Novels of David B and Julie Doucet (Jonas Engelmann)      45

5. Novel-Based Comics (Paul Ferstl)      60

6. In the Art of the Beholder: Comics as Political Journalism (Dirk Vanderbeke)      70


INTERNATIONAL

7. The Carrefour of Practice: Québec BD in Transition (Michel Hardy-Vallée)      85

8. The Use of Allusion in Apitz and Kunkel’s Karl Comics (Sandra Martina Schwab)      99

9. Cultural Specifics of a Scottish Comic: Oor Wullie (Anne Hoyer)      108

10. Memento Mori: A Portuguese Style of Melancholy (Mario Gomes and Jan Peuckert)      116

11. Otherness and the European as Villain and Antihero in American Comics (Georg Drennig)      127

12. 2000AD: Understanding the “British Invasion” of American Comics (Ben Little)      140

13. Whatever Happened to All the Heroes? British Perspectives on Superheroes (Karin Kukkonen and Anja Müller-Wood)      153

14. A Cornerstone of Turkish Fantastic Films: From Flash Gordon to Baytekin (Meral Özçınar)      164

15. From Capes to Snakes: The Indianization of the American Superhero (Suchitra Mathur)      175

16. The Roving Eye Meets Traveling Pictures: The Field of Vision and the Global Rise of Adult Manga (Holger Briel)      187

17. Kawaii vs. Rorikon: The Reinvention of the Term Lolita in Modern Japanese Manga (Dinah Zank)      211

18. Mangascape Germany: Comics as Intercultural Neutral Ground (Paul M. Malone)      223


INTERDISCIPLINARY

19. Workshop I: Toward a Toolbox of Comics Studies (Karin Kukkonen and Gideon Haberkorn)      237

20. Workshop II: Comics in School (Mark Berninger)      245

21. Workshop III: Teaching Comics and Literary Studies—Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess’ “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (Mark Berninger)      253

22. Workshop IV: Teaching Comics and Film Studies—Ang Lee’s The Hulk (USA 2003) (Andreas Rauscher)      265

23. Comic Linguistics: Comics and Cartoons in Academic Teaching (Christina Sanchez)      274


About the Contributors      283

Index      287

“recommended”—Choice; “an extremely informative and useful contribution”—Studies in Comics.