Although the idea that graphic narratives represent an important literary form is still debated in academic circles, in recent years comics scholarship has emerged into wider contexts. This collection of new essays considers various literary approaches to graphic narrative and sequential art. The authors examine the politics of comic form and narrative, the ways in which graphic narrative and sequential art “cross over” into other forms and genres, and how these articulations challenge the ways we read and interpret texts.
By bringing literary theory to bear on graphic narrative and balancing readings of individual texts with larger ideas about comics scholarship as a whole, this work expands our understanding of the form itself and its engagement with political culture.

Jake Jakaitis is the director of undergraduate studies in English at Indiana State University, where he teaches literary theory and criticism, contemporary American literature, multicultural American literature, and science fiction. He lives in Terre Haute.
James F. Wurtz is an associate professor of English at Indiana State University, where he teaches 19th and 20th century British and Irish writing, graphic narrative, and literary theory and criticism.

Edited by Jake Jakaitis and James F. Wurtz
Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 229
Bibliographic Info: 27 illustrations, notes, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2012
pISBN: 978-0-7864-6663-4
eISBN: 978-0-7864-8978-7
Imprint: McFarland

Introduction: Reading Crossover

JAKE JAKAITIS and JAMES F. WURTZ      1

PART I: WAYS OF READING

1. Michael Chabon’s Amazing Adventures with Dark Horse Comics

JOHN JOSEPH HESS      25

2. The Comic Modernism of George Herriman

DANIEL STEIN      40

3. Fantastic Alterities and The Sandman

JULIA ROUND      71

4. Thirty-Two Floors of Disruption: Time and Space in Alan Moore’s “How Things Work Out”

RIKKE PLATZ CORTSEN      93

PART II: READING ETHNICITY

5. Picturing Books: Southern Print Culture in Howard Cruse’s Stuck Rubber Baby

DAVID BORDELON      107

6. Iconoclastic Readings and Self-Reflexive Rebellions in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and Persepolis      2

PAMELA J. RADER      123

7. Drawing the Trauma of Race: Choices and Crises of Representation in Art Spiegelman’s Maus

LUMINITA DRAGULESCU      138

8. Mezclando (Mixing) the “Facts” and the Power of the Image in Latino USA

ELLEN M. GIL-GÓMEZ      152

PART III: READING THE HERO

9. “3X2(9YZ)4A”: Stasis and Speed in Contemporary Superhero Comics

MARTYN PEDLER      177

10. My Wonder Woman: The “New Wonder Woman,” Gloria Steinem, and the Appropriation of Comic Book Iconography

ANDREW J. FRIEDENTHAL      188

11. Paneling Rage: The Loss of Deliberate Sequence

MICHAEL P. MILLINGTON      207

About the Contributors      219

Index      221

“excellent, sometimes brilliant essays on comic books and comic strips. Recommended”—Choice.