“I’m Just a Comic Book Boy”

Comics and the punk movement are inextricably linked—each has a foundational do-it-yourself ethos and a nonconformist spirit defiant of authority. This collection of new essays provides for the first time a thorough analysis of the intersections between comics and punk. The contributors expand the discussion beyond the familiar U.S. and UK scenes to include the influence punk has had on comics produced in other countries, such as Spain and Turkey.

Christopher B. Field is an associate professor in the languages, literature, and philosophy department at Tennessee State University. His interests include contemporary, 20th-century and early American literature, and popular culture, rhetoric and composition.

Keegan Lannon is an adjunct English instructor at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois, and North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. He has published and presented on comics and narrative theory.

Michael David MacBride has taught a variety of English, literature, and humanities courses at universities in and around the Midwest. He lives in Shakopee, Minnesota.

Christopher C. Douglas is an instructor at the University of Alabama. His scholarly interests include the creation of community in fiction, non-human narration, and the history of the novel.

Edited by Christopher B. Field, Keegan Lannon, Michael David MacBride and Christopher C. Douglas

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 240
Bibliographic Info: 19 photos, notes, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2019
pISBN: 978-0-7864-9641-9
eISBN: 978-1-4766-3498-2
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments v
Introduction 1

Part I: Punk Superhero Comics
One Man Artistic Corps: Jack Kirby’s OMAC as Punk Precursor
Christopher B. Field 19
Captain America: ­All-American Punk
Jill Dahlman 29

Part II: Vertigo Punk Comics
No Future: John Constantine, Hellblazer and the ’70s Punk Rocker in the 21st Century
Spencer Chalifour 49
“I Hate It Here”: Spider Jerusalem as Punk ­Anti-Hero
Jodie Childers 61
24-Hour Murder People: The Punk Iconography in Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles
Keegan Lannon 75
Anarchy at the Alamo: The Creation of a 21st Century American ­Punk-Western in Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s Preacher
Russell Weber 88

Part III: Underground Punk Comics
Aspiring Revolutionaries and “Petty” Conflicts: The Penis in the Punk Movement and Binky Brown
Michael David MacBride 113
Reinventing a Carnivalesque Public Sphere: (Re)imagining and (Re)drawing Madrid in the Long 1970s
Louie Dean ­Valencia-García 134
Drawing Istanbul’s Asshole: Turkish Punk Comics
Can Yalçinkaya 153

Part IV: Punk Manga
Bōsōzoku Motorcycle Gangs, the Bubble Economy and Psychic Children: Reaffirming Giri Through Ōtomo Katsuhiro’s Akira (1988)
Christopher C. Douglas 171
Schoolgirls and Sukeban: Representations of Punk Women in Contemporary Japanese Manga
Alice Vernon 188
Punk Bodies and the “Do It Yourself” Philosophy
Francesco-Alessio Ursini 205

About the Contributors 223
Index 225