White Boy in Skull Valley


Book Description

From the famed New Yorker illustrator comes one of the lost treasures of American comic strips.




In the Studio


Book Description

Nine critically acclaimed cartoonists and graphic novelists invite us into their studios to discuss their art and inspirations These studio visits with some of today's most popular and innovative comic artists present an unparalleled look at the cutting edge of the comic medium. The artists, some of whom rarely grant interviews, offer insights into the creative process, their influences and personal sources of inspiration, and the history of comics. The interviews amount to private gallery tours, with the artists commenting, now thoughtfully, now passionately, on their own work as well as the works of others. The book is generously illustrated with full-color reproductions of the artists' works, including some that have been published and others not originally intended for publication, such as sketchbooks and personal projects. Additional illustrations show behind-the-scenes working processes of the cartoonists and particular works by others that have influenced or inspired them. Through the eyes of these artists, we see with a new clarity the achievement of contemporary cartoonists and the extraordinary possibilities of comic art.




From Daniel Boone to Captain America


Book Description

From nineteenth-century American art and literature to comic books of the twentieth century and afterwards, Chad A. Barbour examines in From Daniel Boone to Captain America the transmission of the ideals and myths of the frontier and playing Indian in American culture. In the nineteenth century, American art and literature developed images of the Indian and the frontiersman that exemplified ideals of heroism, bravery, and manhood, as well as embodying fears of betrayal, loss of civilization, and weakness. In the twentieth century, comic books, among other popular forms of media, would inherit these images. The Western genre of comic books participated fully in the common conventions, replicating and perpetuating the myths and ideals long associated with the frontier in the United States. A fascination with Native Americans also emerged in comic books devoted to depicting the Indian past of the US In such stories, the Indian remains a figure of the past, romanticized as a lost segment of US history, ignoring contemporary and actual Native peoples. Playing Indian occupies a definite subgenre of Western comics, especially during the postwar period when a host of comics featuring a "white Indian" as the hero were being published. Playing Indian migrates into superhero comics, a phenomenon that heightens and amplifies the notions of heroism, bravery, and manhood already attached to the white Indian trope. Instances of superheroes like Batman and Superman playing Indian correspond with depictions found in the strictly Western comics. The superhero as Indian returned in the twenty-first century via Captain America, attesting to the continuing power of this ideal and image.




A Comfortable Boy


Book Description

"Long before he became a celebrity by being depicted as John Keating in the Dead Poets Society, Sam Pickering lived an ordinary childhood in the South. This memoir, extraordinarily told, is Pickering?s crowning moment to his long, literary career. Told with honesty, warmth, and integrity, he tells his story through his eighth grade year, focusing on family, growing up, and centers on finding his self. For Pickering, family is everything. Happiness is precious. For some people happiness is hard-won, slowly distilled from the grit of rasping days. For others, like Sam Pickering, happiness has come easily. In A comfortable boy, Pickering describes the early years of childhood, rolling back through time on the wheels of anecdotal memory. With an eye peeled for detail, he recalls family and places. He meanders farm and school, roaming Tennessee and Virginia. He notices things that others sometimes miss or at least neglect. Recently, he wrote that he saw two stickers on the rear window of a rusting Pontiac, the warning 'Baby on Board' inexplicably beside the command 'Drive It Like You Stole It'. He owns three dogs, all mongrels rescued from the streets of Hartford, and he calls the trowel he uses to scoop up their droppings 'Excalibur'. For Pickering life's pleasures are endless, lurking amid the wildflowers of field and wood or sprouting in paragraphs written to his great-grandmother during the Civil War. In part A comfortable boy reveals what made Pickering a successful teacher and writer, not the wound of the suffering Romantic but instead the simple joy and gratitude for being born in the South at a certain time in a particular place and in a specific family among people, he writes, 'whom it was impossible not to love and not to laugh at and with'"--From publisher's description.




The Comics


Book Description

Insights into the aesthetics of one of popular culture's favorite art forms




Drawing from the Archives


Book Description

This book proposes a new history of the graphic novel by examining how it recirculates older comics in the present.




The Treasure of Skull Valley


Book Description

Suzanne discovers a mysterious map hidden in the pages of a classic old book at the thrift store. It’s titled “My Treasure Map” and leads past Skull Valley, twenty miles west of Prescott and into the high desert country—to an unexpected, shocking and elusive treasure. “Please help,” the note begs. The mystery searchers utilize the power and reach of the Internet to trace the movement of people and events. . . half a century earlier.




Redrawing the Western


Book Description

"As the Western began to flourish in literature, it also began to appear in illustrations and early comic strips of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. William Grady charts the history of the genre in comic strips and books from its origins in this period through its mid-century heyday to its gradual decline in the 60s and 70s, ending with a brief look at the current "afterlife" of Western comics over the last few decades. In doing so, he also argues for the importance of comics in the development of the Western alongside both literature and film/television. He explains how the mythic-historical settings of Western comics allowed the young readers at whom they were aimed to explore different aspects of their contemporary society, wrestle with taboo topics, and envision different futures for the US. Grady begins by exploring the origins of the Western genre in the late 19th century and shows the importance of illustrated narratives and cartoons in helping readers visualize the West, thus establishing much of its iconic imagery of frontier life, including racist stereotypes of Indigenous Peoples. He moves forward in time to show how the West became mythologized and fantastic elements were introduced into the real landscape in comic strips such as Gasoline Alley and Krazy Kat, until the Great Depression, where strips emphasized the escapist adventures of the West in Red Ryder, Lone Ranger, and others. The postwar Western spread into comic books and was used alternately as positive and negative commentaries on the Cold War and America's place in the world, but in the era of Vietnam and Watergate, Western comics portrayed darker reflections of American culture and history and eventually more or less died out. Despite the genre's apparent demise, Grady ends by examining its ongoing influence over the last decades as its tropes are used to interrogate and subvert the idea of the mythic West and explore diverse perspectives on the genre"--




American Comics: A History


Book Description

The sweeping story of cartoons, comic strips, and graphic novels and their hold on the American imagination. Comics have conquered America. From our multiplexes, where Marvel and DC movies reign supreme, to our television screens, where comics-based shows like The Walking Dead have become among the most popular in cable history, to convention halls, best-seller lists, Pulitzer Prize–winning titles, and MacArthur Fellowship recipients, comics shape American culture, in ways high and low, superficial, and deeply profound. In American Comics, Columbia professor Jeremy Dauber takes readers through their incredible but little-known history, starting with the Civil War and cartoonist Thomas Nast, creator of the lasting and iconic images of Uncle Sam and Santa Claus; the golden age of newspaper comic strips and the first great superhero boom; the moral panic of the Eisenhower era, the Marvel Comics revolution, and the underground comix movement of the 1960s and ’70s; and finally into the twenty-first century, taking in the grim and gritty Dark Knights and Watchmen alongside the brilliant rise of the graphic novel by acclaimed practitioners like Art Spiegelman and Alison Bechdel. Dauber’s story shows not only how comics have changed over the decades but how American politics and culture have changed them. Throughout, he describes the origins of beloved comics, champions neglected masterpieces, and argues that we can understand how America sees itself through whose stories comics tell. Striking and revelatory, American Comics is a rich chronicle of the last 150 years of American history through the lens of its comic strips, political cartoons, superheroes, graphic novels, and more. FEATURING… • American Splendor • Archie • The Avengers • Kyle Baker • Batman • C. C. Beck • Black Panther • Captain America • Roz Chast • Walt Disney • Will Eisner • Neil Gaiman • Bill Gaines • Bill Griffith • Harley Quinn • Jack Kirby • Denis Kitchen • Krazy Kat • Harvey Kurtzman • Stan Lee • Little Orphan Annie • Maus • Frank Miller • Alan Moore • Mutt and Jeff • Gary Panter • Peanuts • Dav Pilkey • Gail Simone • Spider-Man • Superman • Dick Tracy • Wonder Wart-Hog • Wonder Woman • The Yellow Kid • Zap Comix … AND MANY MORE OF YOUR FAVORITES!




The Whiteboy


Book Description