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The most comprehensive reference ever compiled about the rich and enduring genre of comic books and graphic novels, from their emergence in the 1930s to their late-century breakout into the mainstream. * Includes over 330 entries on comic books and their creators * Presents the work of 80 contributors--accomplished academics and librarians who are also fans of comic books and graphic novels * Offers selected bibliographic listings with the entries * Provides a comprehensive index of artists, writers, works, characters, genres, and themes

Best American Comics Writing of the 21st Century, edited by NewYork Times, Vanity Fair, and Bookforum critic Ben Schwartz, is the first-ever attempt to collate the very best criticism of the contemporarygraphic novel boom in a way that contextualizes and codifies one of the mostimportant literary movements of the last 60 years. Via its various authors -John Updike, Daniel Clowes, Jonathan Lethem, Chris Ware, Frank Miller, WillEisner, David Hadju, Douglas Wolk, and more - the book also functions as avaluable readers' guide for fans, academics, and librarians, tracing the currentcomics renaissance from its beginnings and creative growth to today's bestsellerappeal, and where it's headed. Best American Comics Writing of the21st Century also features a cover by nationally known satiristDrew Friedman (The New York Observer, Old Jewish Comedians)spotlighting "The Comic Book Critics of America" in a tongue-in-cheek takeon a formerly low medium increasingly held in high regard.

This edition of Thierry Groensteen's The System of Comics makes available in English a groundbreaking work on comics by one of the medium's foremost scholars. In this book, originally published in France in 1999, Groensteen explains clearly the subtle, complex workings of the medium and its unique way of combining visual, verbal, spatial, and chronological expressions. The author explores the nineteenth-century pioneer Rodolphe Topffer, contemporary Japanese creators, George Herriman's Krazy Kat, and modern American autobiographical comics. The System of Comics uses examples from a wide variety of countries including the United States, England, Japan, France, and Argentina. It describes and analyzes the properties and functions of speech and thought balloons, panels, strips, and pages to examine methodically and insightfully the medium's fundamental processes. From this, Groensteen develops his own coherent, overarching theory of comics, a "system" that both builds on existing studies of the "word and image" paradigm and adds innovative approaches of his own. Examining both meaning and appreciation, the book provides a wealth of ideas that will challenge the way scholars approach the study of comics. By emphasizing not simply "storytelling techniques" but also the qualities of the printed page and the reader's engagement, the book's approach is broadly applicable to all forms of interpreting this evolving art.

Some of the most noteworthy graphic novels and comic books of recent years have been entirely autobiographical. In Graphic Subjects, Michael A. Chaney brings together a lively mix of scholars to examine the use of autobiography within graphic novels, including such critically acclaimed examples as Art Spiegelman's Maus, David Beauchard's Epileptic, Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, Alan Moore's Watchmen, and Gene Yang's American Born Chinese.             These essays, accompanied by visual examples, illuminate the new horizons that illustrated autobiographical narrative creates. The volume insightfully highlights the ways that graphic novelists and literary cartoonists have incorporated history, experience, and life stories into their work. The result is a challenging and innovative collection that reveals the combined power of autobiography and the graphic novel.