Strips, Toons, and Bluesies: Essays in Comics and CultureD. B. Dowd, M. Todd Hignite Comics are typically thought of as "low" art. While the latest "Garfield" or "Boondocks" Sunday strip might be a common topic around the breakfast table or water cooler, it is rarely considered material for more serious consideration. Strips, Toons, and Bluesies gives comics the serious attention they deserve. Rather than focusing on the punch lines, this book celebrates the rich visual and verbal pictures comics have brought to both mass and marginalized audiences. It shows how these worksfrom fifteenth-century woodcuts to Depression-era bluesies to contemporary zinesmake passionate statements about what is most important in their creators' lives. The authors address such key issues as the intertwined origins of comics and animation; the sex, violence, and taboo-breaking of 200 years of underground comics; the popular "Locas" stories of Jaime Hernandez's "Love and Rockets;" and the political and racial portrayals of African Americans in 1960s comics. The book also includes a twenty-five-page history of comics from 1380 to today, a thorough and novel approach to the genre. |
Contents
Introduction | 6 |
Two Centuries of Underground Comic Books | 34 |
The 1960s African Americans | 60 |
A Chronology of Comics | 82 |
Selected Bibliography for Chronology | 107 |
Common terms and phrases
Adventures African Americans Angelfood McSpade Black Panther black superhero book panel Fantagraphics Bullwinkle Buster Brown caricature caricaturist cartoonists cartoons Chick Publications Chris Ware circa comic book Comic book cover Comic book panel comic strip courtesy of Fantagraphics culture D.B. Dowd depicted early EC Comics engraving Fantagraphics Books fantasies Fantastic Four Felix the Cat film Funnies genre illustration Image courtesy Internet invented Jack Kirby Jaime Hernandez Jaime Hernandez/Fantagraphics Books jungle comics LAMAN Little Nemo LOAY Lois Lane Love and Rockets magazine mainstream Marvel Comics medium mini-comics movie narrative newspaper comics panel Fantagraphics Books parody political popular Porgy and Bess Press printed production published R.F. Outcault racism reader Robert Crumb Rodolphe Töpffer satire sexual Siegel Stan Lee stereotypes Stokely and Tess story Studios superhero superhero comics Superman syndicate Tarzan television Tijuana Bibles Todd Hignite underground comics Washington University Winsor McCay Yellow Kid York