International Publication Pathways for Australian Comic Books and Graphic Novels

The paper analyzes the V for Vendetta comic books, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd. These volumes are graphic novels whose characteristics place them in the literary genre of the critical dystopia, but they have also been associated with the genre of the superhero comic, which, according to a number of authors including Alan Moore, is inextricably linked to the ideology and practice of the political right, which in its extreme form assumes the form of fascism. The way that fascism is treated in that work, as well as in two other comics discussed in the paper (Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns), is linked to the way in which the process of creativity/innovativeness functioned in the context of the revision/deconstruction of the superhero comic book genre in the 1980s, both on the collective (intra-genre) and the individual level, on the level of the thought structure of the British writer Alan Moore. Using the structural-semiotic model of analysis, the paper seeks to fathom the logic of this deconstruction procedure "broken down" into the three comic books discussed in the paper, with particular emphasis on the analysis of V for Vendetta, with the aim of establishing its "hidden", connotative semantic dimension. The study adopts a modern view of the comic book according to which the essence of this medium, which distinguishes it from other narrative and graphic forms of expression as well as from film, can be recognized in the specific, sequential way of combining its visual and narrative components, thus generating meanings whose interpretation depends on the intention of the author but also on the view of the reader.

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Book Reviews

European Comic Art ◽

10.3167/eca.2021.140106 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 14 (1) ◽

pp. 89-95

Author(s):

Fransiska Louwagie ◽

Benoît Crucifix

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Comic Books ◽

Graphic Novels ◽

Bande Dessinee ◽

The Holocaust

Ewa Stańczyk, ed., Comic Books, Graphic Novels and the Holocaust: Beyond Maus. (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2020). 142 pp. ISBN: 9780367585921 (£29.59)Vittorio Frigerio, Bande dessinée et littérature: Intersections, fascinations, divergences (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2018). 96 pp. ISBN: 9788822902573 (€10.00)

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Representations: Cartoons, Graphic Novels, Comic Books: North America

Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures ◽

10.1163/1872-5309_ewic_com_002169 ◽

2019 ◽

Keyword(s):

North America ◽

Comic Books ◽

Graphic Novels

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Comic books and graphic novels

The Cambridge Companion to Popular Fiction ◽

10.1017/ccol9780521513371.012 ◽

2012 ◽

pp. 175-195 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Hillary Chute ◽

Marianne Dekoven

Keyword(s):

Comic Books ◽

Graphic Novels

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Latinx Popular Culture and Social Conflict: Comics, Graphic Novels, and Film

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.330 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Frederick Luis Aldama

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Popular Culture ◽

Comic Books ◽

Graphic Novels ◽

Comic Book ◽

The United States ◽

Corporate America ◽

Consumer Market ◽

Negative Stereotypes ◽

Cultural Imaginary

Despite Latinxs being the largest growing demographic in the United States, their experiences and identities continue to be underrepresented and misrepresented in the mainstream pop cultural imaginary. However, for all the negative stereotypes and restrictive ways that the mainstream boxes in Latinxs, Latinx musicians, writers, artists, comic book creators, and performers actively metabolize all cultural phenomena to clear positive spaces of empowerment and to make new perception, thought, and feeling about Latinx identities and experiences. It is important to understand, though, that Latinxs today consume all variety of cultural phenomena. For corporate America, therefore, the Latinx demographic represents a huge buying demographic. Viewed through cynical and skeptical eyes, increased representation of Latinxs in mainstream comic books and film results from this push to capture the Latinx consumer market. Within mainstream comic books and films, Latinx subjects are rarely the protagonists. However, Latinx comic book and film creators are actively creating Latinx protagonists within richly rendered Latinx story worlds. Latinx comic book and film creators work in all the storytelling genres and modes (realism, sci-fi, romance, memoir, biography, among many others) to clear new spaces for the expression of Latinx subjectivities and experiences.

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