Comic Art in Museums: An Overview

2020 ◽  
pp. 14-22
Author(s):  
Denis Kitchen
Keyword(s):  
Graphic Novels ◽  
Rapid Evolution ◽  
First Person ◽  
Art Exhibitions ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Comic Art ◽  
Narrative Images

This 2017 essay by cartoonist, publisher, and curator Denis Kitchen touches on many of the business and practical aspects of comic art exhibitions, as well as providing us with a first-person view of the rapid evolution of comics from early strips to today’s diverse range of award-winning graphic novels. He discusses the importance of exhibit catalogs, particularly Masters of American Comics, the increasing valuation of comic art drawings, importance of collectors, Al Capp (Li’l Abner), R. Crumb, Harvey Kurtzman, Will Eisner, underground comix, having the “eye,” and the importance of narrative. Images: Will Eisner (P’Gel), catalog covers Underground Classics and Masters of American Comics

Pioneers: Comic Art Exhibitions, 1930–1967

2020 ◽  
pp. 63-65
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Comic Strip ◽  
World War ◽  
Art Exhibitions ◽  
Historical Trends ◽  
Museum Exhibitions ◽  
Comic Art

In this interstitial introduction, art historian Kim A. Munson establishes a chronology of museum exhibitions of original comic art between 1930 and 1967, summarizing the importance of historical trends (the popularity of comics exhibits during World War II) and pioneers like Milton Caniff and the National Cartoonist Society. This chapter contextualizes M.C. Gaines’ 1942 Print magazine article about the important touring exhibit The Comic Strip: Its Ancient and Honorable Lineage and Present Significance. This chapter introduces Alvaro de Moya and Pierre Couperie, who were the founders of influential fan groups that led to breakthrough exhibits in Brazil (1951) and in France (1967).

Asian American Graphic Narrative

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica Chiu ◽  
Jeanette Roan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Graphic Novels ◽  
The United States ◽  
Comic Strips ◽  
Graphic Narrative ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Graphic Narratives ◽  
Before And After

Asian American graphic narratives typically produce meaning through arrangements of images, words, and sequences, though some forgo words completely and others offer an imagined “before” and “after” within the confines of a single panel. Created by or featuring Asian Americans or Asians in a US or Canadian context, they have appeared in a broad spectrum of formats, including the familiar mainstream genre comics, such as superhero serials from DC or Marvel Comics; comic strips; self-published minicomics; and critically acclaimed, award-winning graphic novels. Some of these works have explicitly explored Asian American issues, such as anti-Asian racism, representations of history, questions of identity, and transnationalism; others may feature Asian or Asian American characters or settings without necessarily addressing established or familiar Asian American issues. Indeed, many works made by Asian American creators have little or no obvious or explicit Asian American content at all, and some non-Asian American creators have produced works with Asian American representations, including racist stereotypes and caricatures. The earliest representations of Asians in comics form in the United States were racist representations in the popular press, generally in single-panel caricatures that participated in anti-immigration discourses. However, some Asian immigrants in the early to mid-20th century also used graphic narratives to show and critique the treatment of Asians in the United States. In the realm of mainstream genre comics, Asian Americans have participated in the industry in a variety of different ways. As employees for hire, they created many well-known series and characters, generally not drawing, writing, or editing content that is recognizably Asian American. Since the 2010s, though, Asian American creators have reimagined Asian or Asian American versions of legacy characters like Superman and the Hulk and created new heroes like Ms. Marvel. In the wake of an explosion of general and scholarly interest in graphic novels in the 1990s, many independent Asian American cartoonists have become significant presences in the contemporary graphic narrative world.

Graphic Novels for Children and Young Adults

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Graphic Novels ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
First Century ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Secondary Classrooms ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Part Time ◽  
Children And Young Adults

One of the most significant transformations in literature for children and young adults during the last twenty years has been the resurgence of comics. Educators and librarians extol the benefits of comics reading, and increasingly, children's and young adult comics and comics hybrids have won major prizes, including the Printz Award and the National Book Award. Despite the popularity and influence of children's and young adult graphic novels, the genre has not received adequate scholarly attention. This book offers a critical examination of children's and YA comics. The anthology is divided into five sections: structure and narration; transmedia; pedagogy; gender and sexuality; and identity, that reflect crucial issues and recurring topics in comics scholarship during the twenty-first century. The chapters analyze a variety of contemporary comics, including such highly popular series as Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Lumberjanes; Eisner award-winning graphic novels by Gene Luen Yang, Nate Powell, Mariko Tamaki, and Jillian Tamaki; as well as volumes frequently challenged for use in secondary classrooms, such as Raina Telgemeier's Drama and Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

Samuel R. Delany

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Matharoo
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Graphic Novels ◽  
Temple University ◽  
City College ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
Aids Crisis ◽  
Open Relationship ◽  
University Of Massachusetts

Samuel R. Delany is a profoundly influential and award-winning African-American gay author, critic, and teacher, whose many novels, short stories, memoirs, and essays are among the most important of the 20th and 21st centuries. His works have fundamentally altered the terrain of science fiction (SF) due in part to their formally consummate, theoretically sophisticated, materially grounded, and politically radical explorations of difference. These explorations reach an apogee in Dhalgren (1975), a bestselling countercultural classic. Delany is a Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) Grand Master. He is also one of SF’s best critics. The courageous humility and pragmatism with which he treats his subjects, when considered alongside the virtuosity with which he writes, gesture at a cosmologically scaled multiplicity, the understanding of which is dependent on biography, a point rendered clear in his exquisite autobiography The Motion of Light in Water (1988). Delany was born in Harlem, New York, on 1 April 1942. He was educated at the prestigious Dalton School and Bronx High School of Science. He spent summers at progressive youth camps. He also briefly attended the City College of New York. Delany has held professorships at University of Massachusetts Amherst, SUNY Buffalo, and Temple University. From 1961 to 1980, he and poet Marilyn Hacker had an open marriage; they have one child. He has been in an open relationship with Dennis Rickett since 1991. He was astoundingly prolific at a prodigal age. He translated Rimbaud’s Le bateau ivre (1871) when he was eighteen. For a time, he lived in a commune in New York, writing songs for the folk-rock band Heavenly Breakfast. He has worked on shrimp boats in Texas. He has written graphic novels and a couple of stories for the Wonder Woman comics. He has written an opera, and he has written and directed a film. He has published pornographic novels that engage thoughtfully with the HIV/AIDS crisis. In short, to borrow a concept he develops in Empire Star (1966), Delany might be described as “multiplex”: even an ephemeral biography such as this one casts light on his singular ability to sustain and synthesize presumably opposed differences into a greater unity.

The Artistry of Neil Gaiman

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Picture Books ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Graphic Novels ◽  
Doctor Who ◽  
Neil Gaiman ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Wide Scale ◽  
Scholarly Discussion ◽  
Radio Play ◽  
The Graveyard Book

Neil Gaiman (1960-present) currently reigns in the literary world as one of the most critically-decorated and popular authors of the last fifty years. Perhaps best known as the writer of the Harvey, Eisner, and World Fantasy-award winning DC/ Vertigo series, The Sandman, Gaiman quickly became equally-renowned in literary circles for works such as Neverwhere, Coraline, the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, etc. award-winning American Gods, as well as the Newbery and Carnegie Medal-winning The Graveyard Book. For adults, for children, for the comic reader to the viewer of the BBC's Doctor Who, Gaiman's writing has crossed the borders of virtually all media and every language making him a celebrity on a world-wide scale. Despite Gaiman's incredible contributions to multiple national comics traditions (from such works as Miracleman to the aforementioned The Sandman), to the maturation of American comics as a serious storytelling medium, and to changing the rights of creators to retain ownership of their works, his work continues to be underrepresented in sustained fashion in comics studies. As American Gods tops ratings charts for Starz, Anansi Boys can be found in radio play from the BBC, and adaptations of some of his work from Trigger Warning and Fragile Things become standalone comics by renowned artists, it seems timely to bring the bulk of Gaiman's comics into the scholarly discussion. The thirteen essays and two interviews with Gaiman and his frequent collaborator, artist P. Craig Russell, a formal introduction, forward, and afterword examine the work (specifically-comics, graphic novels, picture books, visual adaptations of prose works, etc.) of Gaiman and a multitude of his collaborative illustrators. The essays radiate from an examination of Gaiman's work surrounding proclamations challenging his readers to "make good art'; what makes Gaiman's work unique and worthy of study lies in his eschewing of typical categorizations and typologies, his constant efforts to make good art-whatever form that art may take-howsoever the genres and audiences may slip into one another. What emerges is a complicated picture of a man who always seems fully-assembled virtually from the start of his career, but only came to feel comfortable in his own skin and his own voice far later in his life.

scholarly journals Extensive C->U transition biases in the genomes of a wide range of mammalian RNA viruses; potential associations with transcriptional mutations, damage- or host-mediated editing of viral RNA

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. e1009596
Author(s):  
Peter Simmonds ◽  
M. Azim Ansari
Keyword(s):  
Rna Structure ◽  
Rna Viruses ◽  
Multivariable Analysis ◽  
Rapid Evolution ◽  
Structural Parameter ◽  
Coding Region ◽  
Association Index ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Genome Scale

The rapid evolution of RNA viruses has been long considered to result from a combination of high copying error frequencies during RNA replication, short generation times and the consequent extensive fixation of neutral or adaptive changes over short periods. While both the identities and sites of mutations are typically modelled as being random, recent investigations of sequence diversity of SARS coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) have identified a preponderance of C->U transitions, proposed to be driven by an APOBEC-like RNA editing process. The current study investigated whether this phenomenon could be observed in datasets of other RNA viruses. Using a 5% divergence filter to infer directionality, 18 from 36 datasets of aligned coding region sequences from a diverse range of mammalian RNA viruses (including Picornaviridae, Flaviviridae, Matonaviridae, Caliciviridae and Coronaviridae) showed a >2-fold base composition normalised excess of C->U transitions compared to U->C (range 2.1x–7.5x), with a consistently observed favoured 5’ U upstream context. The presence of genome scale RNA secondary structure (GORS) was the only other genomic or structural parameter significantly associated with C->U/U->C transition asymmetries by multivariable analysis (ANOVA), potentially reflecting RNA structure dependence of sites targeted for C->U mutations. Using the association index metric, C->U changes were specifically over-represented at phylogenetically uninformative sites, potentially paralleling extensive homoplasy of this transition reported in SARS-CoV-2. Although mechanisms remain to be functionally characterised, excess C->U substitutions accounted for 11–14% of standing sequence variability of structured viruses and may therefore represent a potent driver of their sequence diversification and longer-term evolution.

scholarly journals Mutation bias implicates RNA editing in a wide range of mammalian RNA viruses

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Simmonds ◽  
M. Azim Ansari
Keyword(s):  
Rna Editing ◽  
Rna Viruses ◽  
Rna Virus ◽  
Structural Parameters ◽  
Rapid Evolution ◽  
Sequence Variability ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Mouth Disease Virus ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Virus Sequence

ABSTRACTThe rapid evolution of RNA viruses has been long considered to result from a combination of high copying error frequencies during RNA replication, short generation times and the consequent extensive fixation of neutral or adaptive changes over short periods. While both the identities and sites of mutations are typically modelled as being random, recent investigations of sequence diversity of SARS coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) have identified a preponderance of C->U transitions, potentially driven by an APOBEC-like RNA editing process. The current study investigated whether this phenomenon could be observed in the more genetically diverse datasets of other RNA viruses. Using a 5% divergence filter to infer directionality, 18 from 32 datasets of aligned coding region sequences from a diverse range of mammalian RNA viruses (including Picornaviridae, Flaviviridae, Matonaviridae, Caliciviridae and Coronaviridae) showed a >2-fold base composition normalised excess of C->U transitions compared to U->C (range 2.1x–7.5x). C->U transitions showed a favoured 5’ U upstream context consistent with previous analyses of APOBEC-mediated RNA targeting. Amongst several genomic compositional and structural parameters, the presence of genome scale RNA secondary structure (GORS) was associated with C->U/U->C transition asymmetries (p < 0.001), potentially reflecting the documented structure dependence of APOBEC-mediated RNA editing. Using the association index metric, C->U changes were specifically over-represented at phylogenetically uninformative sites, consistent with extensive homoplasy documented in SARS-CoV-2. Excess C->U substitutions accounted for 15-20% of standing sequence variability of HCV and other RNA viruses; RNA editing may therefore represent a potent driver of RNA virus sequence diversification and longer term evolution.Author SummaryThe rapid evolution of RNA viruses is thought to arise from high mutation frequencies during replication and the rapid accumulation of genetic changes over time in response to its changing environments. This study describes an additional potent factor that contributes to the evolution of RNA infecting mammals, the deliberate mutation of the viral genome by host antiviral pathways active within the cell when it becomes infected. This so called “genome editing” by one or more APOBEC enzymes leads to characteristic C->U mutations that damage the virus’s ability to replicate. While this pathway is well characterised as an antiviral defence against HIV and other retroviruses, this study provides evidence for its activity against a wide range of human and veterinary viruses, including HCV and foot and mouth disease virus. APOBEC-driven mutations accounted for 15-20% of standing sequence variability of RNA virus groups, representing a potent driver of RNA virus sequence diversification.

Comic Art in Museums

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Comic Books ◽  
Graphic Novels ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Critical Dialogue ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Material ◽  
Comic Art

Over the last twenty years, the growing diversity in content and artistic innovation in graphic novels, comic books, and web comics combined with the popularity of films based on comics material have made comic art newly attractive to curators, museums, and university galleries. More artists identified with comics are getting big budget retrospectives, collecting institutions are mounting rich historical shows, and exhibits capitalizing on the popularity of all types of comics are popping up around the world. This book is an introduction to the history and controversies that have shaped comics exhibitions, who the pioneers were, different ideas about comic art exhibits around the world, how the best practices for displaying comics have developed and why, and how artists and curators have found ways to display comics that break away from the “framed pages on the wall” format. Using long out-of-print reviews and new material from experts such as Art Spiegelman, Denis Kitchen, and Andrei Molotiu, Comic Art in Museums maps out the history of influential shows of original comic art from newly rediscovered shows of the 1930’s to contemporary blockbusters like High and Low: Modern Art, Popular Culture and Masters of American Comics, as well as the critical dialogue surrounding these shows. To borrow a phrase from Theirry Groensteen, it’s the story of one way that comics have finally achieved “cultural legitimization.”

Dupin’s Descendants in Print and on Screen

2018 ◽  
pp. 658-675
Author(s):  
John Gruesser
Keyword(s):  
Computer Games ◽  
Comic Books ◽  
Edgar Allan Poe ◽  
Graphic Novels ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Sexual Orientations ◽  
Auguste Dupin ◽  
Nonprint Media

Edgar Allan Poe envisions detection as competition, staging contests between characters, constructing plots so as to outwit readers, and in effect competing with himself in the two sequels to “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” By striving to outdo what he has already done, Poe weaves authorial competition into the fabric of detection, inspiring a diverse range of writers to bring innovations to the form. He would likely be amazed to find that the descendants of Auguste Dupin have come in an array of shapes, sizes, nationalities, genders, socioeconomic classes, sexual orientations, subject positions, and ethnic and racial backgrounds. Moreover, even his vivid imagination could not have conceived of detection’s impact on various print and nonprint media in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including comic books, graphic novels, animation, computer games, television, and film.

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