Synopses & Reviews
This book brings together an international group of scholars who chart and analyze the ways in which comic book history and new forms of graphic narrative have negotiated the aesthetic, social, political, economic, and cultural interactions that reach across national borders in an increasingly interconnected and globalizing world. Exploring the tendencies of graphic narratives - from popular comic book serials and graphic novels to manga - to cross national and cultural boundaries, Transnational Perspectives on Graphic Narratives addresses a previously marginalized area in comics studies. By placing graphic narratives in the global flow of cultural production and reception, the book investigates controversial representations of transnational politics, examines transnational adaptations of superhero characters, and maps many of the translations and transformations that have come to shape contemporary comics culture on a global scale.
About the Author
Shane Denson is Assistant Professor/Post-Doc Research Associate in American Studies at Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany. He has published on a range of topics in film and media studies.
Christina Meyer is Assistant Professor/Post-Doc Research Associate in American Studies at Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany. She is the author of War and Trauma Images in Vietnam War Representations (2008).
Daniel Stein is Assistant Professor/Post-Doc Research Associate at the John-F.-Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. He is the author of Music Is My Life: Louis Armstrong, Autobiography, and American Jazz (2012) and co-editor of From Comic Strips to Graphic Novels: Contributions to the Theory and History of Graphic Narrative (2013).
Table of Contents
Notes on the Contributors
Foreword, John A. Lent
Introducing Transnational Perspectives on Graphic Narratives: Comics at the Crossroads,
Shane Denson, Christina Meyer, Daniel Stein
Part I: Politics and Poetics1) Not Just a Theme: Transnationalism and Form in Visual Narratives of U.S. Slavery,
Michael A. Chaney
2) Transnational Identity as Shape-shifting: Metaphor and Cultural Resonance in Gene Luen Yang's
American Born Chinese,
Elisabeth El Refaie3) Cosmopolitan Suspicion: Comics Journalism and Graphic Silence,
Georgiana Banita4) Staging Cosmopolitanism: The Transnational Encounter in Joe Sacco's
Footnotes in Gaza,
Aryn Bartley5) “Trying to Recapture the Front”: A Transnational Perspective on Hawaii in R. Kikuo Johnson's
Night Fisher,
Iris-Aya Laemmerhirt
6) Folding Nations, Cutting Borders: Transnationalism in the Comics of Warren Craghead III,
Daniel Wüllner
Section II: Transnational and Transcultural Superheroes7) Batman Goes Transnational: The Global Appropriation and Distribution of an American Hero,
Katharina Bieloch and Sharif Bitar
8) Spider-Man India: Comic Books and the Translating/Transcreating of American Cultural Narratives,
Shilpa Davé9) Of Transcreations and Transpacific Adaptations: Investigating Manga Versions of Spider-Man,
Daniel Stein
10) Warren Ellis: Performing the Transnational Author in the American Comics Mainstream,
Jochen Ecke
11) “Truth, Justice, and the Islamic Way”: Conceiving the Cosmopolitan Muslim Superhero in
The 99,
Stefan Meier
Section III: Translations, Transformations, Migrations 12) Lost in Translation: Narratives of Transcultural Displacement in the Wordless Graphic Novel
Florian Groß
13) Hard-Boiled Silhouettes: Transnational Remediation and the Art of Omission in Frank Miller's
Sin City,
Frank Mehring14) The “Big Picture” as a Multitude of Fragments: Jason Lutes's Depiction of Weimar Republic Berlin,
Lukas Etter15) “Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together”: The Cultural Crossovers of Bryan Lee O'Malley,
Mark Berninger16) A Disappointing Crossing: The North American Reception of Asterix and Tintin,
Jean-Paul Gabilliet Afterword
Framing, Unframing, Reframing: Retconning the Transnational Work of Comics,
Shane DensonIndex