Editorial Reviews
Book Description
Through the combination of text and images, comic books offer a unique opportunity to explore deep questions about aesthetics, ethics, and epistemology in non-traditional ways. The essays in this collection focus on a wide variety of genres, from mainstream superhero comics, to graphic novels that exercise social realism, to European adventure classics.
Included among the contributions are essays on the existentialist ethos present in Daniel Clowes's graphic novel Ghost World, ecocriticism in Paul Chadwick's long-running Concrete series, and the inherent political philosophies espoused in Hergé's perennially popular The Adventures of Tintin. Modern political concerns inform Terry Kading's "Drawn into 9/11: But Where Have All the Superheroes Gone?," which discusses how superhero comics have responded to 9/11, and how the concerns of the genre reflect the anxieties of the contemporary world.
Along with comics themselves, essayists explore the issues surrounding the development and appreciation of the medium. Amy Kiste Nyberg examines the rise of the Comics Code, using it as a springboard for discussing the ethics of censorship and child protection in America. Stanford W. Carpenter's "Truth Be Told: Authorship and the Creation of the Black Captain America" uses interviews, memos, and other documents to analyze how a team of Marvel artists and writers re-imagined the origin of one of Marvel's most iconic superheroes. Throughout, essayists in Comics as Philosophy show how well the form can be used by its artists and its interpreters as a means of philosophical inquiry.
From the Publisher
This inventive anthology uses the comics to explore the tenets of philosophy, and:
* Features essays on such popular comics as The Amazing Spider-Man, Tintin, Watchmen, and Captain America
* Features essays by noted comics scholars Robert C. Harvey and Amy Kiste Nyberg, among others
* Includes contributions from Jeremy Barris (Marshall University), Laura Canis (Baldwin Wallace College), Paul Canis (John Carroll University/Cleveland State University), Stanford W. Carpenter (independent; Baltimore), Robert C. Harvey (independent; Champaign, Illinois), Terry Kading (Thompson Rivers University), Kevin de Laplante (Iowa State University) Jeff McLaughlin (Thompson Rivers University), Amy Kiste Nyberg (Seton Hall University), Aldo Regalado (University of Miami-Florida), Pierre Skilling (Université Laval, Québec City, Canada), and Iain Thomson (University of New Mexico)
Comics As Philosophy
Comics As Philosophy,Jeff McLaughlin,University Press of Mississippi,1578067944,Comic books, strips, etc.,Comics & Graphic Novels,Fiction - General,General,History & Criticism,History and criticism,History: World,Literature - Classics / Criticism,Moral and ethical aspects
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