Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society最新文献

{"title":"Preserving the Legacy of Black Press Cartoonists","authors":"J. Robb","doi":"10.1353/ink.2023.a898387","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ink.2023.a898387","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:The comics and cartoons featured in twentieth-century Black Press newspapers are particularly important as historical documents that offer insights into Black experiences in the United States and as works of art that recover the voices of artists from traditionally marginalized communities. Yet clear, high-quality versions of these cartoons and comic strips are difficult to find. Physical copies of newspapers like the Chicago Defender and the Pittsburgh Courier were discarded by libraries and replaced with microfilm, which was subsequently digitized and made available through databases like ProQuest Historical Newspapers and Newspapers.com. These versions can be inadequate for comics studies scholars due to poor image quality and other factors. The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum has uncovered physical Chicago Defender newspaper pages and volumes from 1943–47 and 1950. They have also acquired some physical Pittsburgh Courier issues and sections that include comics and cartoons. Howard University has also launched the Black Press Archives Digitization Project, which may eventually digitize physical newspaper pages directly. It is important for libraries to preserve the remaining physical copies of these newspaper comics and cartoons and to digitize them directly, perhaps as part of a large, cross- library cooperative project.","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114460169","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Keeping It Unreal: Black Queer Fantasy and Superhero Comics by Darieck Scott (review)","authors":"D’Arcee Charington Neal","doi":"10.1353/ink.2023.a898389","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ink.2023.a898389","url":null,"abstract":"1. Brunet and Davis cite a blog that quotes from an interview that Jim Amash did with Vince Fago which was published in Alter Ego #11. In their introduction Brunet and Davis critique the use of interviews with male comics creators from the Golden and Silver Ages, using all Alter Ego interviews as their examples of problematic interviews that are used to shape comics history (Comic Book Women, 9–10). It is worth noting that, if Snyder did identify as a lesbian, she might not have identified as queer and vice versa—these words have historically contingent meanings and must be used carefully.","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120959264","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"An Exploration in the Digital Analysis of Comics Images","authors":"Jacob Murel","doi":"10.1353/ink.2023.a898385","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ink.2023.a898385","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Digital tools and methods for the large-scale analysis of comics images have seen little application within comics studies when compared against traditional methods of historical, textual, and art-critical analysis. This paper presents a digital method for analyzing hundreds of comics images using the medical imaging software ImageJ and, in doing so, demonstrates that method’s utility in opening new avenues for understanding (at times, familiar) comics. Following a review of current digital scholarship of comics, this paper demonstrates ImageJ’s utility in critically (re)examining comics through a case study focused on Winsor McCay’s early twentieth-century American newspaper comic Little Nemo in Slumberland. Beyond showcasing ImageJ’s utility for analyzing comics images en masse, I hope to demonstrate the value of deploying digital tools and methods in an exploratory rather than deterministic spirit.","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"78 4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133042508","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sandro Botticelli’s Visual Language in Illustrations of The Divine Comedy","authors":"Philip Smith","doi":"10.1353/ink.2023.a898386","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ink.2023.a898386","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This paper seeks to offer a close reading of Botticelli’s illustrations for The Divine Comedy using Neil Cohn and Thierry Groensteen’s tools of comics analysis. Botticelli uses a visual language, I argue, which is distinct from that of modern comics (what Neil Cohn calls American Visual Language), most notably in its flexible reading paths. Unlike modern comics creators, who use panel ordering as a primary means to convey sequence, Botticelli is not tethered to a specific horizontal reading direction; the vertical book positioning facilitates a narrative path which is not dependent upon a fixed start and end point to a given page but tracks a passage down the page. In the absence of a standard reading path, Botticelli uses a rising perspective and a distinctive color palette for recurring icons to guide his readers through a narrative.","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"51 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114964776","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Red Lines: Political Cartoons and the Struggle against Censorship by Cherian George and Sonny Liew (review)","authors":"Nhora Lucía Serrano","doi":"10.1353/ink.2023.a898391","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ink.2023.a898391","url":null,"abstract":"100 More broadly, when politics and pop culture or entertainment converge, we both ask our politics to entertain us and ask our entertainment to foreground its politics. This convergence might help to “motivate, educate, and connect the public to political issues and systems,” as Knopf notes (xxv). It might also drive the proliferation of narratives common to entertainment and politics: “conspiracy narratives that work to uncover the truth and/or achieve justice”; outsider or “antiestablishment, anti-politician” narratives in which traditional institutions and norms are an impediment rather than an aid to justice; understandings of politics that take their bearings from “fan cultures,” in which engagement with complex issues is replaced by shared symbology (xxiv–xxv, 25–28, 207). None of these developments seems entirely positive. Knopf shows us, convincingly, how comics, in requiring that readers “fill in the blanks,” might be especially useful in encouraging a deeper and more thoughtful engagement with politics (111). It might also be the case that comics, in encouraging the convergence of entertainment and politics, might be perpetuating the kind of destructive oversimplification of complicated things that Knopf’s supervillain presidents embrace. There’s much more to Politics in the Gutters than what I’ve covered here, and what I’ve left out is also well worth discussing—in another, longer engagement. If I had to complain about one thing, I’d say that, in reading Politics in the Gutters, I often wished for the wonderful wit and wordplay found in so much of Knopf’s other work. Of course, responsible scholarship is not entirely a laughing matter—but, to quote a famous supervillain: why so serious? Politics in the Gutters is most enjoyable to read when it has fun with its source material—which is, after all, fun. But this is a relatively insignificant gripe. All in all, Christina M. Knopf’s Politics in the Gutters is a great read. Your local or online bookseller will thank you—and ought to send Knopf a thank-you note, too—since, if you’re anything like me, you’ll want to order a whole bunch of the comics Knopf writes about, read them, and then come back to Politics in the Gutters again. What’s better than a book that makes you want to read more comics?","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"18 23","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"113955423","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Comic Book Women: Characters, Creators, and Culture in the Golden Age by Peyton Brunet and Blair Davis (review)","authors":"S. Heifler","doi":"10.1353/ink.2023.a898388","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ink.2023.a898388","url":null,"abstract":"Peyton Brunet and Blair Davis’s Comic Book Women: Characters, Creators, and Culture in the Golden Age is a book driven by a feminist praxis. Their objective is to center women comics creators and women characters within the male-dominated comics history. Brunet and Davis divide the book into eight chapters with an introduction and conclusion, plus a foreword by Trina Robbins. The foreword by Robbins explains the importance of women’s and girls’ comics for readers, both past and present. The chapters are titled after the comic book genres to which they are devoted: Superhero, Jungle, Crime, Horror, Western, Science Fiction, and Romance, with chapter 6 devoted to title characters. This organization allows Brunet and Davis to address the comic book characters and women-centered plots of each genre as well as the women creators behind them. Brunet and Davis detail the implications of the obfuscation of women from comic book history. They note accurately that male creators and masculine-focused comics have been privileged within the historical narrative. However, their approach to the historiography makes it unclear how such privilege became the standard. For instance, they seldomly reference specific histories or scholars in their critiques of the field, instead broadly referring to “comic book historians” who privilege male comic book creators and masculine narratives in their academic work. While it is easy to","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"67 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129140021","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Thinking Outside of the Box: Theorizing the Frameless Panel","authors":"Michelle Ann Abate","doi":"10.1353/ink.2023.a898384","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ink.2023.a898384","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Frameless panels are a significant, but vastly undertheorized, phenomenon in comics. Using examples from Jules Feiffer’s work in The Village Voice as the basis for discussion, this essay argues that the omission of distinct boundaries around an image does more than merely impact the aesthetic appearance of sequential art; such omissions also impact its spatial, semiotic, and narratological operations. The lack of borders changes the way that readers view, engage with, and interpret the material. Frameless comics alter many of the most essential and seemingly immutable components of sequential art, from the sense of closure and the construction of the grid to the pace of reading and the location—as well as function—of the gutter. Ultimately, this format invites us to reconsider long-standing assumptions about the centrality of panel frames to comics. Not only are boundaries between panels not essential to sequential art, but—as the work of Jules Feiffer demonstrates—their omission can be an asset rather than a shortcoming.","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132827602","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Understanding Comics at 30: An Introduction","authors":"Rachel Miller, Daniel Worden","doi":"10.1353/ink.2022.0019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ink.2022.0019","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:A brief introduction to the special issue \"Understanding Comics at 30,\" this essay explains the significance of Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics to comics studies, as well as critiques of the book's concepts and history of the comics medium. On the thirtieth anniversary of the influential book's publication, this special issue brings together comics studies scholars to reflect on Understanding Comics.","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124770362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Natsume Fusanosuke on Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics","authors":"Natsume Fusanosuke, Jon Holt, Teppei Fukuda","doi":"10.1353/ink.2022.0034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ink.2022.0034","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Although Understanding Comics had a huge impact on how people in North America and Europe looked at comics, little has been written about what impact it had in Japan on Manga Studies (or Mangagaku). Natsume Fusanosuke, a doyen of Manga Studies in Japan from the early 1990s, was one of the first to see and to review Scott McCloud's book when it was published in Japanese translation in 1998 as Mangagaku. Natsume later went on to write the afterword to the second, updated translation of the book in 2020. We present its early review and his last word on what the future held for Understanding Comics, what it meant in the past thirty years, and what it might mean in Japan in the future for the field. Upon first seeing Understanding Comics in English in 1995, Natsume cried out \"We are not alone!\" to fellow manga scholar Takekuma Kentarō. We can see from these two essays—separated by over three decades—what McCloud's visitation to Japan contributed to the comics studies community there over time. Moreover, Natsume puts into greater context how this book's impact and focus compares with that of his own research group and their own rival formalist comics-studies books, such as How to Read Manga (Manga no yomikata, 1995), certainly one of the best comparator texts in Japanese to read alongside McCloud's work.","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130374373","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Form and Counter-Narratives: Using Understanding Comics with Pre-Service Teachers","authors":"Jason D. DeHart","doi":"10.1353/ink.2022.0033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ink.2022.0033","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:In this article, the author describes the use of Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics in literacy courses with preservice teachers. The article includes information about how the book has been central to conversations about comics work, as well as examples of how the author has used the text to link to particular comics titles.","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"96 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131490055","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}