{"title":"The Specters of Captain America: Time and the Haunting of American Politics","authors":"N. Curtis","doi":"10.1353/ink.2020.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ink.2020.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Captain America is a revenant. Since coming back from the dead in 1964 he has been killed and returned on other occasions or has gone missing and has been shown to haunt the central narrative from a distance. In this sense he can be considered a specter as developed by Jacques Derrida in Specters of Marx. The spectrality of Captain America is also a way for writers to engage in efforts to define the character and for readers to understand the politics of the comics, which are often defined in opposition to versions of Captain America that are excessively nationalist, zealously patriotic, and even fascistic. This paper also argues that other aspects of Captain America's biography, including his 1941 origin, the use of and search for a replacement super soldier serum, and the death of Bucky have also been repeatedly used to explore the political meaning of the character.","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122016273","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":"Comics and Public History: The True Story of the 1934 Chatham Coloured All-Stars","authors":"D. Jacobs, Heidi L. M. Jacobs","doi":"10.1353/ink.2020.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ink.2020.0009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay examines how the Harding Project, a digital and oral history project at the University of Windsor, decided to use comics as one way to tell the story of the 1934 Chatham Coloured All-Stars. It is a story of collaboration and what can happen when conversation is allowed to develop organically as connections are created with the community. This essay details one such collaboration, between individual community members, community groups, and researchers from History, Leddy Library, and English at the University of Windsor, and the resulting cross-pollination of public history, digital librarianship, and comics studies. In telling this story, the essay examines the ways in which comics, in a variety of forms, can aid in the public dissemination of knowledge, act as an educational resource and site of multimodal literacy, and engage in the process of revising the historical narrative and intervening in practices of historiography and pedagogy surrounding race and sport in Canada.","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124467400","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":"The Blue Age of Comic Books","authors":"Adrienne Resha","doi":"10.1353/ink.2020.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ink.2020.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Drawing on comics studies, disability studies, and old and new media theory, this essay argues that we are in a new age of comic books, not Golden, Silver, Bronze, or Modern, but Blue. The Blue Age is set apart from earlier ages by three new media phenomena: digital readers, guided reading technologies, and social media. Platforms like Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook are used by industry professionals and readers alike. Guided reading technologies like comiXology's Guided View make digital comics more accessible to more readers. Because Blue Age comics are digital, made with or mediated through new media technology, Blue Age readers are digital readers whether they read comics in print or on screens. Blue Age superheroes like Kamala Khan and Miles Morales represent people of marginalized identities. However, the Blue Age is not limited to the superhero genre or the comic book form. It is an age of contemporary comics. \"The Blue Age of Comic Books\" is a theoretical framework for contemporary comics studies.","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134331261","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":"Serial Selves: Identity and Representation in Autobiographical Comics by Frederik Byrn Køhlert (review)","authors":"Jenny Blenk","doi":"10.1353/ink.2020.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ink.2020.0010","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"88 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130681842","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":"Identity Temporalities and American Born Chinese","authors":"R. Wanzo","doi":"10.1353/ink.2020.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ink.2020.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In American Born Chinese, author Gene Luen Yang's play with time and caricature is an example of what I call identity temporalities at work in comic art. Comics have aesthetic characteristics that equip them to depict the nexus of identity and progress. The building blocks of caricature and sequentiality are in conversation with each other, destabilizing conventional readings of bodies, space, and things in relationship to time. People do not often understand idealization as part of the work of caricature, but as we see with Uncle Sam or well-known comic characters such as Superman or Little Orphan Annie, ideal typologies are also important forms of caricatures. The ability of these caricatures—both idealized and derogatory—to become immediate referents for identity typologies is part of their power. These caricatures travel and resonate in the present because of nostalgia and attachments to characterizations tied to particular moments in history. American Born Chinese demonstrates how we should be attentive to the way that the temporality of comics calls upon readers to read identity—specifically in relationship to time and discourses of racial progress.","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132056272","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":"Between Pen and Pixel: Comics, Materiality, and the Book of the Future by Aaron Kashtan (review)","authors":"Daniel F. Yezbick","doi":"10.1353/ink.2020.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ink.2020.0000","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131619532","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":"Watchmen and Speculating on the Future of the Humanities","authors":"J. Miranda, J. Turner","doi":"10.1353/ink.2020.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ink.2020.0006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' comic book Watchmen speculates on possible future relationships between the humanities and the sciences. Watchmen offers four versions of how scientific and humanistic knowledges might play out including anticipating the challenges facing the humanities in light of a future tied to techno-scientific and financial speculation. Drawing on the aesthetic qualities of speculative fiction to interrogate a future conceived, produced, and determined by the sciences, Watchmen draws attention to the epistemological limitations of scientific knowledge and the potential of the humanities to disclose a different kind of truth: what is sui generis and miraculous about humanity. While speculative, Watchmen suggests that the reevaluation of knowledge that resulted in prioritizing science over the humanities during the twentieth century, the gap that grew between these two forms of knowledge, as well as the efforts to reconcile science with the humanities, have failed to bring about a vision of a unified and peaceful world. Despite this failure, or perhaps in its aftermath, Watchmen suggests the humanities are destined to reappear in order to disclose a truth marginalized by a scientific future.","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126910495","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":"All-Negro Comics and the Birth of Lion Man, the First African American Superhero","authors":"Blair Davis","doi":"10.1353/ink.2019.0023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ink.2019.0023","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:In 1947, Orrin C. Evans published the first and only issue of All-Negro Comics, a comic book created exclusively by black writers and artists and featuring black characters throughout. This essay contextualizes the book within the history of African American comics characters and details the ways in which its key character, Lion Man, is a pioneering black superhero—appearing decades prior to Marvel's Black Panther and The Falcon. In examining how All-Negro Comics offered readers a unique chance to see black identity represented in authentic ways, this essay exposes the ways in which the comics industry was home to systemic forms of discrimination that put a quick end to Evans' efforts at making comics.","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116654909","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":"Drawing Racial Lines: The Aesthetics of Franklin in Peanuts","authors":"M. Abate","doi":"10.1353/ink.2019.0031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ink.2019.0031","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This essay takes another look at the comics life and cultural legacy of Franklin from Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts. While the appearance of this figure marks an important moment in US comics, it was also not without complications and even problems. In a heretofore overlooked detail, the shading technique that Schulz used to signify the race of his new black character mirrors the one that he used to shade another long-established figure from the strip: Pig-Pen. As his name implies, Pig-Pen is known for being filthy: his face is dirty, his clothes are soiled, and his body is surrounded by an ever-present cloud of dust. Schulz uses a similar hatching method to indicate that Pig-Pen's skin is dirty as he does to indicate that Franklin's is black. In so doing, Peanuts connects itself with the long history in American popular culture of likening blackness with dirt. The visual links or aesthetic connections that occur between Franklin and Pig-Pen not only complicate celebratory views of Franklin as a progressive character, but they also add to recent discussions about the importance of paying attention to the line in comics.","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"76 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134322963","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":"Comics and Sacred Texts: Reimagining Religion & Graphic Narratives ed. by Assaf Gamzou and Ken Koltun-Fromm (review)","authors":"M. Brake","doi":"10.1353/ink.2019.0027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ink.2019.0027","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127433426","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}