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Hottest Mainstream, Books about Comics from McFarland
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Newest Titles in This Section
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In 2002, Vertigo/DC Comics published the first issue of Bill Willingham's Fables. The series imagined the lives of fairy tale figures--Snow White, the Big Bad Wolf, Cinderella and the ubiquitous Prince Charming, among many others--as they made new lives for themselves in modern-day New York City, having fled their storied homeworlds following an invasion. After 150 issues and many awards, Fables concluded... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$18.99
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Nineteen Artists, Writers, Producers and Others
In the words of Walt Disney, "Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive." Part biography, part history, part artistic commentary, this volume looks at major figures in the field of animation and discusses how their contributions have affected the course of the industry--and, in many cases, popular culture... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$19.99
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Aesthetic, Cultural and Thematic Perspectives
The theme of memory has played a significant role in anime throughout its evolution as an art form and as popular entertainment. Anime's handling of memory is multifaceted, weaving it into diverse symbolic motifs, narratives and aesthetic issues.
This study aims to provide a detailed analysis of a range of anime titles wherein different... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$17.99
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Eight Famous Works from Page to Screen
Exploring a selection of anime adaptations of famous works of both Eastern and Western provenance, this book is concerned with appreciating their significance and appeal as independent texts.
The author evaluates three aspects of anime adaptation--how anime adaptations develop their original sources in stylistic, aesthetic, and psychological... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$17.99
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Narrative Structure, Design and Play at the Crossroads of Animation and Computer Games
This book describes the thematic and structural traits of a recent and popular development within the realm of anime: series adapted from visual novels. Visual novels are interactive fiction games in which players creatively control decisions and plot turning points.
Endings alter according to the player's choices,... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$19.99
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A Study of Cartoon Camelots on Film and Television
This is an exploration of the potent blend of Arthurian legend, cartoon animation, and cultural and artistic trends from 1933 to the present. In more than 170 theatrical and televised short cartoons, televised series and specials, and feature-length films from The Sword in the Stone to Shrek the Third--all covered in this book--animators... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$15.99
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Essays on the Social, Cultural and Geopolitical Domains
The Marvel Cinematic Universe—comprised of films, broadcast television and streaming series and digital shorts—has generated considerable fan engagement with its emphasis on socially relevant characters and plots.
Beyond considerable box office achievements, the success of Marvel’s movie studios has opened up dialogue on... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$9.99
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Comics and sequential art are increasingly in use in college classrooms. Multimodal, multimedia and often collaborative, the graphic narrative format has entered all kinds of subject areas and its potential as a teaching tool is still being realized. This collection of new essays presents best practices for using comics in various educational settings, beginning with the basics.
Contributors explain... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$14.99
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Millions of Americans know and love Charlie Brown and Snoopy, Blondie and Dagwood, Doonesbury, Li'l Abner, Garfield, Cathy, Beetle Bailey and other such comic strip characters.
Thanks to the cartoonists--the people who have brought and still bring these and other characters to life day after day in the newspapers--the characters have become an entertaining and important part of American culture.... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$17.99
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Dick Grayson--alter-ego of the original Robin of Batman comics--has gone through various changes in his 75 years as a superhero but has remained the optimistic, humorous character readers first embraced in 1940. Predating Green Lantern and Wonder Woman, he is one of DC Comics' oldest heroes and retains a large and loyal fanbase.
The first scholarly work to focus exclusively on the Boy Wonder, this... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$19.99
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Critical Essays on Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Sexuality and Disability
Although its early films featured racial caricatures and exclusively Caucasian heroines, Disney has, in recent years, become more multicultural in its filmic fare and its image. From Aladdin and Pocahontas to the Asian American boy Russell in Up, from the first African American princess in The Princess and the Frog... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$17.99
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The graphic novel is the most exciting literary format to emerge in the past thirty years.
Among its more inspired uses has been the superlative adaptation of literary classics. Unlike the comic book abridgments aimed at young readers of an earlier era, today's graphic novel adaptations are created for an adult audience, and capture the subtleties of sophisticated written works.
This first ever... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$19.99
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A common misconception is that professors who use popular culture and fantasy in the classroom have abandoned the classics, yet in a variety of contexts--high school, college freshman composition, senior seminars, literature, computer science, philosophy and politics--fantasy materials can expand and enrich an established curriculum.
The new essays in this book combine analyses of popular television... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$12.99
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Essays on the Comics, Poetry and Prose
This collection of new essays looks carefully at the broad spectrum of Neil Gaiman’s work and how he interacts with feminism.
Sixteen diverse essays from Gaiman scholars examine highlights from Gaiman’s graphic novels, short stories, novels, poems and screenplays, and confront the difficult issues he raises, including femininity,... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$15.99
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This book explores the connections between comics and Gothic from four different angles: historical, formal, cultural and textual. It identifies structures, styles and themes drawn from literary gothic traditions and discusses their presence in British and American comics today, with particular attention to the DC Vertigo imprint.
Part One offers an historical approach to British and American comics... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$15.99
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Superheroes are enjoying a cultural resurgence, dominating the box office and breaking out of specialty comics stores onto the shelves of mainstream retailers.
A leading figure behind the superhero Renaissance is Grant Morrison, long-time architect of the DC Comics' universe and author of many of the most successful comic books in recent years. Renowned for his anarchic original creations--Zenith,... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$19.99
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Essays on Readers, Research, History and Cataloging
To say that graphic novels, comics, and other forms of sequential art have become a major part of popular culture and academia would be a vast understatement. Now an established component of library and archive collections across the globe, graphic novels are proving to be one of the last kinds of print publications actually gaining... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$19.99
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Essays on the Educational Power of Sequential Art
Sequential art combines the visual and the narrative in a way that readers have to interpret the images with the writing. Comics make a good fit with education because students are using a format that provides active engagement.
This collection of essays is a wide-ranging look at current practices using comics and graphic novels in educational settings,... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$15.99
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Essays on Real and Fictional Defenders of Home
These essays consider the way that heroes and the domestic spaces they defend have been represented in 20th and early 21st century popular forms, especially film, comic books and material culture. The authors work in various academic disciplines such as English, film studies, history and human geography, thus bringing a rich variety... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$19.99
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Premiering in September of 2006, the weekly NBC television series Heroes was an immediate commercial and critical hit, lasting four successful seasons. Heroes follows a group of interrelated characters who discover they have superhuman powers, with each successive episode exploring how these people react to and utilize their powers for good or for evil.
This collection of essays explores a variety... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$17.99
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Ethnographic Essays on a Pop Culture Phenomenon
This collection of 13 new essays employs ethnographic methods to investigate San Diego's Comic-Con International, the largest annual celebration of the popular arts in North America. Working from a common grounding in fan studies, these individual explorations examine a range of cultural practices at an event drawing crowds of nearly... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$15.99
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Essays on The Punisher in Print and on Screen
Since the Punisher's first appearance in the pages of Spider-Man #129, the character has become one of the most popular and controversial figures in Marvel's vast universe.
The Punisher represents one of the most recognizable types of anti-heroes. His iconic skull insignia stands for a unique type of justice: protecting the innocent while violently eliminating... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$39.95 $23.99
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Critical Perspectives on Jim Henson's Muppets
By the end of its five-year run on television, The Muppet Show had transformed its motley cast from fistfuls of felt to multi-media celebrities. Sophisticated and highly individuated, each of the Muppets embodied a conventional character type from classic television comedy. Kermit functioned as straight man to the majority of the show's... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$17.99
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Kyoto Animation, a studio with very humble beginnings, has gained recognition the world over as a uniquely inspired and inventive enterprise.
This book examines Kyoto Animation's philosophy and creative vision with close reference to its anime. It focuses on the studio's choice of genres, themes and imagery while exploring its maintenance of high production values.
The analysis highlights the studio's... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$17.99
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Essays on Disney's Edutainment Films
Throughout its long and colorful history, Walt Disney Studios has produced scores of films designed to educate moviegoers as well as entertain them. These productions range from the True-Life Adventures nature documentaries and such depictions of cutting-edge technology as Man in Space and Our Friend the Atom, to wartime propaganda shorts (Education... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$17.99
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Since its inception as an art form, anime has engaged with themes, symbols and narrative strategies drawn from the realm of magic. In recent years, the medium has increasingly turned to magic specifically as a metaphor for a wide range of cultural, philosophical and psychological concerns.
This book first examines a range of Eastern and Western approaches to magic in anime, addressing magical thinking... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$17.99
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Peter David, award-winning writer of comic books, novels, television, films and video games, has boatloads of stories to tell about his 30-year career. Whether it was attending George Takei's wedding, being described as Will Smith's bodyguard, or wandering around on the set of Babylon 5, David has been telling anecdotes of his life for years. Here they are all in one place, along with the story of... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$29.95 $17.99
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It's a rare comic character who can make audiences laugh for well over half a century--but then again, it's a pretty rare cartoon hero who can boast of forearms thicker than his waist, who can down a can of spinach in a single gulp, or who generally faces the world with one eye squinted completely shut.
When E.C. Segar's gruff but lovable sailor man first tooted his pipe to the public on January... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$19.99
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Critical Essays on the Graphic Novels
Alan Moore, the idiosyncratic, controversial and often shocking writer of such works as Watchmen, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and V for Vendetta, remains a benchmark for readers of comics and graphic novels.
This collection investigates the political, social, cultural, and sexual ideologies that emerge from his seminal work, Lost... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$17.99
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This is a book about the comics genre and language, how these were used to create Batman, and how that character's longevity is largely due to the medium's unique formal qualities.
It argues that Batman's core appeal is his mythic nature which allows him to transcend changes in reader tastes, the vicissitudes of the comics industry, and the changing media landscape.
While including some historical... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$19.99 $9.99
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This is the first overview of cartoon art in this important cultural nexus of Asia. The eight essays provide historical and contemporary examinations of cartoons and comics in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and sociocultural and political analyses of cartooning in Singapore, Myanmar, and Malaysia.
The collection benefits from hundreds of interviews with Southeast Asia's... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$18.99
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First introduced in a 1938 comic book, Superman has since become an iconic character in American entertainment.
This complete history covers Superman's appearances in film and television, from the 1941 introduction of the first Superman cartoon to the 2006 live-action film Superman Returns.
The book includes several rarely seen photographs of the actors who have brought Superman to life for over... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$19.99
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Critical Essays on Television's Shocking Cartoon Series
No American television show of the past decade has been vilified as has Comedy Central's South Park. This is the show that has featured, in turn, a nine-year-old boy enmeshed in an affair with Ben Affleck, a maniacal Mel Gibson smearing feces everywhere, and the misadventures of Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo, a talking, bouncing,... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$14.99
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Essays on Theory, Strategy and Practice
The essays in this collection discuss how comics and graphic narratives can be useful primary texts and learning tools in college and university classes across different disciplines.
There are six sections:
American Studies
Ethnic Studies
Women's and Gender Studies
Cultural Studies
Genre Studies
Composition, Rhetoric and Communication
With a combination... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$19.99
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Billionaire industrialist, cold warrior, weapons designer, alcoholic, philanthropist, Avenger--Tony Stark, alter-ego of Marvel Comics' Iron Man, has played many roles in his five decades as a superhero.
From his 1963 comics debut in Tales of Suspense to the recent film adaptations--The Avengers(2012), Iron Man 3(2013)--hundreds of creators have had a hand in writing the character... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$19.99
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Comic book audience expectations have fluctuated dramatically through the years, and comic book creators have had to adapt to shifting hopes, fears and concerns among readers.
One of Marvel Comic's most popular franchises for five decades, The Avengers have always been reflective of their times, and have adapted to an evolving readership to remain relevant.
This collection of fresh essays by popular... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$15.99
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The X-Men comic book franchise is one of the most popular of all time and one of the most intriguing for critical analysis. With storylines that often contain overt social messages within its "mutant metaphor," X-Men is often credited with having more depth than the average superhero property.
In this collection, each essay examines a specific era of the X-Men franchise in relationship... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$19.99
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Since her first appearance in 1992, Harley Quinn—eccentric sidekick to the Joker—has captured the attention of readers like few new characters have in eight decades of Batman comics. Her bubbly yet malicious persona has earned her a loyal and growing fan base as she has crossed over into television, theater, video games, and film.
In this collection of new essays, contributors explore... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$9.99
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A Complete Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel in Print, Film, Television, Comics, Games and Other Media, 1992-2010
This bibliographic guide covers the "Buffyverse"--the fictional worlds of the acclaimed television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) and its spinoff Angel (1999-2004), as well as the original Buffy feature film of 1992. It is the largest... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$18.99
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For military cartoonists the absurdity of war inspires a laugh-or-cry response and provides an endless source of un-funny amusement.
Cartoons by hundreds of artists-at-arms from more than a dozen countries and spanning two centuries are included in this study--the first to consider such a broad range of military comics.
War and military life are examined through the inside jokes of the men and... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$19.99
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A great deal of scholarship has focused on Joss Whedon's television and film work, which includes Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, The Cabin in the Woods and The Avengers.
But Whedon's work in the world of comics has largely been ignored. He created his own dystopian heroine, Fray, assembled the goofy fannish heroes of Sugarshock, and wrote arcs for Marvel's... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$17.99
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A childhood comic book fan turned comic book retailer, the author soon discovered the prevalence of scams in the world of comics collecting. This book is his tutorial on how to collect wisely and reduce risks. Drawing on skills learned from twenty years with the San Diego Police Department and as a Comic-Con attendee since 1972, he covers in detail the history and culture of collecting comic books... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$15.99
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Essential Concepts and Applications
Since the creation of the comic book, there has been a lot of legal conflict and confusion where concepts such as public domain, unincorporated entities and moral rights are involved. As a result, comics creators are frequently concerned about whether they are protecting themselves. There are many questions and no single place to find the answers--that... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$19.99
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For decades, scholars have been making the connection between the design of the superhero story and the mythology of the ancient folktale.
Moving beyond simple comparisons and common explanations, this volume details how the workings of the superhero comics industry and the conventions of the medium have developed a culture like that of traditional epic storytelling.
It chronicles the continuation... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$19.99
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Superheroes have been an integral part of popular society for decades and have given rise to a collective mythology familiar in popular culture worldwide.
Though scholars and fans have recognized and commented on this mythology, its structure has gone largely unexplored. This book provides a model and lexicon for identifying the superhero mythos.
The author examines the myth in several narratives--including... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$18.99
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From the beginning, both Robert Kirkman's comics and AMC's series of The Walking Dead have brought controversy in their presentations of race, gender and sexuality. Critics and fans have contended that the show's identity politics have veered toward the decidedly conservative, offering up traditional understandings of masculinity, femininity, heterosexuality, racial hierarchy and white supremacy. ... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$9.99
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Embiggening the Learning Experience with the Wisdom of Springfield
The object of much debate, attention, and scholarship since it first aired more than 20 years ago, The Simpsons provides excellent, if unexpected, fodder for high school and college lesson plans. After all, laughing students are hardly sleeping students! But The Simpsons also provides a familiar student knowledge... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$19.99
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Director, producer and screenwriter Joss Whedon is a creative force in film, television, comic books and a host of other media. This book provides an authoritative survey of all of Whedon’s work, ranging from his earliest scriptwriting on Roseanne, through his many movie and TV undertakings—Toy Story, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly/Serenity, Dr. Horrible, The Cabin in... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$24.99
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Mention Shaft and most people think of Gordon Parks' seminal 1971 film starring Richard Roundtree in a leather coat, walking the streets of Manhattan to Isaac Hayes' iconic theme music. But the black private dick who inspired the blaxploitation film genre actually made his debut on the printed page as the creation of a white novelist.
Ernest Tidyman was a seasoned journalist down on his luck when... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$15.99
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Wolverine. Logan. Weapon X. By any name, Marvel Comic's savage, brooding antihero is, in his own words, the best at what he does--killing with gratuitous precision. Paradoxically violent yet humane, the beer-swilling, cigar-smoking mutant with retractable claws is universally misjudged in the Marvel Universe yet esteemed by fans worldwide.
The author explores Wolverine's development from bit character... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$15.99
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