Black Women in Sequence: Re-inking Comics, Graphic Novels, and Anime

by Deborah Elizabeth Whaley

Overview

Black Women in Sequence takes readers on a search for women of African descent in comics subculture. From the 1971 appearance of the Skywald Publications character “the Butterfly” - the first Black female superheroine in a comic book - to contemporary comic books, graphic novels, film, manga, and video gaming, a growing number of Black women are becoming producers, viewers, and subjects of sequential art.

As the first detailed investigation of Black women’s participation in comic art, Black Women in Sequence examines the representation, production, and transnational circulation of women of African descent in the sequential art world. In this groundbreaking study, which includes interviews with artists and writers, Deborah Whaley suggests that the treatment of the Black female subject in sequential art says much about the place of people of African descent in national ideology in the United States and abroad.

For more information visit the author's website: http://www.deborahelizabethwhaley.com/#!black-women-in-sequence/c65q

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780295994963
Publisher:	University of Washington Press
Publication date:	11/01/2015
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	730,390
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Deborah Elizabeth Whaley is associate professor of American studies and African American studies at the University of Iowa. She is the author of Disciplining Women: Alpha Kappa Alpha, Black Counterpublics, and the Cultural Politics of Black Sororities.

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Re-inking the Nation: Jackie Ormes’s Black Cultural Front Comics

2. Black Cat Got Your Tongue?: Catwoman, Blackness, and Postracialism

3. African Goddesses, Mixed-Race Wonders, and Baadasssss Women: Black Women as “Signs” of African in US Comics

4. Anime Dreams for African Girls: Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water

5. Where I’m Coming From: Black Female Artists and Postmodern Comix

Conclusion: Comic Book Divas and the Making of Sequential Subjects

Notes

Index

What People are Saying About This

Cassandra Jackson

"Black Women in Sequence considers how Black women function as ‘referents’ for a larger discussion about social relations. What sets the book apart is its sophisticated approach to the subject."

John Jennings

"This book has a great deal to contribute to the field. There's never been a publication that focuses on the diversity of representations by Black female comics creators to this magnitude."

Editorial Reviews

"Engaging and provocative, Black Women in Sequence is relevant not only to comic scholars, but to anyone with an interest in how difference is represented using visual rhetoric."

Feminist Media Studies

"A must read."

Women Write about Comics - Laura Sneddon

One of the first book-length works to deal specifically with the construction and experience of black women in sequential art. . . . Whaley considers the creation and consumption of sequential media by black women, often erased from conversations about fan culture. . . . An extraordinarily ambitious work.

American Literature - Joshua Abraham Kopin

11/15/2016
From 1971 and Hell Rider superhero Butterfly through contemporary cartoons, Whaley (American studies, Univ. of Iowa) unpacks meaning and cultural impact of cartoons by and of women of African descent. Topics include Catwoman, Jackie Ormes and her pioneering newspaper strips, black women characters as embodying attributes of Africa, and the anime Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. Over a dozen characters are discussed, and as many black women creators.

Library Journal

"One of the first book-length works to deal specifically with the construction and experience of black women in sequential art. . . . Whaley considers the creation and consumption of sequential media by black women, often erased from conversations about fan culture. . . . An extraordinarily ambitious work."

Joshua Abraham Kopinn Literature