Animal Comics: Multispecies Storyworlds in Graphic Narratives

by Bloomsbury Publishing

Overview

Animal characters abound in graphic narratives ranging from Krazy Kat and Maus to WE3 and Terra Formars. Exploring these and other multispecies storyworlds presented in words and images, Animal Comics draws together work in comics studies, narrative theory, and cross-disciplinary research on animal environments and human-animal relationships to shed new light on comics and graphic novels in which animal agents play a significant role. At the same time, the volume's international team of contributors show how the distinctive structures and affordances of graphic narratives foreground key questions about trans-species entanglements in a more-than-human world. The writers/artists covered in the book include: Nick Abadzis, Adolpho Avril, Jeffrey Brown, Sue Coe, Matt Dembicki, Olivier Deprez, J. J. Grandville, George Herriman, Adam Hines, William Hogarth, Grant Morrison, Osamu Tezuka, Frank Quitely, Yu Sasuga, Charles M. Schultz, Art Spiegelman, Fiona Staples, Ken'ichi Tachibana, Brian K. Vaughan, and others.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350015333
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	12/14/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	280
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

David Herman has taught at several institutions in the US and, most recently, at Durham University, UK. Growing out of his recent studies on animal narratives across media, his monograph Narratology beyond the Human will be published in 2018.
DAVID HERMAN has taught at institutions that include North Carolina State University, Purdue University, and Ohio State University, in the US, and Durham University in the UK. The guest-editor of a special issue of Modern Fiction Studies on "Animal Worlds in Modern Fiction" (2014) and editor of Creatural Fictions: Human-Animal Relationships in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Literature (2016), he is the author of a monograph on Narratology beyond the Human: Storytelling and Animal Life, which will be published in 2018.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors

Introduction: More-than-Human Worlds in Graphic Storytelling
David Herman

Part I. Animal Agency in the History and Theory of Comics

1. Lions and Tigers and Fears: A Natural History of the Sequential Animal
Daniel F. Yezbick, St Louis Community College, USA

2. The Animalized Character and Style
Glenn Willmott, Queen's University, Canada

Part II. Species of Difference: Functions of Animal Alterity in Graphic Narratives

3. The Politics and Poetics of Alterity in Adam Hines's Duncan the Wonder Dog
Alex Link, Alberta College of Art&Design, Canada

4. The Saga of the Animal as Visual Metaphor for Mixed-Race Identity in Comics
Michael A. Chaney, Dartmouth College, USA

5. Curly Tails and Flying Dogs: Structures of Affect in Nick Abadzi's Laika
Carrie Rohman, Lafayette College, USA

6. Invasive Species: Manga's Insect-Human Worlds
Mary A. Knighton, Aoyama Gakuin University, Japan

Part III. Critical Frameworks for Multispecies Comics

7. Resituating the Animal Comic: Environmentalist Aesthetics in Matt Dembicki's Xoc: The Journey of a Great White
Laura Pearson, University of Leeds, UK

8. Interspecies Relationships in Graphic Micronarratives: From Olivier Deprez to Avril-Deprez
Jan Baetens, University of Leuven, Belgium

9. Animal Minds in Nonfiction Comics
David Herman

Part IV. Graphic Animality in the Classroom and Beyond

10. Can We Be Part of the Pride? Reading Animals through Comics in the Undergraduate Classroom
Andrew Smyth and Charles E. Baraw, Southern Connecticut State University, USA

11. This is Home
Bridget Brewer and Thalia Field, Brown University, USA

Index