The American Villain: Encyclopedia of Bad Guys in Comics, Film, and Television seeks to provide one go-to reference for the study of the most popular and iconic villains in American popular culture. Since the 1980s, pop culture has focused on what makes a villain a villain. The Joker, Darth Vader, and Hannibal Lecter have all been placed under the microscope to get to the origins of their villainy. Additionally, such bad guys as Angelus from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Barnabas Collins from Dark Shadows have emphasized the desire for redemption-in even the darkest of villains. Various incarnations of Lucifer/Satan have even gone so far as to explore the very foundations of what we consider "evil." The American Villain: Encyclopedia of Bad Guys in Comics, Film, and Television seeks to collect all of those stories into one comprehensive volume. The volume opens with essays about villains in popular culture, followed by 100 A-Z entries on the most notorious bad guys in film, comics, and more. Sidebars highlight ancillary points of interest, such as authors, creators, and tropes that illuminate the motives of various villains. A glossary of key terms and a bibliography provide students with resources to continue their study of what makes the "baddest" among us so bad. Examines in detail how villains and villainesses have appeared in comics and other media over the decades Shows how villains and villainesses have reflected the fears, anxieties, and hopes of American society at any given period Provides scholarly material that gives readers additional important historical context in five essays Ensures that diverse and obscure villains and villainesses are given equal coverage

Discover the complete history of DC Comics' Harley Quinn comic art with this deluxe book. Harley Quinn made her comic book debut in The Batman Adventures #12 and soon became one of the most popular characters in the DC Comics pantheon. From there, Harley made regular appearances in multiple series, eventually getting her own ongoing comic in 2001. This deluxe art book provides the complete history of Harley Quinn comic art, detailing the creation and evolution of the character through exclusive interviews with the writers and artists who have brought the character to life. Packed with the most iconic covers and panels in Harley Quinn history, The Art of Harley Quinn is the ultimate visual guide to one of the most beloved villains in comic book history.

Nineteenth-century women illustrators and cartoonists provides an in-depth analysis of fourteen women illustrators of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Jemima Blackburn, Eleanor Vere Boyle, Marianne North, Amelia Francis Howard-Gibbon, Mary Ellen Edwards, Edith Hume, Alice Barber Stephens, Florence and Adelaide Claxton, Marie Duval, Amy Sawyer, Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, Pamela Colman Smith and Olive Allen Biller. The chapters consider these women's illustrations in the areas of natural history, periodicals and books, as well as their cartoons and caricatures. Using diverse critical approaches, the volume brings to light the works and lives of these important women illustrators and challenges the hegemony of male illustrators and cartoonists in nineteenth-century visual and print culture. -- .

World War One was the landmark event of the first quarter of the 20th century. In "The Great War, 1914-1918, " Roy Douglas tells the history of the period through an international collection of over 100 cartoons, many of them previously unknown. This pioneering pan-European approach offers new perspectives of key themes, events and figures, forcing a new reinterpretation of the familiar. Both "establishment" and "subversive" cartoons demonstrate the real concerns of all participants from the governments of the combative powers, to the soldier to those at home.
This unique collection will inform in a fresh way the continued historical debates surrounding the Great War and the implications which reach to the present day.

In a film eight years in making, Studio Ghibli's cofounder Isao Takahata tells the untold story of Princess Kaguya. An old bamboo cutter and his wife find a tiny girl inside a bamboo shoot and raise her. The mysterious little princess grows rapidly into a young lady, enthralling everyone who encounters her-but ultimately, she must face her fate. This book captures the breathtaking art of the film from conception to production, and features commentary, interviews, and an in-depth look at the production process. "Every frame is worthy of being its own painting." -Joe Hisaishi, film's composer

Acre, 1291. The last Crusadercity in the Holy Land is about to fall. TwoKnights Templar, obeying the grandmaster's orders, manage to escape theinvading Muslim army on the order's last ship. New York City, nowadays. During the unveilingof an exhibition of some of the Vatican's treasures, four men disguised asTemplars attack the Metropolitan Museum and steal several artefacts, includinga centuries-old decoder - a loss that horrifies the Church.

Marie Duval: maverick Victorian cartoonist offers the first critical appraisal of the work of Marie Duval (Isabelle Emilie de Tessier, 1847-1890), one of the most unusual, pioneering and visionary cartoonists of the later nineteenth century. It discusses key themes and practices of Duval's vision and production, relative to the wider historic social, cultural and economic environments in which her work was made, distributed and read, identifing Duval as an exemplary radical practitioner. The book interrogates the relationships between the practices and the forms of print, story-telling, drawing and stage performance. It focuses on the creation of new types of cultural work by women and highlights the style of Duval's drawings relative to both the visual conventions of theatre production and the significance of the visualisation of amateurism and vulgarity. Marie Duval: maverick Victorian cartoonist establishes Duval as a unique but exemplary figure in a transformational period of the nineteenth century. -- .

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.

Douglas covers all the great political and social issues of the interwar period. His greatest gift is for concise, clear explanation, setting each cartoon into its historical context. The scope is international.

Comic empires is a unique collection of new research exploring the relationship between imperialism and political cartoons, caricature, and satirical art. Edited by leading scholars across both fields (and with contributions from contexts as diverse as Egypt, Australia, the United States, and China, as well as Europe) the volume provides new perspectives on well-known events, and illuminates little-known players in the 'great game' of empire in modern times. Some of the finest comic art of the period is deployed as evidence, and examined seriously, in its own right, for the first time. Accessible to students of history at all levels, Comic empires is a major addition to the world-leading 'Studies in Imperialism' series, as well as standing alone as an innovative and significant contribution to the ever-growing international field of comics studies. -- .

Batman fans can call upon the world's greatest superhero with this high-quality die-cast metal Bat-Signal--projects up to 20 feet! Special features: - 5-inch tall authentically detailed Bat-Signal replica - Metal construction - LED light-up function, up to 20-feet projection in darkness - 360A Degrees rotatable base - 48-page hardcover book on Batman and Bat-Signal lore, featuring full-color illustrations throughout 3 AAA batteries not included.

Combined for the first time here are Maus I: A Survivor's Tale and Maus II - the complete story of Vladek Spiegelman and his wife, living and surviving in Hitler's Europe. By addressing the horror of the Holocaust through cartoons, the author captures the everyday reality of fear and is able to explore the guilt, relief and extraordinary sensation of survival - and how the children of survivors are in their own way affected by the trials of their parents. A contemporary classic of immeasurable significance. 

Part of a ten-volume bibliography series on comic art compiled by John A. Lent during the past decade, this volume provides more information on U.S. and Canadian comic art, animation, caricature, and gag, political, illustrative, and magazine cartoons than any other printed source in the world. Lent, founding editor of International Journal of Comic Art and longtime scholar of cartooning globally, takes great pains to be exhaustive, representative, and accurate in providing 11,367 citations of books, chapters, articles, and "fugitive" materials gleaned from a variety of sources worldwide, including about 400 periodicals and journals. Easy to use, incorporating a well-structured outline that includes categories and sub-categories, Lent spans every conceivable aspect of comic art. Other features include periodical directories for both Canada and the United States with addresses, typical contents, and inaugural dates of 101 comic art-related journals, magazines, and fanzines, and citations to hundreds of cartoonists and animators and their characters and works. Undoubtedly, this volume and the other nine in the Greenwood/Praeger series are unequalled as the definitive comic art bibliographies.

In late 1995 and early 1996, cartoonist/reporter Joe Sacco travelled four times to Gorazde, a UN-designated safe area during the Bosnian War, which had teetered on the brink of obliteration for three and a half years. Still surrounded by Bosnian Serb forces, the mainly Muslim people of Gorazde had endured heavy attacks and severe privation to hang on to their town while the rest of Eastern Bosnia was brutally 'cleansed' of its non-Serb population. But as much as Safe Area Gorazde is an account of a terrible siege, it presents a snapshot of people who were slowly letting themselves believe that a war was ending and that they had survived. Since it was first published in 2000, Safe Area Gorazde has been recognized as one of the absolute classics of graphic non-fiction. We are delighted to publish it in the UK for the first time, to stand beside Joe Sacco's other books on the Cape list - Palestine, The Fixer and Notes from a Defeatist.

'BEST GRAPHIC NOVEL OF 2021' Guardian and Irish Times 'Starts as a charming romantic comedy and turns into something tender and affecting about our need for connection. I loved this one. ' David Nicholls 'Beautiful, bittersweet portrait of modern life . . . his tragicomedy will also make the heart swell.' Guardian 'Brilliant.' Candice Carty-Williams 'This is a miraculous book.' Joe Dunthorne Nick, a young illustrator, can't connect with people. Whether it's the barista down the street, his own family or Wren, an oncologist whose life becomes painfully tangled with his, Nick can't shake the feeling that there is some hidden realm of human interaction beyond his reach. He staggers through meaningless conversations and haunts lookalike, vacuous coffee shops in the hope that he will find it there. But it isn't until Nick learns to stop performing and speak about the things that really matter that the complex and colourful worlds of the people he meets are finally revealed to him. Illustrated in both colour and black-and-white in McPhail's instantly recognisable style, In is poignant, fresh and hilarious. McPhail transforms the graphic novel with a heart-wrenching compassion uncannily appropriate for our isolated times.

What is it about anime that is so appealing to a transnational fan base? Is the American attraction to anime similar to the popularity of previous fads of Japanese culture, like the Japonisants of fin-de-siecle France enamored of Japanese art and architecture, or the American poets in the fifties and sixties who latched onto haiku? Or is this something new, a product of global culture in which ethnic identities carry less weight? This book explores these issues by taking a look at anime fans and the place they occupy, both in terms of subculture in Japan and America, and in relation to Western perceptions of Japan since the late 1800s.