This collection of essays analyzes the many ways in which comic book and film superheroes have been revised or rewritten in response to changes in real-world politics, social mores, and popular culture. Among many topics covered are the jingoistic origin of Captain America in the wake of the McCarthy hearings, the post?World War II fantasy-feminist role of Wonder Woman, and the Nietzschean influences on the ?sidekick revolt? in the 2004 film The Incredibles.

This is an affectionate and revealing book about uncovering the story behind this most uncommon trio - a man, a boy and his tiger. For ten years, "Calvin and Hobbes" was one of the world's most beloved comic strips. And then, on the last day of 1995, the strip ended. Its mercurial and reclusive creator, Bill Watterson, not only finished the strip but withdrew entirely from public life. There is no merchandising associated with Calvin and Hobbes: no movie franchise; no plush toys; no coffee mugs; and, no t-shirts (except a handful of illegal ones). There is only the strip itself, and the books in which it has been compiled. In "Looking for Calvin and Hobbes", Nevin Martell traces the life and career of the intensely private man behind "Calvin and Hobbes". With input from a wide range of artists and writers (including Dave Barry, Harvey Pekar, and Brad Bird) as well as some of Watterson's closest friends and professional colleagues, this is as close as we're ever likely to get to one of America's most ingenious and intriguing figures - and a fascinating detective story, too.

Celebrated during his lifetime as much for his personality as for his paintings, Andy Warhol (1928-1987) is the man who invented Pop Art, the notion of 15 minutes of fame and the idea that an artist could be as illustrious as the work he creates. With a unique, focused look at Warhol's life, this graphic novel biography offers insight into the turning point of Warhol's career and the time leading up to the creation of the Thirteen Most Wanted Men mural for the 1964 World's Fair, when Warhol clashed with urban planner Robert Moses and architect Philip Johnson. In Becoming Andy Warhol, New York Times bestselling writer Nick Bertozzi and artist Pierce Hargan showcase the moment when, by stubborn force of personality and sheer burgeoning talent, Warhol went up against the creative establishment and emerged to become one of the most significant artists of the 20th century.

This beautiful and engaging volume charts the evolution of manga from its roots in late 19th-century Japan through the many and varied forms of comics, cartoons and animation created throughout Asia for more than 100 years. World authority on comic art Paul Gravett details the evolving meanings of the myths and legends told and retold by manga artists of every decade and reveals the development and cross pollination of cultural and aesthetic ideas between manga artists throughout Asia. He explores the explosion of creativity in manga after the Second World War with the emergence of such artists as Osamu Tezuka, whose pioneering Astro Boy spawned a new and much imitated visual dynamic. He highlights how creators have responded to political events since 1950 in the form of propaganda, criticism and commentary in manga magazines, comics and books. There have been many remarkably powerful and sophisticated graphic novels, although some sexually explicit and emotionally dark adult manga has also attracted criticism, raising questions about taste and acceptability. Gravett discusses the influence of censorship on manga and concludes with a survey of current multi- platform offerings of manga in Asia and the transition from cut-price rental libraries to the booming specialist emporia and comic conventions that champion the kaleidoscope of creativity apparent in the digital age.

"Magnificent! The best how-to manual ever published." - Kevin Kelly, Cool Tools Scott McCloud tore down the wall between high and low culture in 1993 with Understanding Comics, a massive comic book about comics, linking the medium to such diverse fields as media theory, movie criticism, and web design. In Reinventing Comics, McCloud took this to the next level, charting twelve different revolutions in how comics are generated, read, and perceived today. Now, in Making Comics, McCloud focuses his analysis on the art form itself, exploring the creation of comics, from the broadest principles to the sharpest details (like how to accentuate a character's facial muscles in order to form the emotion of disgust rather than the emotion of surprise.) And he does all of it in his inimitable voice and through his cartoon stand-in narrator, mixing dry humor and legitimate instruction. McCloud shows his reader how to master the human condition through word and image in a brilliantly minimalistic way. Both comic book devotees and the uninitiated will marvel at this journey into a once-underappreciated art form.

There's a price on Shelton's head - enough to buy a small country! Wayne Shelton has a sad duty to fulfill: give the heirs of his deceased team members their share of the pay for the disastrous Khalakjistan mission. But the solemnity of the task is quickly shattered: two hitmen attempt to shoot him in South America, then a bomb is placed under his car in the USA... Who exactly placed such an extravagant price on Shelton's head? And who's the mysterious biker trailing him?

This book covers producing concepts and character sketches to laying out the final page of art. From comics icon Stan Lee, creator of the Mighty Marvel Universe and characters such as Spider-Man, Incredible Hulk and the X-Men, comes this ultimate how-to book for aspiring comic book artists. In Stan Lee's "How to Draw Comics", the author sets out to teach everything he knows about writing, drawing and creating comic book characters. The book focuses primarily on action-adventure comics, but will touch upon other genres and styles, such as romance, humour, horror and the widely influential manga style. From producing concepts and character sketches to laying out the final page of art, the man with no peer, Stan Lee, is the ultimate guide to the world of creating comics.

All of Chris Hart's how-to-draw titles are best-sellers. And the best-sellers among all of his best-sellers are the ones about animals. "How to Draw Cartoon Animals," just one example, appears regularly on the BookScan Top 50 Art Books list, with more than 190,000 copies sold. Now "The Cartoonist's Big Book of Drawing Animals" is ready to roar onto the market All the most popular animals are here, including dogs, cats, horses, penguins, lions, tigers, bears, and elephants, as well as the favorite sidekick animals--pigs, kangaroos, giraffes, turtles. Simple step-by-step drawings show how to capture every cartoon emotion, from cutesy-sweet to begging to scheming, and how to create every box-office type, from baby animals to villain animals to clueless animals and much more. Faces, bodies, paws, feet, wings, tails--every part of dozens of animals is explained in this bumper book by the world's leading author of instructional art books. It's a mega-menagerie for cartoonists

After finding out she is to be forced into an marriage of convenience as soon as she graduates high school, Kokoro sees her life ending before her eyes at her father's wishes. And so in her final year of high school, she decides to indulge in her love of other women, and create an incredible sketchbook of lesbian romance to leave behind as her legacy. As she observes the young women of her town, she learns more about their desires, their struggles, and the unpredictable whims of love.

2022 Eisner Award Winner for Best Academic/Scholarly Work Japanese comics, commonly known as manga, are a global sensation. Critics, scholars, and everyday readers have often viewed this artform through an Orientalist framework, treating manga as the exotic antithesis to American and European comics. In reality, the history of manga is deeply intertwined with Japan’s avid importation of Western technology and popular culture in the early twentieth century.   Comics and the Origins of Manga reveals how popular U.S. comics characters like Jiggs and Maggie, the Katzenjammer Kids, Felix the Cat, and Popeye achieved immense fame in Japan during the 1920s and 1930s. Modern comics had earlier developed in the United States in response to new technologies like motion pictures and sound recording, which revolutionized visual storytelling by prompting the invention of devices like speed lines and speech balloons. As audiovisual entertainment like movies and record players spread through Japan, comics followed suit. Their immediate popularity quickly encouraged Japanese editors and cartoonists to enthusiastically embrace the foreign medium and make it their own, paving the way for manga as we know it today.   By challenging the conventional wisdom that manga evolved from centuries of prior Japanese art and explaining why manga and other comics around the world share the same origin story, Comics and the Origins of Manga offers a new understanding of this increasingly influential artform.

One of the singular talents in landscape design, Chip Sullivan has shared his expertise through a seemingly unusual medium that, at second glance, makes perfect sense--the comic strip. For years Sullivan entertained readers of Landscape Architecture Magazine with comic strips that ingeniously illustrated significant concepts and milestones in the creation of our landscapes. These strips gained a large following among architects and illustrators, and now those original works, as well as additional strips created just for this book, are collected in Cartooning the Landscape. Framed by a loose narrative in which a young man's search for wisdom is fulfilled by a comics shop owner who instructs him not only in the essentials of illustrating but in how to see, the book takes us on a whirlwind series of journeys. We visit the living sculptures of the Tree Circus on California's Highway 17, the vast network of tunnels and fortifications--almost an underground city--of France's Maginot Line, and take a trip through time that reveals undeniable parallels between the Emperor Hadrian's re-creation of the Elysian Fields and, of all things, the iconic theme parks of Walt Disney. Sullivan immerses us in the artist's concepts and tools, from the Claude mirror and the camera obscura to the role of optical illusion in art. He shows us how hot air balloons introduced aerial perspective and reveals exhibition effects that portended everything from Cinerama to Smell-O-Vision. Sullivan's book is also a plea, in an era increasingly dominated by digitally rendered images, for a new appreciation of the art of hand drawing. The proof of this craft's value lies in the hundreds of Sullivan's panels collected in this passionate, humorous, always illuminating tour of the rich landscape surrounding us.

"I found this book to be a hoot from beginning to end. Ms. Gresh and Mr. Weinberg must have spent some time in institutions for the deranged, because well-balanced minds could not have conceived of this project. But thank God for their derangement, for they have produced a package of pure fun from first page to last. If, like me, you admire superheroes from a distance, or if you are a hardcore fan of them, you will enjoy this book as surely as you would enjoy waking one morning to discover that you are invincible, able to fly, and in possession of a totally cool costume behind which to hide your true identity." —Dean Koontz, from the Introduction

"We comics fans have known it for years, of course: somewhere, in some nether dimension or on some alternate world, there is an Earth on which superheroes are real, living, breathing beings . . . and now Lois Gresh and Bob Weinberg have shown us how that’s possible. Mutants . . . aliens . . . scientific geniuses with a penchant for wearing costumes and masks . . . or just plain Joes who’ve trained their bodies within an inch of their lives . . . all are probed, dissected, examined in loving details. To paraphrase an old DC Comics feature: Science says you’re wrong if you believe that The Science of Superheroes isn’t more fun than a barrel of genetically-altered winged monkeys." —Roy Thomas, writer and editor of X-Men, Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, Superman, Justice League of America, Legion of Superheroes, Star Wars, and many other comic book classics

"Weinberg and Gresh tell it like it is–– and how it would be, if our favorite comic book characters actually existed. The Science of Superheroes is a fascinating and entertaining examination of everything from astrophysics to genetic biology to the evolution of the "superhero." —Mark Powers, editor of X-Men and Uncanny X-Men

For over 30 years, Stan Winston and his team of artists and technicians have been creating characters, creatures and monsters for the silver screen, from "The Terminator" and the extraterrestrial monstrosities of "Aliens" and "Predator "to the amazing dinosaurs of "Jurassic Park "and the fanciful character of "Edward Scissorhands."
Now, at last, he's opening up the Stan Winston Studio to collaborate on the first-ever book to reveal all the behind-the-scenes secrets of his groundbreaking and hugely influential artistry and effects work.
Featuring an extensive array of sketches, production art, and photographs straight from the studio archives, this is the book his fans have been waiting for!

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.

The essential guide to drawing manga figures. Ideal for seasoned comic artists or complete beginners, this fantastic book is packed with clear instructions and inspiration for drawing manga figures. It begins with the basics and contains galleries of body parts, expressions and hair styles to inspire and encourage the reader, along with step-by-step guides to mastering fundamentals such as anatomy and hands and feet. A range of profiles, characters, genders and ages is included. Build up skill through drawing and inking and then experiment using different colouring media - including markers, watercolour acrylics and pencils - to achieve outstanding results. This title was previously published as Manga - The Mega Guide (9781782210764)

From their big bright eyes and chubby cheeks to their childlike cuteness and adorable expressions, it's hard not to fall in love with Chibi Mangas. The origin of many of popular chibis are the result of creating a child version of adult characters from well-known anime series such as Sailor Moon, Naruto, Dragon Ball, and One Piece. Filled with super cute characters created by artists from around the world, this is the perfect guidebook to creating your own collection of sweet CHIBI manga.

Winner, 2021 Katherine Singer Kovacs Book Award, given by the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Winner, 2021 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards for Best Academic/Scholarly Work Honorable Mention, 2021 Harry Shaw and Katrina Hazzard-Donald Award for Outstanding Work in African-American Popular Culture Studies, given by the Popular Culture Association Winner, 2020 Charles Hatfield Book Prize, given by the Comic Studies Society Traces the history of racial caricature and the ways that Black cartoonists have turned this visual grammar on its head Revealing the long aesthetic tradition of African American cartoonists who have made use of racist caricature as a black diasporic art practice, Rebecca Wanzo demonstrates how these artists have resisted histories of visual imperialism and their legacies. Moving beyond binaries of positive and negative representation, many black cartoonists have used caricatures to criticize constructions of ideal citizenship in the United States, as well as the alienation of African Americans from such imaginaries. The Content of Our Caricature urges readers to recognize how the wide circulation of comic and cartoon art contributes to a common language of both national belonging and exclusion in the United States. Historically, white artists have rendered white caricatures as virtuous representations of American identity, while their caricatures of African Americans are excluded from these kinds of idealized discourses. Employing a rich illustration program of color and black-and-white reproductions, Wanzo explores the works of artists such as Sam Milai, Larry Fuller, Richard "Grass" Green, Brumsic Brandon Jr., Jennifer Crute, Aaron McGruder, Kyle Baker, Ollie Harrington, and George Herriman, all of whom negotiate and navigate this troublesome history of caricature. The Content of Our Caricature arrives at a gateway to understanding how a visual grammar of citizenship, and hence American identity itself, has been constructed.

This book examines how the definition of the medium, as well as its language, readership, genre conventions and marketing and distribution have kept comic books within the realm of popular culture. This study presents a unique contribution to the current literature on comics and helps clarify concepts and definitions useful in studying the medium. The evolution of the comic book superhero - from the patriotic heroes of the 1940s to the muscular rebels of the 1990s - is analysed, showing how as the superheroes change, so does the style and content of the books.

The Penguin Classics Marvel Collection presents the origin stories, seminal tales, and characters of the Marvel Universe to explore Marvel's transformative and timeless influence on an entire genre of fantasy.

It is impossible to imagine American popular culture without Marvel Comics. For decades, Marvel has published groundbreaking visual narratives that sustain attention on multiple levels: as metaphors for the experience of difference and otherness; as meditations on the fluid nature of identity; and as high-water marks in the artistic tradition of American cartooning, to name a few.

The Black Panther is not just a super hero; as King T'Challa, he is also the monarch of the hidden African nation of Wakanda. Combining the strength and stealth of his namesake with a creative scientific intelligence, the Black Panther is an icon of Afro-futurist fantasy. This new anthology includes the Black Panther's 1966 origin tale and the entirety of the critically acclaimed "Panther's Rage" storyline from his 1970s solo series.

A foreword by Nnedi Okorafor, a scholarly introduction and apparatus by Qiana J. Whitted, and a general series introduction by Ben Saunders offer further insight into the enduring significance of Black Panther and classic Marvel comics.

The Penguin Classics black spine paperback features full-color art throughout.