When Art Spiegelman's "Maus"-a two-part graphic novel about the
Holocaust-won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, comics scholarship grew
increasingly popular and notable. The rise of "serious" comics has
generated growing levels of interest as scholars, journalists, and
public intellectuals continue to explore the history, aesthetics,
and semiotics of the comics medium.
Yet those who write about the comics often assume analysis of
the medium didn't begin until the cultural studies movement was
underway. "Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium"
brings together nearly two dozen essays by major writers and
intellectuals who analyzed, embraced, and even attacked comic
strips and comic books in the period between the turn of the
century and the 1960s. From e. e. cummings, who championed George
Herriman's "Krazy Kat," to Irving Howe, who fretted about Harold
Gray's "Little Orphan Annie," this volume shows that comics have
provided a key battleground in the culture wars for over a
century.
With substantive essays by Umberto Eco, Marshall McLuhan, Leslie
Fiedler, Gilbert Seldes, Dorothy Parker, Irving Howe, Delmore
Schwartz, and others, this anthology shows how all of these writers
took up comics-related topics as a point of entry into wider
debates over modern art, cultural standards, daily life, and mass
communication.
"Arguing Comics" shows how prominent writers from the Jazz Age
and the Depression era to the heyday of the New York Intellectuals
in the 1950s thought about comics and, by extension, popular
culture as a whole.
A columnist for the "National Post" (Canada), Jeet Heer has been
published in "Slate," the "Boston Globe," the "Guardian," the
"Comics Journal" and many other venues.
Kent Worcester, a professor of political science and
international studies at Marymount Manhattan College, is the author
of "C. L. R. James: A Political Biography." His work has appeared
in the "Comics Journal," "New Statesman," "Popular Culture Review,"
and numerous other publications.
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