Commies, Cowboys, and Jungle Queens

Commies, Cowboys, and Jungle Queens PDF Author: William W. Savage
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 9780819563385
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
in the confusing decade following World War II, comic books were all the rage. They treated such issues as the atomic and hydrogen bombs, communism, and the Korean War, and they offered heroes and heroines to deal with these problems. Using five representative cartoon stories, historian William Savage looks at the immense popularity of comic books and their impact on the American public. Cartoons.

Commies, Cowboys, and Jungle Queens

Commies, Cowboys, and Jungle Queens PDF Author: William W. Savage
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 9780819563385
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
in the confusing decade following World War II, comic books were all the rage. They treated such issues as the atomic and hydrogen bombs, communism, and the Korean War, and they offered heroes and heroines to deal with these problems. Using five representative cartoon stories, historian William Savage looks at the immense popularity of comic books and their impact on the American public. Cartoons.

Wolf-Women and Phantom Ladies

Wolf-Women and Phantom Ladies PDF Author: Steven Dillon
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438455798
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
Provides encyclopedic coverage of female sexuality in 1940s popular culture. Popular culture in the 1940s is organized as patriarchal theater. Men gaze upon, evaluate, and coerce women, who are obliged in their turn to put themselves on sexual display. In such a thoroughly patriarchal society, what happens to female sexual desire? Wolf-Women and Phantom Ladies unearths this female desire by conducting a panoramic survey of 1940s culture that analyzes popular novels, daytime radio serials, magazines and magazine fiction, marital textbooks, Hollywood and educational films, jungle comics, and popular music. In addition to popular works, Steven Dillon discusses many lesser-known texts and artists, including Ella Mae Morse, a key figure in the founding of Capitol Records, and Lisa Ben, creator of the first lesbian magazine in the United States. “This exciting book presents a truly capacious understanding of US culture and offers a spectacular array of analyses of how the decade’s cultural discourse struggled to define female desire and how so much male literature and filmmaking sought to constrain it. Dillon’s study will teach scholars of modern American literature and culture a great deal more about the 1940s than they already know or think they know. It is a brilliant addition to the field.” — Gordon Hutner, author of What America Read: Taste, Class, and the Novel, 1920–1960

Icons of the American Comic Book [2 volumes]

Icons of the American Comic Book [2 volumes] PDF Author: Randy Duncan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1022

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Book Description
This book explores how the heroes and villains of popular comic books—and the creators of these icons of our culture—reflect the American experience out of which they sprang, and how they have achieved relevance by adapting to, and perhaps influencing, the evolving American character. Multiple generations have thrilled to the exploits of the heroes and villains of American comic books. These imaginary characters permeate our culture—even Americans who have never read a comic book grasp what the most well-known examples represent. But these comic book characters, and their creators, do more than simply thrill: they make us consider who we are and who we aspire to be. Icons of the American Comic Book: From Captain America to Wonder Woman contains 100 entries that provide historical background, explore the impact of the comic-book character on American culture, and summarize what is iconic about the subject of the entry. Each entry also lists essential works, suggests further readings, and contains at least one sidebar that provides entertaining and often quirky insight not covered in the main entry. This two-volume work examines fascinating subjects, such as how the superhero concept embodied the essence of American culture in the 1930s; and the ways in which comic book icons have evolved to reflect changing circumstances, values, and attitudes regarding cultural diversity. The book's coverage extends beyond just characters, as it also includes entries devoted to creators, publishers, titles, and even comic book related phenomena that have had enduring significance.

The Gospel According to Superheroes

The Gospel According to Superheroes PDF Author: B. J. Oropeza
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820474229
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
And 1970s, and the dark and violent creatures who embody the pre- and post-millennial crises of faith. Lavishly illustrated, the articles come to startling conclusions about what we have really been reading under the covers with flashlights for generations. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture

Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture PDF Author: Bart Beaty
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1604730714
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
This book is a re-examination of the critic whose Congressional testimony sparked the Comics Code. Bart Beaty traces the evolution of Wertham's attitudes toward popular culture and reassesses his place in the debate about pop culture's effects on youth and society. When The Seduction of the Innocent was published in 1954, Wertham (1895-1981) became instantly known as an authority on child psychology. Although he had published several books before Seduction, its sharp criticism of popular culture in general--and comic books in particular--made it a touchstone for debate about issues of censorship, child protection, and freedom of speech. This book reinterprets his intellectual legacy and challenges notions about his alleged cultural conservatism. Drawing upon Wertham's published works as well as his unpublished private papers, correspondence, and notes, Beaty reveals a man whose opinions, life, and career offer more subtlety of thought than previously assumed. In particular, the book examines Wertham's change of heart in the 1970s, when he began to claim that comics could be a positive influence in American society.

Comics through Time [4 volumes]

Comics through Time [4 volumes] PDF Author: M. Keith Booker
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 2803

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Book Description
Focusing especially on American comic books and graphic novels from the 1930s to the present, this massive four-volume work provides a colorful yet authoritative source on the entire history of the comics medium. Comics and graphic novels have recently become big business, serving as the inspiration for blockbuster Hollywood movies such as the Iron Man series of films and the hit television drama The Walking Dead. But comics have been popular throughout the 20th century despite the significant effects of the restrictions of the Comics Code in place from the 1950s through 1970s, which prohibited the depiction of zombies and use of the word "horror," among many other rules. Comics through Time: A History of Icons, Idols, and Ideas provides students and general readers a one-stop resource for researching topics, genres, works, and artists of comic books, comic strips, and graphic novels. The comprehensive and broad coverage of this set is organized chronologically by volume. Volume 1 covers 1960 and earlier; Volume 2 covers 1960–1980; Volume 3 covers 1980–1995; and Volume 4 covers 1995 to the present. The chronological divisions give readers a sense of the evolution of comics within the larger contexts of American culture and history. The alphabetically arranged entries in each volume address topics such as comics publishing, characters, imprints, genres, themes, titles, artists, writers, and more. While special attention is paid to American comics, the entries also include coverage of British, Japanese, and European comics that have influenced illustrated storytelling of the United States or are of special interest to American readers.

Drawing the Past, Volume 1

Drawing the Past, Volume 1 PDF Author: Dorian L. Alexander
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496837177
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Contributions by Lawrence Abrams, Dorian L. Alexander, Max Bledstein, Peter Cullen Bryan, Stephen Connor, Matthew J. Costello, Martin Flanagan, Michael Fuchs, Michael Goodrum, Bridget Keown, Kaleb Knoblach, Christina M. Knopf, Martin Lund, Jordan Newton, Stefan Rabitsch, Maryanne Rhett, and Philip Smith History has always been a matter of arranging evidence into a narrative, but the public debate over the meanings we attach to a given history can seem particularly acute in our current age. Like all artistic mediums, comics possess the power to mold history into shapes that serve its prospective audience and creator both. It makes sense, then, that history, no stranger to the creation of hagiographies, particularly in the service of nationalism and other political ideologies, is so easily summoned to the panelled page. Comics, like statues, museums, and other vehicles for historical narrative, make both monsters and heroes of men while fueling combative beliefs in personal versions of United States history. Drawing the Past, Volume 1: Comics and the Historical Imagination in the United States, the first book in a two-volume series, provides a map of current approaches to comics and their engagement with historical representation. The first section of the book on history and form explores the existence, shape, and influence of comics as a medium. The second section concerns the question of trauma, understood both as individual traumas that can shape the relationship between the narrator and object, and historical traumas that invite a reassessment of existing social, economic, and cultural assumptions. The final section on mythic histories delves into ways in which comics add to the mythology of the US. Together, both volumes bring together a range of different approaches to diverse material and feature remarkable scholars from all over the world.

Dark Carnivals

Dark Carnivals PDF Author: W. Scott Poole
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1640096124
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
The panoramic story of how the horror genre transformed into one of the most incisive critiques of unchecked American imperial power The American empire emerged from the shadows of World War II. As the nation’s influence swept the globe with near impunity, a host of evil forces followed—from racism, exploitation, and military invasion to killer clowns, flying saucers, and monsters borne of a fear of the other. By viewing American imperial history through the prism of the horror genre, Dark Carnivals lays bare how the genre shaped us, distracted us, and gave form to a violence as American as apple pie. A carnival ride that connects the mushroom clouds of 1945 to the beaches of Amity Island, Charles Manson to the massacre at My Lai, and John Wayne to John Wayne Gacy, the new book by acclaimed historian W. Scott Poole reveals how horror films and fictions have followed the course of America’s military and cultural empire and explores how the shadow of our national sins can take on the form of mass entertainment.

Superheroes and American Self Image

Superheroes and American Self Image PDF Author: Michael Goodrum
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317048393
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
This book offers an interdisciplinary approach to the study of comic-books, mobilising them as a means to understand better the political context in which they are produced. Structured around key political events in the US between 1938 and 1975, the author combines analyses of visual and textual discourse, including comic-book letters pages, to come to a more complete picture of the relationship between comic-books as documents and the people who read and created them. Exploring the ways in which ideas about the US and its place in the world were represented in major superhero comic-books during the tumultuous period of US history from the Great Depression to the political trauma of Watergate and the end of the Vietnam War, Superheroes and American Self-Image sheds fresh light on the manner in which comic-books shape and are shaped by contemporary politics. As such it will appeal to scholars of cultural and media studies, history and popular culture.

With Amusement for All

With Amusement for All PDF Author: LeRoy Ashby
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813123976
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 713

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Book Description
With Amusement for All contextualizes what Americans have done for fun since 1830, showing the reciprocal nature of the relationships among social, political, economic, and cultural forces and the ways in which the entertainment world has reflected, changed, or reinforced the values of American society.