Understanding Comics-Based Research focuses on the contribution that comics can bring to community-based participatory research.

Praised throughout the cartoon industry by such luminaries as Art Spiegelman, Matt Groening, and Will Eisner, this innovative comic book provides a detailed look at the history, meaning, and art of comics and cartooning.

Presented in comic strip form, explores the history, symbolism, technique and content of the comic strip genre.

Children’s picturebooks are the very first books we encounter, and they form an important, constantly evolving, and dynamic sector of the publishing world. But what does it take to create a successful picturebook for children? In seven chapters, this book covers the key stages of conceiving a narrative, creating a visual language and developing storyboards and design of a picturebook. The book includes interviews with leading children’s picturebook illustrators, as well as case studies of their work. The picturebooks and artists featured hail from Australia, Belgium, Cuba, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, the UK and the USA. In this publication, Martin Salisbury and Morag Styles introduce us to the world of children’s picturebooks, providing a solid background to the industry while exploring the key concepts and practices that have gone into the creation of successful picturebooks.

Contributions by Thomas Andrae, Martin Barker, Bart Beaty, John Benson, David Carrier, Hillary Chute, Peter Coogan, Annalisa Di Liddo, Ariel Dorfman, Thierry Groensteen, Robert C. Harvey, Charles Hatfield, M. Thomas Inge, Gene Kannenberg Jr., David Kasakove, Adam L. Kern, David Kunzle, Pascal Lefèvre, John A. Lent, W. J. T. Mitchell, Amy Kiste Nyberg, Fusami Ogi, Robert S. Petersen, Anne Rubenstein, Roger Sabin, Gilbert Seldes, Art Spiegelman, Fredric Wertham, and Joseph Witek A Comics Studies Reader offers the best of the new comics scholarship in nearly thirty essays on a wide variety of such comics forms as gag cartoons, editorial cartoons, comic strips, comic books, manga, and graphic novels. The anthology covers the pioneering work of Rodolphe Töpffer, the Disney comics of Carl Barks, and the graphic novels of Art Spiegelman and Chris Ware, as well as Peanuts, romance comics, and superheroes. It explores the stylistic achievements of manga, the international anti-comics campaign, and power and class in Mexican comic books and English illustrated stories. A Comics Studies Reader introduces readers to the major debates and points of reference that continue to shape the field. It will interest anyone who wants to delve deeper into the world of comics and is ideal for classroom use.

David Smith is giving his life for his art—literally. Thanks to a deal with Death, the young sculptor gets his childhood wish: to sculpt anything he can imagine with his bare hands. But now that he only has 200 days to live, deciding what to create is harder than he thought, and discovering the love of his life at the 11th hour isn't making it any easier! This is a story of desire taken to the edge of reason and beyond; of the frantic, clumsy dance steps of young love; and a gorgeous, street-level portrait of the world's greatest city. It's about the small, warm, human moments of everyday life...and the great surging forces that lie just under the surface. Scott McCloud wrote the book on how comics work; now he vaults into great fiction with a breathtaking, funny, and unforgettable new work.

In The Secret Origins of Comics Studies, today’s leading comics scholars turn back a page to reveal the founding figures dedicated to understanding comics art. Edited by comics scholars Matthew J. Smith and Randy Duncan, this collection provides an in-depth study of the individuals and institutions that have created and shaped the field of Comics Studies over the past 75 years. From Coulton Waugh to Wolfgang Fuchs, these influential historians, educators, and theorists produced the foundational work and built the institutions that inspired the recent surge in scholarly work in this dynamic, interdisciplinary field. Sometimes scorned, often underappreciated, these visionaries established a path followed by subsequent generations of scholars in literary studies, communication, art history, the social sciences, and more. Giving not only credit where credit is due, this volume both offers an authoritative account of the history of Comics Studies and also helps move the field forward by being a valuable resource for creating graduate student reading lists and the first stop for anyone writing a comics-related literature review.