"We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay. I believe we have always done this, used images to stand and understand what otherwise would be intolerable." —Lynda Barry, What It Is
Welcome! This guide is intended to gather in one place an aspirational (though not exhaustive) list of resources related to English language comic books, graphic novels, comic strips, and other works at the intersections of image and word. Some of these resources are specific to the CU Boulder Libraries and others are freely available online. This guide also links to other lists, guides, comic book stores, and genre artists and experts. If you have questions, feedback, or would like to suggest a resource for inclusion, please email me using the profile link at right.
Uncanny Bodies by
Superhero comics reckon with issues of corporeal control. And while they commonly deal in characters of exceptional or superhuman ability, they have also shown an increasing attention and sensitivity to diverse forms of disability, both physical and cognitive. The essays in this collection reveal how the superhero genre, in fusing fantasy with realism, provides a visual forum for engaging with issues of disability and intersectional identity (race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality) and helps to imagine different ways of being in the world.
Breaking the Frames by
Breaking the Frames: Populism and Prestige in Comics Studies surveys the current state of comics scholarship, interrogating its dominant schools, questioning their mutual estrangement, and challenging their propensity to champion the comics they study.
Avengers Assemble! by
Avengers Assemble! explores the cinematic and televisual branches of the Marvel Cinematic Universe from a diverse range of critical perspectives. Beginning with Iron Man, it considers them as both embodiments of the changing blockbuster film and affective cultural artifacts that are immersed in the turbulent political climate of their era.
Transmedia Storytelling in East Asia by
This book offers a thorough investigation of the recent surge of webtoons and manga/animation as the sources of transmedia storytelling for popular culture, not only in East Asia but in the wider global context.
