Comic Books as History SC (1989 University Press of Mississippi) comic books 1980-1989

1st Printing - It is safe to say that comic books are not just for kids anymore. As American codes of ethics, aesthetics, and semiotics have evolved, so too has the comic book developed as a genre for presenting the weightier matters of history. Here in a new view of one of literature's former lightweights, the comic book, a medium that once was considered exclusively for juvenile trash literature, is given full-length study as a serious narrative form. Three gifted artists who turned to comic books for expressing sober intent - Jack Jackson, Art Spiegelman, and Harvey Pekar - are credited with it's transformation. They have presented history, autobiography, tragedy, and even the Holocaust in the modes of the conventional comic book - but with a difference. In Jackson's "Los Tejanos and Comanche Moon", in Spiegelman's "Maus: A Survivor's Tale", and in Pekar's "American Splendor" the comics form has been given additional range in tone, style, and subject matter. Here in an appreciation of the serious aims of such creative artists and their acclaimed achievement is a study that takes comics to be dead serious. Softcover, 6" x 9", 164 pages, B&W.