Comics and the City: Urban Space in Print, Picture and Sequence Jorn Ahrens 9780826440198

"Comics and the City" deals with possibly the most important aspect of the aesthetics and narratives of comics - urban topography and environment. This collection of essays covers a variety of international approaches from the three main comic book cultures: the U.S., Europe, and Japan. "Comics and the City" deals with possibly the most important aspect of the aesthetics and narratives of comics - urban topography and environment. This collection of essays covers a variety of international approaches from the three main comic book cultures: the U.S., Europe, and Japan. Not only is the city depicted repeatedly in comic books, but it also serves as a major structural and aesthetic influence on them. Comics emerged parallel to, and in several ways intertwined with, the development of modern urban mass societies at the turn of the 20th century. On the one hand, urban topoi, self-portrayals, forms of urban cultural memories, and variant readings of the city (strolling, advertising, architecture, detective stories, mass phenomena, street life, etc.,) are all incorporated into comics. On the other hand, comics have unique abilities to capture urban space and city life because of their hybrid nature, consisting of words, pictures, and sequences. These formal aspects of comics are also to be found within the cityscape itself: one can see the influence of comic book aesthetics all around us today. With chapters on the very earliest comic strips, and on artists as diverse as Alan Moore, Carl Barks, Will Eisner and Jacques Tardi, "Comics and the City" is an important new collection of international scholarship that will help to define the field for many years to come.

Includes international essays on possibly the most important aspect of the aesthetics and narratives of comics - urban topography and environment.

About the Author
Jorn Ahrens is Senior Lecturer at the Master of Arts in Euroculture at University of Gottingen and Privatdozent at the Dept. of Cultural Studies at Humboldt University in Berlin (HUB). Arno Meteling teaches cultural studies at the University of Cologne in Germany.

Reviews
"This rich collection -- as multi-faceted as the twentieth-century city itself -- proves that comics are a remarkably apposite medium to convey the rich multiplicity of the urban environment. Essays here take up the ways that comics have engaged with urban language, the spatial and temporal experience of city life, aspirational (and dystopian) visual designs, and a broad range of urban types. The range of topics is remarkable, and the scholarship is first rate." -- Scott Bukatman, author of Matters of Gravity: Special Effects & Supermen in the 20th Century
Lucidly written and critically sophisticated, these essays brilliantly chart the myriad connections between comics and the urban landscapes where they were born. With cutting-edge critical readings that range freely across historical periods, narrative genres and national boundaries, Comics and the City pulls off the remarkable feat of being at once tightly focused and intellectually expansive. This volume belongs on the bookshelf of anyone who already cares about comics and anyone interested in finding out how smart comics can be. --Joseph "Rusty" Witek, Stetson University; author of Comic Books as History: The Narrative Art of Jack Jackson, Art Spiegelman and Harvey Pekar
'There is an obvious affinity between comics and the city that this welcome collection of essays explores at length from a variety of disciplinary perspectives... The anthology is broken down thematically rather than chronologically, and works all the better for it...this is an important and necessary intervention in a burgeoning area of studies.' -- New Formations



Book Information
ISBN 9780826440198
Author Jorn Ahrens
Format Paperback
Page Count 288
Imprint Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Weight(grams) 434g