Transnational Perspectives on Graphic Narratives

This book brings together an international group of scholars who chart and analyze the ways in which comic book history and new forms of graphic narrative have negotiated the aesthetic, social, political, economic, and cultural interactions that reach across national borders in an increasingly interconnected and globalizing world. Exploring the tendencies of graphic narratives - from popular comic book serials and graphic novels to manga - to cross national and cultural boundaries, Transnational Perspectives on Graphic Narratives addresses a previously marginalized area in comics studies. By placing graphic narratives in the global flow of cultural production and reception, the book investigates controversial representations of transnational politics, examines transnational adaptations of superhero characters, and maps many of the translations and transformations that have come to shape contemporary comics culture on a global scale.

Notes on the ContributorsForeword, John A. LentIntroducing Transnational Perspectives on Graphic Narratives: Comics at the Crossroads, Shane Denson, Christina Meyer, Daniel Stein Part I: Politics and Poetics1) Not Just a Theme: Transnationalism and Form in Visual Narratives of U.S. Slavery, Michael A. Chaney2) Transnational Identity as Shape-shifting: Metaphor and Cultural Resonance in Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese, Elisabeth El Refaie3) Cosmopolitan Suspicion: Comics Journalism and Graphic Silence, Georgiana Banita4) Staging Cosmopolitanism: The Transnational Encounter in Joe Sacco's Footnotes in Gaza, Aryn Bartley5) "Trying to Recapture the Front": A Transnational Perspective on Hawaii in R. Kikuo Johnson's Night Fisher, Iris-Aya Laemmerhirt6) Folding Nations, Cutting Borders: Transnationalism in the Comics of Warren Craghead III, Daniel WüllnerSection II: Transnational and Transcultural Superheroes7) Batman Goes Transnational: The Global Appropriation and Distribution of an American Hero, Katharina Bieloch and Sharif Bitar8) Spider-Man India: Comic Books and the Translating/Transcreating of American Cultural Narratives, Shilpa Davé9) Of Transcreations and Transpacific Adaptations: Investigating Manga Versions of Spider-Man, Daniel Stein10) Warren Ellis: Performing the Transnational Author in the American Comics Mainstream, Jochen Ecke11) "Truth, Justice, and the Islamic Way": Conceiving the Cosmopolitan Muslim Superhero in The 99, Stefan MeierSection III: Translations, Transformations, Migrations 12) Lost in Translation: Narratives of Transcultural Displacement in the Wordless Graphic NovelFlorian Groß13) Hard-Boiled Silhouettes: Transnational Remediation and the Art of Omission in Frank Miller's Sin City, Frank Mehring14) The "Big Picture" as a Multitude of Fragments: Jason Lutes's Depiction of Weimar Republic Berlin, Lukas Etter15) "Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together": The Cultural Crossovers of Bryan Lee O'Malley, Mark Berninger16) A Disappointing Crossing: The North American Reception of Asterix and Tintin, Jean-Paul Gabilliet AfterwordFraming, Unframing, Reframing: Retconning the Transnational Work of Comics, Shane DensonIndex