eBook - ePub

Super Bodies

Name: Super Bodies
ISBN: 9781477327388

Comic Book Illustration, Artistic Styles, and Narrative Impact

Jeffrey A. Brown,

256 pages
English
ePUB (mobile friendly)
Available on iOS & Android

eBook - ePub

Super Bodies

Comic Book Illustration, Artistic Styles, and Narrative Impact

Jeffrey A. Brown,

About this book

Finalist — San Diego Comic-Con International 2024 Eisner Award in Best Academic/Scholarly Work
2024 MPCA/ACA Best Book for Use in the Classroom, Midwest Popular Culture Association / Midwest American Culture Association (MPCA/ACA)

An examination of the art in superhero comics and how style influences comic narratives.

For many, the idea of comic book art implies simplistic four-color renderings of stiff characters slugging it out. In fact, modern superhero comic books showcase a range of complex artistic styles, with diverse connotations. Leading comics scholar Jeffrey A. Brown assesses six distinct approaches to superhero illustration—idealism, realism, cute, retro, grotesque, and noir—examining how each visually represents the superhero as a symbolic construct freighted with meaning.

Whereas comic book studies tend to focus on text and narrative, Super Bodies gives overdue credit to the artwork, which is not only a principal source of the appeal of comic books but also central to the values these works embody. Brown argues that superheroes are to be taken not as representations of people but as iconic types, and the art conveys this. Even the most realistic comic illustrations are designed to suggest not persons but ideas—ideas about bodies and societies. Thus the appearance of superheroes both directly and indirectly influences the story being told as well as the opinions readers form concerning justice, authority, gender, puberty, sexuality, ethnicity, violence, and other concepts central to political and cultural life.

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Yes, you can access Super Bodies by Jeffrey A. Brown in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & Popular Culture in Art. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.