Killer Bodies offers a history of the single most critically derided subgenre in American superhero comics: the "bad girl" comics of the 1990s, which chronicled the blood-soaked adventures of barely dressed and improbably proportioned action heroines for an audience of adolescent boys. While not in any way attempting to rehabilitate the genre, which for the most part amply deserved its reputation as sexist and borderline pornographic, this book situates it within its original cultural context, as the result of a matrix of influences that included third-wave feminism, neopaganism, "girl power," the rise of the internet, the growing popularity of manga, supermodel beauty ideals, and the mainstreaming of pornography. It explores why and how the figure of the antiheroic, physically aggressive, sexually objectified heroine arose within American comics culture, and the commercial and ideological factors that led to the genre's rapid rise and equally rapid decline amidst the crisis-racked comics industry of the mid-1990s.
- 206 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF
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Information
Publisher
Rutgers University PressYear
2025Print ISBN
9781978841963
9781978841970
eBook ISBN
9781978841994
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1. Secret Origins: The Birth of the "Bad Girl" Genre
- 2. Killer Bodies: "Bad Girls" and the American Comics Industry
- 3. Revolution Girl Style: "Bad Girl" Comics and Third-Wave Feminism
- 4. Girl Power: Postfeminist "Bad Girl" Comics
- 5. After the Fall: "Bad Girl" Comics Since 1997
- Conclusion: How Bad Were the "Bad Girls"?
- Works Cited
- Index
- About the Author
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Yes, you can access Killer Bodies by Joseph Crawford in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & Comics & Graphic Novels Literary Criticism. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.