Duncan & Smith on Critical Approaches to Comics

I recently caught up with Randy Duncan and Matthew Smith, editors of the Eisner nominated book Critical Approaches to Comics: Theories and Methods, a work that collects together writings by a who's who of comics scholars and their deep thoughts regarding all sorts of critical analysis.

KM: Congratulations on your Eisner Award nomination. I understand that this is a new category for academic writing?

RD/MS: Yes, the Eisner Awards administrators and judges, particularly Ben Saunders, an English professor and comics scholar, recognized that academic work on comics was substantially different from the work usually nominated in the Best Comics-Related Book category.  Books with few pictures and words like “critical,” “theories,” and “methods” in the title are not likely to fair well against beautifully produced coffee table books about the history of DC Comics or the art of Alex Toth.

Randy Duncan and Matthew Smith signing at San Diego Comic-Con

KM: You've got a stellar cast of scholars contributing to this book. When I saw your panel San Diego Comic-Con last year, I remember being impressed by the people you brought together. How did you decide who to include?

RD/MS: Reputation had a lot to do with the selections. Nearly all of these scholars had written a book that we had read or made a presentation at a conference we attended in the past.  David Berona is the leading scholar on wordless comics, Molotiu edited the Eisner-nominated Abstract Comics anthology, Peter Coogan wrote the definitive book on the superhero genre, and Amy Nyberg is currently working on the definitive book on comics journalism.  We knew we were aiming our sites high with the list of contributors, but to our delight, nearly everyone we invited agreed to contribute. And we agree: They are stellar!

KM: How does this book build on (or compliment) your previous book Power of Comics: History, Form & Culture?

RD/MS: Power of Comics is really about introducing novice students to the field. And as its subtitle suggests, it covers the breadth of the field, covering what previous scholarship tells us about the history, form, and culture of comics. And so if the Power of Comics is an introduction to the field, then Critical Approaches is emersion into the field.  It articulates ways to generate new comics scholarship by explaining the various intellectual tools that comics scholars use and modeling how they would be employed in order to identify new insights into the medium and the cultures surrounding it.

KM: Can you talk about the structure of the book and the different sections you've included? This is intended as a teaching text, right?

Book Cover

RD/MS: Absolutely! We hope that Critical Approaches will equip the next generation of comics scholars with a variety of methods they can use to generate new insights about comics. With that in mind, we surveyed the field and attempted to identify five areas where we saw critical work clustering. First, there are a considerable number of approaches that address the formal qualities of comic book storytelling. These include tools for interpreting elements like shape, color, and form. Second, there are approaches that focus on the content of the stories and the meanings that result from them. Third is the means of production and how comics are made. This includes consideration of the creators and the industry. Fourth, we identify methods that examine context issues that draw in broader social issues manifest in comics, such as ideology and feminism. Finally, we look at audience reception and how readers make sense and build culture out of the comics experience. In all, we have 21 separate methods under these five section heads. Of course, there was not room to include all scholarly approaches, but Critical Approaches provides a solid representation of methods students and scholars can apply, modify, and build upon to advance the field of comics studies.

KM: What else are you looking forward to at Comic-Con, aside from (hopefully) winning an Eisner?

RD/MS: Ha, ha. It’s just an honor to be nominated . . . and to get to sit at the big kids’ table this year. In addition to the Eisner ceremony, another highlight will be commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the Comics Arts Conference. Randy will be moderating a Pioneers of Comics Scholarship panel featuring some of the scholars whose work is the foundation of comics studies.  Matt will also be offering his “Experience at Comic-Con” course for undergraduates who want to study the intersection of fandom and marketing cultures (seats are still available—see www.powerofcomics.com/fieldstudy for details).

Critical Approaches includes contributions from Henry Jenkins,  David Berona, Joseph Witek, Randy Duncan, Marc Singer, Pascal Lefevre,  Andrei Molotiu, Jeff McLaughlin, Amy Nyberg, Christopher Murray, Mark Rogers, Ian Gordon, Stanford Carpenter, Matthew J. Smith, Brad J. Ricca, Peter Coogan, Leonard Rifas,  Jennifer K. Stuller, Ana Merino, Mel Gibson, Jeffrey A. Brown and Brian Swafford. Congratulations on the nomination, and good luck! 

Brower on Kirby Collages

A quick post to point out a great article on the Kirby Collages by Steven Brower on the Imprint design blog. This is a topic of great fascination for me, and I'm glad to see so many excellent examples of both Kirby's collages and possible inspirations in one place. Check it out!

Kirby collage from Fantastic Four #62, 1967

Wagstaff Moves to the Met

Photo of the Whitney at Night by Ezra Stoller/Esto;
from the Whitney's web site. See more about
the Breuer building here.

As part of my on-going research about The Comic Art Show, which was one of the first major exhibitions of comics as art at the Whitney's downtown gallery in the summer of 1983, I interviewed Sheena Wagstaff, who co-curated the show with John Carlin as part of the Whitney's Independent Study Program. Eventually she became Chief Curator at the Tate in London. I just read in the March edition of ArtNews that she is taking over as head of the Modern Art department of the Metropolitan Museum in New York.  By an odd coincidence, most of the Met's modern collection is moving over to the Whitney's iconic Marcel Breuer building, as the Whitney will be moving into their new Renzo Piano designed building in the meatpacking district.

I plan to incorporate this story into my final draft, along with info about the recent Feininger show, and finally complete and publish my research on this show over the next couple of months (honest :-)

Legal Lecture on Web Design Contracts & Copyright

As some of you may know, my husband Marc H. Greenberg is the founder and co-director of the Intellectual Property Law program at Golden Gate University School of Law here in San Francisco.  A couple of months ago, he agreed to do a short lecture on web design contracts and the basics of copyright law for an advanced HTML/CSS class I was taking at City College of San Francisco. The person introducing him at the top of the video is Claudia DaSilva, who taught the course. While web design is the main topic, there's lots of general information for anyone working in the arts, or setting up their own business (approx 45 minutes).

If you have problems with this video, click here to see it on YouTube.

Bouquets to Art 2012

Floral design by Pico Design,Pico Soriano with Ignacio Lopez,
based on Berkeley No. 3 (1954) by Richard Diebekorn or, as I like to think of it,
still life with law professor (Mark H. Greenberg).

The annual Bouquets to Art exhibition was at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park this past week. It was amazing as always with over 150 floral designers participating (see a full list here).

There were a few things that really stood out to me, in terms of design. People seemed to move away from monotone designs and there was an explosion of color in high contrast compositions. Designers embraced painted leaves and flowers, dyed flowers, recycled materials, colored wire, and all kinds of props and bling. I saw several designs that used Gypsophila (Baby's Breath) in innovative ways, a filler flower that is often shunned (seen as the "dozen roses and baby's breath" bouquet that was popular a couple of generations ago). There were several arrangements that used glass tubes extensively as a design element, and some that were done in terrarium styles. Flowers were grouped by texture and color, and there were also many designs composed of several arrangements working together. People made great use of succulents, and found some that looked pretty exotic.

Floral design by Waterlily Pond Floral Design based on Ultramarine Stemmed Form with Orange
from the Persian series, by Dale Chihuly. The blue "shell" is made of painted palm leaves.

I wish I could remember the location of all of the designs in the photos shown in the slideshow embedded below. This is actually only a portion of the many outstanding designs in the exhibition. If you can't see the slideshow below, click here to see it on Flickr.

 

Gorey Exhibit at Columbia

Illustration by Edward Gorey

Oh, sometimes it drives me crazy being geographically challenged. When will we get transporter technology? "Beam me up"... or beam me over to New York, in this case, where there is an exhibition of works by Edward Gorey at the Columbia University Library of Rare Books and Manuscripts. Check out Gorey Preserved here.

22 Ways to Fight Writer's Block

Since many of the regular readers of this blog write in some way or another, I thought that this infographic from Copyblogger would be useful. I know from personal experience that writer's block can be frustrating and emotionally fraught, and thought that these were good suggestions presented in a fun visual style.

Personally, walks on the beach help. Tea while reading something by an author that inspires me helps, and sometimes I re-read things I have written before (to remind myself that I have done it before and lived through it :-).  What methods do you use to get the words flowing? Leave me a comment.


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