Masters of American comics

cover image

Where to find it

Art Library

Call Number
NC1426 .M34 2005
Status
Available

Information & Library Science Library — Juvenile Folio

Call Number
Folio Graphic Carlin
Status
Available

Summary

Comic strips and comic books were among the most popular and influential forms of mass media in 20thcentury America. This fascinating book focuses on fifteen pioneering cartoonists--ranging from Winsor McCay to Chris Ware--who brought this genre to the highest level of artistic expression and who had the greatest impact on the development of the form.Organized chronologically, Masters of American Comics explores the rise of newspaper comic strips and comic books and considers their artistic development throughout the century. Presenting a wide selection of original drawings as well as progressive proofs, vintage printed Sunday pages, and comic books themselves, the authors also look at how the art of comics was transformed by artistic innovation as well as by changes in popular taste, economics, and printing conventions.First appearing in newspaper Sunday supplements, the comic strip became immediately successful and created the largest audience of any medium of its time. The comic book first began as a way to print existing newspaper comics, then subsequently established the mass popularity of superheroes in the 1940s and 1950s before it matured as a vehicle for independent personal expression in the underground comic books and graphic novels of the 1960s.Included in the book are insightful and entertaining essays on individual artists written by major figures in the fields of comics, narrative illustration, literature, popular culture, and art history. Masters of American Comics convincingly positions the genre of comics into the history of art and is destined to become a classic text for years to come.

Contents

Masters of American comics : an art history of twentieth-century American comic strips and books / John Carlin -- Winsor McCay, The master's hand / Tom De Haven -- Lyonel Feininger, Lightning at the crossroads / Brian Walker -- George Herriman, Blues for Krazy Kat / Stanley Crouch -- E.C. Segar, Segar's Popeye / Jules Feiffer -- Frank King, Walt Wallet lives! / Karal Ann Marling -- Chester Gould, Villainy / Robert Store -- Milton Caniff / Pete Hamill -- Charles M. Schulz / Patrick McDonnell -- Will Eisner, Eisner by Pettibon / Raymond Pettibon -- Jack Kirby, Lo, from the demon shall come - the public dreamer!!! / Glen David Gold -- Harvey Kurtzman, Harvey Kurtzman's hysterical materialism / J. Hoberman -- R. Crumb, It's only lines on paper / Françoise Mouly -- Art Spiegelman, Breakdownable / Jonathan Safran Foer -- Gary Panter, Genius and pal / Matt Groening -- Chris Ware / Dave Eggers.

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