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Introduction

Bridging Gaps

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2023

By
Maaheen Ahmed
Edited by
Maaheen Ahmed
Maaheen Ahmed
Affiliation:
Universiteit Gent, Belgium
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Summary

The introduction offers an overview of recent scholarly discourse and approaches to comics and graphic novels. It provides brief close readings of panels from Rodolphe Töpffer’s L’Histoire d’Albert, the anonymous comic strip, Lucy and Sophie Say Good Bye, George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan, and Emil Ferris’ My Favorite Thing is Monsters, which apply comics methodologies of reading language (Hannah Miodrag) and analyzing graphic novels (Jan Baetens and Hugo Frey), among others. To further highlight the scope of comics analyses across the variety of forms of the medium, the introduction discusses the comics in the light of Rita Felski’s concepts of knowledge and enchantment.

The introduction ends with an overview of the Companion’s seventeen chapters, from the first part on Forms, to the second one on Readings, and ending with Uses.

Keywords

comicscomics theoryenchantmentknowledgeRodolphe TöpfferGeorge HerrimanKrazy KatEmil FerrisChris WareRita Felski
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Comics , pp. 1 - 22
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

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Herriman, George. Krazy Kat, 24 September 1922.Google Scholar
Ware, Chris. Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth. Pantheon, 2000.Google Scholar

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  • Introduction
  • Edited by Maaheen Ahmed, Universiteit Gent, Belgium
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Comics
  • Online publication: 17 August 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009255653.002
Available formats
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Save book to Dropbox

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  • Introduction
  • Edited by Maaheen Ahmed, Universiteit Gent, Belgium
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Comics
  • Online publication: 17 August 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009255653.002
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Edited by Maaheen Ahmed, Universiteit Gent, Belgium
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Comics
  • Online publication: 17 August 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009255653.002
Available formats
×