Tuesday, July 10, 2007

books on comics scholarship

I've been buying and reading a lot of books on comics scholarship recently in preparation for my presentations in October (by the by, did I ever mention here that my second proposal, "Fostering Critical Thinking in Comics," was accepted as well? I'll be presenting it in Chicago during the first weekend in October and the Plastic Man/Spirit paper during the second weekend of October in Kansas City).

Anyway, I have recently purchased:

Jack Cole and Plastic Man, which is obviously going to help me a great deal with the Plastic Man paper and was a very interesting presentation of the zaniness that Cole brought to the character;

Masters of the Comic Book Universe Revealed, which has a bit on Eisner, but which ALSO has a bit on Marjane Satrapi which a colleague and I might use if we co-author a paper on her comics;

The Education of a Comics Artist, which I just got in the mail today and haven't even flipped through yet, but which also has a bit on Eisner and a bit on Satrapi;

and I just ordered today:

Grant Morrison: The Early Years, which should be helpful in the "Soul of a New Machine" portion of the "Fostering Critical Thinking" presentation;

Doom Patrols: A Theoretical Fiction of Postmodernism, which actually has a chapter that analyzes "Soul of a New Machine" which I've read online (and which you can too by clicking this link).

and Reading Comics, by Douglas Wolk, who reveals in the pages of this book that he was the writer behind Jess Lemon, infamous reviewer for the Pulse.