News about the premier academic journal devoted to all aspects of cartooning and comics -- the International Journal of Comic Art (ISSN 1531-6793) published and edited by John Lent.

Saturday, December 13, 2014

New Book - Asian Comics by John Lent



Asian Comics
By John A. Lent
University Press of Mississippi
ISBN 978-1-62846-158-9, hardback, $60

For Immediate Release

The first comprehensive overview of comics production and creativity in Asia

Asian Comics (University Press of Mississippi) dispels the myth that outside of Japan, the continent is nearly devoid of comic strips and comic books. Relying on his fifty years of Asian mass communication and comic art research, during which he traveled to Asia at least seventy-eight times, and visited many studios and workplaces, John A. Lent  shows that nearly every country had a golden age of cartooning and, recently, has witnessed a rejuvenation of the art form.

Organized by regions of East, Southeast, and South Asia, Asian Comics provides detailed information on comics of sixteen countries including their histories, key personnel, characters, contemporary status, problems, trends, and issues. As only Japanese comics output has received close and by now voluminous scrutiny, Asian Comics tells the story of the major comics creators outside of Japan.  The nations covered here include China, Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.

This book is the first comprehensive overview of Asian comics books and magazines (both mainstream and alternative), graphic novels, newspaper comic strips and gag panels, and cartoon/humor magazines. Lent has done exhaustive research on the subject and the volume is crammed with facts, fascinating anecdotes, and interview quotes from many pioneering masters, as well as younger artists.

Readers may be surprised to learn that Indonesia had a self-named graphic novel in 1965, that the revered King of Thailand solicited the drawing skills of a famous cartoonist to illustrate his books, that sexual and scatological cartoon magazines have thrived during Nepal's annual Cow Festival, or that a member of royalty, a national leader, and the founding heads of state in four countries drew those nations' first cartoons.

Liberally illustrated in some cases, with rarely seen images, and well documented with plentiful bibliographies, Asian Comics is a rich resource that will be of much interest to many types of audiences.

John A. Lent has founded and chaired or edited numerous organizations and periodicals, including Asia and Pacific Animation and Comics Association, Asian Research Center on Animation and Comic Art, Asian Popular Culture group of the Popular Culture Association, Asian Cinema Studies Society, Malaysia/Singapore/Brunei Studies Group, the International Journal of Comic Art, and Asian Cinema. He is the author or editor of seventy-six books.

—30—

For more information contact Clint Kimberling, Publicist, ckimberling@mississippi.edu
Read more about Asian Comics at http://www.upress.state.ms.us/books/1705

 

Monday, August 18, 2014

PSA: Help support Asian comics at Michigan State University's Comic Art Collection

Asian Comics Cataloging at Michigan State University

reprinted from Insight May 2014 - http://img.lib.msu.edu/giving/insight/Insight_May2014.pdf


"I always recommend the MSU Comic Art Collection to fellow comic researchers since it is the world's most comprehensive and internationally oriented collection in the field." Matthias Harbeck, doctoral candidate, Carl von Ossietzky Universität, Oldenburg, Germany


Help make our Asian comics accessible!

 

Comics are truly a global phenomenon, and an important goal of our Comic Art Collection is to document how cultures around the world have adopted and transformed the medium.


That's why our collection ranges from Golden Age adventure strips to South American fotonovelas, and from Japanese manga to a nearly complete run of THE 99 – the world's first comic series with Muslim superheroes.


However, it's not enough to acquire these diverse materials. It's essential to catalog them as well, so users near and far can determine what we have available.


Thanks to recent gifts, we have far more Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese comics waiting to be cataloged than we can handle – even with the broad range of language skills among the cataloging team!


Fortunately, help is available. We can send the work to an outside contractor, Backstage, which performs research-level cataloging in some 70 different languages. Backstage can complete about 150 of the most needed items for $5000 – and we have already have a generous gift of $1000 to start us off.


The Comic Art Collection is heavily used by MSU students and faculty working in the fields of history, literature, and cultural studies. Help us support their research by putting more Asian comics on the shelf!


Below is a link to a giving page that allows one to make a donation to support the cataloging of our Asian Comics.  Thanks for your interest and help with this project.

https://givingto.msu.edu/gift/?sid=1625


Tuesday, August 5, 2014

PSA: Help support Asian comics at Michigan State University's Comic Art Collection UPDATED


Asian Comics Cataloging at Michigan State University

"I always recommend the MSU Comic Art Collection to fellow comic researchers since it is the world's most comprehensive and internationally oriented collection in the field." Matthias Harbeck, doctoral candidate, Carl von Ossietzky Universität, Oldenburg, Germany

Help make our Asian comics accessible!

Comics are truly a global phenomenon, and an important goal of our Comic Art Collection is to document how cultures around the world have adopted and transformed the medium.

That's why our collection ranges from Golden Age adventure strips to South American fotonovelas, and from Japanese manga to a nearly complete run of THE 99 – the world's first comic series with Muslim superheroes.

However, it's not enough to acquire these diverse materials. It's essential to catalog them as well, so users near and far can determine what we have available.

Thanks to recent gifts, we have far more Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese comics waiting to be cataloged than we can handle – even with the broad range of language skills among the cataloging team!

Fortunately, help is available. We can send the work to an outside contractor, Backstage, which performs research-level cataloging in some 70 different languages. Backstage can complete about 150 of the most needed items for $5000 – and we have already have a generous gift of $1000 to start us off.

The Comic Art Collection is heavily used by MSU students and faculty working in the fields of history, literature, and cultural studies. Help us support their research by putting more Asian comics on the shelf!

Below is a link to a giving page that allows one to make a donation to support the cataloging of our Asian Comics.  Thanks for your interest and help with this project.

https://givingto.msu.edu/gift/?sid=1625

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

PSA: Help support Asian comics at Michigan State University's Comic Art Collection

Asian Comics Cataloging at Michigan State University

"I always recommend the MSU Comic Art Collection to fellow comic researchers since it is the world's most comprehensive and internationally oriented collection in the field." Matthias Harbeck, doctoral candidate, Carl von Ossietzky Universität, Oldenburg, Germany

Help make our Asian comics accessible!

Comics are truly a global phenomenon, and an important goal of our Comic Art Collection is to document how cultures around the world have adopted and transformed the medium.

That's why our collection ranges from Golden Age adventure strips to South American fotonovelas, and from Japanese manga to a nearly complete run of THE 99 – the world's first comic series with Muslim superheroes.

However, it's not enough to acquire these diverse materials. It's essential to catalog them as well, so users near and far can determine what we have available.

Thanks to recent gifts, we have far more Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese comics waiting to be cataloged than we can handle – even with the broad range of language skills among the cataloging team!

Fortunately, help is available. We can send the work to an outside contractor, Backstage, which performs research-level cataloging in some 70 different languages. Backstage can complete about 150 of the most needed items for $5000 – and we have already have a generous gift of $1000 to start us off.

The Comic Art Collection is heavily used by MSU students and faculty working in the fields of history, literature, and cultural studies. Help us support their research by putting more Asian comics on the shelf!

Thursday, June 19, 2014

International Journal of Comic Art Spring 2014 issue out now


International Journal of Comic Art Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring 2014

Guest Editorial
The Books Are Selling Just Fine, Thank You, or Scholarship and the Permissions Problem
Joseph Thomas
1
Comics Scholarship: Its Delayed Birth, Stunted Growth, and  Drive to Maturity
John A. Lent
9
Towards a Global History of the Political Cartoon: Challenges and Opportunities
Richard Scully
29
Chica moderna o mujer tradiconal? Intersections of Modernity and Tradition in Gabriel Vargas' La Familia Burron
Brittany Tullis
48
Comics Don't Need to Be Literature with a Capital L: An Interview with Leah Moore and John Reppion
Jeffery Klaehn
74
Atomic Horror: Entertaining Comics and "One World or None"
Eric A. Holmes
90
The Misshitsu Trial: Thinking Obscenity with Japanese Comics
Patrick W. Galbraith
125
Representation through Anti-Representation: Showing the Unspeakable in Stassen's Déogratias
Anna Howell
147
"You Can't Deny the Uncomfortable Truths": Carol Tyler and Her Frank Autobiographical Comics
John A. Lent
163
Semiotics of Filipino Komiks-to-Film Adaptation: Decoding Lapu-Lapu (1954)
Joyce L. Arriola
177
The Emergence of Black Cartoon Animators in South Africa: A Spotlight on the Work of Mdu Ntuli
Pfunzo Sidogi
208
Voices from the Margins:
The Place of Wilderness in Watchmen
Aaron A. Cloyd
223
Doomed Hybrids: Three Cases of Fatal Mixing 
in the War Comics of Tezuka Osamu
Ben Whaley
244
Allied, Japanese, and Chinese Propaganda: Cartoon Leaflets During World War II
John A. Lent
258
Women Cartoonists and Illustrators  Draw Covers for American Magazines: Case Studies from The Library of Congress's Prints & Photographs Division
Martha H. Kennedy
302
The Art of Splicing: Autofiction in Words and Images
Maaheen Ahmed
322
R for Reason Gone Rampant? The Intricate Interplay between Madness and Rationality in the Graphic Novel V for Vendetta
Marco R. S. Post
339
Writing History, Day by Day, From My Point of View: The Philosophy of Sudanese Cartoonist Khalid Albaih
Mark Anderson
367
Classical Categories, Prototypes,  and the Graphic Novel
Achim Hescher
384
"Let's part before we become mushy": Femininity and Female Antagonists in Will Eisner's "The Spirit"
David Hayes
402
I Voted Only for the Head Too: Visual Satire and Democratic Governance in Africa
Jimoh, Ganiyu Akinloye
431
Text and Images: Varying Sizes of Word Balloons in Comics
Gary Dufner and Joo Kim
445
From Boom to Bubble and Bust: Comical Economics in Aleix Saló's Troika Trilogy
Ryan Prout
458
Comics for the Blind and for the Seeing
Jakob F. Dittmar
477
Kampong (Village) Boy Lat and Icons of Malaysian Nationhood
Nasya Bahfen, Zainurul Rahman, and Juliette Peers
487
The Next Generation of Comics Scholarship 
Sandman and Greek Mythology  in The Song of Orpheus
Daniela Marino
500
Japanese Honorifics Including Openings, Closings, and Terms of Address in a Japanese Animation Film: Using Authentic Texts in Second Language Teaching and Learning
Cherie Hess
515
"Topolino canta Napoli" : Mickey Mouse as Testimonial of Piedigrotta Festival
Armando Rotondi
532
Personal Remembrances
John A. Lent and Xu Ying 
540
Bi Keguan in My Eyes
Wang Dejuan
Translated by Xu Ying
542
The Printed Word
John A. Lent
550
Book Reviews
553
Exhibition and Media Reviews
Edited by Michael Rhode
566
<Portfolio> 
The Clever Cartoons of Ross Thomson
568

Sunday, May 4, 2014

IJOCA nominated for an Eisner award

The International Journal of Comic Art has been nominated for the prestigious Eisner Award in the Best Scholarly / Academic Work category. We are appreciative of the honor.