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Summary:

"Monsters seem to be everywhere these days, in popular shows on television, in award-winning novels, and again and again in Hollywood blockbusters. They are figures that lurk in the margins and so, by contrast, help to illuminate the center - the embodiment of abnormality that summons the definition of normalcy by virtue of everything they are not. Samantha Langsdale and Elizabeth Rae Coody's edited volume explores the coding of woman as monstrous and how the monster as dangerously evocative of women/femininity/the female is exacerbated by the intersection of gender with sexuality, race, nationality, and disability. To analyze monstrous women is not only to examine comics, but also to witness how those constructions correspond to women's real material experiences. Each section takes a critical look at the cultural context surrounding varied monstrous voices: embodiment, maternity, childhood, power, and performance. Featured are essays on such comics as Faith, Monstress, Bitch Planet, and Batgirl and such characters as Harley Quinn and Wonder Woman. This volume probes into the patriarchal contexts wherein men are assumed to be representative of the normative, universal subject, such that women frequently become monsters."-- [Provided by publisher]

Table of Contents:

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction / Samanthan Lansdale, Elizabeth Rae Coody
• Part 1. The origins, agency, and paradoxes of monstrous women. Rewriting to control: how the origins of Harley Quinn, Wonder Woman, and Mary Magdalene matter to women's perceived power / Elizabeth Rae Coody ; Exploring the monstrous feminist frame: Marvel's She-Hulk as male-centric postfeminist discourse / J. Richard Stevens ; "There is more to me than just hunger": female monsters and liminal spaces in 'Monstress' and 'Pretty Deadly' / Ayanni C.H. Cooper
• Part 2. The body as monstrous. The (un)remarkable fatness of Valiant's 'Faith' / Stefanie Snider ; New and improved? Disability and monstrosity in Gail Simone's 'Batgirl' / Charlotte Johanne Fabricius ; Horrible Victorians: interrogating power, sex, and gender in 'InSEXts' / Keri Crist-Wagner
• Part 3. Childbearing as monstrous. Kicking ass in flip-flops: inappropriate/d generations and monstrous pregnancy in comics narratives / Jeannie Ludlow ; The monstrous portrayal of the maternal Bolivian chola in contemporary comics / Marcela Murillo ; The monstrous "mother" in Moto Hagio's 'Marginal': the posthuman, the human, and the bioengineered uterus / Tomoko Kuribayaski
• Part 4. Monsters of childhood. SeDUCKtress! Magica De Spell, Scrooge McDuck, and the avuncular anthropomorphism of Carl Barks's midcentury Disney comics / Daniel F. Yezbick ; On the edge of 1990s Japan: Kyoko Okazaki and the horror of adolescence / Novia Shih-Shan Chen, Sho Ogawa ; Chinese Snake Woman resurfaces in comics: considering the case study of 'Calabash Brothers' / Jing Zhang
• Part 5. Taking on the role of monster. Monochromatic teats, teeth, and tentacles: monstrous visual rhetoric in Stephen L. Stern and Christopher Steininger's 'Beowulf: The Graphic Novel' / Justin Wigard ; Beauty and her b(r)east(s): monstrosity and college women in 'The Jaguar' / Pauline J. Reynolds, Sara Durazo-DeMoss ; UFO (unusual female other) sightings in 'Saucer Country/State': metaphors of identity and presidential politics / Christina M. Knopf
• About the contributors
• Index.

Contributors:

Langsdale, Samantha , editor

Coody, Elizabeth Rae , editor

Languages:

English

Language Notes:

Item content: English

Related Series:

Horror and monstrosity studies series

Subjects:

Comic books, strips, etc. — History and criticism

Comic books, strips, etc. — Social aspects

Monsters — Comic books, strips, etc.

Women — Comic books, strips, etc.

Comic books, strips, etc.

Monsters

Women

Genres:

Essays

Literary criticism

Comic books, strips, etc.

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

General Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Physical Description:

x, 285 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Call Numbers:

PN6714 .M66 2020

ISBNs:

9781496827623 (hardcover)
1496827627 (hardcover)
9781496827630 (trade paperback)
1496827635 (trade paperback)
9781496827647 (epub) [Invalid]
9781496827654 (epub) [Invalid]
9781496827661 (pdf) [Invalid]
9781496827678 (pdf) [Invalid]

Library of Congress Control Numbers:

2019052202

OCLC Numbers:

1125002222