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Summary:

"Fans and scholars have long regarded the 1980s as a significant turning point in the history of comics in the U.S. The decade saw titles such as Art Spiegelman's "Maus", Frank Miller's "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns", and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's "Watchmen" celebrated by both readers and critics alike, even attracting the attention of prominent publications including the "New York Times," the "Atlantic," and "Rolling Stone." Three decades later, most of the critical discussion of the period still focuses on these three books and their creators, eclipsing the work of others who also played a key role in shaping comics as we know them today. With twenty essays covering a diverse array of material, "The Other 1980s: Reframing Comics' Crucial Decade" offers a more complicated and multivalent picture of this remarkably robust era of ambitious comics publishing. Many of the works considered in this volume were hailed as innovative and groundbreaking in their day, but they have fallen to the wayside, in some cases because they do not easily square with the dominant tendencies in comics studies. Instead, "The Other 1980s" illuminates works that prove far more unwieldy, though no less interesting: open-ended serials that do not translate neatly to the graphic novel format beloved by literature departments; sprawling superhero narratives with no connection to corporate superhero universes; offbeat and abandoned experiments by major publishers, including Marvel and DC, to reach new audiences; idiosyncratic and experimental independent comics; unusual genre exercises filtered through deeply personal sensibilities; and oft-neglected offshoots of the classic "underground" comics movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The contributors also offer original and enlightening examinations of the ways in which the fans and critics of the day engaged with creators and publishers and laid the groundwork for much of the contemporary critical and academic discourse on comics. By uncovering comics and creators long ignored by comics studies, "The Other 1980s" offers a more nuanced understanding of the context from which the iconic works of the 1980s emerged and revises conventional histories of this major period in comics"-- [Provided by publisher]

Table of Contents:

• PART II. "Gerbils, Geckos, and Wharf Rats": Or, Publishers, Properties, and Capitalism
• Making Graphic Novels in the Early Direct Market: Eclipse Enterprises and Steve Gerber's Stewart the Rat
• "Entertainment Should Be an Adventure": Reggie Byers, Shuriken, and the Black-and-White Boom
• Another Toy Story: The Micronauts, Rom, and Capitalist Epic
• PART III. "The Sense of the Everyday": Rethinking Gender, Race, and Sexuality
• Graphic Representations of "Vietnam Syndrome": Race and Masculinity in The 'Nam and Real War Stories
• For Shame! Wimmen's Comix Redux and Dori Seda's Lonely Nights
• "Hysteria, the Other AIDS Epidemic": Strip AIDS USA, HIV, and the Narrative of Respectability
• PART IV. A Real American Hero? Adventures in Politics, Comedy, and Regionalism
• "Shades and Light": Representational Paradox and Tim Truman's Scout Saga
• The Lark/Light Returns: DC's Humorous Heroes of the 1980s
• "Where Is My Soil?" Ms. Mystic in the Anthropocene
• Metropolis in Dixie: Race, Liberty, and the Atlanta of Southern Knights
• PART V. "A SMALL STEP TOWARD THAT UTOPIAN DREAM"
• ROBO-TEXTS AND MECHA-MORPHS: The Rise of Robotech, the Coming of Comico, and the TransmedialJoys of the 1980s "Japanimated" Explosion
• "ALWAYS ANOTHER RAINBOW": Fans, Comics Publishing, and the Return of Donald Duck
• THE CRUSADE OF THE COMICS JOURNAL
• REVOLUTION GIRL STYLE LATER: Intergenerational Feminisms and the Second Life of Wimmen's Comix in the 1980s
• AMETHYST, MEET MISTY, AND ANGEL LOVE: Historical Footnotes or Paths Not Taken?
• EPILOGUE

• CONTRIBUTORS
• INDEX

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Contributors:

Costello, Brannon, 1975- , editor

Cremins, Brian , editor

Languages:

English

Language Notes:

Item content: English

Other Related Resources:

Print version: The other 1980s (Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, [2021] — ISBN 9780807171332; LCCN 2020046111)

Subjects:

Comic books, strips, etc. — United States — History — 20th century

Nineteen eighties

1900-1999

Comic books, strips, etc.

United States

Genres:

History

General Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Description based on: Online resource; title from PDF title page (Project MUSE platform, viewed November 14, 2022).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 355 pages)

Digital Characteristics:

text file

Call Numbers:

PN6725 .O85 2021eb

ISBNs:

9780807175514 (electronic book)
080717551X (electronic book)
9780807175507 (electronic book)
0807175501 (electronic book)
9780807171332 (hardcover) [Invalid]
9780807174777 (paperback) [Invalid]

Library of Congress Control Numbers:

2020046112

OCLC Numbers:

1200832145