Kent Worcester – författare

A fascinating, immensely readable biography of one of the most important radical intellectuals of the twentieth century.C. L. R. James: A Political Biography offers the first sustained account of the life and work of one of the twentieth-century's most important radical intellectuals.C. L. R. James (1901-1989) was born and raised in Trinidad and became one of the most prominent figures to emerge out of the West Indian diaspora. He authored numerous books and essays on Caribbean history, Marxist theory, literary criticism, Western civilization, African politics, Hegelian philosophy, and popular culture. His best known works, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, and Beyond a Boundary are classics of twentieth-century thought. James played an active part in democratic movements in the West Indies and Africa as well as in left-wing and Pan-African campaigns in Britain, the United States, and Trinidad.

With contributions from Will Brooker, Jeffrey A. Brown, Scott Bukatman, John G. Cawelti, Peter Coogan, Jules Feiffer, Charles Hatfield, Henry Jenkins, Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence, Gerard Jones, Geoff Klock, Karin Kukkonen, Andy Medhurst, Adilifu Nama, Walter Ong, Lorrie Palmer, Richard Reynolds, Trina Robbins, Lillian Robinson, Roger B. Rollin, Gloria Steinem, Jennifer Stuller, Fredric Wertham, and Philip Wylie Despite their commercial appeal and cross-media reach, superheroes are only recently starting to attract sustained scholarly attention. This groundbreaking collection brings together essays and book excerpts by major writers on comics and popular culture. While superhero comics are a distinct and sometimes disdained branch of comics creation, they are integral to the development of the North American comic book and the history of the medium. For the past half-century, they have also been the one overwhelmingly dominant market genre. The sheer volume of superhero comics that have been published over the years is staggering. Major superhero universes constitute one of the most expansive storytelling canvases ever fashioned. Moreover, characters inhabiting these fictional universes are immensely influential, having achieved iconic recognition around the globe. Their images and adventures have shaped many other media, such as film, videogames, and even prose fiction. The primary aim of this reader is twofold: first, to collect in a single volume a sampling of the most sophisticated commentary on superheroes, and second, to bring into sharper focus the ways in which superheroes connect with larger social, cultural, literary, aesthetic, and historical themes that are of interest to a great many readers both in the academy and beyond.

Peter Kuper (b. 1958), one of America's leading cartoonists, has created work recognized around the world. His art has graced the pages and covers of numerous magazines and newspapers, including Time, Newsweek, the New Yorker, Harper's, Mother Jones, the Progressive, the Nation, and the New York Times. He is also a longtime contributor to Mad magazine, where he has been writing and drawing Spy vs. Spy for nearly two decades. He is the cofounder and coeditor of World War 3 Illustrated, the cutting-edge magazine devoted to political graphic art. His graphic novels have explored the medium from comics journalism and autobiography to fiction and literary adaptations. Among the works examined herein are his books The System, Sticks and Stones, Stop Forgetting to Remember, Diario de Oaxaca, and adaptations of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Kuper also discusses his recently published opus, the 328-page Ruins, inspired by his experiences in Oaxaca, Mexico.Along with two dozen black-and-white images, this volume features ten lively, informative interviews with Kuper, including a career-spanning lengthy new interview. The book also includes a quartet of revealing interviews with underground comix legends R. Crumb and Vaugh Bod?, Mad magazine publisher William Gaines, and Jack Kirby, co-creator of mainstream superheroes from the Avengers to the Fantastic Four. These interviews were conducted by Kuper and fellow artist Seth Tobocman in the early 1970s, when they were teenagers. Most of the interviews collected in this book are either previously unpublished or long out of print, and they address such varied topics as the nuts and bolts of creating graphic novels, world travels, teaching at Harvard University, Hollywood deal-making, climate change, Spy vs. Spy, New York City in the 1970s and 1980s, Mad magazine, and World War 3 Illustrated.

For fans of Peter Bagge (b. 1957) and his bracing satirical writing and drawing, this collection offers a perfect means to track how he describes his career choices, work habits, preoccupations, and comedic sensibility since the 1980s. Featuring a new interview and much previously unavailable material, this book delivers insightful, occasionally gossipy, sometimes funny, and often tart conversations. His career has intersected with the modern history of comics, from underground comix and indie comics to comics journalism and graphic nonfiction.Bagge's detailed, garrulous, and often grotesquely funny (and discomfiting) work harks back to the underground generation, recalling Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton, while also pointing forward to the emergence of alternative comics as a distinct genre. His signature series, the rawly humorous Hate (1990-1998) and his editorship (1983-1986) of the often outrageous Weirdo magazine, founded by Crumb, established Bagge as a leading voice in alternative comics, and his rude, wildly expressive cartooning makes him a counterpoint to the still introspection of recent literary graphic novels.In his career over three decades, Bagge has left his mark on various formats and genres, as a prolific cartoonist, an accomplished musician, and a sometime essayist, editor, and animator. While his creative output encompasses autobiographical comics, graphic nonfiction, magazine illustrations, gag cartoons, minicomics, political commentary, superhero parodies, comic strips, animated videos, and one-page humor pieces, Bagge stands out for creating continuity-based graphic stories that revolve around sharply defined, over-the-top fictional characters. Libertarians know him for his comics journalism, as his graphic biography of Margaret Sanger in 2013 reaches new audiences. While some have lazily branded Bagge as a grunge-era visual satirist, his creative restlessness and expanding body of work make it difficult to confine him within any single genre, cultural niche, or historical moment.

Peter Kuper (b. 1958), one of America's leading cartoonists, has created work recognized around the world. His art has graced the pages and covers of numerous magazines and newspapers, including Time, the New Yorker, Mother Jones, and the New York Times. He is also a longtime contributor to Mad magazine, where he has been writing and drawing Spy vs. Spy for nearly two decades. He is the cofounder and coeditor of World War 3 Illustrated, the cutting-edge magazine devoted to political graphic art. Along with two dozen images, this volume features ten lively, informative interviews with Kuper. The book also includes a quartet of revealing interviews with underground comix legends R. Crumb and Vaughn Bodé, Mad magazine publisher William Gaines, and Jack Kirby, co-creator of mainstream superheroes from the Avengers to the Fantastic Four. These were conducted by Kuper and fellow artist Seth Tobocman in the early 1970s, when they were teenagers.Kuper's graphic novels have explored the medium from comics journalism and autobiography to fiction and literary adaptation. Most of the interviews collected in this book are either previously unpublished or long out of print, and they address such varied topics as the nuts and bolts of creating graphic novels, world travels, teaching at Harvard University, Hollywood deal-making, climate change, Spy vs. Spy, New York City in the 1970s and 1980s, Mad magazine, and World War 3 Illustrated. Among the works examined herein are his books The System, Sticks and Stones, Stop Forgetting to Remember, Diario de Oaxaca, and adaptations of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Kuper also discusses his recently published opus, the 328-page Ruins, inspired by his experiences in Oaxaca, Mexico. This book is the 2016 Eisner Award Winner for Best Graphic Album.

When Art Spiegelman's Maus-a two-part graphic novel about the Holocaust-won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, comics scholarship grew increasingly popular and notable. The rise of ""serious"" comics has generated growing levels of interest as scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals continue to explore the history, aesthetics, and semiotics of the comics medium.Yet those who write about the comics often assume analysis of the medium didn't begin until the cultural studies movement was underway. Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium brings together nearly two dozen essays by major writers and intellectuals who analyzed, embraced, and even attacked comic strips and comic books in the period between the turn of the century and the 1960s. From e. e. cummings, who championed George Herriman's Krazy Kat, to Irving Howe, who fretted about Harold Gray's Little Orphan Annie, this volume shows that comics have provided a key battleground in the culture wars for over a century.With substantive essays by Umberto Eco, Marshall McLuhan, Leslie Fiedler, Gilbert Seldes, Dorothy Parker, Irving Howe, Delmore Schwartz, and others, this anthology shows how all of these writers took up comics-related topics as a point of entry into wider debates over modern art, cultural standards, daily life, and mass communication.Arguing Comics shows how prominent writers from the Jazz Age and the Depression era to the heyday of the New York Intellectuals in the 1950s thought about comics and, by extension, popular culture as a whole.

A Comics Studies Reader offers the best of the new comics scholarship in nearly thirty essays on a wide variety of such comics forms as gag cartoons, editorial cartoons, comic strips, comic books, manga, and graphic novels.The anthology covers the pioneering work of Rodolphe Töpffer, the Disney comics of Carl Barks, and the graphic novels of Art Spiegelman and Chris Ware, as well as Peanuts, romance comics, and superheroes. It explores the stylistic achievements of manga, the international anti-comics campaign, and power and class in Mexican comic books and English illustrated stories.A Comics Studies Reader introduces readers to the major debates and points of reference that continue to shape the field. It will interest anyone who wants to delve deeper into the world of comics and is ideal for classroom use.

When Art Spiegelman''s Maus—a two-part graphic novel about the Holocaust—won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, comics scholarship grew increasingly popular and notable. The rise of “serious” comics has generated growing levels of interest as scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals continue to explore the history, aesthetics, and semiotics of the comics medium. Yet those who write about the comics often assume analysis of the medium didn''t begin until the cultural studies movement was underway. Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium brings together nearly two dozen essays by major writers and intellectuals who analyzed, embraced, and even attacked comic strips and comic books in the period between the turn of the century and the 1960s. From e. e. cummings, who championed George Herriman''s Krazy Kat, to Irving Howe, who fretted about Harold Gray''s Little Orphan Annie, this volume shows that comics have provided a key battleground in the culture wars for over a century. With substantive essays by Umberto Eco, Marshall McLuhan, Leslie Fiedler, Gilbert Seldes, Dorothy Parker, Irving Howe, Delmore Schwartz, and others, this anthology shows how all of these writers took up comics-related topics as a point of entry into wider debates over modern art, cultural standards, daily life, and mass communication. Arguing Comics shows how prominent writers from the Jazz Age and the Depression era to the heyday of the New York Intellectuals in the 1950s thought about comics and, by extension, popular culture as a whole.

Contributions by Thomas Andrae, Martin Barker, Bart Beaty, John Benson, David Carrier, Hillary Chute, Peter Coogan, Annalisa Di Liddo, Ariel Dorfman, Thierry Groensteen, Robert C. Harvey, Charles Hatfield, M. Thomas Inge, Gene Kannenberg Jr., David Kasakove, Adam L. Kern, David Kunzle, Pascal Lefèvre, John A. Lent, W. J. T. Mitchell, Amy Kiste Nyberg, Fusami Ogi, Robert S. Petersen, Anne Rubenstein, Roger Sabin, Gilbert Seldes, Art Spiegelman, Fredric Wertham, and Joseph WitekA Comics Studies Reader offers the best of the new comics scholarship in nearly thirty essays on a wide variety of such comics forms as gag cartoons, editorial cartoons, comic strips, comic books, manga, and graphic novels.The anthology covers the pioneering work of Rodolphe Töpffer, the Disney comics of Carl Barks, and the graphic novels of Art Spiegelman and Chris Ware, as well as Peanuts, romance comics, and superheroes. It explores the stylistic achievements of manga, the international anti-comics campaign, and power and class in Mexican comic books and English illustrated stories.A Comics Studies Reader introduces readers to the major debates and points of reference that continue to shape the field. It will interest anyone who wants to delve deeper into the world of comics and is ideal for classroom use.

Despite their commercial appeal and cross-media reach, superheroes are only recently starting to attract sustained scholarly attention. This groundbreaking collection brings together essays and book excerpts by major writers on comics and popular culture. While superhero comics are a distinct and sometimes disdained branch of comics creation, they are integral to the development of the North American comic book and the history of the medium. For the past half-century they have also been the one overwhelmingly dominant market genre. The sheer volume of superhero comics that have been published over the years is staggering. Major superhero universes constitute one of the most expansive storytelling canvases ever fashioned. Moreover, characters inhabiting these fictional universes are immensely influential, having achieved iconic recognition around the globe. Their images and adventures have shaped many other media, such as film, videogames, and even prose fiction. The primary aim of this reader is twofold: first, to collect in a single volume a sampling of the most sophisticated commentary on superheroes, and second, to bring into sharper focus the ways in which superheroes connect with larger social, cultural, literary, aesthetic, and historical themes that are of interest to a great many readers both in the academy and beyond.

With contributions from Will Brooker, Jeffrey A. Brown, Scott Bukatman, John G. Cawelti, Peter Coogan, Jules Feiffer, Charles Hatfield, Henry Jenkins, Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence, Gerard Jones, Geoff Klock, Karin Kukkonen, Andy Medhurst, Adilifu Nama, Walter Ong, Lorrie Palmer, Richard Reynolds, Trina Robbins, Lillian Robinson, Roger B. Rollin, Gloria Steinem, Jennifer Stuller, Fredric Wertham, and Philip Wylie Despite their commercial appeal and cross-media reach, superheroes are only recently starting to attract sustained scholarly attention. This groundbreaking collection brings together essays and book excerpts by major writers on comics and popular culture. While superhero comics are a distinct and sometimes disdained branch of comics creation, they are integral to the development of the North American comic book and the history of the medium. For the past half-century, they have also been the one overwhelmingly dominant market genre. The sheer volume of superhero comics that have been published over the years is staggering. Major superhero universes constitute one of the most expansive storytelling canvases ever fashioned. Moreover, characters inhabiting these fictional universes are immensely influential, having achieved iconic recognition around the globe. Their images and adventures have shaped many other media, such as film, videogames, and even prose fiction. The primary aim of this reader is twofold: first, to collect in a single volume a sampling of the most sophisticated commentary on superheroes, and second, to bring into sharper focus the ways in which superheroes connect with larger social, cultural, literary, aesthetic, and historical themes that are of interest to a great many readers both in the academy and beyond.

Despite their commercial appeal and cross-media reach, superheroes are only recently starting to attract sustained scholarly attention. This groundbreaking collection brings together essays and book excerpts by major writers on comics and popular culture.While superhero comics are a distinct and sometimes disdained branch of comics creation, they are integral to the development of the North American comic book and the history of the medium. For the past half-century they have also been the one overwhelmingly dominant market genre. The sheer volume of superhero comics that have been published over the years is staggering. Major superhero universes constitute one of the most expansive storytelling canvases ever fashioned. Moreover, characters inhabiting these fictional universes are immensely influential, having achieved iconic recognition around the globe. Their images and adventures have shaped many other media, such as film, video games, and even prose fiction.The primary aim of this reader is twofold: first, to collect in a single volume a sampling of the most sophisticated commentary on superheroes, and second, to bring into sharper focus the ways in which superheroes connect with larger social, cultural, literary, aesthetic, and historical themes that are of interest to a great many readers both in the academy and beyond.

For fans of Peter Bagge (b. 1957) and his bracing satirical writing and drawing, this collection offers a perfect means to track how he describes his career choices, work habits, preoccupations, and comedic sensibility since the 1980s. Featuring a new interview and much previously unavailable material, this book delivers insightful, occasionally gossipy, sometimes funny, and often tart conversations. His career has intersected with the modern history of comics, from underground comix and indie comics to comics journalism and graphic nonfiction.Bagge's detailed, garrulous, and often grotesquely funny (and discomfiting) work harks back to the underground generation, recalling Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton, while also pointing forward to the emergence of alternative comics as a distinct genre. His signature series, the rawly humorous Hate (1990-1998) and his editorship (1983-1986) of the often outrageous Weirdo magazine, founded by Crumb, established Bagge as a leading voice in alternative comics, and his rude, wildly expressive cartooning makes him a counterpoint to the still introspection of recent literary graphic novels.In his career over three decades, Bagge has left his mark on various formats and genres, as a prolific cartoonist, an accomplished musician, and a sometime essayist, editor, and animator. While his creative output encompasses autobiographical comics, graphic nonfiction, magazine illustrations, gag cartoons, minicomics, political commentary, superhero parodies, comic strips, animated videos, and one-page humor pieces, Bagge stands out for creating continuity-based graphic stories that revolve around sharply defined, over-the-top fictional characters. Libertarians know him for his comics journalism, as his graphic biography of Margaret Sanger in 2013 reaches new audiences. While some have lazily branded Bagge as a grunge-era visual satirist, his creative restlessness and expanding body of work make it difficult to confine him within any single genre, cultural niche, or historical moment.

Contributions by Thomas Andrae, Martin Barker, Bart Beaty, John Benson, David Carrier, Hillary Chute, Peter Coogan, Annalisa Di Liddo, Ariel Dorfman, Thierry Groensteen, Robert C. Harvey, Charles Hatfield, M. Thomas Inge, Gene Kannenberg Jr., David Kasakove, Adam L. Kern, David Kunzle, Pascal Lefèvre, John A. Lent, W. J. T. Mitchell, Amy Kiste Nyberg, Fusami Ogi, Robert S. Petersen, Anne Rubenstein, Roger Sabin, Gilbert Seldes, Art Spiegelman, Fredric Wertham, and Joseph WitekA Comics Studies Reader offers the best of the new comics scholarship in nearly thirty essays on a wide variety of such comics forms as gag cartoons, editorial cartoons, comic strips, comic books, manga, and graphic novels.The anthology covers the pioneering work of Rodolphe Töpffer, the Disney comics of Carl Barks, and the graphic novels of Art Spiegelman and Chris Ware, as well as Peanuts, romance comics, and superheroes. It explores the stylistic achievements of manga, the international anti-comics campaign, and power and class in Mexican comic books and English illustrated stories.A Comics Studies Reader introduces readers to the major debates and points of reference that continue to shape the field. It will interest anyone who wants to delve deeper into the world of comics and is ideal for classroom use.

When Art Spiegelman''s Maus—a two-part graphic novel about the Holocaust—won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, comics scholarship grew increasingly popular and notable. The rise of “serious” comics has generated growing levels of interest as scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals continue to explore the history, aesthetics, and semiotics of the comics medium. Yet those who write about the comics often assume analysis of the medium didn''t begin until the cultural studies movement was underway. Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium brings together nearly two dozen essays by major writers and intellectuals who analyzed, embraced, and even attacked comic strips and comic books in the period between the turn of the century and the 1960s. From e. e. cummings, who championed George Herriman''s Krazy Kat, to Irving Howe, who fretted about Harold Gray''s Little Orphan Annie, this volume shows that comics have provided a key battleground in the culture wars for over a century. With substantive essays by Umberto Eco, Marshall McLuhan, Leslie Fiedler, Gilbert Seldes, Dorothy Parker, Irving Howe, Delmore Schwartz, and others, this anthology shows how all of these writers took up comics-related topics as a point of entry into wider debates over modern art, cultural standards, daily life, and mass communication. Arguing Comics shows how prominent writers from the Jazz Age and the Depression era to the heyday of the New York Intellectuals in the 1950s thought about comics and, by extension, popular culture as a whole.

If the Punisher became a valuable piece of intellectual property during the closing decades of the twentieth century, he has become a global icon in the twenty-first. In this pathbreaking study, Kent Worcester explores the sometimes ridiculous and often socially resonate storyverse of the most famous rageaholic in popular culture: Frank Castle, aka the Punisher. Worcester pays particular attention to nearly five decades' worth of punishment-themed comics and graphic novels published between the 1970s and the present day. These texts provide the material resources for a close reading of the Punisher's distinctive and extreme form of justice discourse. Punishment, after all, is a political and social construct. Violence does not imply or claim legitimacy. Punishment does. To talk about punishment is to ask who deserves to be punished, who decides who deserves to be punished, and what form the punishment should take. All costumed heroes have their political moments; the Punisher is political. Frank Castle inhabits the most politically engaged corner of the entire Marvel Universe. His adventures should attract our interest for precisely this reason.

If the Punisher became a valuable piece of intellectual property during the closing decades of the twentieth century, he has become a global icon in the twenty-first. In this pathbreaking study, Kent Worcester explores the sometimes ridiculous and often socially resonate storyverse of the most famous rageaholic in popular culture: Frank Castle, aka the Punisher. Worcester pays particular attention to nearly five decades' worth of punishment-themed comics and graphic novels published between the 1970s and the present day. These texts provide the material resources for a close reading of the Punisher's distinctive and extreme form of justice discourse. Punishment, after all, is a political and social construct. Violence does not imply or claim legitimacy. Punishment does. To talk about punishment is to ask who deserves to be punished, who decides who deserves to be punished, and what form the punishment should take. All costumed heroes have their political moments; the Punisher is political. Frank Castle inhabits the most politically engaged corner of the entire Marvel Universe. His adventures should attract our interest for precisely this reason.

Third Camp Socialism collects Phyllis and Julius Jacobson’s major writings on civil rights, Stalinism, the Cold War, and the New York Intellectuals.The Jacobsons advanced a militant, small-d democratic perspective on the landmark events of their era, from the New Deal and World War II to sixties protests and the War on Terror. Today, they are best remembered for founding New Politics and defending a third camp perspective that resists capitalism as well as all varieties of “progressive” authoritarianism. This volume makes a powerful case for revisiting the Jacobsons’ contributions to socialist thought.