Santiago Garcia – författare

A noted comics artist himself, Santiago García follows the history of the graphic novel from early nineteenth-century European sequential art, through the development of newspaper strips in the United States, to the development of the twentieth-century comic book and its subsequent crisis. He considers the aesthetic and entrepreneurial innovations that established the conditions for the rise of the graphic novel all over the world.García not only treats the formal components of the art, but also examines the cultural position of comics in various formats as a popular medium. Typically associated with children, often viewed as unedifying and even at times as a threat to moral character, comics art has come a long way. With such examples from around the world as Spain, France, Germany, and Japan, García illustrates how the graphic novel, with its increasingly global and aesthetically sophisticated profile, represents a new model for graphic narrative production that empowers authors and challenges longstanding social prejudices against comics and what they can achieve.

SANTIAGO GARCIA and DAVID RUBIN unite to bring forward the myth of Beowulf,which has endured for a thousand years, inspired an epic poem, become afoundational piece of English literature, and influenced generations of authors:from J.R.R. Tolkien and Seamus Heaney to a multitude of Hollywoodscreenwriters.BEOWULF tells of the tale of a Scandinavian hero in landsthat would become what is now Denmark and Sweden. A monster, Grendel, hasarrived in the kingdom of the Danes, devouring its men and women for over adecade until Beowulf arrives to save them.GARCIA and RUBIN faithfullyfollow the original story for a new version that is neither revisionist norpostmodern, but captures the tone and important details of the poem, translatingits potent, epic resonance and melancholy into a contemporary comic that isn'tstandard swords and sorcery or heroic fantasy fare, but rather an ancient storywith a modern perspective that remains respectful of the sourcematerial.

A noted comics artist himself, Santiago García follows the history of the graphic novel from early nineteenth-century European sequential art, through the development of newspaper strips in the United States, to the development of the twentieth-century comic book and its subsequent crisis. He considers the aesthetic and entrepreneurial innovations that established the conditions for the rise of the graphic novel all over the world. García not only treats the formal components of the art, but also examines the cultural position of comics in various formats as a popular medium. Typically associated with children, often viewed as unedifying and even at times as a threat to moral character, comics art has come a long way. With such examples from around the world as Spain, France, Germany, and Japan, García illustrates how the graphic novel, with its increasingly global and aesthetically sophisticated profile, represents a new model for graphic narrative production that empowers authors and challenges longstanding social prejudices against comics and what they can achieve.