Representing Acts of Violence in Comics by Mickwitz, Nina; Horton, Ian; Hague, Ian;

Short description:

This book examines the ways in which individual moments of violence develop, and are presented, in comics and graphic novels. It raises questions about depiction and the act of showing violence, but it also considers the ways in which violence can affect those involved over the long term.

Long description:

This book is part of a nuanced two-volume examination of the ways in which violence in comics is presented in different texts, genres, cultures and contexts.

Representing Acts of Violence in Comics raises questions about depiction and the act of showing violence, and discusses the ways in which individual moments of violence develop, and are both represented and embodied in comics and graphic novels. Contributors consider the impact of gendered and sexual violence, and examine the ways in which violent acts can be rendered palatable (for example through humour) but also how comics can represent trauma and long lasting repercussions for both perpetrators and victims.

This will be a key text and essential reference for scholars and students at all levels in Comics Studies, and Cultural and Media Studies more generally.

'This book brings new and wide-ranging perspectives from outstanding scholars to an area of comics that critical discourse has tended to shy away from: violence, whether flamboyantly exaggerated, or painfully recovered and made visible.' -Ann Miller, University Fellow, University of Leicester, UK

Table of Contents:

Representing Acts of Violence in Comics Introduction
Nina Mickwitz, Ian Horton & Ian Hague Depiction Picturing National and personal acts of violence: modes of depiction in Barefoot Gen John Miers Bloody Murder in the Bible: Graphic Representations of the "First Murder"
in Biblical Comics
Zanne Domoney-Lyttle A Balancing Act: Didactic Spectacle in Jack Jackson’s "Nits Make Lice"
and Slow Death Comix
Laurike in ‘t Veld Embodiment Seeing (in) Red: "Thick" Violence in Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas’s
Red: A Haida Manga
Laura A. Pearson Embodied Reading and Performing Vulnerability in Joe Sacco’s The Great War
Eszter Szép Humour "Boiled or fried, Dennis?" Violence, play and narrative in ‘Dennis the Menace and Gnasher’
Christopher J. Thompson Humour as a strategy in communicating sexual and domestic abuse of women in comics
Nicola Streeten Gendered and Sexual Violence The risks of representation: making gender and violence visible in The Ballad
of Halo Jones
Maggie Gray Unmaking the Apocalypse: Pain, Violence, Torture, and Weaponizing the Black, Female Body
Joseph Willis Killgrave, The Purple Man
Jamie Brassett and Richard Reynolds