Kovacs, George, and C. W. Marshall, Eds.: Classics and Comics
2012; Volume: 23; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0897-0521
Autores Tópico(s)Digital Games and Media
ResumoKovacs, George, and C. W. Marshall, eds. and Comics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 265 pp. Paperback. ISBN 978-0-19-973419-1. $29.95. From Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo's Asterix to Stan Lee, Larry Leiber, and Jack Kirby's adaption of Thor figure, mythology has provided fertile content for comics. Hercules, for example, seems commissioned for comics panel. hyperbole, heroes, and graphic descriptions make mythology easily translatable into comics. and Comics taps into these two forms of popular culture: comics, paragon of disposable culture, and classical mythology, stories underlying so much of our collective unconscious. editors, George Kovacs and C. W. Marshall, are interested in ways in which comics and classical mythology or the Classics intersect, and they acknowledge that this is a book intended for the capeless classical scholar (5). All contributors except for cartoonist Eric Shanower are classicists, most involved in academia. Unlike other texts that merely use comics as case studies, however, and Comics gives comics their due respect as a unique medium with its own history. book's introduction sets a positive tone, offering a succinct history of comics and a concise definition of medium. Happily missing is defensive tone by which so many studies of comics are limited. Perhaps this is because classics are respected and entrenched in academy so that editors did not feel pressured to validate project. These scholars lend legitimacy to comics studies by offering their own prestige. Following introduction, book is divided into four sections: Seeing Past through Sequential Art, Gods and Superheroes, Drawing (on) History, and The Desires of Troy. There are sixteen distinct essays, each written by a different author. While there are too many to address each here, I will note a few that I think best demonstrate tone and scope of this collection. While I do not agree with every essay's observations and conclusion, this does not detract from book's worth because mark of a good collection is a multivalent approach. Before attending to chapters themselves, one should note a particular strength of this collection: images. Ironically, integral but absent from so many studies on comics are good illustrations. Copyright permission and reproduction costs can be prohibitive for inclusion of panels, but this book has wonderful full-page illustrations, albeit all in black and white. Noteworthy are a 1965 Steve Ditko cover of Spider-Man and a full page of Wonder Woman and Furies from J. G. Jones's 2002 Wonder Woman: Hiketeia. visuals allow comics novice, as well as reader familiar with Marvel's Ares miniseries, to appreciate discussion. Turning now to inclusions in volume, Kovacs explains that It is not only characters of myth and history who are appropriated to comics medium, of course. Allusion, metaphor, and imagery allow writers to borrow narrative patterns and motifs from ancient world, regardless of whether their texts explicitly acknowledge this engagement (20). In other words, and Comics is not merely thematically literal, but also a theoretical analysis of form and techniques of comics. essays approach this task in a variety of ways. Gideon Nisbet's An Ancient Greek Graphic Novel: P.Oxy. XXII 2331 can be described as conventionally classicist. Twentieth-century comics are not mentioned, and only technical terms such as gutter, mixed-media, deconstructive interplay between image and text cue comics-literate reader to relationship with graphic novel. Nisbet establishes correlation between literary papyri and comics by analyzing rare grulloi, humorous cartoons, drawn in black ink and with fading traces of original coloration in green and two shades of yellow (28). …
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