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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Waiting For Autistic Superman: On Autistic Representation In Superhero Comics, Robert Rozema
Waiting For Autistic Superman: On Autistic Representation In Superhero Comics, Robert Rozema
Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture
Climate activist Greta Thunberg recently likened her autism to a “superpower,” invoking a term first used in the American Golden Age comic Supersnipe in 1945. Thunberg’s use of the term superpower, however, is complicated by the way in which superhero comics have historically represented disability in general--and autism in particular. Over the past 30 years, representations of autistic characters in superhero comics have been very rare and mostly wrong, even as autistic presence has increased dramatically in film, television, popular fiction, and other media. This article examines the representation of autistic superheroes, who appear only rarely in superhero comics. As …
“We Are The Walking Dead”: Morality In Robert Kirkman’S Comics Series, Amy L. Jacobs
“We Are The Walking Dead”: Morality In Robert Kirkman’S Comics Series, Amy L. Jacobs
Masters Theses
Despite widespread cultural success, Robert Kirkman’s comics series, The Walking Dead, has received little critical attention in the literary canon. The limited critical attention it has received fails to provide an in-depth examination of the work’s morality. This could be a result of the ever-present influence of Frederic Wertham’s claims in his 1954 work, Seduction of the Innocent. However, when viewed through the frameworks provided by John Gardner’s On Moral Fiction and Wayne C. Booth’s The Company We Keep, Kirkman’s zombie narrative exhibits morality in multi-layered and complex ways with every turn of the page. Through the …
The Sandman: The Artifice Of Comics And Power Of Dreams, Nathan Teft
The Sandman: The Artifice Of Comics And Power Of Dreams, Nathan Teft
Masters Theses
Neil Gaiman’s Vertigo Series The Sandman is an exceptional artistic endeavor. From “Preludes and Nocturnes”(1988) to “The Wake” (1996), Gaiman worked alongside a team of talented artists and graphic designers to produce an indelible work of revisionist mythology. This thesis will attempt to establish the framework by which our modern literary canon has celebrated classical Western myths while relegating graphic or visual forms of literature or outright neglecting comic myths altogether. Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics will frame the discourse for pictographic analysis of Neil Gaiman’s mythological revisionism of Milton’s Paradise Lost in Season of Mists, Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities …
From Subject To Cyborg: Reframing Identity Within Female Spaces In Neil Gaiman's Black Orchid And A Game Of You, Mary A. Ruge
From Subject To Cyborg: Reframing Identity Within Female Spaces In Neil Gaiman's Black Orchid And A Game Of You, Mary A. Ruge
Masters Theses
Whether they are secret or whether they are household names, identities are paramount in superhero comics. Yet those that create these identities do so from a place of privilege in a hierarchy which results in inauthentic characters and repetitive plots. For the superhero genre, the misrepresentation of female characters (perhaps related to a severe underrepresentation of female creators) has resulted in highly patriarchal storylines that are reductive, stereotypical, and often violent toward women. To combat this trend, one must consider the ways in which a more complex female character violates the current framework and offer a solution. For superhero comics, …