Critical Directions in Comics Studies

Thomas Giddens is lecturer in law at the University of Dundee, Scotland. He founded the Graphic Justice Research Alliance and is author of On Comics and Legal Aesthetics, editor of Graphic Justice: Intersections of Comics and Law, and coeditor of Law and Justice in Japanese Popular Culture: From Crime Fighting Robots to Duelling Pocket Monsters. His research focuses on critical, comics, and cultural legal studies, with particular interests in aesthetics, epistemology, and visuality.

If there have been some rather weary debates about the intellectual maturation of comics studies over the past few years, then this book puts them to bed. Combining comics with the academic essay and close readings with discussions of history, theory, and form, the contributors stake out a new field called 'critical comics studies'--crucial reading for all scholars interested in growing the discipline.--Dominic Davies, author of Urban Comics: Infrastructure and the Global City in Contemporary Graphic Narratives and coeditor of Documenting Trauma in Comics: Traumatic Pasts, Embodied Histories, and Graphic Reportage This volume successfully demonstrates that comics studies deserves, to paraphrase editor Giddens, consideration as a discipline in its own right.--G. P. de Syon "CHOICE" Critical Directions in Comics Studies offers a set of excellent essays that make a significant contribution to the development and evolution of comics studies. The essays extend the ways in which comics are treated in terms of themes, theories, and modes of writing. The collection is of a high quality and is innovative in approach, style, and content. On a number of occasions, it really does show what is possible in comics studies and where the field might be going.--Neal Curtis, author of Sovereignty and Superheroes