Changes

__NOTOC__By Richard Deverell

====Analyzing Superman and the Watchmen====

The second and third monograph in the series follows more established analytical discourses, though they also look to new archives and seek to complicate the power of branding. In the series' second book, Ian Gordon tracks the history of the Superman brand. Gordon, a professor of history at the National University of Singapore, writes in <i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0813587514/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0813587514&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=8cfc74a701dbbc46f81ddb754fda413b Superman: The Persistence of an American Icon]</i>, "At any given time, or place, in his history, Superman is, and has long been, an amalgam of factors including myth, memory, nostalgia, intellectual property regimes like copyright and trademark, authors, readers, fans, collectors, comic books, comic strips, radio series, movie serials, television shows, animation, toys and collectibles, and feature films." <ref>Ian Gordon, Superman: The Persistence of an American Icon (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2017), 3.</ref>

====Wonder Women: Bondage and Feminism====

The fifth book in the series, Noah Berlatsky’s <i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0813564182/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0813564182&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=53d9b49801ca38ab35ad1a1b2ac63868 Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter Comics, 1941-1948]</i>, draws upon queer theory, performance theory, and gender theory in his analysis with comparisons to other examples of media targeted to women, such as Twilight and gothic literature, as Berlatsky argues, “Wonder Woman, the original comic, was much more interesting, beautiful, and worthwhile than Wonder Woman the popular icon.”<ref> Noah Berlatsky, Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter Comics, 1941-1948 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2015), 187. </ref>

====EC Comics: Race, Shock, and Social Protest====

Finally, Qiana Whitted’s <i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0813566312/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0813566312&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=17480d13186b0888f46ca1d4ad9ce8a7 EC Comics: Race, Shock, and Social Protest]</i> concludes the Comics Culture series for the time being. Witted, a professor of English and African American studies at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC, previously contributed to Rutgers’ University Press’ essay collection, The Blacker the Ink. In EC Comics, she argues, “The narrative, aesthetic, and marketing strategies of ‘the EC way’ constitute one of the most effective means through which questions of social justice were explored in American comic-book culture after World War II.” <ref> Qiana Whitted, EC Comics: Race, Shock, and Social Protest (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2019), x. </ref> Whitted’s work builds upon that of Amy Kiste Nyberg, Bradford W. Wright, David Hajdu, Carol Tilley, and others who examined EC comics, the end of the medium’s Golden Age, and the rise of the Comics Code Authority.<ref> Whitted, EC Comics, 6. </ref> Unlike those works, however, Whitted “takes a different approach by analyzing the creative choices and critical significance of the message stories within the EC brand against the larger ideological contexts of the late 1940s and 1950s.”<ref> Whitted, EC Comics, 6. </ref>