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__NOTOC__By [[Richard D. Deverell]]
Academic scholars over time have begun to take both content of comics and their impact on American culture very seriously. The Comics Culture series of monographs from Rutgers University Press demonstrates that commitment. The series currently comprises six monographs curated by editors Corey K. Creekmur, Craig Fischer, Jeet Heer, and Ana Merino. The works cover material from Superman’s first appearance in Action Comics no. 1 (1938) through Alan Moore’s Watchmen in 1987. Some, like Paul Young’s study of Frank Miller’s tenure as writer of Daredevil, tell deeply personal narratives at the same time they analyze a particular work. Others, like Qiana Whitted’s examination of EC Comics, delve deeper into well-known historiography in order to uncover new meaning. As a body of work, the Comics Culture series reflects the growing diversity of comic book scholarship.
====Frank Miller's Daredevil and the End Heroism====
Hoberek, a professor of English at the University of Missouri, demonstrates that works like Alan Moore's Watchmen find a more natural place among this list due to the ability of readers to portray them as having a single author – or as a collaboration between one author and one illustrator, in the case of Watchmen – which reinforces a preference toward auteurs.
In portraying Moore and Gibbons as auteurs, Hokerek examines the self-conscious manner in which they used the comics medium both to elevate and deconstruct comic books while also commenting on the nature of the superhero as a subgenre. The layered storytelling of Watchmen, which critics cite when discussing its literary value, developed over the course of its serialized publication. Hoberek further examines how Moore articulated his politics through the comic, questioning the “nostalgia of eighties conservatism” as a defense against “Cold War anxiety” with a frankness rarely seen in mainstream American comics then appearing on the newsstand.<ref> Hoberek, Considering Watchmen, 141.</ref>
Referencing the nature of the business, Hoberek argues that the rise in auteurs was only possible through the shift to a direct market for comics sales as opposed to the older, newsstand based model. He explains, "Moore and [Dave] Gibbon's story has been – both covertly and overtly – enormously influential on what has very recently become the newly genre-positive mainstream of contemporary literary fiction." <ref>Andrew Hoberek, Considering Watchmen: Poetics, Property, Politics (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2017), 30. </ref> Hoberek's work serves not only as a valued contribution to comics studies, but a primer in the theory that underlies that work. He interweaves elements of literary criticism with interviews of Alan Moore and others in the comics industry to paint a complex picture that demonstrates how comics can be both literature and a distinct medium.
====EC Comics: Race, Shock, and Social Protest====
[[File:EC_COMICS.jpg|thumbnail|left|250xp|<i>[http://%5Bhttps://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%20EC%20Comics:%20Race,%20Shock,%20and%20Social%20Protest%5D EC Comics: Race, Shock, and Social Protest]</i> by Qiana Whitted]]
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>
Whitted discusses EC Comics’ use of “preachies,” or social justice stories, to articulate messages that critiqued the U.S. government’s ability to follow its own policies. She writes, “These stories make a case for racial justice by appealing to Americans’ civic and religious beliefs. In doing so, they condemn racism as the betrayal of the nation’s democratic ideals, particularly in light of the Korean War and the Truman Doctrine’s positioning of the United States as the international standard-bearer for democracy.”<ref> Whitted, EC Comics, 53. </ref> Few comic book histories of this period go beyond the rise of the Comics Code Authority to examine the work in the larger context of Cold War America. In this regard, Whitted offers an innovative approach to material familiar with many comics scholars. Her focus on psychology, literary technique, and fan reaction enables her to go beyond the familiar historiography of Nyberg, Wright, Hajdu, and Tilley while also demonstrating the scholarship that sets Rutgers University Press’s Comics Culture series apart from others.
