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Informationen zum Autor Christopher Pizzino is an assistant professor of contemporary US literature at the University of Georgia. Klappentext Mainstream narratives of the graphic novel's development describe the form's "coming of age," its maturation from pulp infancy to literary adulthood. In Arresting Development, Christopher Pizzino questions these established narratives, arguing that the medium's history of censorship and marginalization endures in the minds of its present-day readers and, crucially, its authors. Comics and their writers remain burdened by the stigma of literary illegitimacy and the struggles for status that marked their earlier history.Many graphic novelists are intensely aware of both the medium's troubled past and their own tenuous status in contemporary culture. Arresting Development presents case studies of four key works-Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, Charles Burns's Black Hole, and Gilbert Hernandez's Love and Rockets-exploring how their authors engage the problem of comics' cultural standing. Pizzino illuminates the separation of high and low culture, art and pulp, and sophisticated appreciation and vulgar consumption as continual influences that determine the limits of literature, the status of readers, and the value of the very act of reading. Zusammenfassung Contrary to the idea that comics have naturally matured into respectability, Arresting Development offers a new understanding of comics’ history that connects the genre’s difficult past to its unstable present and uncertain future. Inhaltsverzeichnis AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: From the Basement1. Coming of Age: The Problem of the Bildungsroman2. Autoclastic Icons: Picturing Illegitimacy3. Pop Art Comics: Frank Miller4. The Scandal of Pleasure: Alison Bechdel5. Rolling in the Gutter: Charles Burns6. Blood and Fire: Gilbert HernandezConclusion: On Becoming a Comics ScholarNotesWorks CitedIndex
