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The American Comic Book Industry and Hollywood traces the evolving relationship between the American comic book industry and Hollywood from the launch of
X-Men,
Spider-Man, and
Smallville in the early 2000s through the ascent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Arrowverse, and the
Walking Dead Universe in the 2010s.
Perren and Steirer illustrate how the American comic book industry simultaneously has functioned throughout the first two decades of the twenty-first century as a relatively self-contained business characterized by its own organizational structures, business models, managerial discourses, production cultures, and professional identities even as it has remained dependent on Hollywood for revenue from IP licensing. The authors' expansive view of the industry includes not only a discussion of the "Big Two," Marvel/Disney and DC Comics/Time Warner, but also a survey of the larger comics ecosystem. Other key industry players, including independent publishers BOOM! Studios, IDW, and Image, digital distributor ComiXology, and management-production company Circle of Confusion, all receive attention. Drawing from interviews, fieldwork, archival research, and trade analysis,
The American Comic Book Industry and Hollywood provides a road map to understanding the operations of the comic book industry while also offering new models for undertaking trans- and inter-industrial analysis.
List of contents
Introduction: The More Things Change.: The American Comic Book Industry and Hollywood in the Twenty-First Century
1 Comics Pros Go to Hollywood: The Historical Evolution of the
Comics-Hollywood Relationship
2 Comic Books and the Economics of Intellectual Property Production
3 Drawing Lines: The Place of Comic Book Artists and Writers in Hollywood
4 Synergy in Theory and in Practice: Comic Books and the Contemporary Media
Conglomerate
5 Organizational (Dis-)Integration: Publisher-Hollywood Relationships in the
Twenty-First Century
6 From Dental Floss to Dental Tape: The Strange Case of Digital Comics
Distribution
Afterword: Days of Future Present: The View from 2020
About the author
Alisa Perren is Professor in the Department of Radio-Television-Film and Co-Director of the Center for Entertainment and Media Industries at The University of Texas at Austin. She is author of
Indie, Inc.: Miramax and the Transformation of Hollywood in the 1990s (2012), co-editor of
Media Industries: History, Theory, and Method (2009), and co-founder and editorial collective member of the journal
Media Industries.
Gregory Steirer is Associate Professor of English and Film Studies at Dickinson College. A former National Endowment for the Humanities fellow and researcher for the Carsey-Wolf Center's Media Industries Project, he has published extensively on digital media, comic books, and intellectual property law.
Summary
The American Comic Book Industry and Hollywood traces the evolving relationship between the American comic book industry and Hollywood from the launch of X-Men, Spider-Man, and Smallville in the early 2000s through the ascent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Arrowverse, and the Walking Dead Universe in the 2010s.
Perren and Steirer illustrate how the American comic book industry simultaneously has functioned throughout the first two decades of the twenty-first century as a relatively self-contained business characterized by its own organizational structures, business models, managerial discourses, production cultures, and professional identities even as it has remained dependent on Hollywood for revenue from IP licensing. The authors’ expansive view of the industry includes not only a discussion of the “Big Two,” Marvel/Disney and DC Comics/Time Warner, but also a survey of the larger comics ecosystem. Other key industry players, including independent publishers BOOM! Studios, IDW, and Image, digital distributor ComiXology, and management-production company Circle of Confusion, all receive attention. Drawing from interviews, fieldwork, archival research, and trade analysis, The American Comic Book Industry and Hollywood provides a road map to understanding the operations of the comic book industry while also offering new models for undertaking trans- and inter-industrial analysis.
Foreword
The American Comic Book Industry and Hollywood provides examines the relationship between Hollywood and the U.S. comic book industry in the twenty-first century in terms of labor mobility, production cultures, organizational dynamics, intellectual property deployment, and digital distribution.
Additional text
The book can also be used in dialogue with formal or narrative studies of contemporary superhero comics and films, or as an economic counterpoint to fan studies approaches. In any case, this is an undeniable success.
