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This book explores the representation of fatherhood in contemporary North American autobiographical comics that depict paternal conduct from the post-war period up to the present. It offers equal space to autobiographical comics penned by daughters who represent their fathers' complicated and often disappointing behavior, and to works by male cartoonists who depict and usually celebrate their own experiences as fathers. This book asks questions about how the desire to forgive or be forgiven can compromise the authors' ethics or dictate style, considers the ownership of life stories whose subjects cannot or do not agree to be represented, and investigates the pervasive and complicated effects of dominant masculinities. By close reading these cartoonists' complex strategies of (self-)representation, this volume also places photography and archival work alongside the problematic legacy of self-deprecation carried on from underground comics, and shows how the vocabulary of graphic narration can work with other media and at the intersection of various genres and modes to produce a valuable scrutiny of contemporary norms of fatherhood.
List of contents
1. Introduction Comics, Fatherhood, and Autobiographical Representation.- 2. "A Good and Decent Man": Fatherhood, Trauma, and Post-War Masculinity in Carol Tyler's Soldier's Heart.- 3. "He was there to catch me when I leapt": Paternal Absence and Artistic Emancipation in Alison Bechdel's Fun Home.- 4. "As long as he was there, I felt safe": Fatherhood, Deception, and Detective Work in Laurie Sandell's The Impostor's Daughter.- 5. "To Dream of Birds": The Father as Potential Perpetrator in Nina Bunjevac's "August 1977" and Fatherland.- 6. "A Doting Fool": The Limits of Fatherhood in R. Crumb's Sophie Stories.- 7. "Emasculated by the Diaper Bag": Aging, Masculinity, and Fatherhood in Joe Ollmann's Mid-Life.- 8. "When the Monsters Come Jello Them": Fatherhood, Vulnerability, and the Magic of the Mundane in James Kochalka's American Elf.- 9. "You Tell Your Father He Did a Good Job": Sons, Fathers, and Inter-generational Dynamics in Jeffrey Brown's A Matter of Life.- 10. Conclusion.
About the author
Mihaela Precup is Associate Professor in the American Studies Program at the University of Bucharest, where she teaches American visual and popular culture, as well as contemporary American literature and comics studies.
Report
"It is a fluently written and thoroughly researched book that provides insightful and accessible analysis of autobiographical comics ... . The book is an excellent introduction not only to autobiographical comics dealing with fatherhood and patriarchy but also the field as a whole. ... Always clear and incisive, the book serves as an exemplary introduction for those at undergraduate level, but also as a model for detailed analysis of given graphic novels applicable to scholars at any level." (David Huxley, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, November 6, 2021)
"The Graphic Lives of Fathersis an important addition to scholarship on recent autobiographical comics. Precup is an insightful reader, attentive to visual details, and her discussion of the photographs and silhouettes that inhabit many of the works ties beautifully to her focus on representations of the self. ... In creating this astute gender analysis of twenty-first century autobiographical comics, Mihaela Precup makes a valuable addition to this vibrant field." (Carolyn Kyler, Biography, Vol. 43 (4), 2020)
