ENG 2610 Spring 2024 Nooney

Since the graphic novel’s ascension as a prestige variation of the comic in the early 1980s, critics and fans have used the terms in opposing ways; the comic as shallow children’s entertainment and the graphic novel as medium for mature themes and subject matter. This course intervenes on that discourse by proposing two things about words-and-pictures as an imaginative art. The first is our focus on the cross-pollination in technique and subject matter between mainstream comic books, prestige graphic novels, and underground comix. The second is the comic’s close relationship with cinema. Almost a century before the monocultural domination of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the emerging medium of the comic book was frequently adapted and reinterpreted into cinema, radio, and television, then reinterpreted back into comic form. This course will thread our survey of the development of the comic form from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century with analyses of the comic book’s cinematic/televisual counterparts.