The Routledge Companion to Gender and Sexuality in Comic Book Studies is a comprehensive, global, and interdisciplinary examination of the essential relationship between Gender, Sexuality, Comics, and Graphic Novels. A diverse range of international and interdisciplinary scholars take a closer look at how gender and sexuality have been essential in the evolution of comics, and how gender and sexuality in comics demand that we re-frame and re-view comics history. Chapters cover a wide array of intersectional topics including Queer Underground and Alternative comics, Feminist Autobiography, re-drawing disability, Latina testimony, and re-evaluating the critical whiteness and masculinity of superheroes in this first truly global reference text to gender and sexuality in comics. Comics have always been an important place for the radical exploration of feminist and non-binary sexualities and identities, and the growth of non-normative comic book traditions as a field of inquiry makes this an essential text for upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates, and researchers studying Comics Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, Literary Studies, and Cultural Studies. (Verlagstext)
Table of Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
Gender and Sexuality in Comics: The Told, Untold Stories (Frederick Luis Aldama)
Part I: Interrogating Restrictive Frames
- Chapter 1: Translating Masculinity: The Significance of the Frontier in American Superheroes (Patrick L. Hamilton)
- Chapter 2: Black Boys and Black Girls in Comics: An Affective and Historical Mapping of Intertwined Stereotypes (Maaheen Ahmed)
- Chapter 3: Pocket-Sized Pornography: Representations of Sexual Violence and Masculinity in Tijuana Bibles (Erin Barry)
- Chapter 4: The Comic-Strip in Advertising: Persuasion, Gender, Sexuality (Constance de Silva)
- Chapter 5: Real Men Choose Vasectomy: Questioning and Redefining Mexican National Masculinity in Los Supermachos, from Rius to Anonymous Authors (Annick Pellegrin)
- Chapter 6: Marriage, Domesticity and Superheroes (For Better or Worse) (Jeffrey A. Brown)
- Chapter 7: "Is that a monster between your legs or are ya just happy to see me?": Sex, Subjectivity, and the Superbody in the Marvel Swimsuit Special (Anna F. Peppard)
Part II: Ethnoracial Queer and Feminist Space Clearing Gestures
- Chapter 8: Life Out Loud in the Closet: The Grotesque as Latinx Imagination in Cristy C. Road’s Spit and Passion (Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado)
- Chapter 9: Graphic (Narrative) Presentations of Violence Against Indigenous Women: Responses to the MMIW Crisis in North America (James J. Donahue)
- Chapter 10: From "Accidental" Autobiography to Comics Activism: Tracing the Development of an Andalusian-Chinese Feminism in the Work of Comics Artist Quan Zhou (Jennifer Nagtegaal)
- Chapter 11: Plea Deal Compounds: Black Women’s Anger in "the System" of Bitch Planet (Katlin Marisol Sweeney)
Part III: Back to the Future
- Chapter 12: Panels of Innocence and Experience: Reading Sexual Subjectivity Through Horror Comics (Sara Austin)
- Chapter 13: Teenage Biology 101: Serializing a Queer Girlhood in Ariel Schrag's Potential (Rachel R. Miller)
- Chapter 14: Genre, Gender, Sexual, Textual and Visual, and Real Representations in Bande Dessinée (C(h)ris Reyns-Chikuma)
- Chapter 15: A Comics Écriture Féminine: Anke Feuchtenberger’s Feminist Graphic Expression (Elizabeth "Biz" Nijdam)
- Chapter 16: "I’m Trapped In Here!" Gender Performativity and Affect in Emma Ríos's I.D. (Mikel Bermello Isusi)
- Chapter 17: Empirical Looking: Situating the Multiple Elements of Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout as Vehicles for Articulating a Place for Women in Science (Lisa DeTora)
Part IV: Counterpublics
- Chapter 18: From Anodyne Animals to Filthy Beasts: Defying and Defiling Safety, Sanctity, and Sexual Suppression in Underground Animal Comics (Daniel F. Yezbick)
- Chapter 19: Wonder Woman’s Complicated Relationship with Feminism (George Thomas)
- Chapter 20: "Part of Something Bigger": Ms./Captain Marvel (Carolyn Cocca)
- Chapter 21: Higher, Further, Faster Baby! The Feminist Evolution of Carol Danvers from Comics to Film (Sam Langsdale)
- Chapter 22: Female Fans, Female Creators, and Female Superheroes: The Semiotics of Changing Gender Dynamics (Angela Ndalianis)
- Chapter 23: Public-Facing Feminisms: Subverting the Lettercol in Bitch Planet (Brenna Clarke Gray)
- Chapter 24: "I’d Like Everything That’s Bad For Me!": Tank Girl’s Cracks in Patriarchal Pop Culture (Susan Kerns)
- Chapter 25: Falling In or Stepping Out: Little Red Formation as Agentic Gender Construction in Lumberjanes (Karly Marie Grice)
Part V: Worldly Interventions
- Chapter 26: "A Revelation Not of the Flesh, but of the Mind": Performing Queer Textuality in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home (Maite Urcaregui)
- Chapter 27: BLOOD, or: Gender and Nation in the Contemporary Polish Comic (Kalina Kupczynska)
- Chapter 28: My Grandmother Collects Memories: Gender and Remembrance in Hispanic Graphic Narratives (Radmila (Lale) Stefkova)
- Chapter 29: Feminist Riots and Gay Giants: The Mayo Feminista and Cultural Context of Contemporary Queer Chilean Comics (Sam Cannon)
- Chapter 30: Questioning Obscenity: The Place of "Pussy" in Manga and the World (Lindsey Stirek)
- Chapter 31: See Him, See Her, See Xir: LGBTQ Visibility in Shonen Manga at the Turn of the Century (Zachary Michael Lewis Dean)
- Chapter 32: An Age of Sparkle and Drama: Exploring Gender Identities and Cultural Narratives in 1970s Shojo Manga (Lorna Piatti-Farnell)
Part VI: Queer and Feminist Intermedial Textures
- Chapter 33: Representing the Extreme End-point of Sexual Violence: ethical strategies in Phoebe Gloeckner’s La Tristeza (Rebecca Scherr)
- Chapter 34: The People Upstairs: Space, Memory, and the Queered Family in My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris (Shiamin Kwa)
- Chapter 35: Fat Bats, Postpunks, and Ice Witches: Afrogoth and the Undead Music of Militia Vox and the Comix of Calyn Pickens Rich (Deborah Elizabeth Whaley)
- Chapter 36: Catherine Meurisse and the Gender of Art (Margaret C. Flinn)
- Chapter 37: My Life With Toys: An Academic Esai into the Queer Multipurposing of Toys as Interrupted by the Author’s Life (Jonathan Alexandratos)
- Chapter 38: "Bobby…You’re Gay": Marvel’s Iceman, Performativity, Continuity, and Queer Visibility (Bryan Bove)