Abstract
This chapter examines the role of racial and gendered bias in the construction of the comics canon by focusing on the systematic exclusion of certain creators and their accomplishments. In particular, this chapter examines the important role that the “young adult” comics movement has played in developing a space for nonwhite and non-male cartoonists, including Gene Luen Yang, Jillian and Mariko Tamaki, and Raina Telgemeier.
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Notes
- 1.
Saladin Ahmed, “How Censors Killed the Weird, Experimental, Progressive Golden Age of Comics,” BuzzFeed Ideas, May 2, 2014, http://www.buzzfeed.com/saladinahmed/how-the-comics-code-killed-the-golden-age-of-comics
- 2.
Jared Gardner, “Same Difference: Graphic Alterity in the Work of Gene Luen Yang, Adrian Tomine, and Derek Kirk Kim,” in Multicultural Comics: From Zap to Blue Beetle, ed. Frederick Luis Aldama (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2010), 132–147.
- 3.
Women in Refrigerators, http://www.lby3.com/wir/
- 4.
Jill Lepore, “Looking at Female Superheroes with Ten-Year-Old Boys,” The New Yorker, May 7, 2015, http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/marvel-a-force-female-superheroes
- 5.
Carolyn Cocca, “The ‘Broke Back Test’: A Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of Portrayals of Women in Mainstream Superhero Comics, 1993–2013,” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 5 (2014): 411–428.
- 6.
Leonard Rifas, “Race and Comix,” in Multicultural Comics: From Zap to Blue Beetle, ed. Frederick Luis Aldama (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010), 28.
- 7.
Greg Carpenter, “On Canons, Critics, Consensus, and Comics,” Sequart, January 6–20, 2014, http://sequart.org/magazine/38323/on-canons-critics-consensus-and-comics-part–1/
- 8.
“Masters of American Comics,” Hammer Museum, http://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions/2005/masters-of-american-comics/. The fifteen artists were Winsor McCay, Lyonel Feininger, George Herriman, E.C. Segar, Frank King, Chester Gould, Milton Caniff, and Charles Schulz, representing comic strips, and Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Gary Panter, and Chris Ware representing comic books and graphic novels. See also Bart Beaty, Comics versus Art (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 193–198.
- 9.
Carly Berwick, ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Comic-Book Artists?’ Art News Online, http://www.artnewsonline.com/currentarticle.cfm?art_id=1924; Natalie Nichols, ‘Where the Girls Aren’t,’ LA City Beat, http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=3321&IssueNum=141
- 10.
Berwick, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Comic-Book Artists?” 3; Todd Hignite, “‘Masters of American Comics’: An Interview with Exhibition Co-Curator Brian Walker,” American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), January 3, 2006, http://www.aiga.org/masters-of-american-comics/, 17.
- 11.
“She Draws Comics @ MoCCA,” press release, http://old.brokenfrontier.com/headlines/p/detail/she-draws-comics-at-mocca
- 12.
See Rachel Donadio, “Revisiting the Canon Wars,” The New York Times, September 16, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/books/review/Donadio-t.html
- 13.
Jenny E. Robb and Rebecca Wanzo, “Finding Archives/Making Archives: Observations on Conducting Multicultural Comics Research,” in Multicultural Comics: From Zap to Blue Beetle, ed. Frederick Luis Aldama (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2010), 203.
- 14.
Heidi MacDonald, “Announcing: The Comics Industry Person of the Year 2014: Raina Telgemeier,” The Beat (blog), January 5, 2015, http://www.comicsbeat.com/announcing-the-comics-industry-person-of-the-year–2014-raina-telgemeier/
- 15.
Brian Hibbs, “BookScan Numbers Show Big Book Market Growth for Comics in 2014,” Tilting at Windmills, Comic Book Resources, February 27, 2015, http://www.comicbookresources.com/article/bookscan-numbers-show-big-book-market-growth-for-comics-in–2014
- 16.
YALSA, “Printz Award,” American Library Association, http://www.ala.org/yalsa/printz-award
- 17.
Hibbs, “BookScan Numbers 2014.”
- 18.
An archive of the Great Graphic Novels lists is available at http://www.ala.org/yalsa/great-graphic-novels. The lists are inconsistent in reporting creator credits; in the tally above, I have only included creators who are named within the list as reproduced on the YALSA website.
- 19.
Zack Handlen, Jason Heller, Noel Murray, Keith Phipps, Leonard Pierce, and Tashar Robinson, “The Best Comics of the ’00s,” The A.V. Club, November 24, 2009, http://www.avclub.com/article/the-best-comics-of-the–00s–35713
- 20.
Anne Lundin, Constructing the Canon of Children’s Literature: Beyond Library Walls and Ivory Towers (New York: Routledge, 2004); Kenneth Kidd, “Prizing Children’s Literature: The Case of Newbery Gold,” Children’s Literature 35 (2007): 166–190.
- 21.
Kidd, “Prizing Children’s Literature,” 169.
- 22.
Young Adult Library Service Association (YALSA), “Great Graphic Novels for Teens Committee: Policies and Procedures,” American Library Association, http://www.ala.org/yalsa/booklistsawards/booklists/greatgraphicnovelsforteens/policies
- 23.
B. Joyce Stallworth, Louel Gibbons, and Leigh Fauber, “It’s Not on the List: An Exploration of Teachers’ Perspectives on Using Multicultural Literature,” Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 49 (2006): 478–489; Junko Yokota, “Issues in Selecting Multicultural Children’s Literature,” Language Arts 70, no. 3 (1993): 156–167; Kira Isak Pirofski, “Multicultural Literature and the Children’s Literary Canon,” Research Room, EdChange Critical Multicultural Pavilion, n.d., http://www.edchange.com/multicultural/papers/literature.html
- 24.
National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and International Reading Association (IRA), Standards for the English Language Arts (Newark, DE and Urbana, IL: IRA and NCTE, 1996), 29.
- 25.
“Mission Statement,” We Need Diverse Books, n.d., http://weneeddiversebooks.org/mission-statement/
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Beaty, B., Woo, B. (2016). Not by a White Man?. In: The Greatest Comic Book of All Time. Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels. Palgrave Pivot, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53162-9_9
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