Offering an accessible introduction to the world of comics, this book provides a critical overview of how the form and content of comic books from around the globe have evolved over time.
From Tokyo's manga cafés to Buenos Aires's kioscos, from Parisian ateliers to Lagos's digital studios, comics have become a truly planetary art form. Global Comics: The Basics is the first comprehensive guide to this vibrant world republic of sequential art, tracing how local traditions-Japanese manga, Franco-Belgian bande dessinée, Latin American historietas, African comics, and more-developed their distinctive visual grammars while increasingly cross-pollinating across borders. Frederick Luis Aldama illuminates how creators from Osamu Tezuka to Marjane Satrapi, from the Hernandez Brothers to Deena Mohamed, have wielded the unique power of words-and-pictures storytelling to witness history, challenge power, and reimagine identity. This book offers an important guide to the history of comics globally, situating comic book production, dissemination, and consumption within historical, social, cultural, regional, and global contexts.
Essential reading for anyone interested in learning more about the history and cultural significance of comics on a global level and why they matter more than ever in our interconnected age.
Autorentext
Frederick Luis Aldama is the Jacob & Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas, Austin. He is an award-winning author, co-author and editor of over 50 books, including the Eisner Award winning, Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics (2017), Comics Studies Here and Now (2018), The Routledge Companion to Gender and Sexuality in Comics Studies (2020), and Comics Studies: The Key Concepts (2026). He is editor and co-editor of 10 book series, including Latinographix and Brown Ink that publish graphic fiction and nonfiction. His contributions to literature, art, and education have earned him Obama White House honors as well as induction into both the Texas Institute of Letters and Ohio State University's Hall of Fame.