Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Comics and Cultural Studies: Sites for Struggle
• Chapter 2 Responses to Comicbooks and the Concept of the ""Popular""
• Chapter 3 On the Language of Comics and the Reading Process
• Chapter 4 Superhero Comicbooks
• Chapter 5 Factors that Changed Superhero Comicbooks
• Chapter 6 Frank Miller's The Dark Knights Returns (1986)
• Chapter 7 A Glimpse at the Comics Scene after 1986
• Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

For their first 40 years US comic books relied on tights-clad superheroes doing battle with "enemies" of the establishment. In the 1980s, Frank Miller, Alan Moore, and others broke with this formula: heroes ceased to be superhuman and now grappled with personal problems related to drugs, sex, and alcohol and with their ambivalent notions of authority and power. This major change, the topic of the second half of Bongco's dissertation-turned-book, worked well for the industry until 1993, when corporate greed and manipulation took over. Then it dawned on fans that DC and Marvel Comics were engaging in deceitful marketing practices. In the early chapters, Bongco attributes the disrespect shown comics to their being perceived as inferior, mediocre, impermanent, and violent; reiterates with a few new twists much familiar material on the text-image conflict, narration, panels, timing, and duration; and retraces the history of superhero comics. The book benefits from many illustrations (although DC and Marvel refused permission to reproduce their characters) and from a judicious use of critical analysis, especially in the final two chapters, credited to Jan Philipzig. Though valuable, Reading Comics suffers from sloppy editing and insufficient use of the most recent sources. For large collections serving upper-division undergraduates through professionals. J. A. Lent; University of Western Ontario