Redrawing the Western : a history of American comics and the mythic West /
William Grady
Bok · Engelsk · 2024
| Omfang | pages cm.
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| Utgave | First edition.
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| Opplysninger | Introduction. Rethinking the Western genre through comics -- Part 1. The origins of the mythic West in comics (1800s-1930s) -- "Print the legend" : imagining the American West in the nineteenth-century illustrated press -- The spectacle of the Southwest : post-frontier imaginings of the Far West in newspaper comic strips -- The adventurous decade : retooling the Western during the Depression -- Part 2. A Golden Age of Western comics (1940s-1970s) -- Cowboys, crooks, and comic books : a Golden Age of Western comics -- Western comic books and the culture of Cold War America -- "I know it's not in the romantic Western spirit" : subverting the mythic West in postwar comics -- Blood on the borders : revising the Western in the troubled 1960s and 1970s -- Coda. Walking on the bones of the dead : comics and the Western's "afterlife".. - "As the Western began to flourish in literature, it also began to appear in illustrations and early comic strips of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. William Grady charts the history of the genre in comic strips and books from its origins in this period through its mid-century heyday to its gradual decline in the 60s and 70s, ending with a brief look at the current "afterlife" of Western comics over the last few decades. In doing so, he also argues for the importance of comics in the development of the Western alongside both literature and film/television. He explains how the mythic-historical settings of Western comics allowed the young readers at whom they were aimed to explore different aspects of their contemporary society, wrestle with taboo topics, and envision different futures for the US. Grady begins by exploring the origins of the Western genre in the late 19th century and shows the importance of illustrated narratives and cartoons in helping readers visualize the West, thus establishing much of its iconic imagery of frontier life, including racist stereotypes of Indigenous Peoples. He moves forward in time to show how the West became mythologized and fantastic elements were introduced into the real landscape in comic strips such as Gasoline Alley and Krazy Kat, until the Great Depression, where strips emphasized the escapist adventures of the West in Red Ryder, Lone Ranger, and others. The postwar Western spread into comic books and was used alternately as positive and negative commentaries on the Cold War and America's place in the world, but in the era of Vietnam and Watergate, Western comics portrayed darker reflections of American culture and history and eventually more or less died out. Despite the genre's apparent demise, Grady ends by examining its ongoing influence over the last decades as its tropes are used to interrogate and subvert the idea of the mythic West and explore diverse perspectives on the genre"--
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| ISBN | 9781477329986
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