Overview

As Christopher Nolan’s Batman films and releases from the Marvel Cinematic Universe have regularly topped the box office charts, fans and critics alike might assume that the “comic book movie” is a distinctly twenty-first-century form. Yet adaptations of comics have been an integral part of American cinema from its very inception, with comics characters regularly leaping from the page to the screen and cinematic icons spawning comics of their own.  Movie Comics is the first book to study the long history of both comics-to-film and film-to-comics adaptations, covering everything from silent films starring Happy Hooligan to sound films and serials featuring Dick Tracy and Superman to comic books starring John Wayne, Gene Autry, Bob Hope, Abbott & Costello, Alan Ladd, and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. With a special focus on the Classical Hollywood era, Blair Davis investigates the factors that spurred this media convergence, as the film and comics industries joined forces to expand the reach of their various brands. While analyzing this production history, he also tracks the artistic coevolution of films and comics, considering the many formal elements that each medium adopted and adapted from the other.  As it explores our abiding desire to experience the same characters and stories in multiple forms, Movie Comics gives readers a new appreciation for the unique qualities of the illustrated page and the cinematic moving image.   

Full Product Details

Author:   Blair Davis
Publisher:   Rutgers University Press
Imprint:   Rutgers University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.00cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.426kg
ISBN:  

9780813572253

ISBN 10:   0813572258
Pages:   256
Publication Date:   03 January 2017
Recommended Age:   From 16 to 99 years
Audience:   General/trade ,  College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Reviews

An enlightening, scholarly history ... Davis treats his topic seriously while also celebrating the pleasures of these two lively arts. - Publishers Weekly

<i>Movie Comics </i>makes a crucial contribution to media studies not only by unearthing and exploring the very long history of comics adapted for the screen, but also by simultaneously covering the myriad ways that comics presented material originally produced for film and television. The real subject of this book is the never-ending saga of media mediating one another, and in Blair Davis s most capable hands, it s a tale meticulously researched and engagingly told. --Scott Bukatman author of Hellboy s World: Comics and Monsters on the Margins

Author Information

BLAIR DAVIS is an assistant professor of media and cinema studies at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. He is the author of The Battle for the Bs: 1950s Hollywood and the Rebirth of Low-Budget Cinema (Rutgers University Press) and coeditor of Rashomon Effects: Kurosawa, Rashomon, and Their Legacies.

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