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Singer, Marc. Grant Morrison: Combining the Worlds of Contemporary Comics. Jackson: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2011. 
Added by: joachim (9/5/11, 11:08 AM)   Last edited by: joachim (4/5/12, 8:31 AM)
Resource type: Book
Language: en: English
ID no. (ISBN etc.): 978-1-61703-135-9
BibTeX citation key: Singer2011b
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Categories: General
Keywords: "The Invisibles", Morrison. Grant, Science Fiction, Superhero, United Kingdom, USA
Creators: Singer
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi (Jackson)
Views: 35/917
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Abstract
One of the most eclectic and distinctive writers currently working in comics, Grant Morrison (b. 1960) brings the auteurist sensibility of alternative comics and graphic novels to the popular genres—superhero, science fiction, and fantasy—that dominate the American and British comics industries. His comics range from bestsellers featuring the most universally recognized superhero franchises (All-Star Superman, New X-Men, Batman) to more independent, creator-owned work (The Invisibles, The Filth, We3) that defies any generic classification.
In Grant Morrison: Combining the Worlds of Contemporary Comics, author Marc Singer examines how Morrison uses this fusion of styles to intervene in the major political, aesthetic, and intellectual challenges of our time. His comics blur the boundaries between fantasy and realism, mixing autobiographical representation and cultural critique with heroic adventure. They offer self-reflexive appraisals of their own genres while they experiment with the formal elements of comics. Perhaps most ambitiously, they challenge contemporary theories of language and meaning, seeking to develop new modes of expression grounded in comics’ capacity for visual narrative and the fantasy genres’ ability to make figurative meanings literal.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments (vii)

Introduction: A Union of Opposites (3)
Working methods (6)
Magic words, magic pictures (9)
Worlds within worlds (18)
Alternating currents (20)

Chapter 1: Ground Level (24)
Zenith: Reign of the superbrats (28)
Dare: The contradictions of protest (33)
The New Adventures of Hitler and St. Swithin’s Day: Angry young men (40)
Zenith Phase IV: The Horus paradox (46)

Chapter 2: The World’s Strangest Heroes (52)
Animal Man: Beyond metafiction (53)
Arkham Asylum: Why so serious? (63)
Doom Patrol: Missing faces and replacement heads (72)
Embodied authorities, imaginary terrors (82)
The hilarity of influence (88)

Chapter 3: The Invisible Kingdom (92)
Sebastian O and The Mystery Play: Dandies, messiahs, assassins (94)
The Invisibles: Permanent revolution (98)
Holographic timespace (101)
The decentered text (106)
Secret identities (108)
Kill overload (112)
The language of the angels (118)
Romantic utopias (126)
Resistance is useless (132)

Chapter 4: Widescreen (136)
Flex Mentallo: When worlds collide (140)
JLA: Fanfare for the common man (150)
Marvel Boy and Fantastic Four 1234: Marvel nights (157)
New X-Men: Survival of the fittest (162)
Mutation and difference (167)
The terror of the ideal (175)
Shadowplay (178)

Chapter 5: Free Agents (181)
The Filth: Status: Q (182)
Enjoy your micro-sepsis (188)
In the world of Greg Feely (193)
Seaguy: Beyond the end of the world (198)
Vimanarama: Bollywood Kirby (204)
We3: The vocabularies of control (208)

Chapter 6: A Time of Harvest (221)
Cryptic connections (224)
Dirty realism (227)
Eternal superteens (236)
Civilizations in decline (241)
Absolute meaning (246)

Chapter 7: Work for Hire (251)
All Star Superman: History under glass (254)
Secular mythologies (260)
Ending the never-ending battle (264)
Batman: The many lives of the Batman (267)
Final Crisis: Contaminating self-consciousness (276)

Afterword: Morrison, Incorporated (285)

Notes (293)
Bibliography (305)
Index (317)
Added by: joachim  Last edited by: joachim
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