At just under thirty years the serious academic study of American comic books is relatively young. Over the course of three decades most historians familiar with the medium have recognized that American comics, since becoming a mass-cultural product in 1939, have matured beyond their humble beginnings as a monthly publication for children. However, historians are not yet in agreement as to when the medium became mature. This thesis proposes that the medium’s maturity was cemented between 1985 and 2000, a much later point in time than existing texts postulate. The project involves the analysis of how an American mass medium, in this case the comic book, matured in the last two decades of the twentieth century. The goal is to show the interconnected relationships and factors that facilitated the maturation of the American sequential art, specifically a focus on a group of British writers working at DC Comics and Vertigo, an alternative imprint under the financial control of DC. The project consulted the major works of British comic scriptwriters, Alan Moore, Jamie Delano, Grant Morrison, Peter Milligan, Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis, and Garth Ennis. These works include Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Shade: the Changing Man, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Animal Man, Sandman, Transmetropolitan, Preacher and several other important works. Following a chronological organization, the work tracks major changes taking place in the American comic book industry in the commercial, corporate, and creative sectors to show the processes through which the medium matured in this time period. This is accomplished by combining textual analysis of the comics with industry specific records and a focus on major cultural shifts in US society and culture

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Adapting the concept of the ”popular cultural memory” and its necessary “context knowledge” established by Karin Kukkonen, this bachelor thesis seeks to examine how this memory is “at work” and expresses itself in contemporary fiction, by doing an intertextual reading of the swedish author Amanda Svensson's debut Hey Dolly. Within the intertextual structures of Hey Dolly the reader encounters allusions and references that address almost everything from contemporary popular culture to established authors in the swedish canon, mainly as means for the characters to help them express their emotions and thoughts, by “choosing” from already available content of popular culture to use and modify. The intertextuality alluding to the popular cultural memory does at the same time address the concept of the ideal reader throughout the novel. This ideal reader is addressed by the narrator as one of those “in the know”, as competent enough to see this “popular cultural memory” at work in the novel by “getting” these intertextual allusions and references. Thus any (real) reader has to be equipped with the same expertise of popular culture as the narrator in order to fully understand this intertextuality. The intertextual practices of Hey Dolly should be understood as traits used by the author to express and implicate her/his awareness of the texts “surroundings”, traits indeed found even in the name of Hey Dolly's main protagonist, symptomatically influenced from contemporary, western American commercial culture. Given the premiss where this intertextual framework relies on a heavily contemporary influenced popular cultural context, it potentially would run the risk of not being understood, should future popular culture contexts operate under different premisses. In this regard the high cultural canon memory would have to be regarded as being more stable and “reliable” than the popular cultural memory, as the norms for the canon are more fixed and rarely negotiated.  Arguing that this intertextual reading of Hey Dolly is of an immense value and significant for understanding how the Zeitgeist operates and should be approached, this thesis is still based on the premiss where the intertextual reading of Hey Dolly has largely been nonexistent when looking at how Hey Dolly has been received. Instead in the swedish media we find a consistent dominance of how its reception has been read from almost exclusively a gendered point of view, where Hey Dolly is seen and regarded as the forthcoming of a new representation of the girl/woman ideal. The intertextual reading of Hey Dolly would instead be regarded as “secondary” at best, where the story by itself is self sufficient, even if the reader lacks the necessary context knowledge of how this ”popular cultural memory” is at work in the text.

在蓋曼（Neil Gaiman）第一部小說《無有鄉》（Neverwhere, 1997）裡，透過對地下倫敦的想像，挖掘蟄伏於城市之中的邪惡、混亂與時空的交錯。主人翁理查（Richard）地下倫敦之旅顛覆他對城市既有的認識，城市不是如表面所見的井然有序、善惡分明，而是過去與現在的混雜和交織，惡勢力隨時匍匐其中。本文擬以空間議題為經、城市居民主體為緯，探討蓋曼筆下的倫敦呈現何種後現代都市空間、城市空間和主體間的互動，以及游牧主體如何在他者空間中生成。 論文第二章主要藉助索雅（Edward W. Soja）第三空間（thirdspace）的概念，闡釋小說裡後現代倫敦空間。首先爬梳瑞本（Jonathan Raban）、列斐伏爾（Henri Lefebvre）, 和索雅三人對於後現代地理學的觀念，而後側重於索雅提出的第三空間。《無有鄉》裡，城市遠比理查所認為的還要複雜、失序，他漫遊於地上倫敦和地下倫敦之間，其所見景象呈現倫敦浮世繪，解構真實倫敦和想像倫敦間的界線，而此正體現索雅所謂的第三空間。 第三章以班雅明（Walter Benjamin）對漫遊者（flâneur）的討論為出發點，闡釋《無有鄉》裡漫遊者／偵探和城市空間的互動。身兼漫遊者和偵探的理查，由於處在混雜猶如迷宮的倫敦市景中，所以喪失經典漫遊者對城市全景的掌控。雖然《無有鄉》在情節的過程裡呈現後現代氛圍，企圖解構二元對立，但惡勢力最終的剷除，暗示地下倫敦又將回歸秩序，於焉似又陷入善惡二元對立的局面，但另一方面，女性在回歸秩序的過程裡，扮演舉足輕重的地位，女性的參與展現對空間父權化的抵制，而此也打破性別空間的二分法。 第四章著重討論小說的結局。筆者援引德勒茲（Gilles Deleuze）和瓜達里（Félix Guattari）游牧學（nomadology）的概念，闡釋主人翁主體的變異。在他者倫敦空間裡，主人翁和他者接觸而歷經生成他者（becoming-other），並開啟其逃逸路線（lines of flight），所以在回到原本的世界後，他又欲重返地下倫敦，擺盪於兩個世界，不囿於其中一方。 在《無有鄉》裡，兩個倫敦空間並非截然劃分，卻是相互滲透交織。想像的地下倫敦是一個暗喻，代表被城市邊緣化、他者化而忽略的空間，透過主人翁的漫遊，展現倫敦市景的多重面貌。 / Neil Gaiman’s first novel Neverwhere (1996) depicts an imaginary London Below which exposes the urban evil, chaos, and juxtaposition of diverse spaces. After his journey to London Below, the protagonist Richard changes his view of the city. That is, London is not of orderliness as it appears, but of the present interwoven with the past; it lacks a clear distinction between good and evil, and contains evil power embedded underneath. This thesis employs a spatial perspective as a thread to explore postmodern spatiality embodied in Gaiman’s London cityscape, the interaction between urban space and the subject, and the formation of nomadic subjectivity in the spaces of the other. In Chapter Two, I resort to Edward W. Soja’s conception of Thirdspace to deal with postmodern London spatiality in Neverwhere. I first introduce three spatial critics’ notion of postmodern geographies, including Jonathan Raban, Henri Lefebvre, and Soja whose Thirdspace serves as the main spatial framework of the thesis. Neverwhere delineates the urban landscape which is far more complex and disorderly than Richard assumes. He strolls between London Above and London Below, and his view of these two worlds which deconstructs the line between the real and the imagined presents Thirdspace in Soja’s term. Chapter Three utilizes Benjamin’s discussion of the flâneur as a starting point to deal with the interaction between the flâneur/detective and urban spatiality. As a flâneur/detective, Richard encounters labyrinthine cityscape, so he loses a classical flâneur’s/detective’s panoramic view of the city. Although Neverwhere as it progresses smacks greatly of postmodern aura by deconstructing dualisms, the collapse of evil power near the end of the novel suggests the retrieved order, so the novel seems to regress into dualisms. Simultaneously, in the process of regaining order, females play an important role, for females’ participation presents their resistance to patriarchal space and also subverts a gendered spatial dichotomy. Chapter Four focuses on the discussion of the ending of the novel. I apply Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s conception of nomadology to the protagonist’s nomadic subjectivity. I argue that the other London spatiality triggers the protagonist’s becoming-other via the contagion of the other and initiates his lines of flight. Because of this, after returning to his previous world, the protagonist seeks to leave for London Below. He keeps vacillating between the two worlds, for he refuses to be bound by either of them. In Neverwhere, the multifarious facets of London cartography are outlined through the protagonist’s strolling. The imagined London Below is a metaphor which represents marginalized, otherized and overlooked urban spatiality. The line between London Above and London Below is not completely clear-cut, but interwoven with each other.

The aim of this diploma thesis is a comparative analysis of the image of a forsaken child in the stories written by a popular English writer Neil Gaiman. The survey of a forsaken child in the Gothic, Romantic and Victorian literature (Walpole, Radcliffe, Blake, Dickens, the Brontë sisters) precedes the interpretation. In addition, this diploma thesis considers the separation of the young hero from his family and friends in traditional fairy tales. In this respect, the thesis discusses the role of transitional rituals and their links to the theme of the test in adventurous literature (Gennep, Bachtin). The first, theoretical chapters point out the fact that the transition to a new existence (adulthood) is often accompanied by horror elements or the nearness of death in the adventurous stories. The novel Coraline is a basis for the literary analysis. The psychological characteristic of the main heroine and her family is linked to the function of home and the role of "the other mother" as a source of the Gothic atmosphere and danger. The following chapters analyse other Gaiman's works ("M is for Magic", The Graveyard Book, Odd and the Frost Giants, Fortunately, the Milk, The Ocean at the End of the Zone) in order to study the relations between the reality and dreams, violence and interpersonal relationships, and to describe the heroes' search for the individual identity.

The intention of this thesis is to create a collection of illustrations to fantasy stories Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions by Neil Gaiman. File also includes book cover and flyleaf. The theoretical part focuses on the current trends in book design. First chapter explains concept, importance and historical context of illustration; the next chapter describes present illustration´s technologies. Next part focuses on Neil Gaiman, the author of the book, and his leading illustrator Dave McKean. Last chapter of the theoretical part compares covers and illustrations of foreign copies of book Smoke and Mirrors. The practical part includes detailed notes about working procedure and technologies used. Finally an interpretation to the individual illustrations is given.

The purpose of my dissertation is to conduct an intertextual study of two fantasy texts — Alice in Wonderland by Victorian author Lewis Carroll, and Stardust by postmodern fantasy author Neil Gaiman — and their filmic re-visionings by Tim Burton and Matthew Vaughn respectively. In scrutinising these texts, drawing on insights from feminist, children’s literature and intertextual theorists, the actions of ‘growing up’ and ‘falling down’ are shown to be indicative of a paradoxical becoming of the text’s central female protagonists, Alice and Yvaine. The social mechanisms of the Victorian age that educate the girl-child into becoming accepting of their domestic roles ultimately alienate her from her true state of being. While she may garner some sense of importance within the imaginary realms of fantasy narratives, as these female protagonists demonstrate, she is reduced to the position of submissive in reality – in ‘growing up’, she must assume a ‘fallen down’ state in relation to the male. / English Studies / M.A. (English)

The purpose of my dissertation is to conduct an intertextual study of two fantasy texts — Alice in Wonderland by Victorian author Lewis Carroll, and Stardust by postmodern fantasy author Neil Gaiman — and their filmic re-visionings by Tim Burton and Matthew Vaughn respectively. In scrutinising these texts, drawing on insights from feminist, children’s literature and intertextual theorists, the actions of ‘growing up’ and ‘falling down’ are shown to be indicative of a paradoxical becoming of the text’s central female protagonists, Alice and Yvaine. The social mechanisms of the Victorian age that educate the girl-child into becoming accepting of their domestic roles ultimately alienate her from her true state of being. While she may garner some sense of importance within the imaginary realms of fantasy narratives, as these female protagonists demonstrate, she is reduced to the position of submissive in reality – in ‘growing up’, she must assume a ‘fallen down’ state in relation to the male. / English Studies / M.A. (English)