This paper explores the way Hong Kong independent comics encapsulate the essence of the city. Independent comics are distinguished from mainstream comics by their specific mode of production. More significantly they demonstrate an emphasis on subjective personal creativity and craftsmanship, which stands out sharply in the pervasive objective culture in modern society. Adopting an anthropological approach in representing local ways of living, these comics attempt to map an identity of Hong Kong in a way that is free from confusing influences of her postcolonial history, her political subordination to China and the global capitalist forces. The artists of independent comics embrace the essence of local culture by focusing on space and cultural memory and thereby rediscovering the truth and characteristics of life in Hong Kong. As a form of popular cultural text, Hong Kong independent comics package the local identity and history into fashionable goods for cultural consumption. Together with this, the articulation of a shared past creates forces of cohesion that binds the community together and offers a way for the people to negotiate their identity. / published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

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D. Tech. Language Practice / The graphic novel has become the means through which a generation of contemporary writers has chosen to communicate the myths of our time to the world, yet unlike their counterparts in classic mythology, they have not yet enjoyed the same depths of investigation. As a medium with the ability to conjure up powerful, emotive reactions, the graphic novel is now in need of a means of substantiating the responses and reactions to the medium. This study has set out to prove that through the utilisation of a three-pronged analytic model that incorporates analytical approaches from the schools of Myth- and Archetypal Criticism, visual analysis, and particularly Linguistic Criticism an authoritative literary critique can be produced on a graphic novel that would reveal and comment on the three primary constituents of the medium, namely: language; story; and graphic illustration. In addition, this study has aimed to provide contextualisation for the nature and development of the graphic novel against the backdrop of postmodernism for the purposes of explaining the sociological, cultural and temporal influences that prompted and promoted the development of the comic book into what we now know as the graphic novel. A secondary aim of this study has been to provide further legitimacy to the concept of contemporary mythology through the exploration of this controversial concept and, by virtue thereof, set the scene for the incorporation of Myth-criticism into a multi-pronged analytic model.

Joe Sacco and Chester Brown are two artists who emerged out of a vibrant tradition of autobiographical comics in the eighties and nineties. This paper argues that Sacco's Palestine and Brown's Louis Riel announce a new way of writing the self rejuvenating the autobiographical genre in comic books which has been lamented for having become overused and excessively solipsistic. Sacco's flamboyant expressionism opposes Brown's aesthetic of silence. Brown's silence is configured so that it is not an absence of speech, but a suppression of it in which attention is continually being drawn to the unspoken. A close analysis of Sacco and Brown's comics reveals the different ways in which their complementary aesthetics construct different subject positions for the reader. Sacco simulates a sense of being there and uses his subjectivity as a vehicle for drawing a reader in, while Brown's Louis Riel collapses these distinctions between absence and presence such that there is no point of entry into the work with which a reader can sustain illusory bonds of identification.

This dissertation investigates the development of mass communication research in the United States in the years between 1940 and 1972. Central to that investigation is the career of Dr. Fredric Wertham, a psychiatrist whose interventions into debates about the effects of mass communication in the 1950s have remained largely overlooked in received histories of the discipline. By focussing on Wertham's contribution to the development of communications research a number of submerged tendencies are illuminated. A context for the development of the media effects research paradigm is suggested in the first three chapters, each of which highlights a different element which structured postwar communication research. The importance of elitist critiques of mass culture which dominated aesthetic discussions throughout the first half of the twentieth-century are assessed as a foundational factor in the development of communication research paradigms. Postwar concerns about the role of group-mindedness and collectivization are seen to contribute to a conservative political climate which shaped the development of the discipline. Differences between psychoanalysis and behavioral psychology are examined in order to demonstrate the ways in which communication research was consolidated around quantitative and scientistic methodologies. The remaining chapters present two specific case studies of media effects research. Wertham's 1954 anti-comics book, Seduction of the Innocent, is examined in detail in order to illustrate an approach to the study of the mass media that was not pursued by communications researchers. The development of a conservative and individualistic media effects paradigm stemming from research on the impact of television on children is presented as the culmination of postwar tendencies in communication studies. This dissertation argues that because the study of mass communication has been largely defined in the United States through reference to research into me

This thesis explains the connection between comics and public reactions in two separate eras of conservatism. Comic books were targeted by critics in the 1950s because their content challenged conservative norms. In 1954, a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing on Juvenile Delinquency tried to determine if comic books were having a harmful impact on children. The senators were concerned that comic books objectified women, taught children to engage in violence, promoted bigotry, and perhaps even encouraged homosexuality. The concerns caused outrage that was encouraged by the press. As a result, comic books adopted a form of self-censorship through the Comic Code Authority. The censorship combined with challenges from other media collapsed the comic book market until the next decade. Between 1978 through 1993, the United States entered a second period of conservatism. During this period, comic books reflected far more sensational content than that which had caused the public to react so strongly in 1954. And yet this time, there was almost no public outrage directed at comics. The purpose of this study is to find out why sensational content did not result in the same degree of public outrage that had occurred in 1954. This thesis starts with an overview of the controversies about comics in the 1950s era. Then, in the remainder of the thesis, comic books produced between 1978 and 1993 by the most popular mainstream comic book company, Marvel Comics, focusing on Daredevil, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, Ghost Rider, and the X-Men. The thesis also draws extensively on fan mail from the Stan Lee Archives in Laramie, Wyoming, and in the comic books themselves. Comparing comic books and the period’s changing media landscape, I show that comic books were deemed subversive and a source of scandalously sensational material out of step with much popular culture in the 1950s, but blended so well into the media landscape of the 1970s and 80s that they were safe from public outrage. Therefore, even though comic books became more violent and engaged in escalating levels of sexual objectification of female characters, fans approved of the new tone.

In this creative project, I propose that comics can be used fruitfully to introduce undergraduates to the image-word dynamic, helping them become betters critics, more thoughtful consumers, and more effective creators of images. In addition, I argue that such a course of study be housed in an undergraduate rhetoric and composition major. Therefore, this project accomplishes three goals: it explores the rhetorical function of comics; second, it justifies the inclusion of comics in an undergraduate rhetoric-composition program; and, third, it provides a master syllabus for four classes that would provide the experience necessary to students wishing to study visual, verbal, and visual-verbal rhetorics. / Department of English

This thesis examines how Shakespearean play-texts are adapted into comic books in order to appeal to young readers. By analyzing four different adaptations including two comic book series and two manga series, it seeks to answer these research questions: what is the relationship between entertainment and education in comic book adaptations of Shakespeare? Are there problems that adaptations create at the same time as they try to solve issues of interest or understanding, as perceived by youth? This paper argues that the tension between entertainment and education in comic book adaptations of Shakespeare is usually imbalanced depending on an adaptation’s goals. Substantial changes to the narrative, setting, or characters can create strong dissonances while reading although these feelings can be countered by balancing them with other changes. Adapting Shakespeare’s work into comic books engages youth with an author that they often perceive as difficult and indicates his continued relevance in both education and entertainment.

Comic books are one of the many popular cultural forms that attract, as part of their audience, a committed readership that engages in a participatory relationship as part of a shared interest in the text. In common with other media forms, this engagement expresses itself in a variety of ways, including interaction with other readers online and face-to-face at conventions, correspondence with producers, and the creation of textual products. Other features of the discourses and practices of this community may be more specific to the comic book readership. One of the most interesting of these is a participatory belief, widely expressed by readers, that they can influence the story content of the published comic book and that comic books are unique among other media forms in this. In this thesis, I investigate several aspects of this belief, in order to offer a more nuanced understanding of the participatory involvement that readers have in comic books, particularly the superhero comic books that dominate American comic book culture. First, I examine whether this participatory belief is supported by evidence from published comic books by undertaking a content analysis of the letter columns and story pages of comic books. Next, I explore the discourses of online comic book culture that relate to authorship and the boundaries of participation and show how the rules of textual engagement that are held by readers shape the interactions between readers and producers. Finally, I look for alternative participatory spaces that are available to comic book readers, finding these in a contested form of engagement with comic books, that of exploring the fictional universes of the text. This approach imagines the text as the representation of a non-actual world, to which the comic book is an incomplete window. Theorising this mode of engagement leads to a conceptualisation of participation that makes visible a participatory space that has been previously overlooked by academic fan studies, and that complicates the existing models of participatory culture.