The Revisionist comics of the 1980s to present represent an effort to literally revise the existing conventions of mainstream comics. The most prominent and common device employed by the Revisionists was self-reflexivity; thus, they created metacomics. The Revisionists make a spectacle of critically interrogating the conventions of mainstream comics, but do so using those same conventions: formal, generic, stylistic, etc. At their most practical level, Revisionist metacomics denaturalise the dominant genres of the American mainstream and therefore also denaturalise the ideological underpinnings of those genres. At their most abstract level, they destabilise the concepts of "fiction," "reality," "realism," and "fantasy," and even collapse them into each other.
Chapter 1 explains my methodological approach to metacomics: formal (sequence and hybridity), self-reflexive (metafiction, metapictures, metacomics), and finally denaturalising (articulation and myth). Chapter 2 analyses two metacomic cycles in the mainstream (the Crisis and Squadron Supreme cycles) and surveys the self-reflexive elements of Underground comix (specifically with regard to gender and feminist concerns). Chapter 3 presents three motifs in Revisionist comics by which they denaturalise the superhero: the dictator-hero, postmodern historiography, and fantasy genres. Finally, Chapter 4 analyses three major Revisionist comic-book seriesTransmetropolitan, Promethea, and Sandmanall of which comment on contemporary culture and the nature of representation using the dominant genres of American comics (science fiction, superhero, and fantasy, respectively). / English
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:AEU.10048/1037 |
| Date | 06 1900 |
| Creators | Kidder, Orion Ussner |
| Contributors | Doug Barbour (English and Film Studies), Brad Bucknell (English and Film Studies), William Beard (English and Film Studies), Steven Harris (Art and Design), Bart Beaty (Communications and Culture) |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 9639512 bytes, application/pdf |
| Relation | Kidder, Orion Ussner. "Show and Tell: Notes Towards a Theory of Metacomics." International Journal of Comic Art.10 (Spring 2008). 248 267. |
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