This chapter focuses on a specific comics genre, crime fiction, and the multiple relationships between the two spheres of comics and graphic novels. It takes as its starting point the Crime Does Not Pay magazine (1942), while also presenting a detailed overview and critical analysis of the history of crime comics, which in the beginning often purported to be based on true crime stories. The chapter further analyzes the policy of EC Comics, which entered the crime fiction trend in 1948 before transitioning to horror and science fiction. The chapter then examines the appearance of a new orientation within the EC stories, aiming at effecting progressive social change, in sharp contrast to the severe criticism voiced by psychologist Fredric Wertham, whose anti-comics crusade resulted in the Comics Code (1954). After its implementation, crime fiction disappeared from mainstream comics, but reappeared in the independent comics boom, where creators continued to mine the subversive potential of the genre for political commentary. A close reading of Ed Brubaker’s oeuvre illustrates the new forms of the crime comics tradition today.

Many Black intellectuals and artists have called for a counter-historiography that would redress the silencing of Black voices and the inadequate representation of Black experiences in earlier comics. This chapter identifies three categories of graphic historiographies, each with thematic and formal recurrences: those that propose a frontal look at the context of enslavement, from the horrors of the Middle Passage to the violence of the plantation world; those focusing on the political and social struggles of Black communities after the Civil War, from the Jim Crow era and the courageous actions of Civil Rights leaders to twenty-first-century police brutality; and, finally, those that imagine new Black futures in the mode of speculative fiction, while metaphorically referencing past forms of exploitation and repression. The chapter studies the specific devices of several of these works, including the use of temporal shifts in the graphic adaptation of Octavia Butler’s Kindred, the reliance on oral history and photo-based illustrations in John Lewis’s Run, Book One, the depiction of Black women’s subordination in Shirlene Obuobi’s ShirlyWhirlMD webcomic, and the futuristic metaphors of slavery and capitalism in Roxane Gay’s The Sacrifice of Darkness.

This chapter scrutinizes two genres that seem closer to the world of comic books than to graphic novels, but that have nevertheless proven extremely influential in the development of the latter. It opens with a definition of both science fiction and fantasy, contrasted genres yet with many shared tropes, and it acknowledges the difficulties of summarizing the specific features of each category. The chapter addresses the most important forerunners of both genres, such as Little Nemo in Slumberland, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, or Prince Valiant, whose relevance for the graphic novel is now fully recognized. It aptly analyzes the birth of Action Comics in 1938 as a turning point and the start of the superhero genre with the Superman character, in whom science fiction and fantasy converge (although later forms of both genres also bear the strong influence of crime comics). The chapter also compares the Marvel and DC production and examines the development of franchises, which prove perfectly compatible with the creation of author-oriented graphic novels. Examples of such affinity are The Swamp Thing, The Sandman, Saga, and The Walking Dead.

The history of comics and graphic novels often coincides with a history of marginalization of women and misogynistic stereotypes. Conversely, this chapter examines the representation of women by women in graphic novels, with a particular focus on women’s lives. It recalls the early efforts of women cartoonists within the underground comix of the 1960s and 1970s, such as Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Phoebe Gloeckner, and Julie Doucet, who produced different representations of femininity and sexuality than their male counterparts. It considers the contributions of seminal graphic memoirs by Marjane Satrapi and Alison Bechdel, which blended stories of personal awakening with a political context and message, offering new templates for future works. It also highlights the recurrence of the theme of childhood trauma in autobiographical works by women authors, such as Lynda Barry’s One Hundred Demons (2002), as well as the depiction of unequal work, career, household, and parenting demands placed on women. Finally, it reflects on the manner in which graphic novels by women authors may portray women’s experiences such as motherhood, abortion, and menopause, and considers graphic works that expand the notion of women’s discourse beyond binary identities.

This chapter deals with a genre that, at first sight, clashes with both the major themes and the publication format of the graphic novel: superhero comics. However, the history of the graphic novel demonstrates that it cannot be completely separated from superhero comics. Some important forerunners of the graphic novelists have had long careers in producing superhero comics, and some of their works went far beyond the standards of comics publication in the 1960s and 1970s. Moreover, when the graphic novel gradually consolidated, comics publishers such as Marvel began to adopt the format and to use the direct market system as a response to the decline of comic book distribution. The chapter offers a close analysis of two graphic novels that had superheroes at their core: Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (Miller) and Watchmen (Moore and Gibbons). It gives an overview of the imitations and continuations of these books, with a special look at Eddie Campbell’s “Graphic Novel Manifesto” (2004). It concludes with a case study of the Batman universe.

This chapter examines the birth and development of Latinx comics from the early 1980s to the present. It places the Hernandez Brothers (Los Bros Hernandez: Mario, Gilbert, and Jaime), their long-standing series Love and Rockets, and their alternative publisher Fantagraphics (with editor Gary Groth at the helm) at the center of this expansion. They opened new avenues of expression, production, and distribution of Latinx comics and graphic novels and influenced subsequent generations of Latinx authors. Under the generic umbrella of the series, the Brothers produced unique, single-authored narratives, whose threads were woven across individual volumes, forming a complex story world and creating wide story arcs of a novelistic nature. Stories set in the United States and south of the border portray multiple members and generations of the Latinx community, reflecting the lives and experiences of Latinx readers, left unrepresented in graphic fiction to that point. The chapter argues that today’s vibrant Latinx comics production (e.g., Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing Is Monsters) followed in the Hernandez brothers’ footsteps, with similar stories about everyday life, immigration, racism, and survival.

This chapter examines the nonfiction subgenre of graphic journalism or visual reportage. It first presents the major forerunners of the genre, including Kurtzman, Crumb, and Brabner and Merkle, then further addresses the characteristics of such graphic works from three perspectives: history, documentary, and authorial presence. The analysis of “history” highlights the difference between journalism as a report on recent, noteworthy events and the more distanced view presented in the graphic novel, which requires extensive research and comes much after the time of the events, thereby adding a historical perspective often lacking in journalism, even when the graphic works include a witness account of the authors themselves, as in Joe Sacco’s work, typically. The chapter studies the “documentary” aspect through the effort to represent the experience of others, with particular attention to the encounter between authors and cultural others. Finally, the chapter examines the pivotal role of the graphic “author-journalist” as curator and sometimes character in their own reportage, either directly (Delisle) or in more understated forms (Backderf).

Stories of Asian immigration to North America have developed a series of recognizable tropes, from exile for economic or political reasons to arrival and the subsequent struggles of discrimination, assimilation, and self-identity. This chapter identifies the preferred themes of graphic novel publishers, who continue to seek and legitimize a familiar model of Asian American narrative: that of origin and identity stories, often autobiographical in nature, in which authors grapple with assimilation difficulties and express identity challenges, notably when self-acceptance and community acceptance are not always aligned (e.g., in celebrated works by Adrian Tomine and Gene Luen Yang). The chapter also considers other types of narratives: family stories in which a mixed heritage challenges social norms (Lynda Barry), graphic memoirs from second-generation Asian Americans on their immigrant mothers and their cultural transition, and refugee narratives from authors of the Vietnamese diaspora who reflect on the Vietnam War and the perilous immigration of “boat people.”

This chapter addresses the representation of war in the American graphic novel. It begins with a historical discussion of the decline of the war comic in light of social change in the 1960s. While pop art appropriation of war comics questioned the jingoistic content of the tradition, older-generation comics artists (Milton Caniff, Jack Kubert, et al.) and the National Cartoonist Society continued to promote American militarism in their work. In this culturally compromised context, war comics declined in status and circulation, facilitating the rise of the American graphic novel, which inverted the aesthetics of the old war comics. By contrast, war graphic novels account for the suffering of war, reveal personal and family tragedies, bring forward women’s experiences, and (in translation) offer an international perspective. The recognition given to graphic novels in the public sphere has also facilitated the exhibition and republication of previously marginalized works (e.g., material from Vietnam War veteran Vernon Grant). The chapter concludes with a discussion of Florent Silloray’s graphic novel biography of the famous war photographer Robert Capa, which includes a new theorization of the status of the war image and the human cost of military violence.

Numerous bands and their fans see themselves as having revolutionised rock music in the late 1960s and the early 1970s and given birth to a harder style that was to become known as heavy metal. British bands Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and The Kinks are considered pioneers within the two countries of metal’s origin; their counterparts in the US were Steppenwolf, Iron Butterfly and Blue Cheer. Although it is safe to say that these bands were among those that gave the initial spark for a musical genre that has taken hold around the globe in the more than fifty years of its existence, this introduction is not meant to debate the origins of metal.

Today, metal music is a genre popular with fans worldwide, facilitated by a vast industry with specialised professions, such as journalists, artist and repertoire managers, record producers, concert promoters and stage crews.

Metal’s popularity in Asia is a social fact. Occasionally dismissed in the West as nostalgic ‘dad rock’ or marginal esoterica for self-selecting elitists, in Asia metal remains a vital expressive outlet, and its popularity appears to be growing. Composed of tens of millions of avid enthusiasts, the Asian heavy metal music scene is an increasingly interconnected territory that has forged ties to other world regions through its most successful groups, including Chthonic (Taiwan), Voice of Baceprot (Indonesia), Rudra (Singapore), The Hu Band (Mongolia), Bloodywood (India) and Babymetal (Japan). While it would not be inaccurate to state that online platforms enabled the global conquest of these bands, such an assertion would also be facile and incomplete. The emergence of thriving local music scenes and the culmination of a painstaking decades-long process of indigenisation of metal genre features were also necessary prerequisites; otherwise, Asian metal acts would have little chance of overcoming westerners’ obdurate resistance to Asian music, a dismissal rooted in long-enduring racist stereotypes. Among these is the offensive notion that Asians are weak and emasculated compared to white Europeans. Thus, the ability of Asian people to master a music genre that extols strength and power is hardly trivial within the larger history of cultural representation.

This chapter focuses on heavy metal music and culture in the Middle East. It provides a summary of previous research on metal in the region and touches upon common clichés of metal as a source of counterculture, revolution and change. It then addresses the complicated relationship between metal studies and Orientalism. It is the author’s contention that research on metal in the Middle East has been directly influenced by Orientalist discourse. The author further argues that the impact of this discourse has led to the politicisation and exoticisation of a particular figure – the ‘Muslim metalhead’. This chapter seeks to contribute to the current discussion on ‘Oriental metal’ as an attempt to exotify the very existence (and art) of metalheads from a region that has been geopolitically framed as the ‘Middle East’.

This chapter explores the impact of ‘subgenre qualifiers’ that modify a genre title and distinguish between, say, ‘melodic death metal’ and ‘progressive death metal’. Endemic within contemporary metal discourse, these qualifiers function both to describe and prescribe the specific focus of a given subgenre, affecting composition, production, performance and reception (among other areas). Focusing on technical death metal, the chapter investigates the prescriptive nature of creativity contained within a relatively precise definition of ‘technical’ developed through consistent usage by artists, reliable acknowledgement from audiences and continual reinforcement by critics. By examining discourse from critics and artists, we can observe how subgenre qualifiers are used creatively, sometimes cast as a conceptual constraint against which an artist struggles, sometimes interpreted as a challenge and an explicit focus for an artist’s musical endeavours. The chapter considers how artists and listeners navigate technical death metal’s delimited forms of expression as a case study of the ostensibly highly stratified nature of modern metal.