This anthology explores tensions between the individualistic artistic ideals and the collective industrial realities of contemporary cultural production with eighteen all-new chapters presenting pioneering empirical research on the complexities and controversies of comics work.

Art Spiegelman. Alan Moore. Osamu Tezuka. Neil Gaiman. Names such as these have become synonymous with the medium of comics. Meanwhile, the large numbers of people without whose collective action no comic book would ever exist in the first place are routinely overlooked. Cultures of Comics Work unveils this hidden, global industrial labor of writers, illustrators, graphic designers, letterers, editors, printers, typesetters, publicists, publishers, distributors, translators, retailers, and countless others both directly and indirectly involved in the creative production of what is commonly thought of as the comic book. Drawing upon diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives, an international and interdisciplinary cohort of cutting-edge researchers and practitioners intervenes in debates about cultural work and paves innovative directions for comics scholarship.

Autorentext

Casey Brienza is Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and the Centre for Culture and the Creative Industries at City University London, UK. She is author of Manga in America: Transnational Book Publishing and the Domestication of Japanese Comics and editor of Global Manga: Japanese Comics without Japan?.

Paddy Johnston is a comics scholar, cartoonist, and writer, currently working as a Doctoral Researcher in the English department at the University of Sussex, UK. He has published articles on comics in The Comics Grid, Comics Forum, and Networking Knowledge.

Inhalt
.Introduction; Casey Brienza and Paddy Johnston.- Part I: Locating Labor.- 1 Between Art and the Underground in India; Jeremy Stoll.- 2 For the Love of the Craft: Industry, Identity, and Australian Comics; Amy Louise Maynard.- 3 Imagining US-Mexican Cooperation in the World War II Propaganda Comic Book Nuestro Futuro; Elena D. Hristova.- 4 From Turtles to Topatoco: A Brief History of Comics Production in the Pioneer Valley; Ryan Cadrette.- 5 Recognizing Comics as Brazilian National Popular Culture: CEPTA and the Debates over Professional Identities in Comics; Ivan Lima Gomes.- 6 Gatekeeping by Belgian Comics Publishing Houses Dupuis and Lombard in the mid-1980s; Pascal Lefèvre.- Part II: Illustrating Workers.- 7 An Anatomy of Collaboration in Comics: Romantic Genius vs. The Team; Brenna Clarke Gray and Peter Wilkins.- 8 Creating Comics as Artisans: The Comics Creators of Columbia, 1998-2014; Fernando Suárez and Enrique Uribe-Jongbloed.- 9 Under the Radar: John Porcellino's King-Cat Comics and Self-Publishing as Cultural Work; Paddy Johnston.- 10 Bearing Witness and Telling It How It Is: The Collaborative Creation of Dans les griffes de la vipère; Annick Pelligrin.- 11 Negotiating Artistic Identity in Comics Collaboration; Ahmed Jameel.- 12 Comic Book Rock Stars? Making Sense of Work in Comics; Benjamin Woo.- Part III: Pushing the Boundaries.- 13 Subcultural Clusters and Blurry Boundaries: Localized Manga Production in Hungary; Zoltan Kacsuk.- 14 The Tail That Wags the Dog: The Impact of Distribution on the Development and Direction of the American Comics Industry; David K. Palmer.- 15 Drawing Fatherhood: The Working Father Figure in the Autobiographical Novels of Guy Delisle; Roei Davidson.- 16 Towards Maturity: Analyzing the Tetrahedral System of the Comics Industry in Spain; José Andrés Santiago Iglesias.- 17 Crowdfunding and Comics in Brazil; André Pereira de Carvalho.- 18 A Fumetto, a Comic, and a BD Walk into a Bar: Translation of Humor in Comics; Alex Valente.