Jason Sacks

Eric Hoffman

Dominick Grace

Steve Gerber (1947–2008) is among the most significant comics writers of the modern era. Best known for his magnum opus Howard the Duck, he also wrote influential series such as Man-Thing, Omega the Unknown, The Phantom Zone, and Hard Time, expressing a combination of intelligence and empathy rare in American comics. Gerber rose to prominence during the 1970s. His work for Marvel Comics during that era helped revitalize several increasingly clichéd generic conventions of superhero, horror, and funny animal comics by inserting satire, psychological complexity, and existential absurdism. Gerber's scripts were also often socially conscious, confronting, among other things, capitalism, environmentalism, political corruption, and censorship. His critique also extended into the personal sphere, addressing such taboo topics as domestic violence, racism, inequality, and poverty. This volume follows Gerber’s career through a range of interviews, beginning with his height during the 1970s and ending with an interview with Michael Eury just before Gerber’s death in 2008. Among the pieces featured is a 1976 interview with Mark Lerer, originally published in the low-circulation fanzine Pittsburgh Fan Forum, where Gerber looks back on his work for Marvel during the early to mid-1970s, his most prolific period. This volume concludes with selections from Gerber’s dialogue with his readers and admirers in online forums and a Gerber-based Yahoo Group, wherein he candidly discusses his many projects over the years. Gerber’s unique voice in comics has established his legacy. Indeed, his contribution earned him a posthumous induction into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.

Conversations

Steve Gerber

Gotlieb is a writer central to the Canadian science fiction canon. Though she has been called the queen of Canadian SF by Robert J. Sawyer, and though David Ketterer has suggested that she is Canadian SF, Gotlieb has been largely overlooked by SF studies. This book delves deeply into her body of work and traces her career in detail. Offering close readings of Gotlieb's novels, short stories (including ones not reprinted since their initial appearances), and SF-related poetry, this study explores Gotlieb's development as a writer and her characteristic themes. The book also references her manuscripts when the differences between them and the published stories provide insights into her working methods. The book enumerates and analyzes Gotlieb's innovative explorations of common SF tropes such as the superhuman, human-alien interaction, and the galactic empire, her prevalent thematic concerns (e.g., reproduction, colonization, the mind-body relationship, the essence of "humanity") as well as her stylistically dense and literary approach to the genre.

A Critical Reading

The Science Fiction of Phyllis Gotlieb

Though it lasted just two seasons, Twin Peaks (1990–1991) raised the bar for television and is now considered one of the great dramas in TV history. Its complex plots and sensational visuals both inspired and alienated audiences. After 25 years, the cult classic is being revived. This collection of new essays explores its filmic influences, its genre-bending innovations and its use of horror and science fiction conventions, from the original series through the earlier film prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me and subsequent video releases.

Critical Essays on the Original Series

Approaching Twin Peaks

The early 1980s saw a revolution in mainstream comics—in subject matter, artistic integrity, and creators' rights—as new methods of publishing and distribution broadened the possibilities. Among those artists utilizing these new methods, Chester Brown (b. 1960) quickly developed a cult following due to the undeniable quality and originality of his Yummy Fur (1983–1994). Chester Brown: Conversations collects interviews covering all facets of the cartoonist's long career and includes several pieces from now-defunct periodicals and fanzines. It also includes original annotations from Chester Brown, provided especially for this book, in which he adds context, second thoughts, and other valuable insights into the interviews. Brown was among a new generation of artists whose work dealt with decidedly nonmainstream subjects. By the 1980s comics were, to quote a by-now well-worn phrase, “not just for kids anymore,” and subsequent censorious attacks by parents concerned about the more salacious material being published by the major publishers—subjects that routinely included adult language, realistic violence, drug use, and sexual content—began to roil the industry. Yummy Fur came of age during this storm and its often-offensive content, including dismembered, talking penises, led to controversy and censorship. With Brown's highly unconventional adaptations of the Gospels, and such comics memoirs as The Playboy(1991/1992) and I Never Liked You (1991–1994), Brown gradually moved away from the surrealistic, humor oriented strips toward autobiographical material far more restrained and elegiac in tone than his earlier strips. This work was followed by Louis Riel (1999–2003), Brown's critically acclaimed comic book biography of the controversial nineteenth-century Canadian revolutionary, and Paying for It (2011), his best-selling memoir on the life of a john.

Chester Brown

In 1977, Dave Sim (b. 1956) began to self-publish Cerebus, one of the earliest and most significant independent comics, which ran for 300 issues and ended, as Sim had planned from early on, in 2004. Over the run of the comic, Sim used it as a springboard to explore not only the potential of the comics medium but also many of the core assumptions of Western society. Through it he analyzed politics, the dynamics of love, religion, and, most controversially, the influence of feminism—which Sim believes has had a negative impact on society. Moreover, Sim inserted himself squarely into the comic as Cerebus’s creator, thereby inviting criticism not only of the creation, but also of the creator. What few interviews Sim gave often pushed the limits of what an interview might be in much the same way that Cerebus pushed the limits of what a comic might be. In interviews Sim is generous, expansive, provocative, and sometimes even antagonistic. Regardless of mood, he is always insightful and fascinating. His discursive style is not conducive to the sound bite or to easy summary. Many of these interviews have been out of print for years. And, while the interviews range from very general, career-spanning explorations of his complex work and ideas, to tightly focused discussions on specific details of Cerebus, all the interviews contained herein are engaging and revealing.

Dave Sim

 Eric Hoffman

Though it lasted just two seasons, Twin Peaks (1990-1991) raised the bar for television and is now considered one of the great dramas in TV history. Its complex plots and sensational visuals both inspired and alienated audiences. After 25 years, the cult classic is being revived. This collection of new essays explores its filmic influences, its genre-bending innovations and its use of horror and science fiction conventions, from the original series through the earlier film prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me and subsequent video releases.

Amy J. Ransom

Canadian Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror: Bridging the Solitudes exposes the limitations of the solitudes concept so often applied uncritically to the Canadian experience. This volume examines Canadian and Québécois literature of the fantastic across its genres—such as science fiction, fantasy, horror, indigenous futurism, and others—and considers how its interrogation of colonialism, nationalism, race, and gender works to bridge multiple solitudes. Utilizing a transnational lens, this volume reveals how the fantastic is ready-made for exploring, in non-literal terms, the complex and problematic nature of intercultural engagement.

Bridging the Solitudes

Canadian Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror

Lisa Macklem

What makes a horror television drama interesting? Like any other drama, it is often the character development or plot, and this certainly applies to the dramatically-resonant Supernatural and its beloved characters. However, Supernatural has achieved a dedicated fandom and a record-breaking 15-season run by skillfully engaging with the social reality inhabited by the show's audience. Additionally, the show plays with the fourth wall by having an in-world fandom for the main characters. Supernatural's many layers have garnered the attention of academics who analyzed the show's engagement with diverse topics such as the #MeToo movement, consumerism, and the American Dream. This collection of essays studies the topical issues and politics that added depth and maturity to Supernatural, separated it fromX-Files knock-offs, and garnered the show its own cult following.

Essays on Social Engagement, Fandom and the Series

A Supernatural Politics

Supernatural is one of the most successful horror TV shows ever, providing fifteen seasons of the adventures of Dean and Sam Winchester as they hunt monsters and save the world. It has nurtured a passionate fan base, which has been far more directly integrated into the show than is typical. Wry and self-aware, Supernatural repeatedly breaks out of the televisual box to acknowledge its fans and its own fictionality. Though there have already been several studies of Supernatural, this volume is the first to focus extensively and intensively on the show's metafictional elements. This essay collection argues that Supernatural is not merely a horror show, but is a show about how horror works as a genre, and how fans interact with their favorite material. From exploring how the show has equated authorship with divinity, to considering its incorporation of fandom and closely reading several key episodes, the essays in this volume seek to examine the multiple layers of textuality found in Supernatural.

Essays on the Metatextuality of the Series

Supernatural Out of the Box

Canadian cartoonist Gregory Gallant, pen name Seth, emerged as a cartoonist in the fertile period of the 1980s, when the alternative comics market boomed. Though he was influenced by mainstream comics in his teen years and did his earliest comics work on Mister X, a mainstream-style melodrama, Seth remains one of the least mainstream-inflected figures of the alternative comics' movement. His primary influences are underground comix, newspaper strips, and classic cartooning. These interviews, including one career-spanning, definitive interview between the volume editors and the artist published here for the first time, delve into Seth's output from its earliest days to the present. Conversations offer insight into his influences, ideologies of comics and art, thematic preoccupations, and major works, from numerous perspectives—given Seth's complex and multifaceted artistic endeavors. Seth's first graphic novel, It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken, announced his fascination with the past and with earlier cartooning styles. Subsequent works expand on those preoccupations and themes. Clyde Fans, for example, balances present-day action against narratives set in the past. The visual style looks polished and contemplative, the narrative deliberately paced; plot seems less important than mood or characterization, as Seth deals with the inescapable grind of time and what it devours, themes which recur to varying degrees in George Sprott, Wimbledon Green, and The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists.

Seth

Contributions by Jordan Bolay, Ian Brodie, Jocelyn Sakal Froese, Dominick Grace, Eric Hoffman, Paddy Johnston, Ivan Kocmarek, Jessica Langston, Judith Leggatt, Daniel Marrone, Mark J. McLaughlin, Joan Ormrod, Laura A. Pearson, Annick Pellegrin, Mihaela Precup, Jason Sacks, and Ruth-Ellen St. Onge This overview of the history of Canadian comics explores acclaimed as well as unfamiliar artists. Contributors look at the myriad ways that English-language, Francophone, Indigenous, and queer Canadian comics and cartoonists pose alternatives to American comics, to dominant perceptions, even to gender and racial categories. In contrast to the United States' melting pot, Canada has been understood to comprise a social, cultural, and ethnic mosaic, with distinct cultural variation as part of its identity. This volume reveals differences that often reflect in highly regional and localized comics such as Paul MacKinnon's Cape Breton-specific Old Trout Funnies, Michel Rabagliati's Montreal-based Paul comics, and Kurt Martell and Christopher Merkley's Thunder Bay-specific zombie apocalypse. The collection also considers some of the conventionally "alternative" cartoonists, namely Seth, Dave Sim, and Chester Brown. It offers alternate views of the diverse and engaging work of two very different Canadian cartoonists who bring their own alternatives into play: Jeff Lemire in his bridging of Canadian/US and mainstream/alternative sensibilities and Nina Bunjevac in her own blending of realism and fantasy as well as of insider/outsider status. Despite an upsurge in research on Canadian comics, there is still remarkably little written about most major and all minor Canadian cartoonists. This volume provides insight into some of the lesser-known Canadian alternatives still awaiting full exploration.

Cartoonists, Comics, and Graphic Novels

The Canadian Alternative

In 1977, Dave Sim (b. 1956) began to self-publish Cerebus, one of the earliest and most significant independent comics, which ran for 300 issues and ended, as Sim had planned from early on, in 2004. Over the run of the comic, Sim used it as a springboard to explore not only the potential of the comics medium but also many of the core assumptions of Western society. Through it he analyzed politics, the dynamics of love, religion, and, most controversially, the influence of feminism--which Sim believes has had a negative impact on society. Moreover, Sim inserted himself squarely into the comic as Cerebus's creator, thereby inviting criticism not only of the creation, but also of the creator. What few interviews Sim gave often pushed the limits of what an interview might be in much the same way that Cerebus pushed the limits of what a comic might be. In interviews Sim is generous, expansive, provocative, and sometimes even antagonistic. Regardless of mood, he is always insightful and fascinating. His discursive style is not conducive to the sound bite or to easy summary. Many of these interviews have been out of print for years. And, while the interviews range from very general, career-spanning explorations of his complex work and ideas, to tightly focused discussions on specific details of Cerebus, all the interviews contained herein are engaging and revealing.

Dominick Grace

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