Hillary Chute - WHY COMICS?

Join us for a lively evening with Hillary Chute presenting and signing WHY COMICS?: From Underground to Everywhere.

A comics expert reveals what makes one of the most critically acclaimed and popular art forms—comics—so appealing and unique

Over the past half century, fans have elevated comics from the back pages of newspapers into one of the most popular forms of culture, from Fun Home, the critically acclaimed musical based on Alison Bechdel’s groundbreaking graphic memoir, to the dozens of superhero films that are annual blockbusters worldwide. What is the essence of comics’ appeal? What does this art form do that others can’t?

In WHY COMICS?, Hillary Chute chronicles comics culture, explaining underground comics (also known as comix), and graphic novels, analyzing their evolution and offering fascinating portraits of the creative men and women behind them. Chute reveals why comics—a blend of concise words and striking visuals—is an extraordinarily powerful and effective form of communication that stimulates us intellectually and emotionally, centering her analysis around three essential themes:

  • Why Disaster: How comics are uniquely suited to convey the scale and disorientation of calamity, from Art Spiegelman’s conceptions of the Holocaust and 9/11 to Keiji Nakazawa’s focus on Hiroshima.
  • Why Suburbs: How comics, from the work of Chris Ware to Charles Burns, illustrate the quiet joys and struggles of suburban existence.
  • Why Punk: How comics reflect the Punk movement’s DIY aesthetics and rejection of what came before—giving birth to a truly democratic art form that is becoming a medium of choice for some of today’s most significant artists.


Featuring full-color reproductions of more than eighty significant comics pages and panels, including some famous but never-before reprinted images from comics legends, Why Comics? is an indispensable guide that offers a deeper understanding of this influential art form and its masters.

New Orleans writer Michael Tisserand, Eisner Awards-winning author of KRAZY: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White, will introduce Hillary Chute.

 

Hillary L. Chute is an expert on comics and graphic narratives, a Professor of English and Art + Design at Northeastern University, and the author of Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics; Outside the Box: Interviews with Contemporary Cartoonists; and Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form. She is also co-editor of Comics & Media: A Critical Inquiry Book, inspired by the historic “Comics: Philosophy & Practice” conference she convened in 2012, and is the Associate Editor of Art Spiegelman’s MetaMaus, She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Event date: 

Saturday, March 24, 2018 - 6:00pm

Event address: 

Octavia Books - 513 Octavia Street - New Orleans, LA 70115
Why Comics?: From Underground to Everywhere By Hillary Chute Cover Image
$46.80
Email or call for price
ISBN: 9780062476807
Published: Harper - December 5th, 2017

A New York Times Notable Book of 2018

"...a tour de force of the world of comics, from high-minded graphic novels to Superman..." New York Times


Event Type Terms: