Movie Comics: Page to Screen/Screen to Page from Rutgers University Press

Blair Davis bdavis47@depaul.edu via lists.ufl.edu
8:15 PM (17 minutes ago)

to COMIXSCHOLARS-L
With the usual apologies for self-promotion, I’d like to announce the publication of my new book, Movie Comics: Page to Screen/Screen to Page from Rutgers University Press. It looks at the long history of how comic books and strips adapted films and television programs, as well as how movies and TV adapted comics, with an emphasis on the 1930s through 1950s.
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Here’s the official description from Rutgers: “As Christopher Nolan s "Batman" films and releases from the Marvel Cinematic Universe have regularly topped the box office charts, fans and critics alike might assume that the comic book movie is a distinctly twenty-first-century form. Yet adaptations of comics have been an integral part of American cinema from its very inception, with comics characters regularly leaping from the page to the screen and cinematic icons spawning comics of their own. "Movie Comics" is the first book to study the long history of both comics-to-film and film-to-comics adaptations, covering everything from silent films starring Happy Hooligan to sound films and serials featuring Dick Tracy and Superman to comic books starring John Wayne, Gene Autry, Bob Hope, Abbott & Costello, Alan Ladd, and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. With a special focus on the Classical Hollywood era, Blair Davis investigates the factors that spurred this media convergence, as the film and comics industries joined forces to expand the reach of their various brands. While analyzing this production history, he also tracks the artistic coevolution of films and comics, considering the many formal elements that each medium adopted and adapted from the other. As it explores our abiding desire to experience the same characters and stories in multiple forms, "Movie Comics" gives readers a new appreciation for the unique qualities of the illustrated page and the cinematic moving image."

Scott Bukatman says that "Movie Comics makes a crucial contribution to media studies not only by unearthing and exploring the very long history of comics adapted for the screen, but also by simultaneously covering the myriad ways that comics presented material originally produced for film and television. The real subject of this book is the never-ending saga of media mediating one another, and in Blair Davis’s most capable hands, it’s a tale meticulously researched and engagingly told."

Attached is a flyer with a coupon code for 30% off if you order from Rutgers. An e-book version should be out in January.

Best,
Blair Davis

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Dr. Blair Davis
Assistant Professor, Media & Cinema Studies
College of Communication
DePaul University

http://www.moviecomics.net/