Comic fans looking for scholarly criticism of their favorite comics and graphic novels can check out the University of Florida’s peer-reviewed, open access journal ImageTexT, which is “dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of comics and related media.”
In the latest issue, Jim Casey and Stefan Hall have written a critical essay on David Mack’s Kabuki:
Although stretched over seven volumes, each with their own themes and plot-points, the Kabuki storyline primarily focuses on the (re)creation of self and the (trans)formation of identity. This essay will look at the way Ukiko navigates her construction of personhood and how she resists or participates in the scripting of male-defined womanhood. Like the female cyborg, she is figured as monstrous by her male-dominated culture and must reassemble herself within and against this depiction of monstrosity, actively negotiating the many impediments to her self-definition: she is literally and figuratively written by males, framed and reframed by the collision of lexical sign and artistic image, contained by the fetishizing power of her Noh mask, and prescribed by the genetic and active influence of her parents.
(Curious to know what they’re talking about? Check out Comics@Newsarama’s daily Kabuki strip).
Other articles in the latest issue include “Architectural Grounding in Miller’s Elektra: Temporality and Spatiality in the Graphic Novel,” “Yorick, Don’t Be A Hero: Productive Motion in Y: The Last Man” and “Imagining Terrorists before September 11: Marvel’s GI Joe Comic Books, 1982-1994.” For a future special issue, they plan to focus on the works of Neil Gaiman; the submissions page includes everything you need to know on submitting an article.
Not only do I wish I’d had a resource like this when I was writing essays about comics back in college, but I wish I’d had an “Interdisciplinary Comics Studies” program as well. Guess I was born too early.
