New Works of Imagination
from Part I - History and Genre
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2024
This chapter scrutinizes two genres that seem closer to the world of comic books than to graphic novels, but that have nevertheless proven extremely influential in the development of the latter. It opens with a definition of both science fiction and fantasy, contrasted genres yet with many shared tropes, and it acknowledges the difficulties of summarizing the specific features of each category. The chapter addresses the most important forerunners of both genres, such as Little Nemo in Slumberland, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, or Prince Valiant, whose relevance for the graphic novel is now fully recognized. It aptly analyzes the birth of Action Comics in 1938 as a turning point and the start of the superhero genre with the Superman character, in whom science fiction and fantasy converge (although later forms of both genres also bear the strong influence of crime comics). The chapter also compares the Marvel and DC production and examines the development of franchises, which prove perfectly compatible with the creation of author-oriented graphic novels. Examples of such affinity are The Swamp Thing, The Sandman, Saga, and The Walking Dead.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.