Philippine Comic Books

When cartoons and comics sprouted in the country at the turn of the 20th century, the populace was just beginning to read after being kept for years by the Spanish colonizers from the illumination of literacy. The American occupiers brought public education and, by consequence, a freer discourse. There was an explosion of expression that remains to be contained up to this day. The repressed exuberance of the Filipinos exhibited itself in politics, entertainment, and media. The Philippines is a young country and may not have a deep and complex history like Japan that has its emaki and kibyõshi dating back to the late 18th century, very readable materials replete with drawings that are said to be the forerunners of manga or comics. But in 1821, the Philippines had Ilocano painter Esteban Villanueva depicting the Basi Revolt in vivid sequential paintings like storytelling in comics. Although those paintings, considered the first historical ones in Southeast Asia, probably do not count because they were not printed on paper and publicly disseminated. --Amazon.com

Vietnam's Lost Revolution employs archival material from Vietnam to examine the First Republic of Vietnam's Civic Action program, designed to recast the newly independent state as a modern, anticommunist nation. This book engages with topics like nationalism, post-colonialism, and development in its examination of events that led to the Vietnam War.

Offers undergraduate students with an understanding of the comics medium and its communication potential. This book deals with comic books and graphic novels. It focuses on comic books because in their longer form they have the potential for complexity of expression.

Jake Gallo, an intelligent chicken, returns to the farm where his father, Elmer, one of the first sentient chickens, is dying, where he reads Elmer's diary and talks to the man who protected his parents before chickens were declared human.

In the world of books and literature, “hype” is associated with bestsellerism - the books that sell the most, are read by vast numbers, and constantly talked about in media and staff rooms. Often, it is the success in itself that generates an interest because popularity begets popularity. Quite often though, a hyped bestseller is met with a skeptic criticism of poor language, a badly constructed plot, a predictable story line, or all three. The bestseller phenomenon is sometimes conceived as a threat against “real” literature. Research into the creation, reception, and meaning of bestsellers is utterly scarce and Hype: Bestsellers and Literary Culture is an important contribution to the understanding of the literature read by the masses. Popular literature plays an important role in the lives of millions of readers, offering entertainment, social commentary, and alternate perspectives on everyday life. This volume brings together such diverse issues as the creation of hype, the role and the meaning of the author in the present-day media landscape, changes in the book trade, and the relationship between bestsellers and research into them. Further articles give an historical overview on postapocalyptic stories, desert romances and the role of the authors. This book offers new knowledge on a subject that is increasingly popular within university curricula. Although the anthology is a work of academic research the texts are of equal interest to general readers.

Collection of Philippine comic books.