Twelve Cent Archie

For over seventy-five years, Archie and the gang at Riverdale High have been America’s most iconic teenagers, delighting generations of readers with their never-ending exploits. But despite their ubiquity, Archie comics have been relatively ignored by scholars—until now. Twelve-Cent Archie is not only the first scholarly study of the Archie comic, it is an innovative creative work in its own right. Inspired by Archie’s own concise storytelling format, renowned comics scholar Bart Beaty divides the book into a hundred short chapters, each devoted to a different aspect of the Archie comics. Fans of the comics will be thrilled to read in-depth examinations of their favorite characters and motifs, including individual chapters devoted to Jughead’s hat and Archie’s sweater-vest. But the book also has plenty to interest newcomers to Riverdale, as it recounts the behind-the-scenes history of the comics and analyzes how Archie helped shape our images of the American teenager. As he employs a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches, Beaty reveals that the Archie comics themselves were far more eclectic, creative, and self-aware than most critics recognize. Equally comfortable considering everything from the representation of racial diversity to the semiotics of Veronica’s haircut, Twelve-Cent Archie gives a fresh appreciation for America’s most endearing group of teenagers.

For over seventy-five years, Archie and the gang at Riverdale High have been America’s most iconic teenagers, delighting generations of readers with their never-ending exploits. But despite their ubiquity, Archie comics have been relatively ignored by scholars—until now. Twelve-Cent Archie is not only the first scholarly study of the Archie comic, it is an innovative creative work in its own right. Inspired by Archie’s own concise storytelling format, renowned comics scholar Bart Beaty divides the book into a hundred short chapters, each devoted to a different aspect of the Archie comics. Fans of the comics will be thrilled to read in-depth examinations of their favorite characters and motifs, including individual chapters devoted to Jughead’s hat and Archie’s sweater-vest. But the book also has plenty to interest newcomers to Riverdale, as it recounts the behind-the-scenes history of the comics and analyzes how Archie helped shape our images of the American teenager. As he employs a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches, Beaty reveals that the Archie comics themselves were far more eclectic, creative, and self-aware than most critics recognize. Equally comfortable considering everything from the representation of racial diversity to the semiotics of Veronica’s haircut, Twelve-Cent Archie gives a fresh appreciation for America’s most endearing group of teenagers.

A concise introduction to one of today's fastest-growing, most exciting fields, Comics Studies: A Guidebook outlines core research questions and introduces comics' history, form, genres, audiences, and industries. Authored by a diverse roster of leading scholars, this Guidebook offers a perfect entryway to the world of comics scholarship.

Bart Beaty and Benjamin Woo work to historicize why it is that certain works or creators have come to define the notion of a "quality comic book," while other works and creators have been left at the fringes of critical analysis.

Through each of its chapters, 'Polyptych: Adaptation, Television, and Comics' examines the complex dynamics of adapting serialized texts. The transmedial adaptation of collaborative and unstable texts does not lend itself to the same strategies as other, more static adaptations such as novels or plays. Building off the foundational work of Linda Hutcheon and Gérard Genette, Polyptych considers the analogy of adaptation as a palimpsest—a manuscript page that has been reused, leaving traces of the previous work behind—as needing to be reevaluated. A polyptych is a multi-panel artwork and provides a new model for analyzing how adaptation works when translating collaborative and unstable texts. Given that most television and comic books are episodic and serialized, and considering that both media are also the cumulative work of many artists, this book offers a series of distanced readings to reassess how adaptation works in this field. Comic book adaptations on television are plentiful and are nearly completely ignored in critical discussions of adaptation. This collection focuses on texts that fall outside the most common subjects of study among the corpus and contributes to expanding the field of inquiry. The book features texts that are subjects of previous academic interest, as well as studies of texts that have never before been critically considered. It also includes an appendix that provides the first list of comic book adaptations on North American television. 'Polyptych' is a unique and timely contribution to dynamic and growing fields of study. The book will be of interest to scholars and researchers in the fields of Comic Studies, Adaptation Studies, and Critical Media Studies more broadly, as well as to students undertaking courses on these subjects. It will also appeal to comic book and pop culture fans who wish to expand their knowledge on the subject.

2017 EISNER AWARD NOMINEE for Best Academic/Scholarly Work In the late 1970s and early 1980s, writer-artist Frank Miller turned Daredevil from a tepid-selling comic into an industry-wide success story, doubling its sales within three years. Lawyer by day and costumed vigilante by night, the character of Daredevil was the perfect vehicle for the explorations of heroic ideals and violence that would come to define Miller’s work. Frank Miller’s Daredevil and the Ends of Heroism is both a rigorous study of Miller’s artistic influences and innovations and a reflection on how his visionary work on Daredevil impacted generations of comics publishers, creators, and fans. Paul Young explores the accomplishments of Miller the writer, who fused hardboiled crime stories with superhero comics, while reimagining Kingpin (a classic Spider-Man nemesis), recuperating the half-baked villain Bullseye, and inventing a completely new kind of Daredevil villain in Elektra. Yet, he also offers a vivid appreciation of the indelible panels drawn by Miller the artist, taking a fresh look at his distinctive page layouts and lines. A childhood fan of Miller’s Daredevil, Young takes readers on a personal journey as he seeks to reconcile his love for the comic with his distaste for the fascistic overtones of Miller’s controversial later work. What he finds will resonate not only with Daredevil fans, but with anyone who has contemplated what it means to be a hero in a heartless world. Other titles in the Comics Culture series include Twelve-Cent Archie, Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter Comics, 1941-1948, and Considering Watchmen: Poetics, Property, Politics.

On the surface, the relationship between comics and the ‘high’ arts once seemed simple; comic books and strips could be mined for inspiration, but were not themselves considered legitimate art objects. Though this traditional distinction has begun to erode, the worlds of comics and art continue to occupy vastly different social spaces. Comics Versus Art examines the relationship between comics and the most important institutions of the art world, including museums, auction houses, and the art press. Bart Beaty's analysis centres around two questions: why were comics excluded from the history of art for most of the twentieth century, and what does it mean that comics production is now more closely aligned with the art world? Approaching this relationship for the first time through the lens of the sociology of culture, Beaty advances a completely novel approach to the comics form.

Blondes, brunettes, beach balls and bikinis—now you can cherish the innocence of summer days gone by with this paperback edition collecting the earliest stories from the hard-to-find BETTY & VERONICA SUMMER FUN editions of the ARCHIE GIANT SERIES! Whether chasing after hunky new lifeguards, modeling the latest swimwear or putting up with Archie and Reggie's goofy rivalry for their affections, Betty and Veronica are truly the queens of summer!