Maaheen Ahmed's Books

Monstrous Imaginaries

The Legacy of Romanticism in Comics

By: Maaheen Ahmed

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Monstrous Imaginaries

The Legacy of Romanticism in Comics

By: Maaheen Ahmed

Monsters seem inevitably linked to humans and not always as mere opposites. Maaheen Ahmed examines good monsters in comics to show how Romantic themes from the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries persist in today’s popular culture. Comics monsters, questioning the distinction between human and monster, self and other, are valuable conduits of Romantic inclinations. Engaging with Romanticism and the many monsters created by Romantic writers and artists such as Mary Shelley, Victor Hugo, and Goya, Ahmed maps the heritage, functions, and effects of monsters in contemporary comics and graphic novels. She highlights the persistence of recurrent Romantic features through monstrous protagonists in English- and French-language comics and draws out their implications. Aspects covered include the dark Romantic predilection for ruins and the sordid, the solitary protagonist and his quest, nostalgia, the prominence of the spectacle as well as excessive emotions, and above all, the monster’s ambiguity and rebelliousness. Ahmed highlights each Romantic theme through close readings of well-known but often overlooked comics, including Enki Bilal's Monstre tetralogy, Jim O'Barr's The Crow, and Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, as well as the iconic comics series Alan Moore's Swamp Thing and Mike Mignola's Hellboy. In blurring the otherness of the monster, these protagonists retain the exaggeration and uncontrollability of all monsters while incorporating Romantic characteristics.

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Page Count

257

Publisher

Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published Date

ISBN 10

1496825306

ISBN 13

9781496825308

Openness of Comics

Generating Meaning within Flexible Structures

By: Maaheen Ahmed

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Openness of Comics

Generating Meaning within Flexible Structures

By: Maaheen Ahmed

Never before have comics seemed so popular or diversified, proliferating across a broad spectrum of genres, experimenting with a variety of techniques, and gaining recognition as a legitimate, rich form of art. Maaheen Ahmed examines this trend by taking up philosopher Umberto Eco's notion of the open work of art, whereby the reader—or listener or viewer, as the case may be—is offered several possibilities of interpretation in a cohesive narrative and aesthetic structure. Ahmed delineates the visual, literary, and other medium-specific features used by comics to form open rather than closed works, methods by which comics generate or limit meaning as well as increase and structure the scope of reading into a work. Ahmed analyzes a diverse group of British, American, and European (Franco-Belgian, German, Finnish) comics. She treats examples from the key genre categories of fictionalized memoirs and biographies, adventure and superhero, noir, black comedy and crime, science fiction and fantasy. Her analyses demonstrate the ways in which comics generate openness by concentrating on the gaps essential to the very medium of comics, the range of meaning ensconced within words and images as well as their interaction with each other. The analyzed comics, extending from famous to lesser known works, include Will Eisner's The Contract with God Trilogy, Jacques Tardi's It Was the War of the Trenches, Hugo Pratt's The Ballad of the Salty Sea, Edmond Baudoin's The Voyage, Grant Morrison and Dave McKean's Arkham Asylum, Neil Gaiman's Sandman series, Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell, Moebius's Arzach, Yslaire's Cloud 99 series, and Jarmo Mäkilä's Taxi Ride to Van Gogh's Ear.

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Page Count

351

Publisher

Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published Date

ISBN 10

1496805941

ISBN 13

9781496805942

Comics and Graphic Novels

By: Julia Round,Rikke Platz Cortsen,Maaheen Ahmed

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Comics and Graphic Novels

By: Julia Round,Rikke Platz Cortsen,Maaheen Ahmed

Providing an overview of the dynamic field of comics and graphic novels for students and researchers, this Essential Guide contextualises the major research trends, debates and ideas that have emerged in Comics Studies over the past decades. Interdisciplinary and international in its scope, the critical approaches on offer spread across a wide range of strands, from the formal and the ideological to the historical, literary and cultural. Its concise chapters provide accessible introductions to comics methodologies, comics histories and cultures across the world, high-profile creators and titles, insights from audience and fan studies, and important themes and genres, such as autobiography and superheroes. It also surveys the alternative and small press alongside general reference works and textbooks on comics. Each chapter is complemented by list of key reference works.

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Page Count

281

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1350336076

ISBN 13

9781350336070

Openness of Comics

Generating Meaning within Flexible Structures

By: Maaheen Ahmed

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Openness of Comics

Generating Meaning within Flexible Structures

By: Maaheen Ahmed

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

351

Publisher

Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published Date

ISBN 10

1496805941

ISBN 13

9781496805942

Book's by Maaheen Ahmed

Monstrous Imaginaries

Monstrous Imaginaries

Openness of Comics

Openness of Comics

Comics and Graphic Novels

Comics and Graphic Novels

Openness of Comics

Openness of Comics

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