University of Texas Press has just released Redrawing the Western: A History of American Comics and the Mythic West by independent scholar and librarian William Grady, a history of American Western genre comics and how they interacted with contemporaneous political and popular culture.
Praised by Christopher Conway, author of Heroes of the Borderlands: The Western in Mexican Film, Comics, and Music as “a brilliant feat of cultural history that will wow scholars and aficionados of the Western”, Redrawing the Western charts a history of the Western genre in American comics from the late 1800s through the 1970s and beyond.
Encompassing the core years in which the genre was forged and prospered in a range of popular media, William Grady, who is Associate Editor of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, engages with several key historical timeframes, from the origins of the Western in the nineteenth-century illustrated press; through fin de siècle anxieties with the closing of the frontier, and the centrality of cowboy adventure across the interwar, postwar, and high Cold War years; to the revisions of the genre in the wake of the Vietnam War and the Western’s continued vitality in contemporary comics storytelling.
In its study of stories about vengeance, conquest, and justice on the contested frontier, Redrawing the Western highlights how the “simplistic” conflicts common in Western adventure comics could disguise highly political undercurrents, providing young readers with new ways to think about the contemporaneous social and political milieu.
Besides tracing the history, forms, and politics of American Western comics in and around the twentieth century, William Grady offers an original reassessment of the important role of comics in the development of the Western genre, ranking them alongside popular fiction and film in the process.
• Redrawing the Western: A History of American Comics and the Mythic West by William Grady is available here from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link) | US downthetubes readers should buy it dirrect from the University of Texas Press as discounts may apply | 304 Pages | ISBN: 9781477329986
- About the Author
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The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.
He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: Comics, Comics Education News, Comics Studies, downthetubes Comics News, US Comics
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