Still Open: CFP Law, Comics, Justice: Graphic Justice Discussions 2018 @LexComica

The Graphics Justice Research Alliance CFP for its Graphic Justice Discussions 2018: Law, Comics, Justice is open until July 10, 2018. More here.

Davies on Love, Understanding, & Justice, and Reading Comic Books

Ross E. Davies, George Mason University, Scalia Law School, and The Green Bag, has published Love, Understanding & Justice at Re-readings III at 1 (2018). Here is the abstract.

The great legal realist Llewellyn, then, thinks we should read and re-read a comic book because of what it can teach us about the significance of love and understanding to the administration of justice. It is a thought (a thought, that is, about love, understanding, and justice, not their exposition in comic books) that does seem to have occurred to at least a few judges and legal scholars. Or at least a few have mentioned it.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Tranter on Seeing Law: The Comic and Icon as Law @GriffLawSchool

Kieran Mark Tranter, Griffith Law School, is publishing Seeing Law: The Comic and Icon as Law in volume 33 of the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law (2017). Here is the abstract.

This special issue examines how the comic and the icon prefigure forms of legality that are different to modern law. There is a primal seeing of law unmediated by reading, writing or possibly thinking. This introduction identifies the primacy of the eye, the emergence of visual jurisprudence and the transformations of law as a paper-based material practice to a digitally enabled activity.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

"Black Lightning," a New Superhero Show, Debuts on the CW @blacklightning @TheCW

Jason Johnson reviews the new superhero show, Black Lightning, for The Root. As he points out, it's not the first black superhero show to make it to the small screen, but he thinks it's the best by far.

More about Black Lightning: Variety's review here, THR's review here, Matt Webb Mitovich's  review for TVLine here.

The show premieres January 16 at 9 p.m., 8 Central time, on the CW. It stars Cress Williams (Hart of Dixie) as Jefferson Pierce, the hero of the title, Christine Adams as his ex-wife Lynn, James Remar as Pierce's sidekick Peter Gambi, Damon Gupton as Inspector Henderson, and Marvin "Krondon" Jones, III, as Tobias Whale, Black Lightning's nemesis.

Henderson on Daredevil: Legal (and Moral?) Vigilante @UofOklahomaLaw

Stephen E. Henderson, Unviversity of Oklahoma College of Law, is publishing Daredevil: Legal (and Moral?) Vigilante in volume 15 of the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law (2017). Here is the abstract.

In 1964, the comic world was introduced to its first physically disabled practicing attorney: Matt Murdock. Initially a proud graduate of “State College” and later more impressively pedigreed as a graduate of either Columbia or Harvard Law, Murdock supplemented his day job as attorney with a side of vigilante justice as Daredevil. In 2003, Murdock became the only attorney superhero to appear as the title character in a movie. A truly awful movie, yes, but a movie all the same. And then in 2015, thanks to the talents of Drew Goddard, Murdock became the star of a terrific television series. But while it makes for good comics and television, does it make for good law? Good policy? Is there such a thing as moral vigilantism, and, if so, is Matt Murdock a moral vigilante? What of his foil, the Punisher, or the police officer who comes around to assisting Daredevil’s endeavors? I propose preliminary answers to these questions, including considering vigilantism as theorized by Paul and Sarah Robinson, Les Johnston, and Travis Dumsday. Their metrics are helpful and illuminating, but not, I think, a fully satisfying articulation of what constitutes moral vigilantism. And if we cannot adequately discern moral vigilantism in fictional characters, we will fare no better in the real world. There remains more good work to be done—and more good comics to be written.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

A New Book From Thomas Giddens: On Comics and Legal Aesthetics @ThomGiddens @routledgebooks

Forthcoming from Routledge: Thomas Giddens, St. Mary's University, On Comics and Legal Aesthetics: Multimodality and the Haunted Mask of Knowing (forthcoming, 2018). Here is a description of the book's contents.

What are the implications of comics for law? Tackling this question, On Comics and Legal Aesthetics explores the epistemological dimensions of comics and the way this once-maligned medium can help think about – and reshape – the form of law. Traversing comics, critical, and cultural legal studies, it seeks to enrich the theorisation of comics with a critical aesthetics that expands its value and significance for law, as well as knowledge more generally. It argues that comics’ multimodality – their hybrid structure, which represents a meeting point of text, image, reason, and aesthetics – opens understanding of the limits of law’s rational texts by shifting between multiple frames and modes of presentation. Comics thereby exposes the way all forms of knowledge are shaped out of an unstructured universe, becoming a mask over this chaotic ‘beyond’. This mask of knowing remains haunted – by that which it can never fully capture or represent. Comics thus models knowledge as an infinity of nested frames haunted by the chaos without structure. In such a model, the multiple aspects of law become one region of a vast and bottomless cascade of perspectives – an infinite multiframe that extends far beyond the traditional confines of the comics page, rendering law boundless.

A Book on the Superhero "Green Arrow" from Richard Gray, Phil Hester, Neal Adams, Mike Grell, Chuck Dixon, Brad Meltzer, and Jeff Lemire

New from the Sequart Organization:

Richard Gray et al., Moving Target: The History and Evolution of Green Arrow (2017).

For 75 years, Green Arrow has been a part of the DC Comics world, working his way up from a supporting player to the star of a flagship television series. Yet for much of his career, he was a hero without a home, separate from his contemporaries, or unfavorably compared with a certain Dark Knight. Whether it is the “cowboys and Indians” influences of the 1940s and 1950s, the rebellious realism of the 1970s, the darker edge of the 1980s, or the melodrama of his TV personas, Green Arrow has remained the conscience of the comics world, and perhaps an even better representative than Batman of what one person can do. This collection is the definitive analysis of the Emerald Archer, from his Golden Age origins to his small screen adventures and beyond. Exploring overlooked chapters of Green Arrow’s life, and those of alter ego Oliver Queen, this book shows that Green Arrow has never been just one thing, but rather a perpetually moving target. Includes new interviews with Green Arrow creators from across the decades, including Neal Adams, Mike Grell, Chuck Dixon, Phil Hester, Brad Meltzer, and Jeff Lemire.

New Issue of Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics Devoted To Discussion of Images of Sexual Violence In Comics and Graphic Novels @JGNandComics

In the new issue of Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics: 

Mihaela Precup and Rebecca Scherr, Editorial, Sexual violence in comics

Erin Barry, Eight-page eroticism: sexual violence and the construction of normative masculinity in Tijuana Bibles

Lorna Piatti-Farnell, 'For God’s sake, cover yourself’: sexual violence, disrupted histories, and the gendered politics of patriotism in Watchmen 

Michael J. Prince, The magic of patriarchal oppression in Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell

Brenna Clarke Gray and David N. Wright, Decentering the sexual aggressor: sexual violence, trigger warnings and Bitch Planet 

Tiffany Hong, ‘Of course we record it’: legacy, textual violence, and fridging in Ales Kot’s Zero

Elizabeth Lowry, Book review: Matt Upson, C. Michael Hall, and Kevin Cannon, Information now: A Graphic Guide to student research 

Cormac McGarry, Book review, Bart Beaty and Benjamin Woo, The greatest comic book of all time: symbolic capital and the field of American comic books

Valentino L. Zullo, Book review, Barbara Brownie and Danny Graydon, The superhero costume: identity and disguise in fact and fiction

Eszter Szép, Book review, Daniel Worden, Jackson, A review of the comics of Joe Sacco. Journalism in a visual world

(A subscription may be required).

A New Book Celebrates Comic Book Superheroes Who Battled Adolf Hitler

Mark Fertig's new book Take That, Adolf!: The Fighting Comic Books of the Second World War (Fantagraphics Books, 2017) features over 500 covers of superhero comic books published between 1941 and 1945 showing those who took on Adolf Hitler. Those who defeated Hitler in print included Captain America, Wonder Woman, and others.

Riverdale, a New Archie Series, Debuts On the CW @thecw @CW_Riverdale

The Hollywood Reporter reviews Riverdale, an updated, reinterpreted version of Archie and his friends. In this CW series, K. J. Apa, who plays Archie, quickly becomes involved in a murder mystery, along with his friends Betty, Veronica, and Judhead. It's not your parents', or your grandparents', Archie comics. Link here. The show airs Thursdays on the CW at 9 pm, 8 Central time.

Forthcoming From @routledgebooks: The Secret Origins of Comics Studies

Forthcoming from Routledge Press: The Secret Origins of Comics Studies (Matthew Smith and Randy Duncan, eds., 2017). Here from the publisher's website is a description of the book's contents.

In The Secret Origins of Comics Studies, today’s leading comics scholars turn back a page to reveal the founding figures dedicated to understanding comics art. Edited by comics scholars Matthew J. Smith and Randy Duncan, this collection provides an in-depth study of the individuals and institutions that have created and shaped the field of Comics Studies over the past seventy-five years. From Coulton Waugh to Wolfgang Fuchs, these influential historians, educators, and theorists produced the foundational work and built the institutions that inspired the recent surge in scholarly work in this dynamic, interdisciplinary field. Sometimes scorned, often underappreciated, these visionaries established a path followed by subsequent generations of scholars in literary studies, communication, art history, the social sciences, and more. Giving not only credit where credit is due, this volume both offers an authoritative account of the history of comics studies and also helps move the field forward by being a valuable resource for creating graduate student reading lists and the first stop for anyone writing a comics-related literature review.

Representative John Lewis and the Graphic Novel

Representative John Lewis (D-Georgia) has won the Eisner Award for Best Reality Based Work for his second graphic novel, and the second volume in his autobiography, March, Book Two (published in 2015). Co-winners are Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell. The book continues Representative Lewis' memoir of his work and experiences during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Read more here:

Erin Blackmore, Remembering the Civil Rights Movement...With Comics, JSTOR Daily.

Kim Lacy Rogers, Oral History and the History of the Civil Rights Movement, 75 Journal of American History 567-576 (September 1988).

Thomas Giddens @ThomGiddens on Comics and Legal Aesthetics: Multimodality and the Haunted Mask of Knowing (Routledge, 2017)

Routledge is publishing a wealth of really interesting books in the area of law and the humanities this year and next. Here's another.

Thomas Giddens, St. Mary's University, is publishing On Comics and Legal Aesthetics: Multimodality and the Haunted Mask of Knowing (2017) (due next summer or autumn). Here is a description of the book's contents from the publisher's website.

Law brings certainty to life. Its production of and reliance upon rational text as the predominant way of knowing about, and thus judicially managing, the world enables law to give practical and certain answers to difficult and complex moral, judicial and philosophical questions. But law’s conscious ‘certainty’ involves the denial of alternative ways of knowing, and a repression of the aesthetic and the visual within dominant forms of legal knowledge. Tapping into the recent ‘turn’ towards literary, cultural and visual concerns in legal studies, this book examines the critical value that comics can bring to law. Situated in-between the rational, textual, aesthetic and the visual, comics are, this book demonstrates, uniquely able to explore the limits of the legal text; and, in expanding legal discourse, to offer new ways of figuring the future of law.

Fawaz on Superheroes as Social Leaders and Radical Leaders in American Politics

Ramzi Fawaz has published The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics (New York University Press, 2016). Here is a description of the book's contents from the publisher's website.

In 1964, noted literary critic Leslie Fiedler described American youth as “new mutants,” social rebels severing their attachments to American culture to remake themselves in their own image. 1960s comic book creators, anticipating Fiedler, began to morph American superheroes from icons of nationalism and white masculinity into actual mutant outcasts, defined by their genetic difference from ordinary humanity. These powerful misfits and “freaks” soon came to embody the social and political aspirations of America’s most marginalized groups, including women, racial and sexual minorities, and the working classes. In The New Mutants, Ramzi Fawaz draws upon queer theory to tell the story of these monstrous fantasy figures and how they grapple with radical politics from Civil Rights and The New Left to Women’s and Gay Liberation Movements. Through a series of comic book case studies – including The Justice League of America, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, and The New Mutants –alongside late 20th century fan writing, cultural criticism, and political documents, Fawaz reveals how the American superhero modeled new forms of social belonging that counterculture youth would embrace in the 1960s and after. The New Mutants provides the first full-length study to consider the relationship between comic book fantasy and radical politics in the modern United States.

The ABA Journal Presents---The Ten Top Lawyers In Comics

The ABA Journal's choice of ten top lawyers in comics. I love the idea, though I'm not crazy about the format. I really dislike having to click through lists, frame by frame.

Superheroes, Comics, and Queer Theory

Ramzi Fawaz is publishing The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics (New York University Press, 2016). Here is a description of the book's contents from the publisher's website.

In 1964, noted literary critic Leslie Fiedler described American youth as “new mutants,” social rebels severing their attachments to American culture to remake themselves in their own image. 1960s comic book creators, anticipating Fiedler, began to morph American superheroes from icons of nationalism and white masculinity into actual mutant outcasts, defined by their genetic difference from ordinary humanity. These powerful misfits and “freaks” soon came to embody the social and political aspirations of America’s most marginalized groups, including women, racial and sexual minorities, and the working classes. In The New Mutants, Ramzi Fawaz draws upon queer theory to tell the story of these monstrous fantasy figures and how they grapple with radical politics from Civil Rights and The New Left to Women’s and Gay Liberation Movements. Through a series of comic book case studies – including The Justice League of America, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, and The New Mutants –alongside late 20th century fan writing, cultural criticism, and political documents, Fawaz reveals how the American superhero modeled new forms of social belonging that counterculture youth would embrace in the 1960s and after. The New Mutants provides the first full-length study to consider the relationship between comic book fantasy and radical politics in the modern United States.

Katie Kilkenny discusses the book here for Pacific Standard.

Judge Dredd Strips, Unavailable Since 1978, Will Be Included In New Volume Next Year

From the Guardian, news that some Judge Dredd strips featuring critiques of McDonald's and other consumer culture staples will once again be available. The strips, part of an extended storyline called "The Cursed Earth," was unavailable for decades because of UK copyright law. UK law changed in 2014.

Rebellion Publishing, owners of 2000AD, will put the long-unavailable strips in the hands of eager readers next year in a volume called Judge Dredd: The Cursed Earth Uncensored.
More here from Comics Alliance.  

Law, Zombies, and Legal Education

Thomas E. Simmons, University of South Dakota School of Law, has published What Zombies Can Teach Law Students: Popular Text Inclusion in Law and Literature at 66 Mercer Law Review 729 (2015). Here is the abstract.

Although law and literature studies scholars have typically restricted themselves to the study of great (or at least greater) works of traditional literature, the inclusion of lesser texts has distinct advantages to recommend it. Comic books and television series can be subjected to a law and literature approach and zombie texts are particularly rich narratives for the exploration of legal tensions, competing values, and institutions. The Walking Dead as a television and comic book series provides a finely textured setting within which property law, euthanasia, civil commitments, contrasting decision-making paradigms and the value of procedural formalities are assessed and illuminated. This article suggests several opportunities which utilize zombie texts to advance an understanding of the law within the law school curricula including but not limited to law and literature courses.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

A CFP for a Conference on Politics in Comics

The Comics Forum has issued a Call for Papers for its Conference to be held November 12-13, 2015 at the Leeds Central Library, Leeds (UK). The subject this year is Politics: A Conference on Comics. As part of this year’s Comics Forum conference, Applied Comics Network will lead a session on the politics of comics that communicate specific information, and the use of comics in education. For this session in particular, ACN welcomes proposals from both comics creators and comics scholars. ACN is a network for anyone who works with comics/graphic narrative and information.

More here from the Comics Forum.  

Via Nick Sousanis (on Twitter).

Comics and Law

Marc Greenberg's  Comic Art, Creativity and the Law (Elgar, 2014), will be published in paperback in August 2015 and will be priced at $29.95 (discounted to $23.96 at the publisher's website). The author is Professor of Law, Golden Gate University School of Law.  Here's a description of the contents from the publisher's website.

The characters and stories found in comic art play a dominant role in contemporary popular culture throughout the world. In this first-of-its-kind work, Comic Art, Creativity and the Law examines how law and legal doctrine shapes the creative process as applied to comic art. The book examines the impact of contract law, copyright law (including termination rights, parody and ownership of characters), tax law and obscenity law has on the creative process. It considers how these laws enhance and constrain the process of creating comic art by examining the effect their often inconsistent and incoherent application has had on the lives of creators, retailers and readers of comic art. It uniquely explains the disparate results in two key comic book parody cases, the Winter Brothers case and the Air Pirates case, offering an explanation for the seemingly inconsistent results in those cases. Finally, it offers a detailed discussion and analysis of the history and operation of the 'work for hire' doctrine in copyright law and its effect on comic art creators.Designed for academics, practitioners, students and fans of comic art, the book offers proposals for changes in those laws that constrain the creative process, as well as a glimpse into the future of comic art and the law.