Grynberg on What Trademark Law Can Learn From Comic Art @DePaulLaw

Michael Grynberg, DePaul University College of Law, has published Trademarks as Comics. Here is the abstract.

What can trademark law learn from comic art? This essay uses the comic book form to explore the question.

Download the abstract from SSRN at the link.

Newly published: Mark D. White, The Virtues of Captain America: Modern-Day Lessons on Character from a World War II Superhero (2d ed., Wiley, 2024) @profmdwhite

 New from Wiley:

Mark D. White, The Virtues of Captain America: Modern-Day Lessons on Character from a World War II Superhero (2d. ed., 2024).

Here from the publisher's website is a description of the book's contents.

Learn how Captain America's timeless ethical code is just as relevant in the twenty-first century as it was during the 1940s

Captain America, or simply “Cap,” provides an example of the virtues that define personal excellence, as well as the ideals and principles upon which the United States of America was founded. In The Virtues of Captain America, philosopher and long-time comics fan Mark D. White shows us that this fictional superhero's “old-fashioned” moral code is exactly what we need today to restore kindness and respect in our personal and civic lives.

Presenting Captain America's personal morality within a virtue ethics framework, the book opens with an introduction to basic concepts in moral and political philosophy and addresses issues surrounding the use of fictional characters as role models. The following chapters examine Captain America in detail, exploring the individual virtues that Cap exemplifies, the qualities that describe his moral character, his particular brand of patriotism, his ongoing battle with fascism, his personal vision of the “American Dream,” his moral integrity and sense of honor, and much more.

Now in its second edition, The Virtues of Captain America is updated to include all the new developments in Captain America's saga, including new examples from the last ten years of Captain America's appearances in Marvel Comics. New coverage of the recent “Secret Empire” storyline, in which Captain America was brainwashed by the fascist organization Hydra, features new sections examining the nature of fascism and how Captain America's character and virtues were affected by the change. This edition also offers new material on Sam Wilson—formerly Captain America's partner the Falcon who recently became Captain America himself—and how his interpretation of the role compares to Steve Rogers'.

Showing how we can be better people if we pay attention to the choices made by the Sentinel of Liberty, The Virtues of Captain America:

• Examines the moral and political philosophy behind 80 years of Captain America comics and movies in a light-hearted, often humorous tone
• Demonstrates that the core principles and judgment exhibited by Captain America in the 1940s remain relevant in the twenty-first century
• Describes the basic themes of Captain America's ethics, such as courage, humility, perseverance, honesty, and loyalty
• Illustrates how Captain America stands for the basic ideals of America, not its politics or government

Requiring no background in philosophy or familiarity with the source material, the second edition of The Virtues of Captain America: Modern-Day Lessons on Character from a World War II Superhero remains a must-read for everyone wanting to make ethical decisions in complex real-world situations and tackle the personal and political issues of today with integrity and respect.

Literature and Laws: Online Symposium, April 13, 2024: Bournemouth University

News of an interesting online symposium:

From Julia Round, Associate Professor of English and Comics Studies, Head of the Narrative, Culture and Community Research Centre, Bournemouth University

'Literatures and Laws' Online Symposium on April 13th, 10 am to 5.15 pm. 

 

The registration link is here:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/literatures-and-laws-online-symposium-tickets-873226523037?aff=oddtdtcreator

 

The Zoom link for the event should be in the confirmation email.

 

and the programme is available here:

https://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/centres-institutes/narrative-culture-community-research-centre —we will keep attendees posted regarding any changes.​

Call For Papers: Graphic Justice 2021-2022 Discussions Conference @LexComica

 From Dr. Ashley Pearson, Chair of the Graphic Justice Research Alliance:

We are pleased to announce the Graphic Justice Research Alliance 2021-2022 Discussions conference, ‘Law and Life Beyond the Apocalypse’ will be hosted virtually by the Federal University of Pampa, Brazil on Friday, March 18 2022, led by Dr Amanda Muniz Oliveira.  The theme proposes reflections on law, justice and life in a context where the rule has lost its strength, asking how law and life persists where crisis and devastation have become part of the norm?

 

As the conference is being hosted by an international institution, we have decided to invite responses in both English and Portuguese to ensure local cultural legal scholars are also able to participate. The full Call for Papers is available in PDF format (attached) and via the conference webpage. Abstracts are due February 25, 2022 and can be submitted via the form on the conference webpage.

New Publication: Paul S. Hirsch, Pulp Empire: The Secret History of Comic Book Imperialism (University of Chicago Press, 2021) @CrimeReads @UChicagoPress

 From the wonderful website CrimeReads, an excerpt from Paul S. Hirsch's new book Pulp Empire: The Secret History of Comic Book Imperialism (University of Chicago Press, 2021). It reads in part:

The American comic book is inseparable from foreign policy, the great twentieth-century battles between capitalism and totalitarianism, and the political goals of the world’s preeminent military and cultural power. The history of the American comic book is a story of visual culture, commerce, race, and policy. These four fields are analogous to the four colors used to print comic books: cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. They lie atop one another, smearing, blending, and bleeding to create a complete image. To separate them is to disassemble a coherent whole and to shatter a picture that in its entirety shows us how culture and diplomacy were entangled during the mid-twentieth century.

 

Graphic Justice Discussions 2020, Call For Papers, Closes October 19, 2020 @LexComica

 

This is a reminder that the call for papers for Graphic Justice Discussions 2020, the annual conference of the Graphic Justice Research Alliance, is closing on 19 October 2020.

 

The event is being hosted online by Middlesex University on 8 December 2020, with the theme ‘Graphic Justice in Times of Crisis’. See full details here: https://graphicjustice.org/gjd-2020/.

 

The Graphic Justice Research Alliance is a research community at the intersections of law, comics, and justice.

CFP: Comics Forum 2020: Pages of Whiteness @ComicsForum

Comics Forum 2020: Pages of Whiteness

November 2020, Online

Conference Lead: Olivia Hicks

Call for Contributions

In White, Richard Dyer argues that race is something which is only applied to non-white people; and thus white people are allowed to speak from a non-racialised, normalised position of power.1  In Unstable Masks, Sean Guynes and Martin Lund state that whiteness is a set of malleable historical, geographical and cultural values, that is ‘one of the key historical formations of power, surveillance and control’ in the West.2 Drawing attention to whiteness is drawing attention to what is naturalised and/or normally invisible.

The title of this conference comes from Tracy D. Morgan’s essay ‘Pages of Whiteness’, which explores white supremacy in the erotic fantasies of the queer physical culture movement in the American post-war period.3 The essay title refers both to the white paper used to produce physical culture magazines, but also the overwhelming presence of white bodies within, and the suffocating racist fantasies which inform the rare appearances of Black or Latino models. The phrase suggests an intersection of identity, materiality and (comics) production. This essay is one of many exposing how whiteness shapes the media we create and consume. The idea of whiteness as a ‘norm’ and the backdrop against which all other identities are contrasted and controlled, filters into

every facet of the comics we read and study; from the over-abundance of white characters and storylines, the privileging of white editorial and creative voices, to the ‘whiteness’ of the comic’s pages, suggesting a white, blank default, to the inks which are used in production, which privilege white skin tones. As Zoe D. Smith notes in her essay ‘Four Color-ism’, ‘Brown skin in comics of this period fails in part because there’s too much ink. The layers of cyan, magenta, and yellow are unreliable and painfully noticeable. White skin, by contrast, is thoughtlessly stable.’4

Maintaining the status quo of Western society is a thoughtless action; challenging the structuring logic of our worlds is a task which requires engagement and action. This conference is calling for a critical examining of whiteness and the structuring systems of comics and comics scholarship. One could respond to this theme by exploring whiteness within comics and/or comics academia. One could also choose to examine those identities which are marginalised or excluded; exploring creators and characters with marginalised identities. This call also encourages work on the production and materiality of comics; submissions on colouring (which is an underappreciated part of comics production) and zine culture, where creators often deliberately choose colourful paper or a collage effect which disrupts the notion of the white page being the norm.

Some ways Pages of Whiteness could be interpreted are as follows:

Whiteness and Comics

Comics and Race

Comics and Identity

Comics and Activism/Protest

Queering Comics

Comics Production (including colouring)

Zine Culture

Colour and Comics

Comics scholarship; new approaches to studying comics

Comics Practice as research

Digital “Page-less” Comics

Formats

Comics Forum 2020 will take place online. We invite contributors to submit proposals in the following formats, but we are open to other suggestions if speakers are in a position to offer them:

Pre-recorded videos: This may be a single speaker talk of 10-15 minutes, or a 20-minute conversation between two or more speakers. These can be followed by live Q&As either in a video call and/or via Twitter (please specify which you wish to use when you submit your proposal).

Live Events: These may be workshops, reading groups, demonstrations of practice or research methods etc. Events will be hosted on relevant openly-accessible platforms suitable for large-scale live video calls – if you would like to use a particular platform please specify this, otherwise make clear in your proposal what the format of your proposed event is so we can ensure we have access to a platform that will support it. Please note that time-zones mean that live events can be geographically exclusive, so if you can run your event in a way that includes some asynchronous content this will enable more people to participate.

Digital Zines: Zines on the conference theme can be submitted in PDF format for inclusion in the event via Issuu.

Proposals of up to 250 words in length for contributions in the formats detailed above are now being accepted at the following link: https://tiny.cc/comicsforum20. The deadline for submissions is the 1st of September 2020 and you will be notified of acceptance by or before the 14th of September 2020. Please include a short (100 word) biography with your proposal.

Comics Forum 2020 is part of the Thought Bubble Sequential Art Festival. Find out more about Thought Bubble at: https://www.thoughtbubblefestival.com/.

Note: The Comics Forum organising committee asked Olivia Hicks to be a co-organiser for the 2020 conference in 2019. In January 2020, Olivia proposed the call ‘Pages of Whiteness’ which as accepted by the team immediately. The call was an urgent call to action in comics scholarship in January, and recent events have only served to further highlight how necessary this work is.

1: Richard Dyer, White, (London: Routledge, 1997), p.2.

2: Sean Guynes and Martin Lund, ‘Introduction’ in: Unstable Masks: Whiteness and American Superhero Comics (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2019), p.2.

3: Tracy D. Morgan, ‘Pages of Whiteness: Race, Physique Magazines, and the Emergence of Gay Culture’ in Queer Studies: A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Anthology, edited by Brett Beemyn and Mickey Eliason (New York and London: New York University Press, 1996), pp.280-297.

4: Zoe D. Smith, ‘4 Colorism, or, the Ashiness of it all’, Women Write About Comics (24 May 2019), <https://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2019/05/4-colorism-or-the-ashiness-of-it-all/>

Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics Call for Papers: Special Issue on Indian Graphic Narratives @JGNandComics

The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics has published a Call for Papers for a special issue on Indian graphic narratives. Here's the description of the Call.

The post-millennial years have witnessed significant developments in the field of popular visuality in South Asia and for India at least, a liberalised economy, advancements in digital technology, satellite television, urban beautification projects and a publishing boom have all shaped what we see, how we see it and why we see it. Within this post-millennial, economic, socio-cultural context Indian graphic narratives have prospered. Now, nearly twenty years into a sustained period of their production, there is a need to take stock of the field in order to bring together the various facets of scholarship that continue to emerge about this body of cultural production. Although the early years of the 2000s saw steady production and (in particular, domestic) circulation of Indian graphic narratives, research and scholarship has taken a little time to gain similar momentum but as the canon of creative work has grown, scholarship, particularly in the last seven to ten years has proved to be more sustained and wider in its scope of enquiry. The field now has some key academic texts with many chapters and academic papers supporting this field of interest and research. The aim of this Special Issue is to publish a selection of academic papers that reflect on and take stock of the field, exploring and presenting key themes, tropes and directions that the Indian graphic narratives scene has pursued collectively over the last 15-20 years. We are interested in examining the last twenty years of Indian graphic narratives production through the following (and related) topics with the over-arching theme of ‘reflection’ and ‘taking stock’: The post-millennial Indian publishing scene and Indian graphic narratives (global corporates, domestic, independent presses and story houses) Theoretical approaches to post-millennial Indian graphic narratives Graphic narratives of the early post-millennial years - Sarnath Banerjee, Orijit Sen, Vishwajyoti Ghosh as examples Comics collectives in India and co-created/curated anthologies of graphic narrative work The works of Appupen The works of Amruta Patil Biography-based graphic narratives Graphic non-fiction (such as the First Hand volumes of work)

More at this link.

Rosen on The Lawyer as Superhero: How Marvel Comics' Daredevil Depicts the American Court System and Legal Practice

Louis M. Rosen, Barry University School of Law, is publishing The Lawyer as Superhero: How Marvel Comics' Daredevil Depicts the American Court System and Legal Practice in volume 47 of the Capital University Law Review (2019). Here is the abstract.

This article will explore on the portrayal of lawyers and the legal system in Daredevil comic books, particularly issues published in the Twenty-First Century. Because the Daredevil movie and the first two seasons of the Netflix television series have already been examined from various legal perspectives in past articles, this piece will highlight legal storylines from the comics themselves. This exploration is important because writers of future Netflix seasons will surely draw story elements from the comics discussed here and will very likely adapt these exact stories, encouraging the larger television audience to seek out and read the original comics. Given the character’s newfound fame and popularity, Daredevil can accomplish a heroic feat few superheroes can – his comics and television episodes can add to the general public’s ideas of legal practice, ideally portraying lawyers and the legal system accurately, or at least positively, turning entertaining, dramatic, action-packed fictional stories into teaching moments about what lawyers should and should never do.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

CFP: 2019 Graphic Justice Disuccsions, USC, Queensland, Australia @usceduau @graogu @LexComica

From the emailbox:

2019 Graphic Justice Discussions – “Drawing the Human: Law, Comics Justice”28-29 November 2019, USC, Queensland, Australia The 2019 conference of the Graphic Justice Research Alliance will be hosted by the USC School of Law and Criminology, University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland Australia. The conference explores the theme Drawing the Human: Law, Comics, Justice and will run on the 28^th and 29^th November 2019. The conference seeks to examine the role of comics, graphic novels and graphic art in constituting as well as critiquing law, rights and justice as they relate to and extend beyond the human. Proposals for papers and panels are welcome from academics, postgraduate students and artists from across a range of disciplines including law, criminology and justice, comics studies, visual and cultural studies and the humanities. Please see the attached call for papers which closes on the 31stof August. We look forward to welcoming you to the Sunshine Coast in November. 

She-Hulk, Attorney At Law

ICYMI: From the July, 2014, issue of the ABA Journal, Barry Malone's interview with attorney Charles Soule, who writes the She-Hulk comic for Marvel. Mr. Soule writes She-Hulk (Jennifer Walters) as a sole practitioner) and presents real-life aspects of legal practice. More here. 

ICYMI: Davison-Vecchione on How the EU Is Like the Marvel Universe @dejdavisonvec

ICYMI: Daniel Davison-Vecchione, Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge, has published How is the EU like the Marvel Universe? Legal Experientialism and Law as a Shared Universe at 30 Law and Literature 185 (2017). Here is the abstract.

This article considers the ontological and epistemological questions about European Union (EU) law raised by the phenomenon known as constitutional pluralism, and the challenge this presents to theories of law based on the concept of a legal system. It does so by heuristically comparing the EU legal order and the “Marvel Universe” of Marvel Comics, as both an extension and critique of Ronald Dworkin's analogy between interpreting law and writing a chain novel. The article explicates the concept of a “storyworld” in narrative theory and discusses the Marvel Universe's significance in this respect. It then outlines the similarities between EU law and the Marvel Universe, using the concept of a storyworld to build and apply a theoretical framework that can move beyond orthodox views of constitutional pluralism. Lastly, the article uses these insights to begin laying the groundwork for a new theory of law termed “legal experientialism,” which understands law as an irreducible world that is both experienced and constructed through our collective interpretive practices.

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.

Thomas Giddens, On Comics and Legal Aesthetics (Routledge, 2018) @ThomGiddens @LawDundee @routledgebooks

Thomas Giddens, St. Mary's University, Twickenham, and soon to be at Dundee Law School, has published On Comics and Legal Aesthetics: Multimodality and the Haunted Mask of Knowing (Routledge, 2018). Here from the publisher's website 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 – its 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.

Superheroes and Law Degrees @YaleLawLibrary

ICYMI: Did Batman go to Yale Law School? See Michael Widener's discussion at the Yale Law Library's blog.

Call for Papers: Graphic Justice: Law, Comics, and Related Visual Media, SLSA Annual Conference, March 27-29, 2018, University of Bristol Law School @thomgiddens

Via @thomgiddens:

Graphic Justice: Law, Comics, and Related Visual Media

This stream invites submissions exploring the intersections of law and justice with comics, graphic fiction, and related visual media. Critical interest in the comics medium has exploded in recent decades, and is steadily growing within the legal academy. Indeed, comics and graphic fiction—and their related visual emanations, including film, video games, and wider ‘geek culture’—are of huge and on-going significance to law, justice, and legal studies.

On a socio-cultural level, comics are historically embroiled in debates of free speech whilst today they inspire countless pop culture adaptations—from television to cinema to video games, as well as performance activities such as cosplay—and can be seen to reflect and shape popular visions of justice, morality, politics, and law. On the level of content, from mainstream superhero narratives tackling overt issues of justice, governance and authority, to countless themes related to morality, justice, and humanity in stories within and far beyond the mainstream, comics are rich with legal material. On the level of form, the comics medium’s unique and restless blending of different media and types of representation (text, image, visuality, aesthetics, inter alia) radically opens up discourse beyond the confines of the word, enabling greater critical engagement amidst our increasingly visual age. On the level of production, comics are a complex art-form, with multiple creators working in individual, group, commercial, and industrial contexts, raising questions of ownership and exploitation—issues exacerbated by comics’ transmedia proliferation.

In short, comics and their related visual media bring rich cultural, practical, and aesthetic contexts and mediations to long-standing and emerging legal problems and settings. Broad questions framing this ‘graphic justice’ intersection might include: ​ What are the relationships between comics and related visual media, and law—culturally, socially, formally, theoretically, jurisprudentially...? How can we use comics and related visual media in law—in practice, education, theory, research...? Can we consider comics as objects of legal regulation in their own right—raising issues of definition, ownership, consumption, value...?

The crossover between law, comics, and related media is an expansive and open one. The examples above are merely indicative of possible issues and questions; the graphic justice stream welcomes submissions for papers that traverse any potential intersection between law and comics or related visual media—all broadly defined. ​

Conveners Thomas Giddens (thomas.giddens@stmarys.ac.uk); Angus Nurse (a.nurse@mdx.ac.uk); and David Yuratich (David.Yuratich@rhul.ac.uk)

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.

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.