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.

 

In this comics anthology full of humor and heart, writers and artists from across the US pay tribute to the ways food and sports endure as touchstones in the Latin American diaspora. In the vein of Frederick Luis Aldama’s bestselling anthology Tales from la Vida, creators offer slice-of-life comics in an array of styles to capture common threads that bind this dizzyingly diverse community. From a simple quesadilla eaten hot on the way to school, to a Puerto Rican grandmother’s offering of guineitos en escabeche, to a homesick Chicano punk’s reverse-engineered tamales, food is a gift from elders to children, a marker of continuity and togetherness amid a dominant culture that may dismiss its flavors. Sports, too, provide a path to friendship and connection across national and language barriers, anchoring fans and participants in a sense of identity and place, whether through the perseverance of the Mayan game pok ta’ pok, the unifying surge of lucha libre or soccer fandom, or a father and daughter’s shared love of horse racing. Together, the creators collected in From Cocinas to Lucha Libre Ringsides share a mosaic of stories that vividly portray Latinx identity and life today.

Contributors:
Aleasha Acevedo, José Alaniz, Frederick Luis Aldama, Julio Anta, Charlene Bowles, David Bowles, Adrian Carrillo, José Cabrera, Valerie Martinez Cabrera, Mauricio Alberto Cordero, Jaime Crespo, Celeste Cruz, Ernesto Cuevas Jr., Chris Escobar, Rolando Esquivel, Tim Fielder, Dustin Garcia, Eric J. García, Jorge Garza, Oscar Garza, Lucas Gattoni, Blas Goncalves-Borrego, Estella González, Carina Guevara, Aaron Guzman, Javier Hernandez, Sam Jimenez, Eric Kittelberger, Alberto Ledesma, Pablo Leon, Darren López, Patrick Lugo, Jarred A. Luján, Eliamaría Madrid, Miguel Martinez, Paloma Martínez-Cruz, Carlos Meyer, Marisol Meyer Driovínto, Paul Meyer, Rosie Murillo, Rafael Navarro, Daniel Parada, Stephanie Nina Pitsirilos, Jazmin Puente, Raúl the Third, Anna Maria Richardson, Hector Rodriguez III, Theresa Rojas, Rafael Rosado, Andrea Rosales, Justin Rueff, Irma Ruiz, Angela M. Sánchez, Serenity Serseción, Javier Solórzano, Josh Trujillo, Cayetano Valenzuela, Diana “Dianita” Vargas Sampieri, Andrés Vera Martínez