Comic books incorporated : how the business of comics became the business of Hollywood / Shawna Kidman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kidman, Shawna, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion pictures and comic books--United States--History--20th century.

Motion pictures and comic books.

Comic books, strips, etc--United States--History--20th century.

Comic books, strips, etc.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (314 pages)

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Comic Books Incorporated tells the story of the US comic book business, reframing the history of the medium through an industrial and transmedial lens. Comic books wielded their influence from the margins and in-between spaces of the entertainment business for half a century before moving to the center of mainstream film and television production. This extraordinary history begins at the medium's origin in the 1930s, when comics were a reviled, disorganized, and lowbrow mass medium, and surveys critical moments along the way-market crashes, corporate takeovers, upheavals in distribution, and financial transformations. Shawna Kidman concludes this revisionist history in the early 2000s, when Hollywood had fully incorporated comic book properties and strategies into its business models and transformed the medium into the heavily exploited, exceedingly corporate, and yet highly esteemed niche art form we know so well today.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction: An Unruly Medium

1. Incorporating Comics: A Brief Transmedia History of the U.S. Comic Book Industry

2. Comic Book Crisis: Public Relations, Regulation, and Distribution in the 1950s

3. Super Origins: Authorship, Creative Labor, and Copyright in the 1960s-1970s

4. Tales of the Comic Book Cult: Quality Demographics and Insider Fans in the 1970s-1980s

5. Mutant Risk: Speculation and Comic Book Films in the 1990s-2000s

Epilogue: A Powerful Medium

Appendix A: Comic Book Adaptations for Film and Television

Appendix B: Comic Book Film Adaptations, 1955-2010.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's website, viewed April 6, 2020).

ISBN:

9780520969865

0520969863

OCLC:

1061874225