Presentations

“Missing in Action: The Late Development of the German-Speaking Superhero”, at Superhero Identities Symposium, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne, Australia, Friday, December 9, 2016

 

The creation of Siegel and Shuster’s Superman (1938) and the superhero genre in American comics occurred before and during World War II, when Germany was culturally isolated. If, however, prewar Nazi journalists objected to Superman’s Jewish-American origins and deployment in anti-German propaganda, postwar critics such as Fredric Wertham (1954) saw costumed vigilantes as fascistic themselves. Europeans agreed, yet continued to regard superheroes as uniquely American. A failed attempt to...

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Werbecomics at the Beginning of German Comics”, at Closure: Kieler e-Journal für Comicforschung Conference, Kiel, Germany, Saturday, September 3, 2016

 

The current promotion of die Graphic Novel as flagship of the German comics industry marks the latest attempt at renewal in a field of production (to use Bourdieu’s terms) that has always been marginalized relative to the greater economic, cultural and symbolic significance of comics in other countries. Similar fresh starts, or false starts, have occurred regularly since 1945, with (for example) the rise of a small and...

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