Critical Approaches to Horror Comic Books

This volume explores how horror comic books have negotiated with the social and cultural anxieties framing a specific era and geographical space Paying attention to academic gaps in comics’ scholarship, these chapters engage with the study of comics from varying interdisciplinary perspectives, such as Marxism, posthumanism, theories of adaptation, sociology, existentialism, and psychology Without neglecting the classical era, the book presents case studies ranging from the mainstream comics to the independents, simultaneously offering new critical insights on zones of vacancy within the study of horror comic books while examining a global selection of horror comics from countries such as India (City of Sorrows), France (Zombillénium), Spain (Creepy), Italy (Dylan Dog) and Japan (Tanabe Gou’s Manga Adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft), as well as the United States One of the first books centred exclusively on close readings in an under-studied area, this collection will have an appeal to scholars and students in horror comics studies, visual rhetoric, philosophy, sociology, media studies, pop culture, and film studies It will also appeal to anyone interested in comic books in general and to those interested in investigating intricacies of the horror genre