The Routledge Introduction to American Comics

This accessible, up-to-date textbook covers the history of comics as it developed in the U.S. in all of its forms: political cartoons and newspaper comic strips, comic books, graphic novels, minicomics, and webcomics.

Andrew J. Kunka is Professor of English at the University of South Carolina Sumter. He received his PhD in Twentieth-Century British Literature from Purdue University and a MA in British and American Literature from Marquette University. He is the author of Autobiographical Comics and the Eisner Award-nominated The Life and Comics of Howard Cruse: Taking Risks in the Service of Truth. He has written on a variety of topics in comics studies, including race and ethnicity, the history of the graphic novel, the Comics Code, and adaptations.

Rachel R. Miller received her Ph.D. and M.A. in Twentieth and Twenty-First-Century American Literature and Visual Culture from The Ohio State University, where she served as the first assistant editor for Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society. Her work on women’s comics has been published in The Oxford Handbook of Comics Studies, The Routledge Companion in Gender and Sexuality in Comic Book Studies, and Comics Memory: Archives and Styles. She co-curated the show Ladies First: A Century of Women’s Contributions to Comics and Cartoon Art at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum.