Comic Books and Comic Strips in the United States

Comics have become icons of U.S. popular culture familiar throughout the world. This huge bibliography, one of four compiled by Lent to cover all parts of the world, cites many publications in various writing styles, formats, time periods, and languages. This volume is introduced by famed cartoonists Mort Walker (Beetle Bailey) and Jerry Robinson (The Joker). The genres of comic art have had a phenomenal growth in recent years; the literature has grown with these developments, making this volume of interest to scholars of popular culture and fans alike.Featured are sections on resources, including an annotated directory of 128 comic art-related periodicals; comics collecting; portrayals of comics in movies, television, and radio; and relationships of comics with art, education and children, eroticism, ethnicity, humanism, the professions, violence, and war. Other parts deal with historical, business, legal, and technical aspects of comics. Two hundred and ninety-one comics-related personnel are singled out for special consideration, as well as 143 individual comic strip characters and 48 comic book titles under 13 genres. The foreword by Mort Walker deals with comics over the years and the topic of political correctness, and the introduction by Jerry Robinson gives a history of comic art. The indices are conveniently divided by authors, cartoonists, characters and titles, periodicals, and subjects. The other three books in this international series cover animation, caricature, gag, magazine, illustrative, and political cartoons in the United States and Canada; comic art of Europe; and comic art of Africa, Asia, Australia and Oceania, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

.,."Exhaustive and much needed bibliography by John Lent, who has written many learned and insightful studies of world comics. He is uniquely qualified to undertake this monumental task. Everyone who writes, draws, studies, reads, enjoys, and loves the comics are in his debt."-Jerry Robinson president of Cartoonists and Writers Syndicate creator of "The Joker", .,."these bibliographies provide scholars in this area an invaluable research tool that will save countless hours in the library....Lent is to be commended for his efforts. Scholars working in any discipline related to comic arts should encourage their institutions to add his bibliographies to the library reference collection. Those who have chosen comic arts as their primary field of research should seriously consider purchasing these bibliographies for their own research collection."-Studies in American Humor, ?...these bibliographies provide scholars in this area an invaluable research tool that will save countless hours in the library....Lent is to be commended for his efforts. Scholars working in any discipline related to comic arts should encourage their institutions to add his bibliographies to the library reference collection. Those who have chosen comic arts as their primary field of research should seriously consider purchasing these bibliographies for their own research collection.?-Studies in American Humor, ?Contain[s] a tremendous amount of information and are of immense value to serious comics scholars....[a] necessary purchase for collections specializing in popular culture, comics, and mass media.?-ARBA 95, ?Lent is a prolific writer of books and articles on mass communication and a leading proponent of comic art scholarship. With these three compilations, he offers an enormous contribution to that scholarship. These works reflect long years of independent, painstaking compilation. What Lent has given us, is marvelous, and as comic art continues to be recognized and analyzed by various disciplines, these volumes should prove indispensable. All these titles are highly recommended for all academic collections.?-Choice

JOHN A. LENT has studied comics for 30 years as a part of mass communications./e Besides his professorial duties, he is managing editor of WittyWorld International Cartoon Magazine, has authored or edited 46 books and written hundreds of articles. The three other volumes that comprise this four-volume international study of comic art literature (of which this is one) are Animation, Caricature, and Gag and Political Cartoons in the United States and Canada: An International Bibliography (Greenwood, 1994), Comic Books and Comic Strips in the United States: An International Bibliography (Greenwood, 1994), and Comic Art in Africa, Asia, Australia, and Latin America: A Comprehensive, International Bibliography (Greenwood, 1996).