American Comics

Starred review from August 30, 2021
Columbia professor Dauber (Jewish Comedy) covers the entire landscape of American comics in this outstanding encyclopedic survey intelligently analyzing how “comics have shaped wars and inspired movements” and even “conquered pop culture.” The roots of today’s blockbuster movies date back centuries, but the author focuses on the American experience, which began with the late 19th-century cartoonist Thomas Nast, whose lampooning of the corrupt Tammany Hall was so scathing that he was offered what would today be a multimillion-dollar payoff to stop. Dauber uses Nast to underscore how the medium is replete with erasures that for decades have left creators either ignored or robbed of credit (Nast’s wife, Sarah, for instance, wrote most of the most-memorable captions for her spouse’s art). Other themes recur throughout the 150 years he chronicles in thrilling detail—including the medium’s troubling history of racist and sexist depictions “perpetuated by an overwhelmingly white, male body of cartoonists”; the invention of superheroes, the backlash against comics as supposed corrupting influences on the young, and the expansion of the types of genres depicted in comics beyond action, adventure, and sci-fi. In doing so, he skillfully charts “the story of a changing American audience... American ideals and American anxieties... a perfect vehicle for addressing contemporary issues.” It’s a thorough—and thoroughly entertaining—work.

October 1, 2021
An ambitious attempt to comprehensively map the progression of comics in America. "This book," writes Dauber, professor of Jewish literature and American studies at Columbia, "tries to cover the whole shebang, from [Thomas] Nast's cartoons to the latest graphic memoirs and transmedia corporate productions." If anything, he understates his intent, because "the whole shebang" also encompasses political and cultural upheavals reflected in the work; social concerns they addressed and the prejudices they reflected, from the explicitly racist and misogynist to restrictions within a field criticized as a White boys club; technological and distributional shifts, from printing presses to computers and from selling through magazine stands to headshops to comic book shops; shifts in the target demographics; and branding, merchandising, and multimedia concerns. Although the presentation of all this well-researched material leads to some narrative discohesion, there's plenty of delight and revelation for comics fans. Dauber effectively shows how profoundly Mad magazine shifted the landscape, in defiance of the codes to which others submitted, and how Maus and other literary graphic novels would erase the already blurring line between high and low culture that had kept comics on the wrong side of the tracks. There are also the oft-told stories of artists and developers never receiving their due--e.g., how Superman paid big dividends for so many other than its creators, or how Stan Lee received much of the glory at Marvel, at Jack Kirby's expense. Dauber seems to revel in minutiae, with as many as a half-dozen all but forgotten comics name-checked within a single paragraph as well as offhand references to dozens more. It's clear that the author, in his diligence, was worried about leaving something out, and the lack of supporting illustrations--the comics themselves--reinforces the adage that a picture is worth 1,000 words. Dauber clearly knows and cherishes his subject, and readers who share his passion will find plenty to love.

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October 15, 2021
Dauber, an historian of Jewish literature and humor, expands his professional preserve only slightly to accommodate his latest research. Jews were in comic strips from the beginning, and when the comic book got going, Joe Schuster and Jerry Siegel, both Jewish, created arguably the most influential, Superman. Of course, comics aren't Jewish per se, and throughout his name- and title-packed survey, Dauber is attentive to the contributions of women, Black, Asian (including the huge influence of Japanese manga on the graphic novel), and LGBTI artists, writers, and businesspersons, the last because, as they did with the comics' sibling pop-culture-medium, the movies, "the suits" generally got the last word on how comics developed. Not always, though; since the mid-twentieth century, again as with the movies, independent comics creators and publishers have burgeoned. The internet and comics-based movies have made the biggest recent impacts on comics. Dauber covers all these changes and more. Moreover, he pithily and accurately describes hundreds of individual strips and books, colorfully expanding the limits of conventional definitions. This crammed chronicle will not soon be matched, let alone surpassed.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from November 1, 2021

Starting with Civil War-era cartoonist Thomas Nast and working his way through Krazy Kat, Dick Tracy, and the big midcentury superheroes to 1950s Comics Code, the underground comix movement, the emergence of Black Panther, and the ascendance of the graphic novel, Dauber offers an all-embracing study of American comics. Why have they gripped our imagination, and how have they influenced and been influenced by political and cultural cross-currents? When he's not reading comics, Columbia University professor Dauber writes National Jewish Book Award finalist nonfiction. Try this with Douglas Wolk's All of the Marvels: A Journey to the Ends of the Biggest Story Ever Told (Penguin Pr. Oct.).

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