The Spirit: Short Writing Assignment #1

As already mentioned in class this first writing assignment revolves around Will Eisner's The Spirit. For this short exercise (3-5 pages) you should first of all read a number of The Spirit stories as they appear in The Best of Spirit anthology which is on reserve in the library (below you will also find four more Spirit stories in digital format --however, as I said in class, you should read this particular text 'the old fashioned way', on paper). 

For your actual writing assignment you should first of all offer a historical contextualization of Eisner's work: where does The Spirit fit into the history of sequential art in general and of comics in particular. Secondly, you should choose two pages of your choice in one of the stories (try to choose the two pages that you find are most interesting in terms of their encapsulation and layout --there are plenty of these in Eisner's work and don't be afraid to move deep into The Best of Spirit anthology to the late 40s material) and simply describe the particularities of The Spirit's stylistic features. Please note that I am not necessarily looking for any particularly deep analysis. What your paper should end up being is a simple description of encapsulation, panel to panel relations, full page layout, use of color, line and text, insets, etc. What this should end up being, more than anything, is an exercise for applying and using comics terminology and an excuse to encourage you to look at an example of comic art closely and attentively.
I'm including here, along with the already mentioned extra Spirit stories, an issue each of DC's Action Comics and Detective Comics so that you can use these as comparative texts to Eisner's technique in The Spirit. Included below is also a two page graphic with the basic components of a comics page and spread identified.
Finally, as a conclusion to your short paper remark what, if anything and in your opinion, makes The Spirit such a standout example of comic art. Enjoy.

Will Eisner, The Spirit
DC's Action Comics #1 (1938)
DC's Detective Comics #27 (1939)
Comics Terminology Graphic 1 & Graphic 2 (from Abel & Madden, Drawing Words and Writing Pictures)

**We have already talked about this in class so as you will notice in order to overcome the technical issues we were having with the .cbr extension on the blog I have renamed all linked comic books with a .zip extension. As mentioned in class zip and cbr files are the same thing, the only difference being that the .cbr extension allows your Comic Book Reader application to open and display the images in the zipped folder as a paginated book. All you need to do, after you've downloaded the files to your computer, is change the file extension from .zip to .cbr. Have fun.

From Superheroes to the 'Seduction of the Innocent'

Wright, "Confronting Success: Comic Books and Postwar America, 1945-1950"
Wright, "Youth Crisis: Comic Books and Controversy, 1947-1950"


Wertham, "Seduction of the Innocent"
+ Self-Regulating Codes of the Comics Book Industry


from Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comics
Gabilliet, "Calls For Censorship"
Gabilliet, "Production"
Gabilliet, "The Business of Comic Books"

Bonus Read:
Jules Feiffer, The Great Comic Book Heroes (1965)
Part1 + Part2

Beyond Neo-Realism I

Silvana Mangano and Doris Dowling photographed by Robert Capa on the set of Riso Amaro (1949)

Millicent Marcus, "De Santis's Bitter Rice: A neorealist hybrid"
Pierre Sorlin, "Fourth Generation: The Sweet Life" from Italian National Cinema

Textuality: Semiotics

To complement the other readings, here are three different discussions of 'semiotics' and semiotic analysis and their use for cultural studies and the analysis of media representations. These are not required readings if you have encountered 'media semiotics' before. I would however suggest, to those of you who are encountering 'semiotics' for the first time, to treat these readings as required readings: your work in class, your ability to grapple with the other required readings and your final project would certainly benefit from a familiarity with the concepts presented here.

Mieke Bal, Semiotics for Beginners
Scott McCloud, from Understading Comics: Chapter 2, Semiotics
Jonathan Bignell, Media Semiotics: Introduction + The Cinema

Events: Cinecittà Tour (Friday, September 20) & Robert Schober Talk (Monday, September 30)

As announced in class, here is the info on the two events sponsored by the Com Department.

Cinecittà Studios Tour: 

Where and when: 

Meet in front of Tiber campus at 10:00 AM on Friday Sept. 20th. We leave promptly so please don't be late. Optionally, meet in front of Cinecittà at 11:00 am (take Metro Linea A to the Cinecittà stop). 

Tour starts at 11:30 AM and lasts roughly two hours.

Please bring: 

Two tickets for public transportation and 15 euros for entrance fee. If you want, bring extra money for souvenirs and there is a bar for snacks, cafe and light lunch at inside Cinecittà.

A conversation with Director Robert Schober

Robert Schober is a video/commercial director who has worked with artists such as The Killers, Metallica, Mastodon, Alice in Chains, My Chemical Romance, Devo, Deftones, The B-52s, Meat Puppets and M83. 

He will talk about the creative process in producing music videos, his personal influences, the actual production process as well as the state of the industry, convergence, shifting approaches to media consumption and distribution. Examples of his work will also be screened. This is an event that all students hoping to work in the media industries are encouraged to attend.

Aula Magna, Monday September 30 @ 6.30pm. Refreshments will follow the presentation.

(Neo) Realism I: Cinema, The World and Truth

still from Roberto Rossellini's Germany Year Zero (Italy, 1948)

Overbey, Introduction to Springtime in Italy
(This includes a number of short articles by Zavattini, Antonioni, De Sica & Rossellini)

Marcus, Rossellini's Open City: The Founding
Bazin's collection of articles on neo-realism from What Is Cinema?; Vol. II
Merleau-Ponty, Preface to Phenomenology of Perception
Kracauer, The Found Story and the Episode from Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality

What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream?

This chart looks good but it's outdated. Get the 'big picture' here at Free Press.
The question we will be discussing in class is: What makes mainstream media mainstream? How does this prevent the media from fulfilling the social roles that liberal democratic theory assigns to it?

Noam Chomsky, What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream
James Curran, Mass Media and Democracy Revisited
Eric Alterman, What Liberal Media?
Ed Herman, Media in the US Political Economy

Construction and Performance I: Privilege and Representation

Power, Privilege and Discrimination

Peggy McIntosh, "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack"

Cultural Studies & Representation
Douglas Kellner, "Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism and Media Culture"
Sanjukta Gosh, "'Con-Fusing' Exotica: Producing India in US Advertising"

Ideology and Hegemony
Stuart Hall, "The Whites of Their Eyes: Racing Ideologies and the Media"
James Lull, "Hegemony"

all readings (except the online Peggy McIntosh) are from Dines and Humez (eds), Gender, Race and Class in Media: A Text-Reader; 2nd Edition(Sage, 2003)

Get More: 2013 VMA, Artists.MTV, Music, Miley Cyrus

Comics? Comics!

from Sigmund Freud's notebooks: Comics as dream work

Here are a couple of examples of comics that we can use to continue our discussion of what comics are and what they are not. It is also a good excuse to test out your comic book readers (.cbr and .cbz). Let me know if you encounter any problems reading these files.

Ernie Bushmiller, Nancy, selected Sunday Comics, 1941

Winsor McCay, Little Nemo in Slumberland, 1905-1914

Robert Sergel, "Up Up Down Down" from Eschew 2011

Bonus reading: from Douglas Wolk, Reading Comics Chapter 1: "What Comics Are and What They Aren't"

Welcome To Fall 2013

Images