Roger Sabin

From cops who are paragons of virtue, to cops who are as bad as the bad guys...from surly loners, to upbeat partners...from detectives who pursue painstaking investigation, to loose cannons who just want to kick down the door, the heroes and anti-heroes of TV police dramas are part of who we are. They enter our living rooms and tell us tall tales about the social contract that exists between the citizen and the police. Love them or loathe them--according to the ratings, we love them--they serve a function. They've entertained, informed and sometimes infuriated audiences for more than 60 years. This book examines Dragnet, Highway Patrol, Naked City, The Untouchables, The F.B.I., Columbo, Hawaii Five-O, Kojak, Starsky & Hutch, Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey, Miami Vice, Law & Order, Homicide: Life on the Street, NYPD Blue, CSI, The Shield, The Wire, and Justified. It's time to take another look at the "perps," the "vics" and the boys and girls in blue, and ask how their representation intersects with questions of class, gender, sexuality, and "race." What is their socio-cultural agenda? What is their relation to genre and televisuality? And why is it that when a TV cop gives a witness his card and says, "call me," that witness always ends up on a slab?

Marie Duval: maverick Victorian cartoonist offers the first critical appraisal of the work of Marie Duval (Isabelle Émilie de Tessier, 1847–1890), one of the most unusual, pioneering and visionary cartoonists of the later nineteenth century.It discusses key themes and practices of Duval’s vision and production, relative to the wider historic social, cultural and economic environments in which her work was made, distributed and read, identifing Duval as an exemplary radical practitioner.The book interrogates the relationships between the practices and the forms of print, story-telling, drawing and stage performance.It focuses on the creation of new types of cultural work by women and highlights the style of Duval’s drawings relative to both the visual conventions of theatre production and the significance of the visualisation of amateurism and vulgarity.Marie Duval: maverick Victorian cartoonist establishes Duval as a unique but exemplary figure in a transformational period of the nineteenth century.

Marie Duval: maverick Victorian cartoonist offers the first critical appraisal of the work of Marie Duval (Isabelle Émilie de Tessier, 1847–1890), one of the most unusual, pioneering and visionary cartoonists of the later nineteenth century.It discusses key themes and practices of Duval’s vision and production, relative to the wider historic social, cultural and economic environments in which her work was made, distributed and read, identifing Duval as an exemplary radical practitioner.The book interrogates the relationships between the practices and the forms of print, story-telling, drawing and stage performance.It focuses on the creation of new types of cultural work by women and highlights the style of Duval’s drawings relative to both the visual conventions of theatre production and the significance of the visualisation of amateurism and vulgarity.Marie Duval: maverick Victorian cartoonist establishes Duval as a unique but exemplary figure in a transformational period of the nineteenth century.

In a society where a comic equates with knockabout amusement for children, the sudden pre-eminence of adult comics, on everything from political satire to erotic fantasy, has predictably attracted an enormous amount of attention.Adult comics are part of the cultural landscape in a way that would have been unimaginable a decade ago. In this first survey of its kind, Roger Sabin traces the history of comics for older readers from the end of the nineteenth century to the present. He takes in the pioneering titles pre-First World War, the underground 'comix' of the 1960s and 1970s, 'fandom' in the 1970s and 1980s, and the boom of the 1980s and 1990s (including 'graphic novels' and Viz.). Covering comics from the United States, Europe and Japan, Adult Comics addresses such issues as the graphic novel in context, cultural overspill and the role of women.By taking a broad sweep, Sabin demonstrates that the widely-held notion that comics 'grew up' in the late 1980s is a mistaken one, largely invented by the media. Adult Comics: An Introduction is intended primarily for student use, but is written with the comic enthusiast very much in mind.

In a society where a comic equates with knockabout amusement for children, the sudden pre-eminence of adult comics, on everything from political satire to erotic fantasy, has predictably attracted an enormous amount of attention.Adult comics are part of the cultural landscape in a way that would have been unimaginable a decade ago. In this first survey of its kind, Roger Sabin traces the history of comics for older readers from the end of the nineteenth century to the present. He takes in the pioneering titles pre-First World War, the underground 'comix' of the 1960s and 1970s, 'fandom' in the 1970s and 1980s, and the boom of the 1980s and 1990s (including 'graphic novels' and Viz.). Covering comics from the United States, Europe and Japan, Adult Comics addresses such issues as the graphic novel in context, cultural overspill and the role of women.By taking a broad sweep, Sabin demonstrates that the widely-held notion that comics 'grew up' in the late 1980s is a mistaken one, largely invented by the media. Adult Comics: An Introduction is intended primarily for student use, but is written with the comic enthusiast very much in mind.

There are few people for whom the phrase "last of the Mohicans" does not conjure up memories and associations--childhood games, films, TV programs. Yet most who profess acquaintance with Cooper's title actually have never read his book. The characters--Hawkeye and his Mohican friends Chingachgook and Uncas--owe more to the media than to Cooper's text for their popularity. But they have become familiar icons identified with the colonizing of the northeastern frontier and with the creation of "America." This groundbreaking and entertaining study focuses on the making and the remaking of media versions of Cooper's popular book. It shows that each new rendering extends to its audience a dynamic image of the American myth. Yet along with the appeal of frontier adventure, these media adaptations bear the weight of powerful meanings. Each new version addresses these meanings differently and raises questions about wilderness and frontier, about western expansion, about the relationships between men and women, about the association of whites with "Indians." Why does this book that everyone knows, but that few have read, continue to be perennially attractive for the media? In answer to this question, this study throws a new light on the idea of frontier and on the meaning of the American Dream.