5W Creative: On the Bookshelf

My new book, Breaking the Frames: Populism and Prestige in Comics Studies, is out today from the University of Texas Press. It's about the discipline of comics studies: how scholars read and write about comics, which ones they read and why, and which unspoken assumptions or oversights emerge as a result. It surveys the field through extended readings of comics by Alan Moore, Chris Ware, Marjane Satrapi, Kyle Baker, and many more.

I've been working on this in one form or another for over five years now, and I'm thrilled that it's finally come out. I'm also honored and humbled by the care that Texas has put into making the book, including the amazing cover, as you can see above.

And, as proof that you can spend several years waiting for a bus and then all of a sudden two come along at once, I also have a short story out in this quarter's issue of Abyss & Apex. It's about fate, free will, and the treacherous world of interstellar finance, and it may be of particular interest to those who admire (as I do) the provocative theories of Prof. Ndru Kunk, Brande Chair of Economics at the Colu Integrated University.

I hope you enjoy them—and please, come back here and let me know what you think!


Marc Singer teaches English at Howard University in Washington, DC. He is the author of Breaking the Frames: Populism and Prestige in Comics Studies, available now, and Grant Morrison: Combining the Worlds of Contemporary Comics.