Gothic in Comics and Graphic Novels: A Critical Approach

This book explores the connections between comics and Gothic from four different critical angles: historical, formal, cultural and textual. It identifies structures, styles and themes drawn from the literary Gothic and discusses the presence of these in British and American comics today, paying particular attention to the emergence of the DC Vertigo imprint. Part One offers a historical approach to British and American comics and Gothic: summarising the development of their respective creative content and critical models. It identifies parallel points including censorship, allusion, self-awareness and developments in criticism and audience. The second section brings together some of the narrative strategies of Gothic and comics. It uses Gothic to reinterpret established critical approaches to the comics medium, arguing for a holistic analytical model based around the symbols of the crypt, the spectre and the archive. Part Three then combines cultural and textual analysis: discussing the communities that have built up around comics and gothic artifacts and concluding with case studies of two of Gothic's most famous archetypes in comics: the vampire and the zombie.