The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE recommends an impressive impersonation of Bob Dylan
Comics and the counter-hegemony
STEVE ANDREW relishes a survey that sets the genre within a wider social, cultural and political context
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Here, Vermiglio, William Tell and Wolf Man
New releases from Thorpe and Morrison, Daria Kulesh, and Will Finn and Rosie Calvert
RINA ARYA confronts the brutal operation of Francis Bacon’s approach to portraiture
Emphasising his continuous engagement in labour movement struggles, ALISTAIR FINDLAY salutes John Foster’s contribution as activist, strategist, intellectual and defender of the Morning Star
ANDY MIAH advocates the use of AI to assist people by expanding access to global literature and culture
EWAN KOTZ relishes a veteran Glasgow band that have lost none of their verve for live performance
British Comics: A Cultural History
James Chapman, Reaktion, £15
RECENTLY published in paperback, this entertaining, thoughtful and detailed analysis of British comics from the late Victorian period to the present day is not to be missed. Written with insight and passion, if you don’t see yourself as interested in comic books then this might well be the text to get you started.
And let’s be honest, comics haven’t had a very good press, not just from mainstream commentators but from many on the left. Depicted as the worst of an already low and trashy culture, they have often been labelled violently right-wing, racist and misogynistic so much so that in the late 1940s and ’50s the Communist Party of Great Britain joined hands with some unlikely allies to campaign against what were seen as reactionary and effectively pro-imperialist imports.
More from this author
A landmark work of gay ethnography, an avant-garde fusion of folk and modernity, and a chance comment in a great interview
ANGUS REID applauds the inventive stagecraft with which the Lyceum serve up Stevenson’s classic, but misses the deeper themes
ANGUS REID time-travels back to times when Gay Liberation was radical and allied seamlessly to an anti-racist, anti-establishment movement
ANGUS REID speaks to historian Siphokazi Magadla about the women who fought apartheid and their impact on South African society
Similar stories
STEVEN ANDREW welcomes the third instalment of autobiography by a libertarian socialist whose political work is charged with Gramscian realism
GORDON PARSONS recommends an ideal introduction to the writer who was first to give the English a literary language
AMY MAZOWITA draws attention to artists who are using social media-based comics to process emotion, show solidarity and disseminate knowledge
STEPHEN ARNELL looks at how The Comic Strip proved that overtly political humour could be effective in skewering the Tories – as well as some of the left’s own pretensions