Comics of the Anthropocene

Graphic Narrative at the End of Nature

José Alaniz

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Paperback

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English

University Press of Mississippi
15 July 2025

Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers; Graphic novels: history & criticism; Cultural studies; Global warming; The natural world, country life & pets

Since the first Earth Day in 1970, how have US comics artists depicted the human-caused destruction of the natural world? How do these representations manifest in different genres of comics like superheroes, biography, underground comix, and journalism? What resources unique to the comics medium do they bring to their tasks? How do these works resonate with the ethical and environmental issues raised by global conversations about the anthropogenic sixth mass extinction and climate change? How have comics mourned the loss of nature over the last five decades? Are comics ""ecological objects,"" in philosopher Timothy Morton’s parlance?

Weaving together insights from comics studies, environmental humanities, critical animal studies, and affect studies to answer these questions, Comics of the Anthropocene: Graphic Narrative at the End of Nature explores the representation of animals, pollution, mass extinctions, and climate change in the Anthropocene Era, our current geological age of human-induced environmental transformation around the globe.

Artists and works examined in Comics of the Anthropocene include R. Crumb, McGregor et al.’s Black Panther, Jack Kirby’s Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth, the comics of the Pacific Northwest and Murphy/Zulli’s landmark alternative series The Puma Blues. This book breaks new ground in confronting our most daunting modern crisis through a discussion of how graphic narrative has uniquely addressed the ecology issue.

By: José Alaniz
Imprint: University Press of Mississippi
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781496857736
ISBN 10: 1496857739
Pages: 277
Publication Date: 15 July 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

José Alaniz is professor in the Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures and the Department of Cinema & Media Studies at the University of Washington–Seattle. He is author of Resurrection: Comics in Post-Soviet Russia; Death, Disability, and the Superhero: The Silver Age and Beyond; and Komiks: Comic Art in Russia, the latter two published by University Press of Mississippi.

Reviews for Comics of the Anthropocene: Graphic Narrative at the End of Nature

Comics of the Anthropocene could not be timelier, nor can I imagine anyone better suited to undertake it. This book has it all: close readings of key texts, deft summaries and analyses of relevant literary theory and environmental humanities discourse, excurses into comics history, and powerful meditations on the environment in which the author lives.--Eliot Borenstein, author of Unstuck in Time: On the Post-Soviet Uncanny and Marvel Comics in the 1970s: The World inside Your Head