Hillary Chute

Harvard Book Store welcomes Northeastern University professor and comics scholar HILLARY CHUTE for a discussion of her latest book, Why Comics?: From Underground to Everywhere. This event is co-sponsored by the Newhouse Center for the Humanities at Wellesley College

About Why Comics?

The massive impact that comics have had on our culture becomes more and more clear every day, from the critically acclaimed musical Fun Home, based on Alison Bechdel’s groundbreaking comic, to the dozens of superhero films hitting cinemas every year. What is it that makes comics so special? What can this unique art form do that others can’t?

In Why Comics?, comics scholar Hillary Chute reveals the history of comics, underground comics (or comix), and graphic novels, through deep thematic analysis, and fascinating portraits of the fearless men and women behind them. As Scott McCloud revealed the methods behind comics and the way they worked in his classic Understanding Comics, Chute will reveal the themes that Comics handle best, and how the form is uniquely equipped to explore them.

The topics Why Comics? include:

• Why Disaster: with such major works focusing on disasters, from Art Spiegelman’s work, which covers the Holocaust and 9/11 to Keiji Nakazawa’s work covering Hiroshima, comics find themselves uniquely suited to convey the scale and disorientation of disaster.

• Why Suburbs: through the work of Chris Ware and Charles Burns, Chute reveals the fascinating ways that Comics illustrate the quiet joys and struggles of suburban existence.

• Why Punk: With an emphasis on DIY aesthetics and rebelling against what came before, the Punk movement would prove to be a fertile ground for some of the most significant modern cartoonists, creating a truly democratic art form.

Chute has created an indispensable guide to comics for those new to the genre, or those who want to understand more about what lies behind their favorite works.

Praise

“In her wonderful book, Hillary Chute suggests that we’re in a blooming, expanding era of the art . . . Chute’s often lovely, sensitive discussions of individual expression in independent comics seem so right and true.” —New York Times Book Review

“Chute clearly has a deep understanding of, experience with, and affinity for comics culture. Best of all, though she analyzes with an academic’s rigor and supports her themes with extensive research, she doesn’t write like a professor . . . For anyone who wants a crash course in contemporary comics or wants to teach one, this is your book.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Chute elevates comics to literature when dissecting panels, text, and drawing techniques in the more than 100 reprints within the book.” —Library Journal (starred review)

“Why Comics? is a riveting compendium of history, humor, politics, punk, sex, violence, and the occasional superhero. Hillary Chute has given us the stories behind some of the most subversive literature of our time. You want to read this book.” —Lauren Redniss