New Book by Prof. Davis - Movie Comics

New Book by Prof. Davis - Movie Comics

Prof. Blair Davis has recently published a new book, Movie Comics: Page to Screen/Screen to Page, from Rutgers University Press. Examining the ways in which movies and comics adapted each other between 1900 and 1960, Movie Comics is the first book to closely examine the relationship between the film and comics industries between 1930 and 1960, as well as how films and television programs were adapted into comic books in the Classical Hollywood era.

Publisher's Weekly calls Movie Comics "an enlightening, scholarly history. Davis treats his topic seriously while also celebrating the pleasures of these two lively arts." Comics scholar Scott Bukatman says "Movie Comics makes a crucial contribution to media studies not only by unearthing and exploring the very long history of comics adapted for the screen, but also by simultaneously covering the myriad ways that comics presented material originally produced for film and television. The real subject of this book is the never-ending saga of media mediating one another, and in Blair Davis’s most capable hands, it’s a tale meticulously researched and engagingly told." Film scholar Dana Polan says ""His proven talent for trenchant research well on display, Blair Davis not only chronicles comics' influence on cinema but shows innovatively the movies' frequent adaptation into comics. A masterful study."

https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/movie-comics/9780813572253

Prof. Davis Receives VEF Grant for 'Christianity & Comic Books' Project

Prof. Blair Davis recently received a grant from DePaul University's Vincentian Endowment Fund in support of a project entitled 'Christianity and Comic Books.' Davis seeks to build a collection of Christian comic books to be housed in the DePaul Library’s Special Collections department, where they may be used for both teaching and research purposes. The collection will contain approximately forty comic books dating back as far as the 1940s, and including such works as Picture Stories From the Bible and Bible Tales for Young Folk. Examples of more recent titles include the 1982 comic book The Life of Pope John Paul II, and the 2003 comic book The Bible: Eden.

                        

"Comic books have served as a vibrant form through which Catholic beliefs and culture have been disseminated. By preserving this legacy, DePaul University will further add to its Vincentian identity by allowing current and future students and scholars to benefit from these rarely seen representations of Christianity in popular culture," says Davis.

Please see the DePaul University Newsline article for further information on the Vincentian Endowment Fund Awards: http://www.depaulnewsline.com/features/2015-vincentian-endowment-fund-awards-announced

New Book from Prof. Blair Davis

Routledge recently published the anthology Rashomon Effects: Kurosawa, Rashomon and Their Legacies, co-edited by Blair Davis. The book examines the cultural and aesthetic impacts of Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 film Rashomon, as well as the director’s larger legacies to cinema, its global audiences and beyond. It demonstrates that these legacies are not only cinematic and artistic, but also cultural and cognitive. The book moves from an examination of one filmmaker and his immediate social context in Japan, and goes on to explore how an artist’s ideas might transcend their cultural origins to ultimately provide global influences.

Chapters include new work by Stephen Prince, Andrew Horvat, Janice Matsumura, Robert Anderson, Jan Walls, Jef Burnham and Nur Yalman. It also contains some of the last published work from the late Donald Richie, one of the foremost experts on Japanese cinema.

                                    

Davis and his co-editors, Robert Anderson and Jan Walls, describe how "the essays in this volume address issues beyond the realm of Rashomon within film studies, and centre around the Rashomon effect which itself has become a widely recognized English term referring to significantly different perspectives and interpretations of different eyewitnesses to the same dramatic event. The dual figures of ripples and circles comprise the organizing image and principle of this book. The ripples represent the creative energy caused by each new iteration of the Rashomon principle, namely that any event or process usually involves more than one take, and indeed at times multiple, inconsistent, and even conflicting takes. In this book, we describe the continuing and spreading results of an event or action as ripples. Like the ever-expanding ripples moving across water when an object is dropped into it, a ripple effect occurs when there is incremental movement outwards from an initial state. This image has also been applied in financial markets to describe the impact of an event and how it circulates through the players in the industry and its effect on stock price and stock coverage. While the movement of the ripples represents the continuing and vibrant influence of Rashomon effects into the twenty-first century, the circles represent specific events, such as the publication of a new script, a particular production, or a remake."

For more information, see:
https://www.routledge.com/products/9781138827097