Faster Than a Speeding Bullet: The Rise of the Graphic Novel

Stephen Weiner & Will Eisner

Hardcover | 15.24 x 1.52 x 22.86 cm | 80 pp

NBM Publishing | 2012 | 9781561637027

What fuelled the explosion in the Graphic Novel in recent decades? Where did all the excitement come from? Stephen Weiner, a comics historian and children's literature specialist, provides the answers in this groundbreaking book - the first history of graphic novels.

From the agonising Holocaust vision of Art Spiegelman's Maus to the teenage angst
of Dan Clowes' Ghost World, this book takes you into the heart of the graphic novel
revolution. Weiner tells the whole history of this relatively new medium - from the first modern urban autobiographical graphic novel, Will Eisner's A Contract with God, to the hip indie comics of the Hernandez Bros' Love and Rockets, the dark mysteries of Neil Gaiman's Sandman, and the postmodern super-heroics of Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight.

Contents
1. The First Comics: Americans Embrace a New Art Form
2. The 1950s: The Shadow of McCarthyism
3. The 1960s: Troubled Heroes for Troubled Times
4. The Comic Book Store: Fans Find a Home
5. The Graphic Novel: Comics Take Themselves Seriously 
6. Trade Publishers and Comics: An Uneasy Alliance
7. Opening the Gates: The Comics Field Grows
8. The New Heroes: Would You Let this Man Marry Your Sister?
9. Maus: Surviving and Thriving
10. The Sandman: A New Mythology
11. Bone Wars: The Paradigm Shifts into High Gear
12. Understanding Comics: The Dream of a Common Language 
13. A Message in a Bottle: Notes from the Underground
14. A New Millennium For Comics
15. What's Next for Graphic Novels