Gothic for Girls: Misty and British Comics

Round, Julia

ISBN 10: 1496824466 / ISBN 13: 9781496824462

Published by University Press of Mississippi, 2019

About this Item

Seller Inventory # mon0003976974

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Gothic for Girls: Misty and British Comics
• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Publication Date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1496824466
• ISBN 13: 9781496824462
• Binding: paperback
• Condition: Fine

About this title

Synopsis

Winner of the 2019 Broken Frontier Award for Best Book on Comics

Today fans still remember and love the British girls’ comic Misty for its bold visuals and narrative complexities. Yet its unique history has drawn little critical attention. Bridging this scholarly gap, Julia Round presents a comprehensive cultural history and detailed discussion of the comic, preserving both the inception and development of this important publication as well as its stories.

Misty ran for 101 issues as a stand-alone publication between 1978 and 1980 and then four more years as part of Tammy. It was a hugely successful anthology comic containing one-shot and serialized stories of supernatural horror and fantasy aimed at girls and young women and featuring work by writers and artists who dominated British comics such as Pat Mills, Malcolm Shaw, and John Armstrong, as well as celebrated European artists. To this day, Misty remains notable for its daring and sophisticated stories, strong female characters, innovative page layouts, and big visuals.

In the first book on this topic, Round closely analyzes Misty’s content, including its creation and production, its cultural and historical context, key influences, and the comic itself. Largely based on Round’s own archival research, the study also draws on interviews with many of the key creators involved in this comic, including Pat Mills, Wilf Prigmore, and its art editorial team Jack Cunningham and Ted Andrews, who have never previously spoken about their work. Richly illustrated with previously unpublished photos, scripts, and letters, this book uses Misty as a lens to explore the use of Gothic themes and symbols in girls’ comics and other media. It surveys existing work on childhood and Gothic and offers a working definition of Gothic for Girls, a subgenre which challenges and instructs readers in a number of ways.

About the Author

Julia Round is an independent scholar and editor of Studies in Comics journal and the Encapsulations book series. Her books include the award-winning Gothic for Girls: “Misty” and British Comics; Gothic in Comics and Graphic Novels: A Critical Approach; and the coauthored Comics and Graphic Novels. She has also coedited Horror and Comics, Multimodal Comics: The Evolution of Comics Studies, and The Routledge Companion to Literary Media and published over fifty articles and book chapters in journals and collections including Gothic Studies, Language and Literature, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, International Journal of Comic Art, and Children’s Literature in Education.