Super Bodies

Comic Book Illustration, Artistic Styles, and Narrative Impact

By Jeffrey A. Brown

SERIES: World Comics and Graphic Nonfiction Series

University of Texas Press

Finalist — San Diego Comic-Con International 2024 Eisner Award in Best Academic/Scholarly Work
2024 MPCA/ACA Best Book for Use in the Classroom, Midwest Popular Culture Association / Midwest American Culture Association (MPCA/ACA)

An examination of the art in superhero comics and how style influences comic narratives.

For many, the idea of comic book art implies simplistic four-color renderings of stiff characters slugging it out. In fact, modern superhero comic books showcase a range of complex artistic styles, with diverse connotations. Leading comics scholar Jeffrey A. Brown assesses six distinct approaches to superhero illustration—idealism, realism, cute, retro, grotesque, and noir—examining how each visually represents the superhero as a symbolic construct freighted with meaning.

Whereas comic book studies tend to focus on text and narrative, Super Bodies gives overdue credit to the artwork, which is not only a principal source of the appeal of comic books but also central to the values these works embody. Brown argues that superheroes are to be taken not as representations of people but as iconic types, and the art conveys this. Even the most realistic comic illustrations are designed to suggest not persons but ideas—ideas about bodies and societies. Thus the appearance of superheroes both directly and indirectly influences the story being told as well as the opinions readers form concerning justice, authority, gender, puberty, sexuality, ethnicity, violence, and other concepts central to political and cultural life.

Not surprisingly, this is exceptionally well illustrated for an academic book. It is an important contribution to comics scholarship and will help anyone appreciate the medium more deeply. CHOICE

Comics Studies needs to apply a more holistic approach in the study of comic book illustration, one that recognizes art as formally equal to text in the construction of narrative. Brown’s argument feels almost tacit, like a thing known all along that just needed a push to be recollected. Much of this effect can be attributed to Brown’s comfort with navigating the field. Brown dialogically contextualizes his claims with an impressive reach of scholarly voices from across multiple disciplines, weaving familiar and unfamiliar ideas into exciting new possibilities for Comics Studies. . . . Brown’s Super Bodies is an invitation for comics scholars to look at the field anew. INKS

A valuable look at a corner of Comics Studies that does not get the attention it deserves. The Comics Grid

Super Bodies provides an entirely new framework for thinking through the importance of visual style in comics. It is likely to be incredibly generative for the field of comics studies and beyond. Bart Beaty, coeditor of Comics Studies: A Guidebook

This engaging discussion of styles as a broader issue, rather than the styles of individual artists, will appeal to students at all levels and academics in fields including comics studies, but also design, illustration, and cultural and media studies. Mel Gibson, author of Remembered Reading: Memory, Comics and Post-War Constructions of British Girlhood

Jeffrey A. Brown is a professor of popular culture at Bowling Green State University. He is the author of Batman and the Multiplicity of Identity: The Contemporary Comic Book Superhero as Cultural Nexus; Love, Sex, Gender, and Superheroes; and other books on comic books and superheroes.