Maaheen Ahmed, Openness of Comics: Generating Meaning within Flexible Structures (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2016). 224 pp. ISBN: 978-1-496-80593-5 ($60.00)

Abstract

<p>As a cross-disciplinary field rapidly approaching full maturity, comics studies is fast producing some major works of considerable intellectual weight. As with all disciplines, this is both a challenge as well as an opportunity, as the increasing sophistication of analysis often demands ever more complex neologisms and languages to explain and explore content, structure, and form. Confronted by a work founded on a single conceptual notion - 'openness' - I confess to having been daunted. How could the author take such a complex notion and make it explicable to even the most grounded reader, without destabilizing the simplicity and accessibility of the whole comic genre? I am pleased to say that Maaheen Ahmed has succeeded admirably, in her still-new monograph, in the University Press of Mississippi's standout Comics Studies series.</p>