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)

Title
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)
Publication Date
2020-03-01
Author(s)
Scully, Richard
( author )
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4012-4991
Email: rscully@une.edu.au
UNE Id une-id:rscully
Type of document
Review
Language
en
Entity Type
Publication
Publisher
Berghahn Books Ltd
Place of publication
United Kingdom
UNE publication id
une:1959.11/54500
Abstract

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.

Link
Citation
European Comic Art, v.13 (1)
ISSN
1754-3800
1754-3797

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