1950s America
A01=Fabrice Leroy
American Dream
antisemitism
Author_Fabrice Leroy
cartoons
Category=AGA
Category=ATFA
Category=DSK
Category=JBCC1
Category=XA
cinematic propaganda
Civil Rights
comic studies
comics
Cousin Joseph
drama
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_fiction
eq_graphic-novels-manga
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
film noir
films
gender discrimination
graphic experimentation
graphic novels
Great Depression
immigration
Jules Feiffer
Kill My Mother
McCarthyism
novels
plays
political issues
politics
propaganda
satire
storytelling voice
The Ghost Script
the Great Depression
unionization
unionization struggles
unions
Product details
- ISBN 9781978842915
- Weight: 340g
- Dimensions: 156 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 13 May 2025
- Publisher: Rutgers University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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The legendary American cartoonist and author Jules Feiffer has enjoyed a long and varied career, working on everything from illustrating The Phantom Tollbooth to writing the screenplay for the film Popeye. But some of his most innovative work came very late in his career, with a trio of graphic novels he composed in his eighties: Kill My Mother (2014), Cousin Joseph (2016), and The Ghost Script (2018).
Back to Black provides the first full-length critical analysis of this trilogy, exploring how it pays homage to the iconography and themes of film noir through constant graphic experimentation and a striking reinvention of Feiffer’s distinctive style. Fabrice Leroy shows how Feiffer deftly alternates between dramatic and satirical tones as he plays with the conventions of noir to provide a caustic yet moving commentary on mid-twentieth-century American life. Through close readings of each novel in the trilogy, he examines Feiffer’s singular depiction of the central political issues in the United States from the Great Depression to the 1950s, which still resonate today: unionization struggles, cinematic propaganda, McCarthyism, the American Dream, immigration, antisemitism, civil rights, and gender discrimination. Placing the noir trilogy into the context of Feiffer’s long career, Back to Black demonstrates how he offers a loving pastiche of the genre without losing his unique voice or critical edge.
Back to Black provides the first full-length critical analysis of this trilogy, exploring how it pays homage to the iconography and themes of film noir through constant graphic experimentation and a striking reinvention of Feiffer’s distinctive style. Fabrice Leroy shows how Feiffer deftly alternates between dramatic and satirical tones as he plays with the conventions of noir to provide a caustic yet moving commentary on mid-twentieth-century American life. Through close readings of each novel in the trilogy, he examines Feiffer’s singular depiction of the central political issues in the United States from the Great Depression to the 1950s, which still resonate today: unionization struggles, cinematic propaganda, McCarthyism, the American Dream, immigration, antisemitism, civil rights, and gender discrimination. Placing the noir trilogy into the context of Feiffer’s long career, Back to Black demonstrates how he offers a loving pastiche of the genre without losing his unique voice or critical edge.
FABRICE LEROY is a professor of Francophone studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He is the author of Sfar So Far: Identity, History, Fantasy, and Mimesis in Joann Sfar’s Graphic Novels and coeditor of the collections Intermediality in French-Language Comics and Graphic Novels and The Cambridge Companion to the American Graphic Novel.
