Description
Book SynopsisIn
The New Nancy Jeff Karnicky explores how today’s successful daily comic strips are flexible and relatable, and he uses Olivia Jaimes’s 2018 reboot of the long-running comic strip
Nancy to illustrate the ways that contemporary comics have adapted to twenty-first-century technology and culture.
Because comic creation has become part of the gig economy, flexible comics must be accessible to both online and print readers, and they must quickly grab readers’ attention. Flexible comic creators like Jaimes must focus both on the work of producing comics and on building an audience.
Daily comics also must form a relatable connection with readers. Most contemporary comic creators cultivate an online persona through which they engage readers with specific identities, beliefs, and expectations. This work might form a mutually beneficial bond that results in a successful daily comic strip, but it risks becoming fraught, toxic, and sometime
Trade Review“Extremely impressive. Jeff Karnicky demonstrates why Olivia Jaimes’s
Nancy is a work of central importance. The book offers insights on the materiality of contemporary comics, including their labor conditions, their publication practices, and the ways they reflect current events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. . . . An important advance in the scholarly conversation about comics.”—Aaron Kashtan, author of
Between Pen and Pixel: Comics, Materiality, and the Book of the FutureTable of ContentsList of Illustrations
Series Editors’ Introduction
Acknowledgments
Introduction. “Going
In on That Cornbread”: Becoming Flexible, Becoming #Relatable (April 9, 2018)
1. “Cash Preferred”: Olivia Jaimes’s Working Persona (November 8, 2019)
2. “New Year, New Me!”: Nancy’s Representations (June 4, 2018)
3. “But I Broke the Fourth Wall!”: Nancy’s Object Humor (January 20, 2019)
4. “You’ve Got Your Mask, Right?”: Nancy’s Pandemic (November 3, 2020)
Notes
Bibliography
Index
