Singular Sensations - by Michelle Ann Abate

About the Book

"The Far Side. Ziggy. The Family Circus. Many of the most popular, influential, and acclaimed comics series in the United States have used the single-panel form. Singular Sensations is the first full-length critical study to examine this important, but long neglected, mode of cartoon art. From political cartoons in the Gilded Age and gag panels in the Depression era to the character-based work of the postwar period and digital comics in the twenty-first century, Michelle Ann Abate engages with a wide array of historical time periods, socio-political subject matter, and aesthetic styles. During this process, Singular Sensations demonstrates that single-panel comics have played an important role in the origins, history, and evolution of cartoon art in the United States. In many respects, comics as we know them-and especially as we love them-would not be the same without the single-panel form. Accordingly, Singular Sensations moves this mode of cartoon art out of the margins and into foreground"--

Book Synopsis

What do The Family Circus, Ziggy, and The Far Side have in common? They are all single-panel comics, a seemingly simple form that cartoonists have used in vastly different ways.

Singular Sensations is the first book-length critical study to examine this important but long-neglected mode of cartoon art. Michelle Ann Abate provides an overview of how the American single-panel comic evolved, starting with Thomas Nast's political cartoons and R.F. Outcault's groundbreaking Yellow Kid series in the nineteenth century. In subsequent chapters, she explores everything from wry New Yorker cartoons to zany twenty-first-century comics like Bizarro. Offering an important corrective to the canonical definition of comics as "sequential art," Abate reveals the complexity, artistry, and influence of the single-panel art form.

Engaging with a wide range of historical time periods, sociopolitical subjects, and aesthetic styles, Singular Sensations demonstrates how comics as we know and love them would not be the same without single-panel titles. Abate's book brings the single-panel comic out of the margins and into the foreground.

Review Quotes

"With her trademark pitch-perfect precision and profound purview, Abate rips the curtains back to show the magic behind single-panel comic storytelling. With breathtaking historical scope and dazzling analyses of exemplars, Abate gifts us with generative concepts and vital tools that crack wide open understanding of how story works in one gestaltic gulp. Singular Sensations is the paradigm shift in Comics Studies we've long awaited!"--Frederick Luis Aldama "author of the Eisner-award winning Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics"

About the Author

MICHELLE ANN ABATE is professor of literature for children and young adults at the Ohio State University in Columbus. She is the author of seven previous books of literary criticism, including Blockheads, Beagles, and Sweet Babboos: New Perspectives on Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts and the Lambda Literary Award nominee Tomboys: A Literary and Cultural History.