Monstrous Women in Comics

<p>Contributions by Novia Shih-Shan Chen Elizabeth Rae Coody Keri Crist-Wagner Sara Durazo-DeMoss Charlotte Johanne Fabricius Ayanni C. Hanna Christina M. Knopf Tomoko Kuribayashi Samantha Langsdale Jeannie Ludlow Marcela Murillo Sho Ogawa Pauline J. Reynolds Stefanie Snider J. Richard Stevens Justin Wigard Daniel F. Yezbick and Jing Zhang</p><p>Monsters seem to be everywhere these days in popular shows on television in award-winning novels and again and again in Hollywood blockbusters. They are figures that lurk in the margins and so by contrast help to illuminate the center--the embodiment of abnormality that summons the definition of normalcy by virtue of everything they are not.</p><p>Samantha Langsdale and Elizabeth Rae Coody's edited volume explores the coding of woman as monstrous and how the monster as dangerously evocative of women/femininity/the female is exacerbated by the intersection of gender with sexuality race nationality and disability. To analyze monstrous women is not only to examine comics but also to witness how those constructions correspond to women's real material experiences.</p><p>Each section takes a critical look at the cultural context surrounding varied monstrous voices: embodiment maternity childhood power and performance. Featured are essays on such comics as Faith Monstress Bitch Planet and Batgirl and such characters as Harley Quinn and Wonder Woman.</p><p>This volume probes into the patriarchal contexts wherein men are assumed to be representative of the normative universal subject such that women frequently become monsters.</p>