TY - BOOK AU - Baetens,Jan TI - Rebuilding Story Worlds: The Obscure Cities by Schuiten and Peeters T2 - Critical Graphics SN - 9781978808515 AV - PN6790.B43 S449 2020 U1 - 741.5/9493 23 PY - 2020///] CY - New Brunswick, NJ PB - Rutgers University Press KW - Comic books, strips, etc KW - Belgium KW - History and criticism KW - Graphic novels KW - LITERARY CRITICISM / General KW - bisacsh KW - Belgium, Belgian art, François Schuiten, French, Benoît Peeters, comics, comic books, parallel world, architecture, city-state, genre, gender, urban space, urban development, designer, historic building, poststructuralist critical theory, fictional world, visual studies, literary studies, The Obscure Cities N1 - Frontmatter --; Contents --; 1. A New Series, a New Type of Author --; 2. A World of Its Own --; 3. More Than a Possible World --; 4. Between Chapter and Series --; 5. A New Fantastic --; 6. In and Out the Medium --; 7. Doing Politics in Comics --; 8. Close-Reading The Leaning Girl --; 9. A Conversation with Benoît Peeters --; 10. Birth of an Album: The Theory of the Grain of Sand --; Acknowledgments --; Notes --; References --; Index --; About the Author; restricted access N2 - A collaboration between Belgian artist François Schuiten and French writer Benoît Peeters, The Obscure Cities is one of the few comics series to achieve massive popularity while remaining highly experimental in form and content. Set in a parallel world, full of architecturally distinctive city-states, The Obscure Cities also represents one of the most impressive pieces of world-building in any form of literature. Rebuilding Story Worlds offers the first full-length study of this seminal series, exploring both the artistic traditions from which it emerges and the innovative ways it plays with genre, gender, and urban space. Comics scholar Jan Baetens examines how Schuiten’s work as an architectural designer informs the series’ concerns with the preservation of historic buildings. He also includes an original interview with Peeters, which reveals how poststructuralist critical theory influenced their construction of a rhizomatic fictional world, one which has made space for fan contributions through the Alta Plana website. Synthesizing cutting-edge approaches from both literary and visual studies, Rebuilding Story Worlds will give readers a new appreciation for both the aesthetic ingenuity of The Obscure Cities and its nuanced conception of politics UR - https://doi.org/10.36019/9781978808515 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9781978808515 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9781978808515/original ER -