Reviews

"Hellboy’s World is really a manifesto for a different kind of comics studies." —Confessions of an Aca-Fan

Quite simply, a masterpiece of loving attention and lively interaction with the works under study. More than that: a constellation of ideas that bear on comics in general, art and culture at large, and the very act (or as Bukatman says, the adventure) of reading itself. , —Charles Hatfield The Comics Journal

“Hellboy’s World is written with such joyfulness and panache that I find it a pleasure to page through, again and again. Beautifully designed, bountifully illustrated — all scholarly tomes on comic art should look this good.” —Charles Hatfield LA Review of Books

"Multitasking among such a broad range of texts and media sounds daunting, but Bukatman meets the challenge with energy and grace. . . [he] takes mainstream comics like Hellboy on their own terms for the complex and elusive creatures they are." —Film Quarterly

“In Bukatman’s capable hands, we find ample demonstration of the special wondrousness that books can possess for us as we try to possess them (and not just comic books). They are objects wonderful to behold, wonderful to hold and enter into. And Bukatman’s own tome is in this respect a splendid thing: a beautifully produced work that lovingly offers insights that radiate from every page to invoke the enduring and inevitable bookishness inhering within our visual culture. A sublime investigation of comic books as sites/sights of essential world-building.”—Dana Polan, author of Scenes of Instruction: The Beginnings of the U.S. Study of Film



“Hellboy’s World is a smart, provocative book that showcases Bukatman’s lucid and sparkling writing throughout. It’s a pleasure to read such a lively academic book—and it is lively not just because of its subject matter, a superhero comic of sorts, but also because of Bukatman’s energy and dedication to his subject.”—Hillary L. Chute, author of Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form





“A revelation . . . as complex, challenging, and ‘monstrous’ as the comics the book explores. Whether he’s talking virtual subjects,orScott Bukatman is savagely brilliant and utterly indispensable.”—Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of