Superhero Comics and Scottish Identity

The Comics Art of Frank Quitely

David John Boyd (Author), Julie Briand-Boyd (Author),

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Series: Studies in European Comics and Graphic Novels

Category: Literature

Language: English

ISBN: 9789462704664

Publication date: June 25, 2025

€59.50 (including 6% VAT)

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Number of pages: 300

Size: 230 x 170 x 12 mm

Number of illustrations: 70

Illustrations and other content description:
Illustrated, 40 pages in colour

Stock item: 166589

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Series: Studies in European Comics and Graphic Novels

Category: Literature

Language: English

ISBN: 9789461666536

Publication date: July 15, 2025

€51.00 (including 6% VAT)

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Number of pages: 300

Number of illustrations: 70

Illustrations and other content description:
Illustrated, 40 pages in colour

Series: Studies in European Comics and Graphic Novels

Category: Literature

Language: English

DOI: 10.11116/9789461666529

ISBN: 9789461666529

Publication date: June 25, 2025

€51.00 (including 6% VAT)

Buy Now

Easy access with the Glassboxx app

Number of pages: 300

Number of illustrations: 70

Illustrations and other content description:
Illustrated, 40 pages in colour

Summary
Contents
About the Author

The work of Frank Quitely and the role of comics art in contemporary Scottish culture, politics and society.

Superhero Comics and Scottish Identity explores the life and career of Glasgow-born, Eisner Award-winning, and internationally acclaimed Marvel, DC, and Image Comics artist Frank Quitely. With a prolific career spanning more than three decades, Quitely played a pivotal role in the British superhero renaissance of the 1990s and 2000s and in the explosive emergence of the Scottish new wave of comics, a movement that included peers like Alan Grant, Mark Millar, and Grant Morrison, but has been underrepresented in both comics studies and Scottish studies. This work investigates questions of historical and contemporary expressions of Scottishness in transcultural comics genres such as superhero, science fiction, and fantasy. Framed through the lens of comics and literary genres, as well as their British and American editors, Quitely’s approach to Scottishness is oblique and self-reflexive; his expressions of Scottishness are tensely bound to current nuanced examinations of Scottish national, literary and historical subjectivity. His work oscillates between two axiomatic antipodes: the regional, provincial, and local versus the transnational, cosmopolitan, and global.

This comprehensive study also features an in-depth interview with Quitely, as well as unearthed archives, sketchbooks, notes, and donated or personal artworks not available elsewhere.

This book will be made open access within three years of publication thanks to Path to Open, a program developed in partnership between JSTOR, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), University of Michigan Press, and The University of North Carolina Press to bring about equitable access and impact for the entire scholarly community, including authors, researchers, libraries, and university presses around the world. Learn more at https://about.jstor.org/path-to-open/

Acknowledgements

Part 1—Sketching Scotland
Introduction. The Scottish Connection
Chapter 1. Frank Quitely’s Portraits of Scottishness
Chapter 2. Frank Quitely’s Landscapes of Scottishness

Part 2—The Garden of Two Glasgows
Chapter 3. Frank Quitely’s Angelic Doubles
Chapter 4. Frank Quitely’s Devilish Derivations

Part 3—The Bottled City of Glasgow
Chapter 5. Frank Quitely as Global Artist
Chapter 6. Frank Quitely as Local Artist
Conclusion. From Glasgow to Gotham
The Glasgow Interviews. A Conversation with Frank Quitely

Bibliography
Index

David John Boyd

David John Boyd is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Stirling Maxwell Centre of the University of Glasgow.

Julie Briand-Boyd

Julie Briand-Boyd is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Stirling Maxwell Centre of the University of Glasgow.

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