Polyptych: Adaptation, Television, and Comics

“Polyptych: Adaptation, Television, and Comics” seeks to expand our understanding of a remarkably under-studied area: the intersection of comic books and television. Through a series of case studies, questions about how media align and differ are brought to the fore. The authors here address a wide variety of works, from fairly low-budget adaptations of popular comic books in the 1970s to more expansive narrative universes in recent years. The breadth of examples does a good job of underlining a variety of approaches to the texts. Generally, the essays here are narrowly focused, which means that they do not fall into the error of generalizing. The scholarship demonstrates strong familiarity with earlier writers on comics and television, and, in particular, theories of adaptation. This is an interesting volume that addresses an area that few other books do (particularly in contrast to the voluminous scholarship on the comics-cinema relationship), and I am certain that it will find a readership among both comics and television scholars.

Dr Bart Beaty

Professor, Department of English

University of Calgary