Drew Morton, Los Angeles, California, USA is an assistant professor of mass communication at Texas A&M University-Texarkana. His publications have appeared in Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Cinema Journal, [in]Transition, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, and Studies in Comics. He is the co-founder and coeditor of [in]Transition, the award-winning journal devoted to videographic criticism.
Batman (1989) launched what has become a commercial legacy in
Hollywood--the successful adaptation of the superhero comic book to
the big screen as blockbuster entertainment. However, few scholars
have traced the historical restructuring of the comic book's
cultural worth within the industry that preceded this development.
Morton's meticulous exploration of stylistic remediation in Sin
City (2005) is particularly stunning, as he traces the filmmakers'
painstaking efforts to translate the graphic style and formal
properties of Frank Miller's revered 1991 comic book--its panels,
speed lines, flat compositions, high contrast, low-key lighting,
and multiframe--onto the movie screen.--Denise Mann, professor,
Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media, UCLA
At a time when superhero blockbusters dominate the box office, we
need to know much more than we do about the formal and
institutional factors shaping these films. In Panel to the Screen,
Drew Morton provides a nuanced account of why these films look the
ways they do as producers adopt a range of strategies for the
cinematic remediation and translation of comics, and in turn, he
considers how comic artists absorb devices from Hollywood which
make their books seem that much more screen-ready when read by
studio executives. This groundbreaking book moves from one rich and
compelling case study to the next and will be essential reading for
anyone interested in comics, films, and the relationship between
them.--Henry Jenkins, author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and
New Media Collide
Hot on the heels of Hollywood's rush to mine and monetize the
immense imagined worlds of comics, comes this patient, much-needed
intervention by Drew Morton. Panel to the Screen provides a
convincing, well-written, and persuasively argued 'poetics' of the
often-complex film-comics interaction. Morton is particularly good
at showing how and why stylistic aesthetics, industrial
organization, and adaptation theories must be considered alongside
each other, in order to grasp the full significance of the
comics-to-film creative enterprise.--John T. Caldwell, author of
Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in
Film and Television
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