Comic Book Geographies

COMIC BOOK GEOGRAPHIES. Edited by Jason Dittmer. 227 pp.; 47 ills. Mainz, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2014. $71.00 (cloth), ISBN 9783515102698. Comic studies cross many disciplines, including geography. Comic Book Geographies, edited by Jason Dittmer, is intended to bring geography and the interdisciplinary field of comic studies into dialogue. For this alone, this book is an important addition to the emerging genre of geohumanities. However, in speaking to wider concerns beyond the conversations within comic studies, or the geography of comics, this book is uneven in its applicability. The first two pieces, a foreword by comic artist Daniel Merlin Goodbrey and an introduction by editor Jason Dittmer are both very accessible and will be useful to those less familiar with the geographic literature on comics. In particular both of these writings explain the importance of space and place to comics. The foreword by Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, a comic artist, reflects on how the relationship between space and the page has influenced his career. Even as hypertexted material makes reading graphic stories in alternate orders easier to facilitate, Goodbrey noted that comics are still "a spatial medium; all the elements in a comics exist in a fixed spatial relationship" (p. 11). Marcus Doel also discusses the importance of this mediated spatial relationship in the last chapter, with attendant implications for the future of the comic genre. Dittmer's introduction also does a wonderful job of explaining the importance of comics. He introduces a framework for understanding the geographies of media developed by Paul Adams in his 2011 article "A Taxonomy for Communication Geography" (Progress in Human Geography 35 (1): 37-57), and then adapts it to be comic specific. The taxonomy developed by Adams is designed to show the interrelationships between the content and the context of a media form to space and place. The two categories related to content include "Place in Comics" and "Space in Comics." The two categories that deal with context include, "Comics in Place" and "Comics in Space." "Together, these four interrelations between space/place and context/contents point to a conceptual language that provides a firm grounding for a joint exploration of comics by scholars in geography and the wider field of comics studies" (p. 18). As I moved further into the book, I was surprised that these categories were not the organizing feature of the text, but the three section headings did aptly describe the chapters contained within them. The text is broken down into three sections: "Representing and Performing Place/Space," "Body Politic," and "Space in Comic Theory." Due to the clarity of theme within each unit, I will discuss the chapters in relation to how they could be used, or who would be interested in them. As a reader and teacher, I am always looking for interesting and engaging theoretically driven works to bring into my courses. The chapters by Shaun Huston and Catriona MacLeod would have clear benefits in that context, being particularly useful to geographers interested in urban and feminist/postcolonial issues. Each of these chapters has clear descriptions of important concepts that are often confusing to students embedded within an engaging case study. Students of urban geography would thoroughly enjoy "Live/Work: Portland, Oregon as Place for Comics Creation," by Shaun Huston. Huston discusses the importance of community formation to how Portland became a hub for comic book creation. The distinctions made between the ideas of the creative class, artisan economy, creativity in place, and neobohemians will clarify the differences for students while entertaining them. Catriona MacLeod's chapter, "Wandering Women to Fixed Females: Relations of Gendered Movement through Post-Colonial Space in letters D'Outremer and Le Bar du Vieux Francais," will be particularly useful to feminist and postcolonial geographers. …