- Copyright Page
- Contributors
- Our World Republic of Comics: An Introduction
- What Kind of Studies Is Comics Studies?
- Why There Is No “Language of Comics”
- In Box: Rethinking Text in the Digital Age
- What Else Is a Comic?: Between Bayeux and Beano
- Reading Spaces: The Politics of Page Layout
- Comics as Art
- The Cartoon on the Comics Page: A Phenomenology
- All By Myself: Single-Panel Comics and the Question of Genre
- Drawing, Redrawing, and Undrawing
- Bakhtinian Laughter and Recent Political Editorial Cartoons
- Columbia and the Editorial Cartoon
- Efficacy of Social Commentary through Cartooning
- Radical Graphics: Australian Second-Phase Comics
- Self-Regulation and Self-Censorship: Comics Creators in Czechoslovakia and Communist Eastern Bloc
- This is Who I Am: Hybridity and Materiality in Comics Memoir
- Auto/biographics and Graphic Histories Made for the Classroom: Logicomix and Abina and the Important Men
- Ambiguity in Parallel: Visualizing History in Boxers and Saints
- Irony, Ethics, and Lyric Narrative in Miriam Engelberg’s Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person
- Animals in Graphic Narrative
- The Diversionary Art of Zeina Abirached in Le Piano Oriental
- Disco, Derby, and Drag The Queer Politics of Marvel’s Dazzler
- The Replacements: Ethnicity, Gender, and Legacy Heroes in Marvel Comics
- Hammer in Hand: Feminist Community Building in Jason Aaron’s Thor
- When Feminism Went to Market: Issues in Feminist Anthology Comics of the 1980s and ’90s
- Children in Comics: Between Education and Entertainment, Conformity and Agency
- I’m Not a Kid. I’m a Shark!: Identity Fluidity in Noelle Stevenson’sYoung-Adult Graphic Novels
- Forgetting at the Intersection of Comics and the Multimodal Novel: James Sie’s Still Life Las Vegas
- My Favorite Thing Is Monsters: The Socially Engaged Graphic Novel as a Platform for Intersectional Feminism
- Paper or Plastic? Mapping the Transmedial Intersections of Comics and Action Figures
- Transformative Architectures in Postcolonial Hong Kong Comics
- Adaptation and Racial Representation in Dell/Gold Key TV Tie-ins
- Candy and Drugs for Dinner: Rat Queens, Genre, and Our Aesthetic Categories
- Non-Compliants, Brimpers, and She-Romps: Bitch Planet, Sex Criminals, and Their Publics
- Literary Adaptations in Comics andGraphic Novels
- Comics Studies in America: The Making of a Field of Scholarship?
- Next Issue: Anticipation and Promise in Comics Studies
- Comics Studies as Interdiscipline
- Comics Studies as Practitioner-Scholar
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter traces the queer politics of Marvel Comics’ Dazzler (aka Alison Blaire) from her comics debut (1980), to her solo series and other appearances over the following decade, and up through her recent one-shot appearance in Dazzler: X-Song #1 (2018). Drawing on scholarship by queer theorists Sara Ahmed, Jack Halberstam, and Nishant Shahani, the chapter examines how queer reading practices expand on what Ramzi Fawaz refers to as an “affective orientation toward otherness and difference” in superhero comics by reading Dazzler alongside other concepts in queer studies—particularly those tied to disco, derby, and drag. By highlighting how Alison Blaire’s relationship to these concepts destabilizes normative gender categories, the chapter demonstrates how Dazzler’s status as both a mutant and a performer allows her to embody queerness even in periods devoid of explicitly LGBTQ+ content in Marvel Comics.
Keywords: Dazzler, disco, drag, feminism, Lady Gaga, Marvel Comics, mutant, performance, queer, roller derby
Nicholas E. Miller, Valdosta State University
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- Copyright Page
- Contributors
- Our World Republic of Comics: An Introduction
- What Kind of Studies Is Comics Studies?
- Why There Is No “Language of Comics”
- In Box: Rethinking Text in the Digital Age
- What Else Is a Comic?: Between Bayeux and Beano
- Reading Spaces: The Politics of Page Layout
- Comics as Art
- The Cartoon on the Comics Page: A Phenomenology
- All By Myself: Single-Panel Comics and the Question of Genre
- Drawing, Redrawing, and Undrawing
- Bakhtinian Laughter and Recent Political Editorial Cartoons
- Columbia and the Editorial Cartoon
- Efficacy of Social Commentary through Cartooning
- Radical Graphics: Australian Second-Phase Comics
- Self-Regulation and Self-Censorship: Comics Creators in Czechoslovakia and Communist Eastern Bloc
- This is Who I Am: Hybridity and Materiality in Comics Memoir
- Auto/biographics and Graphic Histories Made for the Classroom: Logicomix and Abina and the Important Men
- Ambiguity in Parallel: Visualizing History in Boxers and Saints
- Irony, Ethics, and Lyric Narrative in Miriam Engelberg’s Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person
- Animals in Graphic Narrative
- The Diversionary Art of Zeina Abirached in Le Piano Oriental
- Disco, Derby, and Drag The Queer Politics of Marvel’s Dazzler
- The Replacements: Ethnicity, Gender, and Legacy Heroes in Marvel Comics
- Hammer in Hand: Feminist Community Building in Jason Aaron’s Thor
- When Feminism Went to Market: Issues in Feminist Anthology Comics of the 1980s and ’90s
- Children in Comics: Between Education and Entertainment, Conformity and Agency
- I’m Not a Kid. I’m a Shark!: Identity Fluidity in Noelle Stevenson’sYoung-Adult Graphic Novels
- Forgetting at the Intersection of Comics and the Multimodal Novel: James Sie’s Still Life Las Vegas
- My Favorite Thing Is Monsters: The Socially Engaged Graphic Novel as a Platform for Intersectional Feminism
- Paper or Plastic? Mapping the Transmedial Intersections of Comics and Action Figures
- Transformative Architectures in Postcolonial Hong Kong Comics
- Adaptation and Racial Representation in Dell/Gold Key TV Tie-ins
- Candy and Drugs for Dinner: Rat Queens, Genre, and Our Aesthetic Categories
- Non-Compliants, Brimpers, and She-Romps: Bitch Planet, Sex Criminals, and Their Publics
- Literary Adaptations in Comics andGraphic Novels
- Comics Studies in America: The Making of a Field of Scholarship?
- Next Issue: Anticipation and Promise in Comics Studies
- Comics Studies as Interdiscipline
- Comics Studies as Practitioner-Scholar
- Index