Neon Visions

Neon Revelations tracks the groundbreaking career of comics innovator and iconoclastic auteur Howard Chaykin and the impact of his work on the transformation of American comic books in the 1980s. Acclaimed (and often controversial) projects such as American Flagg!, Time2, and Black Kiss turned action-packed adventure tales of mainstream comics into a platform for personal expression, political engagement, and aesthetic experimentation. Chaykin remains a vital and prolific artist today, yet despite the original and influential nature of his comics, he has received scant critical attention. Spanning Chaykin’s career from his 1980s heyday to the contemporary period, the first book-length study of Chaykin’s work locates the unique power of Chaykin’s comics in their inventive explorations of the question of authenticity in popular culture. It examines the ways in which Chaykin’s work, which demands a mode of reading that is alive to the distinct affordances of the comics medium and the complexities of its history, reveals the limitations of valuing comics narrowly as "literature."