" Isn't allusion, like grief, a form of memory? What discoveries about intertextual interpretation, or one's emotional commitment to a comics story, or even the cultural encoding of grief itself might follow from this surprising comparison? Jacobs's book is so open to such possibilities, and so determined to open them for readers, that I count his embrace of his emotional connection to (these) comics as a giant step forward in articulating how scholars' fandom experiences can factor into comics studies. I also appreciate the cumulative effect of this accomplishment, which for me depends less on the book's argumentative throughline (though one will find one here) than on the fragmented style and episodic structure of On Comics and Grief, as well as the sharp, highly teachable close analyses that each new chapter brings. The net result is that Jacobs has rebuilt my understanding of how comics readers are situated as individuals, not merely as masses, and engaged me as a partner in the process by inviting me to connect some of the fragments to each other on my own. - Paul Young, Dartmouth College, INKS: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society " - INKS: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society " On Comics and Grief covers the year after the author's mother passed away, during which he experienced profound loss and grief while working on a project predicated on Jacobs's reading of every commercially produced comic book published in the US in 1976. The book is organized in 12 chapters prefaced by an introduction. Each chapter represents a month when Jacobs reads and analyzes two titles for his study, synthesizing personal experience with the traditionally non-personalized project of scholarship. Jacobs's approach reveals deep and sometimes startling connections between coming to grips with emotional experiences and practicing literary criticism. The comics selected for each month often represent extremes of comics content and thus readership.
April's selections, for example, are issues of Daredevil and Little Dot . The juxtaposition of seemingly different comics suggests critical tensions that complement Jacobs's personal account. The author enhances and complicates this effect by interrupting his narrative with quotes from writers who work in different authorial contexts, from comic studies to commercial advertisements. Impressive in scope and moving in affect, Jacobs's On Comics and Grief is a unique and significant contribution to several scholarly disciplines as well as to non-fiction writing. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty." - J. G.
Matthews, Washington State University , CHOICE "When Dale Jacobs looks back on what a single year of comics reading reveals about a lifetime of his mother's love, the results are as poignant as they are critically provocative. Brilliantly conceived, On Comics and Grief makes space for us, as scholars and enthusiasts, to explore how the aims of our public work are inescapably shaped by our most personal experiences." - Qiana Whitted, University of South Carolina, author of EC Comics: Race, Shock, and Social Protest "I've always believed that comics have the power to evoke any emotion and any idea, and Dale Jacobs clearly feels the same. This is a wonderful exploration of the emotional power of the medium." - Jeff Lemire, author of Essex County and Sweet Tooth.