Born in the South Bronx to Puerto Rican parents, artist and writer George Perez (1954-2022) cut his teeth in the 1970s as an artist at Marvel who worked on lesser titles like The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu and Creatures on the Loose, and then mainstays like Fantastic Four and The Avengers. In the 1980s, Perez jumped ship to DC where he helped turn The New Teen Titans into a top-selling title and cocreated Crisis on Infinite Earths, which marked the publisher's fiftieth anniversary and consolidated its sprawling universe. As writer and artist, Perez relaunched DC's Wonder Woman, a run that later inspired much of the 2017 film. Though Perez's style is highly recognizable, his contributions to comic art and history have not been fully acknowledged. In George Perez, author Patrick L. Hamilton addresses this neglect, first, by discussing Perez's artistic style within the context of Bronze Age superhero art, and second, by analyzing Perez's work for its representations of race, disability, and gender. Though he struggled with deadlines and health issues in the 1990s, Perez would reintroduce himself and his work to a new generation of comics fans with a return to Marvel's The Avengers, as well as attempts at various creator-owned comics, the last of these being Sirens from Boom! Studios in 2014. Throughout his career, Perez established a dynamic and minutely detailed style of comic art that was both unique and influential.
Patrick L. Hamilton is professor of English at Misericordia University in Dallas, Pennsylvania. With Allan W. Austin, he coauthored All New, All Different? A History of Race and the American Superhero, which won the Popular Culture Association's John G. Cawelti Award for the Best Textbook/Primer. He also authored Of Space and Mind: Cognitive Mappings of Contemporary Chicano/a Fiction.
Acknowledgments Introduction: The Invisible Artist Chapter 1: Play and Possibility on the Comic Book Page Chapter 2: Overcoming Narratives of Race and Disability Chapter 3: From Wonder(s) to Sirens: Representing Gender Conclusion Notes Works Cited Index
George Perez by Patrick L. Hamilton is a trend I love. Academics are taking pop culture seriously as part of culture. This text is a serious academic work that can be used, and likely will be used, in college courses on art and sociology. It is published by an academic press! This is not a silly book about silly books. And you will feel like someone is taking beloved pop culture seriously.-- "Between Disney"
