The New Old Style: Anachronism in Contemporary Comics (Encapsulations: Critical Comics Studies)

The New Old Style explores how the deliberate use of cartooning styles that mimic those of the early twentieth century has paradoxically become one of the most significant vehicles for formal experimentation in contemporary comics.Dubbing this phenomenon "the anachronistic aesthetic," Matthew Levay argues that what can initially appear to be a nostalgic affinity for outmoded drawing styles is in fact a complex and holistic movement in contemporary comics with profound consequences for how artists and audiences might understand the critical possibilities and historical legacies of the medium itself. The phenomenon of anachronism as an aesthetic mode is visible in North American comics as early as the 1970s, but it rose to prominence in the 1990s.Since then, multiple artists have drawn in ways that reference cartooning styles of the distant past-those of early twentieth-century newspaper comics, early American animation, and midcentury comic books for young children, to name a few.The Ne