The Poetics of Slumberland

“Slipping comfortably into Bukatman's book, one is dreamily transported to utopian worlds where merry madcap disorder rules. Beginning with the advent of modernity in the surreal comic strips of Winsor McCay and stretching into the superhuman comics of heroes like Plastic Man and Superman (with a really cool cape), the author re-enchants the labor of creative artistry with the spirit of anima. . . . The lavishly illustrated book is delightfully Chestertonian, clapping its hands in glee over the unruly energy and plasmatic possibilities of the Pygmalion myth drawn into the imaginations of playful artists and their exhilaratingly disruptive arts. . . .Bukatman shows the marvelous animated poetics of visual media. . . . Essential.”

— Choice

"Thanks to Bukatman’s prose (a blend of rich textual analysis, a deft knowledge of theories ranging from play to phenomenology, and humour—here is a book about comics that is often comical!)—and a beautiful collection of colour and black and white reproductions of comic and film art, our scholarly community now benefits from an elaboration of both the practice of comic book consumption and the ties that bind American comics and animation."

— Studies in Comics

"...an exceptional analysis of the nature of the animated and the animating (in the broadest sense of these terms) as they arise in twentieth- (and twenty-first-) century narrative media. Anyone who is interested in comics and animation, or in the role played by notions of life, energy, and plasticity in art more generally, will find much that is useful, novel, and insightful in Bukatman’s study."

— caa.reviews