Margins
Paul Bunyan book cover
Paul Bunyan
The Invention of an American Legend : A TOON Graphic
2023
First Published
3.65
Average Rating
48
Number of Pages

Did you know that a mainstay of American folk culture was in fact created as an advertising ploy? Few people realize that Paul Bunyan, the legendary lumberjack, and his blue ox are the product of corporate marketing by a highly industrialized industry. Cartoonist NOAH VAN SCIVER shows us the myth creation as real life marketing man extraordinaire W.B. Laughead spins ever more wondrous tall tales. Van Sciver's story is bracketed by rich contributions from contemporary Native artists and storytellers with a very different connection to the land that the Bunyan myths often conceal. Readers will see how a lumberjack hero, a quintessential American fantasy, captures the imagination but also serves to paper over the seizure of homeland from First Peoples and the laying bare of America's northern forests. It’s a tall tale with deep roots . . . in profit-making!

Avg Rating
3.65
Number of Ratings
155
5 STARS
17%
4 STARS
45%
3 STARS
27%
2 STARS
10%
1 STARS
1%
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Author

Noah Van Sciver
Noah Van Sciver
Author · 15 books

[copied from: http://nvansciver.wordpress.com/about/] I am THE one and only Noah Van Sciver, cartoonist/comic strip artist and illustrator. I’m best known for my alternative comic book series Blammo and my weekly comic strip 4 Questions which appears every week in the alternative newspaper Westword. My work has appeared in The Best American comics 2011, Mad magazine, Sunstone, The Comics Journal, MOME and numerous comics anthologies. I’m currently hard at work on my first graphic novel The Hypo which will be published by Fantagraphics books upon its completion. I’m a cancer and I hate seafood, and adventure.

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