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Few topics on popular culture can be adequately researched on the web alone. These reading suggestions are designed as beginning points for further offline study.

Heer, Jeet, and Kent Worcester. A Comic Studies Reader. Jackson: U Press of Mississippi, 2009
Wide-ranging collection of scholarly articles dealing with history, form and social meanings of the comic medium.
Lefèvre, Pascal and Dierick Charles, eds. Forging a New Medium: The Comic Strip in the Nineteenth Century. Brussels: Vub Brussels U P, 1999.
Establishes the historical background necessary to understand the origin and nature of the modern comic strip. Includes essays on rise of comics in particular countries, among them England, Spain, Germany, and the US, essays from prominent artists in the genre, as well as a useful timeline on the development of the comic strip.
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993.
Very lucid, rich introduction to the history and visual and verbal meaning making processes of comic books. The book itself is done in brilliant comic book form.
Ndalias, Angela, ed. The Contemporary Comic Book Superhero. NY: Routledge, 2010.
Wide-ranging, international collection of essays comic superheroes, including some that also deal with superheroes in film and TV.
Pustz, Matthew. Comic Book Culture: Fanboys and True Believers. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999.
Study of contemporary comic strip fans, from the casual to the nearly pathologically devoted. The subtitle refers to the author’s distinction between mainstream “fanboys” and “true believers” devoted to alternative comix culture.
Robinson, Lillian. Wonder Women: Feminism and Superheroes. Routledge, 2004.
A prominent feminist critic takes on superheroines.
Smith, Matthew J. and Randy Duncan, eds. Critical Approaches to Comics. Routledge, 2011.
Textbook that introduces a variety of methods for studying comics.
Wright, Bradford W. Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
Offers a social history of US comic books that shows how changing trends in comic books, from Superman’s debut in 1938 up to the late 20th century, both reflected and contributed to changing political and cultural values.