PIZZINO, CHRISTOPHER. Arresting Development: Comics at Boundaries of Literature. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2016. 231 pp. $29.95 paperback. Last semester I had discussion with colleague about teaching of comics and graphic novels in which she expressed justifiable confusion over what constituted difference between them. To which I, with slight grin, responded, You call them comics when speaking to undergraduates and graphic novels when speaking to dean. After Christopher Pizzino's important new book, Arresting Development: Comics at Boundaries of Literature, I see my quip unintentionally exemplifies his book's central concern: problem of medium's legitimacy (to use one of Pizzino's keywords). If idea of code switching in face of institutional authority expresses fundamental anxiety over status of comics, particular code invoked points to way some comics creators and many comics scholars have sought to legitimize medium by aligning it with literature, an art form with privileged cultural status. To treat comics--a handful of which have been considered for and even won important literary awards--as literature undoubtedly has conferred measure of cultural value on certain works. But more importantly for Pizzino literary laurels some comics have won has given rise to what he refers to Bildungsroman discourse, narrative repeated ad nauseam in journalism on comics and in comics scholarship that comics have changed over past few decades from a medium intended only for children to one sometimes fit for adults (30). Yet in his book's first chapter Pizzino makes counterintuitive argument acclaim meted out to these works has not elevated status of medium whole. The Bildungsroman discourse, in other words, implicitly affirms logic whereby exceptional literary comics merely prove rule medium is by and large ignoble. (Thus Pizzino evidently invokes literary term Bildungsroman with intentional irony.) Comics enthusiasts espouse Bildungsroman discourse, then, unintentionally contribute to conditions medium. Moreover, Pizzino identifies at least two consequences follow from Bildungsroman discourse anyone who values medium should find unsettling. On one hand, he contends this way of narrating history of comics fails to acknowledge cultural and political repression--from early twentieth-century condemnations of comics as false copies of real literature required real reading (25) to mid-century hysteria over purported effects comics had on young readers--that comics initially faced. This history of repression reached its nadir in infamous 1954 hearings held by US Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency and comics industry's subsequent self-censorship through Comics Code Authority. The Comics Code itself, one might add, only further strengthened prejudice comics were primarily for children. On other hand. Pizzino points out Bildungsroman discourse legitimizes some comic works largely by applying external standards [otherwise] have been used to devalue (42) medium. If Pizzino's critique of Bildungsroman discourse helps us question standards we use to evaluate comics, his ensuing chapters challenge us to attend more effectively to specificity of medium in interpreting comics. Toward this end, his second chapter introduces concept of autoclasm, potentially his book's most fecund intervention in field of comic studies. (In footnote, Pizzino reports he was unaware 'autoclastic' already existed scientific term in field of geology [203] when he coined it.) Comics, it seems, are fully aware of their problematic cultural status and autoclasm is formal tendency through which the medium figures and repeats its own sense of its illegitimacy (49). …