While at CMRC 2010 I found out about this range of books from Continuum. Looks really interesting – especially the ‘Graven Images’ book.
“Graven Images: Religion in Comic Books & Graphic Novels” (Continuum)
“Comics and the City: Urban Space in Print, Picture and Sequence” (Jorn Ahrens, Arno Meteling)
“The Power of Comics: History, Form and Culture” (Randy Duncan, Matthew J. Smith)
“Secret Identity Crisis: Comic Books and the Unmasking of Cold War America” (Matthew J. Costello)
And related to the religion and comic books theme, Newsarama has had a number of brief articles on interaction of the Islam inspired comic book series “The 99” with DC Comics mainstream titles and characters.