Wonder Woman’s Secrets in Context
Jill Lepore’s The Secret History of Wonder Woman is a major event in comics scholarship. But no scholarly work stands alone; all are always part of a wider conversation.
Comics Chronicles
The Plugged-Up Parodist: Nick Maandag’s Constipated Comedy
Visually, there are very few gifted cartoonists who are as remorselessly ungiving as Nick Maandag. There is no succulent texture in his universe, no oasis of exfoliating leafy beauty to offer relief from the aridity of the art.
Harold Gray and the Limits of Conservative Anti-Racism
Race, Harold Gray and Little Orphan Annie.
Kim Thompson as Critic
There were many Kim Thompsons: translator, anthologist, editor, publisher. The first Kim Thompson I encountered was Kim the critic, who tended to get lost in the busy shuffle.
Fact and Fancy in Seth’s G.N.B. Double C
Everybody misunderstands Seth. Popular mythology has pegged the cartoonist as a nostalgist hankering over the lost past. In fact, Seth is a fantastist obsessed not with the world-that-was but rather the world-as-it-might-have-been.
Crumb in the Beginning
In 1987, the proposal to bring all of Crumb back into print in a uniform set of books was a radical publishing act which re-contextualized and re-vitalized an already momentous body of work.
Iowa Comics Conference Notebook
A visit to Iowa with a crowd of cartoonists, publishers and academics.
A Dan Clowes Notebook
From Ice Haven to Mr. Wonderful.
A Chester Brown Notebook
Some notes that try to tease out a fuller account of Chester’s remarkable “comic-strip memoir.”
Bill Blackbeard, R.I.P.
The man who gave comics its memory.
Notes on S. Clay Wilson
If we acknowledge that he was the artist who gave permission for Crumb to become Crumb, then it’s clear that Wilson was the central artist of the underground generation.
Black Readers & White Comics
Some more notes on race and comics. Although the notes deal with this issue from a variety of angles, one topic that I keep returning to here is the question of black readers of the comic strips.
Racism as a Stylistic Choice and other Notes
Some notes on race and comics which attempt to bring some nuance and complexity to a frustrating debate by bringing some historical facts to the table.
