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Something is Rotten in the State of Gotham
“There’s only one Hamlet (and most children don’t read it), whereas comic books come by the millions.” That’s what Frederic Wertham told readers of National Parent-Teacher in 1949, his second of three...
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What is a Comic?
I was just reading Amazon reviews for a collection of essays by philosophers on the topic of comics, and one disgruntled reader complained that the authors “spend most of their time simply trying to...
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Re: Superheroes and the curse of superpowers
Dear Professor Gavaler, I am a biologist at the University of Oklahoma, currently writing a review paper about our research on sensory processing by weakly electric fish in South America and Africa (a...
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Is This a Comic?
I’m going to say no. Though why, I’m less sure. The image does include three panels, and if you read then sequentially, then that’s a comic. It’s even a kind of narrative: a short page’s descent into...
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Is This a Story?
I’m going to say yes. And not just because the four-panel comic strip is titled “I rowed my father’s boat to sea.” The sequence tells a visual story whether those words are included or not. And the...
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My Favorite Childhood Softporn
It’s 1977, so I’m eleven, older if the magazine I found in one of my cousins’ bedrooms wasn’t his most recent newsstand purchase. The cover price is $1.50. I paid $8 after pulling it from a vendor’s...
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Queen Kong vs. Ms. Jones
I don’t know what Warren Publishing had in mind when they commissioned Frank Frazetta’s “Queen Kong” in 1971, but Eerie devoted an entire issue to the image in in 1977. The cover of No. 81...
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Is Marilyn Monroe a Character in a Comic Strip?
I’ve been obsessed with Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe series lately. When I found out the poster art for Night of the Living Dead isn’t copyrighted, I made this Warhol-inspired knock-off: Warhol...
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Kirby vs. Steranko! Silver Age Layout Wars!
When did the Silver Age of comics end and the Bronze Age begin? There’s no definite year, but the 1973 “SNAP!” of Gwen Stacy’s too-perfect neck in Amazing Spider-Man #121 is a contender. 1970 is a...
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