The introduction of Steve Ditko and Stan Lee's Amazing Spider-Man radically changed the face of g... more The introduction of Steve Ditko and Stan Lee's Amazing Spider-Man radically changed the face of graphic literature. Spider-Man would go on to be one of the most recognized and beloved characters in western culture, and by mixing the individualist Zeitgeist of the mid-twentieth century with the ideals of Romanticism, co-creator Steve Ditko set a standard that would lead to some of the most significant work in comic book history. Unlike any comics creator who had preceded him, Ditko set a clear path for the psychological growth of his character and developed him over more than 38 issues. Applying a particular view of the Byronic hero, Ditko created a sort of 'Romantic epic' that continued in his post-Spider-Man works with the Blue Beetle, the Question and Mr A. Ditko set himself further apart from his contemporaries by developing a complicated view of violence that challenged the Comics Code Authority. The 'right to kill' that Steve Ditko invented for superheroes was not intended to bring the anti-hero to comics; rather, Ditko utilized it to demonstrate the moral authority of heroes against villains that, in his view, forfeited their lives. By pairing this new right to kill with psychologically complex protagonists, Ditko's work reflected the anxieties of 1960s western culture
This examination of Jim Terry’s 2020 graphic memoir, Come Home, Indio, places the comic within co... more This examination of Jim Terry’s 2020 graphic memoir, Come Home, Indio, places the comic within conversations about what Kate Polak has identified as comics potential to operate as access generators to complex political conversations regarding the inequities faced by Indigenous peoples in the United States. Making use of what comics scholar Barbara Postema has identified as “narrative weaving” in comics, Come Home, Indio explores complexity of racial and social injustice on both a micro and macro scale as well as how those who are confronted with such inequities might reconcile with others and form deeper bonds with their own communities through spiritual and political activism. Although much critical energy has been spent on graphic memoirs, this article emphasizes how Terry’s comic might be considered within the complexities of twenty-first century American life, adding to recent conversations, like Frederic Aldama’s 2020 edited collection, Graphic Indigeneity. To date, scholarly engagement with comics by Indigenous creators has been limited, which situates this article as part of an important step forward, moving beyond mere acknowledgement of Native creators and toward prioritizing the role of their political voices and experiences in comics.
University Press of Mississippi eBooks, Feb 15, 2021
This chapter provides an overview of many of the major works that Ditko produced after leaving Ma... more This chapter provides an overview of many of the major works that Ditko produced after leaving Marvel and developing new superheroes for Charlton Comics. The majority of the comics considered in this chapter are those produced at DC in the late 1960s and 1970s; however, there are also discussions on Ditko’s work at Warren Publications as well as two of his most significant independent works, Static and The Mocker. Each examination places the selected text within the theoretical framework provided early on, and of major importance, each of these comics—produced after Ditko had supposedly devoted his work entirely to Objectivism—demonstrate that the creator’s output was far more interested in cosmic intraspace and the kind of redemption possible through a sort of excavation of the mind.
Early in his career, Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko developed two motifs that would become the... more Early in his career, Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko developed two motifs that would become the basis for the philosophic tenants and narrative conventions that dominate his creative output: "dark karma" and "cosmic inner space." The author identifies and defines these motifs, demonstrating how they separate Ditko from many of his predecessors and contemporaries. Moreover, the development of these tropes informs Ditko's career-long interest in the individual, and he eventually merges "dark karma" and "cosmic inner space" with his later interest in Objectivism. Recognizing these tropes in work that predates Ditko's interest in the philosophy of Ayn Rand is critical to developing a coherent reading of his contributions and situating the artist within a broader historical context.
Steve Ditko almost never participated in interviews, and in 1968 he took part in his very last, i... more Steve Ditko almost never participated in interviews, and in 1968 he took part in his very last, in issue 4 of the fanzineMarvel Main. Responding to a question about which of his characters he believed were the clearest extension of his own philosophy, Ditko remarked, “Every person, whether he wants to be or not, is in a continuous struggle. It’s not a physical life or death struggle. . . . It’s a struggle for his mind!” For Ditko, this struggle meant to protect one’s mind from being corrupted by “irrational premises.” It’s that personal struggle for the individual mind that underwrites Ditko’s philosophy as he explored it over the course of his career, from its beginnings in 1953, working in a variety of genres, to his
University Press of Mississippi eBooks, Feb 15, 2021
Dr. Strange is a character wholly of Ditko’s invention, which other writers later contributed to ... more Dr. Strange is a character wholly of Ditko’s invention, which other writers later contributed to and altered. This chapter addresses the issue of Dr. Strange’s racial identity as well as the complicated politics of cosmic intraspace on display throughout Ditko’s tenure on the character. This chapter considers one of Ditko’s most knotty and sophisticated narrative arcs as it addresses the creation of the self, how occult and mystical ideas infiltrate (and are infiltrated) by individualist thought, and how the two operate together to create a mystic liberal imagination of self-creation through an internal excavation of the mind.
University Press of Mississippi eBooks, Feb 15, 2021
This chapter applies both dark karma and cosmic intraspace to several of Ditko’s pre-Comics Code ... more This chapter applies both dark karma and cosmic intraspace to several of Ditko’s pre-Comics Code horror and weird suspense stories produced for Charlton Comics in 1953. The readings and contextualization provided in this chapter demonstrate that many of the ethical and moral concerns that appear in Ditko’s later, supposedly Objectivist comics, actually appear long before he became acquainted with Rand’s work. Rather, as this chapter argues, Ditko folded Objectivism into his pre-existing moral and ethical beliefs, which had a distinctly mystical flavor.
University Press of Mississippi eBooks, Feb 15, 2021
This chapter begins with a discussion of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen as a response not... more This chapter begins with a discussion of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen as a response not just to the neoliberal political climate of the 1970s and 1980s but specifically to the work and politics of Steve Ditko, as Watchmen is dependent upon Ditko’s work for a number of key themes. Keeping Watchmen’s historical context in mind, this chapter also presents instances and consequences of mystic liberalism in American political history, specifically with Ronald Reagan. Along with the discussion of Watchmen as a transitional work into the post-Ditko period of comics production, is a brief examination of some of Ditko’s most recent works which demonstrates his consistent interest in the occult and mysticism as narrative devices, bringing the reader full circle with Ditko’s earliest comics discussed in chapter two. The chapter closes with a discussion of the “Master Planner” story from Amazing Spider-Man.
University Press of Mississippi eBooks, Feb 15, 2021
Easily Ditko’s most well-known creation, Spider-Man is critical to any discussion about Ditko’s w... more Easily Ditko’s most well-known creation, Spider-Man is critical to any discussion about Ditko’s work. This chapter focuses on Ditko’s role as writer on the series and the trajectory that he set the character on: a psychological epic not seen in other superhero comics of the period. Ditko puts Spider-Man through his paces, demanding that, like Dr. Strange, he searches his interior in a quest to find and create himself, transitioning from lonely nebbish to confident individualist. Ditko’s interest in Objectivist epistemology takes an increasingly important role with Spider-Man, setting the stage for the superheroes that would follow his departure from Marvel Comics. Among those more grounded and transparently philosophical characters was the Blue Beetle. Ditko created his version of Blue Beetle, and as this chapter argues, uses him to pick up where he left of with Peter Parker, completing the psychological quest that began in Amazing Fantasy #15.
Critique: Studies In Contemporary Fiction, Jun 25, 2018
In his 1985 novel Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy takes his challenges to the divine order direct... more In his 1985 novel Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy takes his challenges to the divine order directly to one of its self-proclaimed adherents: Samuel Chamberlain. Throughout the novel, the reader can observe a discourse between McCarthy's nineteenth century historical source texts, principally Samuel Chamberlain's My Confession (1956), and McCarthy's own twentiethcentury sensibilities. The dialog McCarthy creates between his text and Chamberlain's results in Blood Meridian's rebuttal to the nineteenth century Christianity of My Confession in favor of a scientific, naturalist view of the world as represented by the judge. Furthermore, as a part of that discourse, McCarthy not only countervails Chamberlain's Christian worldview but the very notion of his public "confession" as a witness of the Glanton Gang's atrocities; McCarthy achieves this through the figure of the kid who is a witness only unto himself and cannot confess in the same way that Chamberlain does.
University Press of Mississippi eBooks, Feb 15, 2021
The Question and Mr. A are widely understood as being Ditko’s most Objectivist characters, both o... more The Question and Mr. A are widely understood as being Ditko’s most Objectivist characters, both of whom often spoke using an Objectivist lexicon, and Ditko identified Mr. A as being an experiment in interpreting and applying Rand’s work. While the politics and violence of The Question and Mr. A are often discussed, there is, as yet, no deep consideration of how these characters function not as literal proponents of violence but as avatars for ideological constructs addressing metaphysical issues, particularly Ditko’s conception of the conflicts of “life” versus “anti-life” and “mind” versus “anti-mind.” This chapter recalibrates the discussion surrounding the penchant Ditko’s characters have for violence, placing it within a more sensible intellectual context that is consistent to the mystic liberal framework Ditko had been operating in for the previous few decades
University Press of Mississippi eBooks, Feb 15, 2021
This chapter more fully introduces the theoretical framework for Kruse’s reading of Ditko’s work ... more This chapter more fully introduces the theoretical framework for Kruse’s reading of Ditko’s work and includes more thorough definitions for the key terms as well as a historical and cultural context for those terms. The contextualization provided in this chapter offers a look into Ditko’s hometown Johnstown, Pennsylvania and its immigrant community of industrial workers, along with the liberal political voices such as Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden alongside occult and mystic voices such as H.P. Blavatsky, and how popular twentieth-century advocates of the mind power movement like Norman Vincent Peale, Dale Carnegie, and other members link each of these seemingly disparate ideas and methodologies. The result of this entanglement—in theory and in practice—is mystic liberalism.
University Press of Mississippi eBooks, Feb 15, 2021
Steve Ditko (1927–2018) is one of the most important contributors to American comic books. As the... more Steve Ditko (1927–2018) is one of the most important contributors to American comic books. As the cocreator of Spider-Man and sole creator of Dr. Strange, Ditko made an indelible mark on American popular culture. Mysterious Travelers: Steve Ditko and the Search for a New Liberal Identity resets the conversation about his heady and powerful work. Always inward facing, Ditko's narratives employed superhero and supernatural fantasy in the service of self-examination, and with characters like the Question, Mr. A, and Static, Ditko turned ordinary superhero comics into philosophic treatises. Many of Ditko's philosophy-driven comics show a clear debt to ideas found in Ayn Rand’s Objectivism. Unfortunately, readers often reduce Ditko's work to a mouthpiece for Rand's vision. Mysterious Travelers unsettles this notion by theorizing a major strand of liberal thought yet to be explored in academic discourse. Conscripting the popular mind power and New Thought movements into the rhetoric of libertarianism and later, Reagan-era neoliberalism, Ditko’s work provides access to a “mystic liberalism” that leverages the so-called power of positive thinking for political and philosophic aims. Mysterious Travelers also provides a critical reexamination of Ditko’s “right to kill” for fictional characters as well as significant insights into the racial history of Dr. Strange.
Calling back to EC Comics’ horror line, and reuniting several members EC’s stable of artists, War... more Calling back to EC Comics’ horror line, and reuniting several members EC’s stable of artists, Warren Publications’ anthology-style comic magazines, Creepy and Eerie, were a highwater mark for both Warren and the horror comics genre. Series editor and head writer Archie Goodwin shepherded stories that recalled both the exquisitely gruesome and terrifying tales from EC’s heyday as well as EC’s sharp, left-leaning political tongue. This chapter will consider several collaborations between Goodwin and artist Gray Morrow, released in 1965. Each is thematically linked, calling into question patriarichal and colonial power, literally dehumanizing and bestializing white patriarchy. Together, Goodwin and Morrow argue that white, colonial patriarchy is a globally destructive force which is threatened by its own consumptive greed, in some cases literally eating its own.
This examination of Jim Terry’s 2020 graphic memoir, Come Home, Indio, places the comic within co... more This examination of Jim Terry’s 2020 graphic memoir, Come Home, Indio, places the comic within conversations about what Kate Polak has identified as comics potential to operate as access generators to complex political conversations regarding the inequities faced by Indigenous peoples in the United States. Making use of what comics scholar Barbara Postema has identified as “narrative weaving” in comics, Come Home, Indio explores complexity of racial and social injustice on both a micro and macro scale as well as how those who are confronted with such inequities might reconcile with others and form deeper bonds with their own communities through spiritual and political activism. Although much critical energy has been spent on graphic memoirs, this article emphasizes how Terry’s comic might be considered within the complexities of twenty-first century American life, adding to recent conversations, like Frederic Aldama’s 2020 edited collection, Graphic Indigeneity. To date, scholarly e...
The purpose of this resource guide is to provide a foundation for people interested in studying, ... more The purpose of this resource guide is to provide a foundation for people interested in studying, teaching, and contributing to comics and comics-based scholarship within the classroom.
By the mid 1950s, director-producer Sam Katzman was settling in at Columbia Pictures; the one-tim... more By the mid 1950s, director-producer Sam Katzman was settling in at Columbia Pictures; the one-time Poverty Row filmmaker had nearly thirty years in Hollywood and had established a reputation for himself by producing serials and genre pictures with meager budgets that had disproportionately high rates of return. Katzman's approach to filmmaking boiled down to this: if the film was profitable, then it was good. At Columbia, Katzman relied on gimmicks that appealed to a teenage audience: fast cars, teenage criminals, rockabilly music, science fiction, and horrific creatures, all with an atom-age spin. For instance, 1955's Creature with the Atom
The purpose of this resource guide is to provide a foundation for people interested in studying, ... more The purpose of this resource guide is to provide a foundation for people interested in studying, teaching, and contributing to comics and comics-based scholarship within the classroom.
The introduction of Steve Ditko and Stan Lee's Amazing Spider-Man radically changed the face of g... more The introduction of Steve Ditko and Stan Lee's Amazing Spider-Man radically changed the face of graphic literature. Spider-Man would go on to be one of the most recognized and beloved characters in western culture, and by mixing the individualist Zeitgeist of the mid-twentieth century with the ideals of Romanticism, co-creator Steve Ditko set a standard that would lead to some of the most significant work in comic book history. Unlike any comics creator who had preceded him, Ditko set a clear path for the psychological growth of his character and developed him over more than 38 issues. Applying a particular view of the Byronic hero, Ditko created a sort of 'Romantic epic' that continued in his post-Spider-Man works with the Blue Beetle, the Question and Mr A. Ditko set himself further apart from his contemporaries by developing a complicated view of violence that challenged the Comics Code Authority. The 'right to kill' that Steve Ditko invented for superheroes was not intended to bring the anti-hero to comics; rather, Ditko utilized it to demonstrate the moral authority of heroes against villains that, in his view, forfeited their lives. By pairing this new right to kill with psychologically complex protagonists, Ditko's work reflected the anxieties of 1960s western culture
This examination of Jim Terry’s 2020 graphic memoir, Come Home, Indio, places the comic within co... more This examination of Jim Terry’s 2020 graphic memoir, Come Home, Indio, places the comic within conversations about what Kate Polak has identified as comics potential to operate as access generators to complex political conversations regarding the inequities faced by Indigenous peoples in the United States. Making use of what comics scholar Barbara Postema has identified as “narrative weaving” in comics, Come Home, Indio explores complexity of racial and social injustice on both a micro and macro scale as well as how those who are confronted with such inequities might reconcile with others and form deeper bonds with their own communities through spiritual and political activism. Although much critical energy has been spent on graphic memoirs, this article emphasizes how Terry’s comic might be considered within the complexities of twenty-first century American life, adding to recent conversations, like Frederic Aldama’s 2020 edited collection, Graphic Indigeneity. To date, scholarly engagement with comics by Indigenous creators has been limited, which situates this article as part of an important step forward, moving beyond mere acknowledgement of Native creators and toward prioritizing the role of their political voices and experiences in comics.
University Press of Mississippi eBooks, Feb 15, 2021
This chapter provides an overview of many of the major works that Ditko produced after leaving Ma... more This chapter provides an overview of many of the major works that Ditko produced after leaving Marvel and developing new superheroes for Charlton Comics. The majority of the comics considered in this chapter are those produced at DC in the late 1960s and 1970s; however, there are also discussions on Ditko’s work at Warren Publications as well as two of his most significant independent works, Static and The Mocker. Each examination places the selected text within the theoretical framework provided early on, and of major importance, each of these comics—produced after Ditko had supposedly devoted his work entirely to Objectivism—demonstrate that the creator’s output was far more interested in cosmic intraspace and the kind of redemption possible through a sort of excavation of the mind.
Early in his career, Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko developed two motifs that would become the... more Early in his career, Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko developed two motifs that would become the basis for the philosophic tenants and narrative conventions that dominate his creative output: "dark karma" and "cosmic inner space." The author identifies and defines these motifs, demonstrating how they separate Ditko from many of his predecessors and contemporaries. Moreover, the development of these tropes informs Ditko's career-long interest in the individual, and he eventually merges "dark karma" and "cosmic inner space" with his later interest in Objectivism. Recognizing these tropes in work that predates Ditko's interest in the philosophy of Ayn Rand is critical to developing a coherent reading of his contributions and situating the artist within a broader historical context.
Steve Ditko almost never participated in interviews, and in 1968 he took part in his very last, i... more Steve Ditko almost never participated in interviews, and in 1968 he took part in his very last, in issue 4 of the fanzineMarvel Main. Responding to a question about which of his characters he believed were the clearest extension of his own philosophy, Ditko remarked, “Every person, whether he wants to be or not, is in a continuous struggle. It’s not a physical life or death struggle. . . . It’s a struggle for his mind!” For Ditko, this struggle meant to protect one’s mind from being corrupted by “irrational premises.” It’s that personal struggle for the individual mind that underwrites Ditko’s philosophy as he explored it over the course of his career, from its beginnings in 1953, working in a variety of genres, to his
University Press of Mississippi eBooks, Feb 15, 2021
Dr. Strange is a character wholly of Ditko’s invention, which other writers later contributed to ... more Dr. Strange is a character wholly of Ditko’s invention, which other writers later contributed to and altered. This chapter addresses the issue of Dr. Strange’s racial identity as well as the complicated politics of cosmic intraspace on display throughout Ditko’s tenure on the character. This chapter considers one of Ditko’s most knotty and sophisticated narrative arcs as it addresses the creation of the self, how occult and mystical ideas infiltrate (and are infiltrated) by individualist thought, and how the two operate together to create a mystic liberal imagination of self-creation through an internal excavation of the mind.
University Press of Mississippi eBooks, Feb 15, 2021
This chapter applies both dark karma and cosmic intraspace to several of Ditko’s pre-Comics Code ... more This chapter applies both dark karma and cosmic intraspace to several of Ditko’s pre-Comics Code horror and weird suspense stories produced for Charlton Comics in 1953. The readings and contextualization provided in this chapter demonstrate that many of the ethical and moral concerns that appear in Ditko’s later, supposedly Objectivist comics, actually appear long before he became acquainted with Rand’s work. Rather, as this chapter argues, Ditko folded Objectivism into his pre-existing moral and ethical beliefs, which had a distinctly mystical flavor.
University Press of Mississippi eBooks, Feb 15, 2021
This chapter begins with a discussion of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen as a response not... more This chapter begins with a discussion of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen as a response not just to the neoliberal political climate of the 1970s and 1980s but specifically to the work and politics of Steve Ditko, as Watchmen is dependent upon Ditko’s work for a number of key themes. Keeping Watchmen’s historical context in mind, this chapter also presents instances and consequences of mystic liberalism in American political history, specifically with Ronald Reagan. Along with the discussion of Watchmen as a transitional work into the post-Ditko period of comics production, is a brief examination of some of Ditko’s most recent works which demonstrates his consistent interest in the occult and mysticism as narrative devices, bringing the reader full circle with Ditko’s earliest comics discussed in chapter two. The chapter closes with a discussion of the “Master Planner” story from Amazing Spider-Man.
University Press of Mississippi eBooks, Feb 15, 2021
Easily Ditko’s most well-known creation, Spider-Man is critical to any discussion about Ditko’s w... more Easily Ditko’s most well-known creation, Spider-Man is critical to any discussion about Ditko’s work. This chapter focuses on Ditko’s role as writer on the series and the trajectory that he set the character on: a psychological epic not seen in other superhero comics of the period. Ditko puts Spider-Man through his paces, demanding that, like Dr. Strange, he searches his interior in a quest to find and create himself, transitioning from lonely nebbish to confident individualist. Ditko’s interest in Objectivist epistemology takes an increasingly important role with Spider-Man, setting the stage for the superheroes that would follow his departure from Marvel Comics. Among those more grounded and transparently philosophical characters was the Blue Beetle. Ditko created his version of Blue Beetle, and as this chapter argues, uses him to pick up where he left of with Peter Parker, completing the psychological quest that began in Amazing Fantasy #15.
Critique: Studies In Contemporary Fiction, Jun 25, 2018
In his 1985 novel Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy takes his challenges to the divine order direct... more In his 1985 novel Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy takes his challenges to the divine order directly to one of its self-proclaimed adherents: Samuel Chamberlain. Throughout the novel, the reader can observe a discourse between McCarthy's nineteenth century historical source texts, principally Samuel Chamberlain's My Confession (1956), and McCarthy's own twentiethcentury sensibilities. The dialog McCarthy creates between his text and Chamberlain's results in Blood Meridian's rebuttal to the nineteenth century Christianity of My Confession in favor of a scientific, naturalist view of the world as represented by the judge. Furthermore, as a part of that discourse, McCarthy not only countervails Chamberlain's Christian worldview but the very notion of his public "confession" as a witness of the Glanton Gang's atrocities; McCarthy achieves this through the figure of the kid who is a witness only unto himself and cannot confess in the same way that Chamberlain does.
University Press of Mississippi eBooks, Feb 15, 2021
The Question and Mr. A are widely understood as being Ditko’s most Objectivist characters, both o... more The Question and Mr. A are widely understood as being Ditko’s most Objectivist characters, both of whom often spoke using an Objectivist lexicon, and Ditko identified Mr. A as being an experiment in interpreting and applying Rand’s work. While the politics and violence of The Question and Mr. A are often discussed, there is, as yet, no deep consideration of how these characters function not as literal proponents of violence but as avatars for ideological constructs addressing metaphysical issues, particularly Ditko’s conception of the conflicts of “life” versus “anti-life” and “mind” versus “anti-mind.” This chapter recalibrates the discussion surrounding the penchant Ditko’s characters have for violence, placing it within a more sensible intellectual context that is consistent to the mystic liberal framework Ditko had been operating in for the previous few decades
University Press of Mississippi eBooks, Feb 15, 2021
This chapter more fully introduces the theoretical framework for Kruse’s reading of Ditko’s work ... more This chapter more fully introduces the theoretical framework for Kruse’s reading of Ditko’s work and includes more thorough definitions for the key terms as well as a historical and cultural context for those terms. The contextualization provided in this chapter offers a look into Ditko’s hometown Johnstown, Pennsylvania and its immigrant community of industrial workers, along with the liberal political voices such as Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden alongside occult and mystic voices such as H.P. Blavatsky, and how popular twentieth-century advocates of the mind power movement like Norman Vincent Peale, Dale Carnegie, and other members link each of these seemingly disparate ideas and methodologies. The result of this entanglement—in theory and in practice—is mystic liberalism.
University Press of Mississippi eBooks, Feb 15, 2021
Steve Ditko (1927–2018) is one of the most important contributors to American comic books. As the... more Steve Ditko (1927–2018) is one of the most important contributors to American comic books. As the cocreator of Spider-Man and sole creator of Dr. Strange, Ditko made an indelible mark on American popular culture. Mysterious Travelers: Steve Ditko and the Search for a New Liberal Identity resets the conversation about his heady and powerful work. Always inward facing, Ditko's narratives employed superhero and supernatural fantasy in the service of self-examination, and with characters like the Question, Mr. A, and Static, Ditko turned ordinary superhero comics into philosophic treatises. Many of Ditko's philosophy-driven comics show a clear debt to ideas found in Ayn Rand’s Objectivism. Unfortunately, readers often reduce Ditko's work to a mouthpiece for Rand's vision. Mysterious Travelers unsettles this notion by theorizing a major strand of liberal thought yet to be explored in academic discourse. Conscripting the popular mind power and New Thought movements into the rhetoric of libertarianism and later, Reagan-era neoliberalism, Ditko’s work provides access to a “mystic liberalism” that leverages the so-called power of positive thinking for political and philosophic aims. Mysterious Travelers also provides a critical reexamination of Ditko’s “right to kill” for fictional characters as well as significant insights into the racial history of Dr. Strange.
Calling back to EC Comics’ horror line, and reuniting several members EC’s stable of artists, War... more Calling back to EC Comics’ horror line, and reuniting several members EC’s stable of artists, Warren Publications’ anthology-style comic magazines, Creepy and Eerie, were a highwater mark for both Warren and the horror comics genre. Series editor and head writer Archie Goodwin shepherded stories that recalled both the exquisitely gruesome and terrifying tales from EC’s heyday as well as EC’s sharp, left-leaning political tongue. This chapter will consider several collaborations between Goodwin and artist Gray Morrow, released in 1965. Each is thematically linked, calling into question patriarichal and colonial power, literally dehumanizing and bestializing white patriarchy. Together, Goodwin and Morrow argue that white, colonial patriarchy is a globally destructive force which is threatened by its own consumptive greed, in some cases literally eating its own.
This examination of Jim Terry’s 2020 graphic memoir, Come Home, Indio, places the comic within co... more This examination of Jim Terry’s 2020 graphic memoir, Come Home, Indio, places the comic within conversations about what Kate Polak has identified as comics potential to operate as access generators to complex political conversations regarding the inequities faced by Indigenous peoples in the United States. Making use of what comics scholar Barbara Postema has identified as “narrative weaving” in comics, Come Home, Indio explores complexity of racial and social injustice on both a micro and macro scale as well as how those who are confronted with such inequities might reconcile with others and form deeper bonds with their own communities through spiritual and political activism. Although much critical energy has been spent on graphic memoirs, this article emphasizes how Terry’s comic might be considered within the complexities of twenty-first century American life, adding to recent conversations, like Frederic Aldama’s 2020 edited collection, Graphic Indigeneity. To date, scholarly e...
The purpose of this resource guide is to provide a foundation for people interested in studying, ... more The purpose of this resource guide is to provide a foundation for people interested in studying, teaching, and contributing to comics and comics-based scholarship within the classroom.
By the mid 1950s, director-producer Sam Katzman was settling in at Columbia Pictures; the one-tim... more By the mid 1950s, director-producer Sam Katzman was settling in at Columbia Pictures; the one-time Poverty Row filmmaker had nearly thirty years in Hollywood and had established a reputation for himself by producing serials and genre pictures with meager budgets that had disproportionately high rates of return. Katzman's approach to filmmaking boiled down to this: if the film was profitable, then it was good. At Columbia, Katzman relied on gimmicks that appealed to a teenage audience: fast cars, teenage criminals, rockabilly music, science fiction, and horrific creatures, all with an atom-age spin. For instance, 1955's Creature with the Atom
The purpose of this resource guide is to provide a foundation for people interested in studying, ... more The purpose of this resource guide is to provide a foundation for people interested in studying, teaching, and contributing to comics and comics-based scholarship within the classroom.
Graphic Possibilities: A Comics Research Guide, 2020
The purpose of this resource guide is to provide a foundation for people interested in studying, ... more The purpose of this resource guide is to provide a foundation for people interested in studying, teaching, and contributing to comics and comics-based scholarship within the classroom.
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