CSS Newsletter #2 FEBRUARY 2016 In this issue: Newsletter info (S. Kirtley and N. Serrano) INKS premium and forthcoming journal bonus (C. Hatfield & J. Gardner) MLA Round-Up (S. Kirtley) Graduate Student Caucus (B. Owens et al) "To Make the Absent Appear": Hillary Chute's Disaster Drawn (B. Cremins) Review: Ramzi Fawaz's The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics (C. Hatfield) Upcoming ICAF announcements Meanwhile, Back in Megatropolis: An Interview with Cartoonist Don Simpson (B. Cremins) Coming in March: CSS elections! Greetings, Comics Folks! Welcome to the Comics Studies Society Newsletter. We are delighted to announce that we have started our very first membership drive and are offering Special Two-Year Founding Memberships! You can enroll by visiting: http://www.comicssociety.org/members/ This is the last newsletter you will receive unless you decide to join CSS, so please do sign up and enjoy exclusive benefits like this newsletter, an upcoming INKS premium and journal bonus, and super-secret invisible decoder ring (supplies limited)! INKS and the Journal Meanwhile, Back in Bonuses Megatropolis: An We are proud to announce that next year Interview with the CSS will launch its journal of Cartoonist Don record, Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society, under the editorship of Simpson Jared Gardner. Inks will be published by the Ohio State University Press on behalf of and in partnership with the CSS--and Have you noticed anything different about will carry on the name and spirit of the the CSS webpage? The handsome CSS original groundbreaking journal Inks: logo is the work of cartoonist Don Cartoon and Comic Art Studies, edited by Simpson. The creator of the acclaimed pioneering scholar Lucy Shelton Caswell series Megaton Man, Simpson also created and also published by the OSUP from 1994 the science fiction serial Border Worlds, through 1997. In this way CSS aims to pay which, along with “America’s Most tribute to the founders and pathmakers in Bombastic Super-Hero,” will also return to our field, even as we acknowledge the print next year. In addition to his long tremendous growth in comics studies over career as a writer and artist, Simpson the past twenty years. earned his Ph.D. in the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh in 2013. First published by Kitchen Sink in the 1980s, Megaton Man takes up where Harvey Kurtzman and Wallace Wood’s “Superduperman” left off in 1953. The original Inks: Cartoon and Comic Art Kurtzman, as I’ve argued elsewhere, Studies was the first peer-reviewed identified the One-Dimensional Man a academic journal devoted to comics study, decade before Herbert Marcuse described and featured a rich mix of articles and him in 1964. Like Kurtzman’s Clark Bent, reviews related to comic strips, political Megaton Man’s alter ego Trent Phloog cartooning, comic books and graphic exists in a world where, to borrow a line novels, and other facets of comic art. It from Marcuse, “people recognize was the kind of publication that all too themselves in their commodities,” with the often gets called "ahead of its time" after a “soul” flickering “in their automobile, hi-fi brave but sadly abbreviated run. With the set, split-level home, kitchen equipment” blessing of Inks's founding editor, the great (Marcuse 9). The cover of Megaton Man Lucy Caswell, we of CSS hope to celebrate No. 6 tells the story: as the hero struggles both the continuity and the growth of our with his creator, a note pinned to the field by reviving the journal's historic name drawing table offers readers a preview of and carrying it into the future. what’s to come: an “explosion,” a “fightscene,” a “recap,” another Jared Gardner, our Journal Editor, reports “explosion,” a second “fightscene,” a that “things are coming together nicely” for “flashback,” one more “explosion,” a third a 2017 launch. This new version “fightscene,” a cliffhanger. Simpson’s of Inks will continue the rigor of the brushwork, as the cover of Megaton Man original (including the practice of peer No. 8 makes clear, owes a debt to Will review) while adding substantial new Eisner, but he also fills his comics with features keyed to the resources and playful lysergic visions and Grass Green- developments of comics studies today. The like distortions of anatomy and journal will bring together comics scholars, perspective. If Lou Fine had drawn album cartoonists and other comics professionals, covers for Moby Grape or The 13th Floor and independent scholars in what promises Elevators, they might have looked a little to be an exciting showcase for research, like Megaton Man. I spent many, many archival discoveries, and debates about the hours trying to copy his style and wore out future of comics and its study. CSS a bunch of Windsor-Newton Sceptre Golds members can expect a journal that serves in the process (but that’s another story). the Society's needs and reflects the ever- growing nature of our field. Members signing up during our Founding Membership drive will receive the first year of the new Inks as well as a special premium, The Best of Inks, Series 1, a collection of outstanding essays and articles from the original Inks in 1994-97. More details TBA! ICAF CSS is excited to partner with the International Comic Arts Forum on several fantastic events this April. CSS will co-sponsor a luncheon at the ICAF conference on Thursday, April But what’s the story behind the CSS logo? 14th from 12:30 - 1:35 PM, and is working Don attended the 2014 ICAF at Ohio State, with the Grad Student Caucus on a panel where the CSS made its debut. As he discussing, “Getting a Job When You Work explains below, he started sketching a few on Comics: Q&A sponsored by the Comics ideas and shared them with CSS Interim Studies Society Grad Student President Charles Hatfield. I’ll let him tell the rest of the story. Caucus” on Friday April 15th from 3-4:10. The roundtable will feature Ben Owen Don and I conducted this interview over (Ohio State University), Susan Kirtley email on February 19, 2016. Here, in (Portland State University), Theresa Rojas addition to talking about his work as an (MIT), Frederik Byrn Køhlert (University of artist and as a teacher, he also speaks to Calgary), and Andrea Gilroy (University of the connections between comics and Oregon). Furthermore, CSS will announce architecture that echo the obsessions of election results in the final days of ICAF. creators like Chris Ware and Edie Fake So please join us at this great event! You (who has also looked to Jane Jacobs by can find more information on the full lineup way of Samuel R. Delany for inspiration). of impressive speakers, including CeCe I’d like to thank Don for taking the time to Bell, Howard Cruse, and Keith Knight answer these questions and for lending his at: http://www.internationalcomicartsforu talents to the CSS. While he’s here, I’d also m.org/. like to thank him for the Partyers from Mars, the Megatropolis Quartet, Doctor Software, Yarn Man, the Quantum Leaper, MLA Round-Up the Cosmic Cue-Ball, Bad Guy, The Wooverine, and, of course, for Kozmik Kat, MLA 2016 offered a wealth of great panels who, along with Raul from Howard and presentations for comics scholars. The Chaykin’s American Flagg!, is one of the excitement kicked off with a panel on great feline heroes in all comics. “Comics Pedagogy” moderated by Keith Now, as Megaton Man himself likes to say, McLeary and Derek McGrath. The packed “WOO!” house was treated to a rousing discussion of comics in universities and BC: Can you talk a little about the Comics classrooms. Panel participant Elizabeth Studies Society logo? I guess I'm asking Losh blogged about the “lively panel” for you to tell me its origin story! Bedford at https://app- DS: I was attending ICAF 17 in Columbus community.macmillan.com/community/the and sketched up the logo idea for Charles -english-community/bedford- on the spot. We discussed some other bits/blog/2016/01/25/becoming- possibilities, but I'm basically a first-idea academically-respectable-notes-on-comics- guy, and we ended up going with what we from-mla-2016. had. I refined the idea in Adobe Illustrator and tried a number of different color The MLA Discussion Group on Comics and schemes and shadows to see what would Graphic Narratives presented three panels: work. Then it was really up to the approval "Satire and the Editorial Cartoon," of others. "Latina/o Comics," and "Charlie Hebdo and BC: In 2013, you completed your Ph.D. at Its Publics." All were well attended and well the University of Pittsburgh. Can you talk a received. The Discussion Group recently little about the relationship between your announced a call for next year’s MLA career as an artist and about your convention, where they will be proposing academic work? another three panels, on "Temporality," "Adaptation," and "Alien Lines." Please see DS: I went back to school in January 2003 the call at graphicnarratives.org and after a year of soul-searching following consider applying! September 11, 2001. I gravitated to art and architectural history as a discipline and ended up doing a dissertation on city “To Make the Absent planning history, specifically the origin of the concepts of civic center and cultural Appear”: Hillary center in American urban planning, or what Jane Jacobs referred to as monumental Chute’s Disaster centers (because the architecture of museums, libraries, city halls, courthouses, Drawn etc., are often neoclassical, and usually set in a park or green space).