Join us on Thursday, April 6, for a reception and program to celebrate the exhibition The Art of the News: Comics Journalism.

5:00-6:30 pm —  Explore the exhibition. The museum galleries will be open until 6:30 pm. Light snacks and refreshments will be provided in the lobby before the program.

6:30—7:30 pm — Program in the Eisner Seminar Room. Katherine Kelp-Stebbins, co-curator of the exhibition, in conversation with Ben Passmore about the exhibition and his comics work.

Free and open to the public. Join us for a book discussion and signing with Columbus-based artist Raeghan Buchanan, author and illustrator of The Secret History of Black Punk: Record Zero, an illustrated roll-call for punk, post-punk, hardcore, no-wave, and experimental bands from ground zero ‘til now. A starting point for anyone curious, another reference for those who devour all genre-related things, or a cool artifact for anyone in the know. Free and open to the public.

Join us for a special virtual program with Jean Lee Cole on her book How the Other Half Laughs: The Comic Sensibility in American Culture, 1895-1920, in conjunction with our current exhibit Man Saves Comics! Bill Blackbeard’s Treasure of 20th Century Newspapers.

This event is part of Will Eisner Week 2023.

Register here: https://osu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_7YbuubRfSrqkiaBVNotd5g

At the turn of the twentieth century, strips such as Hogan’s Alley, The Katzenjammer Kids, and Bringing Up Father defined the genre and became a driving force in the development of mass media. The earliest newspaper comic strips were marked by wild creativity, violence, and class commentary almost completely absent from today’s “funny pages”; Cole argues that they—and the laughter they provoked–also played an important role in the formation of immigrant and working-class community identity.

Comic heroes were born amidst the tumult of World War II and became pillars of the American century. They reflected the muscular interventionism central to postwar nationalism even as soapy personal dramas internalized an ambiguity toward war, empire, and domestic society felt by writers and their often youthful readership. These seemingly contradictory impulses have defined the comics medium, even as the ubiquity of pulp adventurism in contemporary media drives a new era of US-led cultural globalization. The conference will explore this history by bringing together nationally renowned specialists on foreign affairs and political messaging. It will ask how government priorities shaped four-color responses to global conflicts, and to what extent disruptive events like the Vietnam War challenged their ability to stand for truth, justice, and the American way? Did the late Cold War and 9/11 revive patriotic narratives? And how have multimedia adaptations handled the long evolution of iconic characters while addressing contemporary matters ranging from the War on Terror to new political divisions? These discussions will consider how comics and pulp adventures inform popular narratives of conflict, insecurity, and heroism, and what their long history reveals about cultural attitudes toward U.S. power.

View the full schedule for the November 4 conference here: CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THIS EVENT >