Blog Posts

Fartcopter Studies

I’m proud to have had a short, hard-hitting piece of cultural criticism (on Adult Swim’s “Fartcopter” and drone aesthetics) published in Slate, mostly because I’ve now achieved my longstanding dream of putting the word “fartcopter” on my CV. Continue reading Fartcopter Studies

Pretty Cool

It’s hard for me to believe sometimes, but I submitted my dissertation prospectus in December of 2005, during my fourth year as a graduate student in the Department of English at Stanford University. At the time — having recently read David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest and feeling vaguely dissatisfied with his argument in “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction” — I … Continue reading Pretty Cool

Abstract: Art Spiegelman’s Children’s Cartoons and the History of Comics Literacy

This is the abstract of a paper I hope to deliver at ACLA in 2016 (on a stream I am co-sponsoring called “Institutions of Reading“). The paper represents some of my preliminary work for a projected Spiegelman/Mouly chapter of my current book project, “Rise of the Graphic Novel.” It is also a talk-version of my anticipated contribution to the … Continue reading Abstract: Art Spiegelman’s Children’s Cartoons and the History of Comics Literacy

Justin Green’s “Strong Iconic Attraction”

For my first real post on “Rise of the Graphic Novel,” I’m going to share the abstract I submitted for the forthcoming ASAP/7 conference at Clemson University in Greenville, SC. Title Justin Green’s “Strong Iconic Attraction,” or, How U.S. Comics Emerged from the Underground Abstract In the 1970s, underground comix began transforming into what many … Continue reading Justin Green’s “Strong Iconic Attraction”