Archie’s dark side

America’s most wholesome comic wanted to remake the comics world in its image.
A new exhibit at Olin Library, “Domesticated Pulp: Archie Publications and the Comics Code,” which runs through December 17, includes ephemera from the Archie offices, including editorial policy, printer’s proofs and original artwork.

By Rosalind Early 

 October 16, 2023

Fans of Riverdale, the CW TV show based on the Archie Comics series, might be surprised to learn that in the comic books Archie Andrews never went to juvie and Veronica Lodge never ordered a hit on her father. Archie and the gang were actually a byword for wholesome, an idealized portrait of small-town American youth where the teens faced problems like making a mess when tie-dying clothes, getting up early to run charity races and making fun of Archie’s old jalopy.

“You get a vision of teenage life that has wacky hijinks but none of the angst and loathing actual teenagers experience,” says D.B. Dowd, a nationally known illustrator and professor of art in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.

Archie publisher John Goldwater led a self-censorship organization — the Comics Code Authority — homogenizing comics for decades. 

(Courtesy Dowd Illustration Research Archive)

Introduced in 1941, Archie was as popular as it was long-lasting, but Archie’s impact on comics goes further than its popularity.

Archie publisher John Goldwater led a self-censorship organization — the Comics Code Authority (CCA), which set the decency standards for pulp publications — that would homogenize comics for decades. Without the CCA’s seal of approval, comic book publishers were essentially cut off from wholesale distribution.

Goldwater and Archie’s impact is the subject of a new exhibit in the Newman Tower of Collections and Exploration at Olin Library, “Domesticated Pulp: Archie Publications and the Comics Code.” The exhibit, which runs through December 17, includes ephemera from the Archie offices, including editorial policy, printer’s proofs, original artwork from illustrators Bob Montana and Don DeCarlo, and more.

The Archie Comic Collection, which includes more than 100 pieces of original works of art, was amassed by notable cartoonist, author and collector Craig Yoe and acquired by the University Libraries in 2020. The collection is just one of many housed in the Dowd Illustration Research Archive, which aims to preserve the history of illustration and visual culture.

“It was a trove of stuff,” says Dowd, who curated the exhibit along with Andrea Degener, interim curator of the Dowd Illustration Research Archive. But the exhibit is more than just Archie, it tells the history of pulp publishing in the United States and how the Comics Code Authority re-shaped the industry.

“The Archie Comic Collection provides a unique study of how Goldwater leveraged the code to promote the long-term success of the Riverdale universe,” Degener says. “Before the advent of Archie, Goldwater published titles like Close-Up and Dash, which were essentially pin-up magazines categorized in the men’s humor genre. But he seemed to sense an opportunity with the popularity of Archie and began branding Archie Comics as wholesome and appropriate for readers of all ages well before the code was even established.”

Pulp publishing, the rise of an industry

Kids liked pulp publications too, and some of the content was alarming to experts. In the November 1953 issue of Ladies’ Home Journal in “What Parents Don’t Know About Comic Books,” psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, MD, posited that comics could cause juvenile delinquency. (Courtesy Dowd Illustration Research Archive)

The 1930s saw the rise of “what we think of as ‘pulp’ publishing,” although cheap printing for the working class dates to the 19th century. Printed on inexpensive paper were humor comics like in the newspaper, but also detective comics, crime and horror comics, girlie magazines with pin-ups and, later, superheroes.

“There’s lots of experimentation,” Dowd says. The work was “aimed at a working-class audience, and a lot of immigrants read pulp magazines.” But kids liked pulp a lot, too, and some of the content was alarming to experts, most prominently Fredric Wertham, a psychiatrist, who wrote Seduction of the Innocent that claimed comics caused juvenile delinquency.

Wertham’s outcry led to Senate hearings in 1954. William Gaines, the publisher of Entertaining Comics (EC), was advised against taking the stand. His company had titles like The Haunt of Fear, Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror. The covers often featured scantily clad women in danger — the exact comic books Wertham was critiquing. One of EC’s covers, “Crime SuspenStories Vol 1 No. 22,” featured a man holding a bloody hatchet in one hand and the implicitly decapitated head of a blonde woman in the other. Her body is on the floor at his feet. Gaines was asked if he thought this was appropriate.

“Yes sir, I do, for the cover of a horror comic,” Gaines replied. “A cover in bad taste, for example, might be defined as holding the head a little higher so that the neck could be seen dripping blood from it.”


“For the most part, the Comics Code just eliminated a whole bunch of comics. A variation of the code — one that would have rated the comics for various age groups — would have been preferable.”Rebecca Wanzo

The public was scandalized. By the fall of 1954, publishers formed the Comics Magazine Association of America and the Comics Code Authority to burnish their industry’s reputation and keep the government from censoring them. As a result, comics had to adhere to certain decency standards: no sex before marriage, no pin-ups, no comics with “horror,” “terror” or “weird” in the title, etc. This meant EC had to end most of its lines.

“For the most part, the Comics Code just eliminated a whole bunch of comics,” says Rebecca Wanzo, chair and professor of women, gender and sexuality studies in Arts & Sciences and author of The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging. “A variation of the code — one that would have rated the comics for various age groups — would have been preferable.”
The rise of the Comics Code Authority

Behind the censorship was Goldwater, who served as president of the Comics Magazine Association of America for 25 years. He had the market cornered on wholesome: Archie had proved so popular after being introduced in a Pep comic that the company, formerly MLJ Comics, renamed itself Archie Comics. And the editorial policy was clear, as a memo in the exhibit from the company explains: “Archie Andrews is a positive force; he provides wholesome, non-violent entertainment in the role of the clean-cut, ‘typical American teenager’ we wish all teenagers were.” (Emphasis theirs.)

“Archie is very much Americana. It was an answer to quiet the adult critiques that comics were the cause of rebellious youth culture,” Degener says. “For several decades, Archie Comics was the only publication with a teenage cast that could speak to both a younger and slightly older demographic. The problems faced by the cast were very cyclical and simple; the predicament was always resolved by the end of the comic and in a way that satisfied both adult and youth readership.”

Goldwater skirted his own rules, particularly with regard to pin-ups. Katy Keene, a spinoff in the Archie Comics world, was the worst offender, always striking a pin-up pose. The excuse: Keene was supposed to be modeling fashions that had been suggested by readers. (Courtesy Dowd Illustration Research Archive)

Goldwater exported his attitude about “typical” Americans to the rest of the industry. “The fixation on the typical was highly normative and majoritarian: Racial minorities were invisible, heterosexuality unquestioned, and gender roles strictly enforced,” a placard in the exhibit points out. “Critics were already speaking out against the ‘conformism’ of the 1950s, and John Goldwater is poorly remembered by the insurgents who created alternative comix in the 1960s.”

Plus, Dowd argues, Goldwater skirted his own rules, particularly with regard to pin-ups. Betty and Veronica both regularly modeled fashions in pin-up-like poses. Katy Keene, a spinoff in the Archie Comics world, was the worst offender, always striking a pin-up pose as she pulled on her stockings or powdered her nose. The excuse for all this leg? Keene was supposed to be modeling fashions that had been suggested by readers.

“Katy Keene is an interesting study because her character sets the precedent for Betty and Veronica’s famous fashion specials and one-on-one dialogue with readers,” Degener says. “Katy Keene was glamorous, and she was always followed around by her younger sister, Sis, who aspired to be like Katy. Katy even had her own fan club.”

“The term pin-up refers to a whole woman shown in an illustration in a cheese-cakey way,” Dowd says. “Betty, Veronica and Katy Keene are like pulp vixens. There’s never any sexual content, but there’s certainly a sense of buried sexuality that’s in this wholesome package. That’s why we called the exhibition ‘domesticated pulp,’ because that’s what Archie did.”

Censorship, then and today

Today, school and public libraries face scrutiny about the books they carry. Across the country, Republicans have introduced laws or regulations to prevent kids from accessing “illicit material” that is not that illicit, such as Fun Home, a graphic memoir about author Alison Bechdel’s family and struggles with her sexuality.

But Wertham was not a conservative. “Wertham was a pretty progressive psychiatrist,” Wanzo says. “He was interested in the problems of racism being represented in comics and things like that.” (This problem may have been exacerbated by the CCA, which once took issue with a Black man being depicted as an astronaut, for instance, despite that not being against the Comics Code.)

Still, the excuse for the censorship, protecting the youth, is a common refrain. “Young people are going to find ways to access things they want to access,” Wanzo says. “But there’s a tension between what the state should do in terms of regulating content and what providers should do.” She points out that parents should be able to regulate what their child sees, but not be able to eliminate legal content that others may want to see.

“The desire to control what young people encounter in the world — and the danger that they will think thoughts that aren’t ours — is deeply unattractive.”D.B. Dowd

“There are ways to talk about content,” she says.

Most publishers stopped using the Comics Code Authority by 2001, and they’d been pushing against the CCA for decades with comics like Watchmen.

One of the earliest publishers to push against the CCA was Gaines. He eventually left the pulp industry and started MAD magazine to circumvent the CCA, and for decades, the groundbreaking publication didn’t even have ads so it could be fully independent. (Learn more about MAD at another comics-focused exhibit: “MADness Unleashed: The World of MAD Magazine” in Olin Library on Level 1 of the Kagan Grand Staircase. The exhibit runs through January 28.)

Despite essentially fostering MAD magazine, very little redeems the CCA in the eyes of most comics and illustration fans. “The desire to control what young people encounter in the world — and the danger that they will think thoughts that aren’t ours — is deeply unattractive,” Dowd says.

Canada Censors Cartoons

While everyone is getting on their high horse about censorship and freedom of speech over the issue of the Danish Cartoons, and I plead guilty, lets look at the fact that in Canada in the Criminal Code cartoons are banned as well. Yep. In particular Crime Comics. By name.

Now these are particular comics that existed during the forties and fifties and were published without the censors seal of the Comics Code Authority on them. They were lurid graphic comics about crime.

Prior to the CCA most crime comics were just as lurid and usually depicted cops being killed by bad guys. The CCA then banned that kind of depiciton . But some comics like the EC series run by Mad Magazine of horror, science fiction and crime comics refused to be censored.

While the comic industry in the U.S. engaged in self censorship the Grundy's in Canada made the publication of crime comics illegal. And they still are. So are horror comics. And sex comics. And horror sex comics. Yet we see them in most comic stores.

So whatcha gonna do about it. This law is so out of date its like one of the mangled corpses that comes back to life in an EC comic.



Offences Tending to Corrupt Morals

Corrupting morals


163. (1) Every one commits an offence who

(b) makes, prints, publishes, distributes, sells or has in his possession for the purpose of publication, distribution or circulation a crime comic.

Definition of “crime comic”

(7) In this section, “crime comic” means a magazine, periodical or book that exclusively or substantially comprises matter depicting pictorially

(a) the commission of crimes, real or fictitious; or

(b) events connected with the commission of crimes, real or fictitious, whether occurring before or after the commission of the crime.

The Dark Age of the Justice Society of America

All-Star Comics #57 not only marked the end of the original run of the Justice Society of America, for many it marks the end of the Golden Age. Many would end the Golden Age with World War II, others at some point in the late Forties, but, regardless, it was quite clearly the end of an era. After all, the Justice Society of America had been one of the last remaining superhero titles from the Golden Age. In the early Fifties the comic book industry would be dominated by other genres. Science fiction, horror, western, and romance comic books could be found on newstands everywhere. Perhaps the two most popular genres at the time were crime and horror. Lev Gleason' Crime Does Not Pay had debuted in 1942 and proven to be a great success. In the late Forties several other companies followed Gleason's lead and produced their own crime comic books. Horror comics appeared on the scene in the late Forties. Among the most popular titles in the genre were those published by E. C. Comics, a relative latecomer to the field. Tales from the Crypt, The Haunt of Fear, and The Vault of Horror were among the best sellers in the industry. Indeed, they would become classics in the medium, inspiring not only a generation of young comic book artists and writers, but novelists and film makers as well.

It seemed that the day of the superhero was past. In 1954 Atlas Comics (formerly Timely Comics) tried to revive their superhero line. Unfortunately their revivals of Captain America, The Human Torch, and The Sub-Mariner failed--Sub-Mariner Comics lasted the longest, at nine issues. Charlton Comics' attempt to revive Fox Feature Syndicate's flagship superhero, the Blue Beetle, in the pages of Space Adventures also met with failure. Superheroes were passé or so it seemed.

Unfortunately for the comic book industry, it might have been better had they stood by the superheroes of old. Since 1947 comic books had been increasingly coming under attack in newspaper editorials and magazine articles. Many people believed that they had a deleterious effect on youth and some even believed that they led to juvenile delinquency. As hard as it is to believe today, some areas even held comic book burnings. Foremost among the industry's critics was Dr. Frederic Wertham, a noted author and at one time the senior psychiatrist at Belleview. Beginning in the Forties Wertham wrote several articles attacking comic books and in 1954 published a book on the subject, Seduction of the Innocent.

Contrary to popular belief, Wertham's primary target was not the horror comic books of the era. Dr. Wertham was much more concerned about crime comic books, although he included a large number of genres under the heading of "crime (including science fiction and horror)." Nor did he single out E. C. Comics in his attacks, though they were one of his favourite targets. In fact, the company whose comic books Wertham cited most often in his works was Fox Features Syndicate, the notorious publisher of sensationalistic and often graphic crime and jungle comic books (who, ironically, had gone out of business in 1950).

Regardless, neither Wertham's articles nor his book, Seduction of the Innocent, were hardly based on sound scientific principles. His conclusions were based primarily on his work with juvenile delinquents and contained no empirical evidence of comic books' effects on normal children. Seduction of the Innocent, in particular, is filled with a priori assumptions, conclusions based on guilt by association, and interpreting material out of context. Despite the fact that Seduction of the Innocent offered no real evidence for the harmful effects comic books supposedly had on children, the book severely damaged the industry. What had once been mere public outcry against violence in comic books soon became all out war against the comic book industry. The United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, headed by Estes Kefauver, would even investigate comic books to see if there was a link between them and juvenile delinquency.

The Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency regarding comic books ended inconclusively and, contrary to what many believe now, there appears to have been no real threat of government intervention in the comic book industry. Even in the absence of government intervention, however, the comic book industry perceived its existence as being threatened. In October 1954 several major publishers joined together to create the Comics Code Authority. The publishers referred to the Comics Code as "the most stringent code in existence for any communications media (sic)." With the Comics Code in effect, most comic books became very squeaky clean affairs, with an absolute minimum of violence and absolutely no sex (not that there ever had been any to begin with). Perhaps as a result, comic book sales plummeted to all time lows.

Another EC classic from artist Johnny Craig. This controversial cover holds a special place in the history of the formation of the Comics Code. I've borrowed the following commentary from Richard Wolfe's excellent crime comic cover website- Crimeboss

[This cover] wins the contest for "most notorious cover illustration" hands down. When the Senate Committe of the Judiciary to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency began hearings in New York City in 1954, this particular cover caught the eye of Senator Estes Kefauver. William Gaines, the publisher of E.C. Comics, was put in the awkward position of having to defend the cover:

"Here is your May issue. This seems to be a man with a bloody axe holding a woman's head up, which has been severed from her body. Do you think that's in good taste?" asked Kefauver.
"Yes, sir, I do...for the cover of a horror comic. A cover in bad taste, for example, might be defined as holding the head a little higher so that blood could be seen dripping from it, and moving the body over a little further so that the neck of the body could be seen to be bloody," replied Gaines.
"You've got blood coming out of her mouth."
"A little."

By the end of the day, William Gaines had achieved nationwide notoriety and crime comics had been pronounced guilty of corrupting the youth of America.

Tags

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Criminal Code
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“The Art of Thai Comics: A Century of Strips and Stripes” by Nicolas Verstappen

Comics in Thailand have enjoyed a long and rich history and have been enjoyed by people of all socio-economic classes, even though they’ve had a reputation as a form of “low culture”. In The Art of Thai Comics: A Century of Strips and Stripes, Nicolas Verstappen goes back even further than a hundred years to show just how long comics have been embedded in Thai culture.

It wasn’t just that comics were seen as lowbrow in Thailand when Verstappen set out to research his beloved art form, but pre-1980s comics were all but unknown to those in Thailand who were interested in this genre.

Due to the humid tropical climate of Thailand, monsoons and their unforgiving floods, voracious bookworms and a lack of consideration and archival endeavors, most of the pre-1980s comics production has been wiped out. Roaming markets, libraries, antiquarian bookstores and online groups, I struggled to find the seminal comics works that had been cited in the literature.

He hit the jackpot in early 2020 when more than a thousand comics from the 1930s were discovered in an attic—cut out, curated, and bound into volumes. These comics were not included in the national archives, so they were indeed a great find.

The Art of Thai Comics: A Century of Strips and Stripes, Nicolas Verstappen

 (River Books, April 2021)

Verstappen is a Belgian professor in the department of Communication Arts at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok and has arranged his book according to historical period, but also breaks most of the chapters into chronological profiles of almost two dozen comic writers and illustrators. He begins, however, with some context.

Verstappen goes as far back as the origins of the Thai language in southwestern China and the earliest known illustrated art appeared in Thailand in the 14th century, depicting stories of Gautama Buddha in stone reliefs.

Chulalongkorn University is named for King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) whose son Vajiravudh, later Rama VI, was educated in Britain at the turn of the century, where he learned to enjoy political satire cartoons. He even drew his own caricatures of corrupt officials to expose their vices. Rama VI also wrote crime serials along the lines of Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe, and Guy de Maupassant. His most significant contribution to comics, however, was establishing the Poh-Chang Academy of Arts in 1913, where many of the artists profiled in this book studied.



Sawas Jutharop was a Poh-Chang graduate and the first artist in Thailand to have a serialized comic strip in 1932. One of King Rama VI’s unfortunate legacies was an article he penned in 1914 titled “The Jews of the East”, which combined anti-Semitic tropes from Europe with anti-Chinese sentiment. Sawas Juthrop included in his comics derogatory characterizations of Chinese migrants in Thailand. He also drew a comic inspired by the American character, Popeye.

Thai culture has always been a blend of influences, so it’s not surprising to find this reflected in comics. Another illustrator of that time, Witt Sutthastien, who used the pen name Wittamin and was only seventeen at the time, combined Popeye and Mickey Mouse into a character named Ling Gee.

From the sailor, Wittamin keeps the elongated body shape with over-developed calves and forearms, the ears, the rolled-up sleeves and the famous pipe. From Disney’s mouse, Wittamn borrows the dark skin, the white hands (or gloves) and face, the prominent black nose, the oval eyes with each pupil reduced by a quarter, and the famous pair of shorts with two buttons in the front.

In another instance of blended cultures, Verstappen portrays the cartoonist Tookkata, born Pimon Galassi. The grandson of an Italian government official in Thailand during the reign of King Rama V in the early 20th century, Tookkata was also a graduate of Poh-Chang. He often wrote strong female characters and was a popular cartoonist in the four decades following World War II.

As the Cold War descended on much of the world, these fears and worries were depicted in Thai comics.

For the insurgents and soldiers in the jungle, the petrified students, the disfranchised farmers and the alienated migrants, the muted traumatic experiences of the previous decades seem to have found a derivative—and maybe cathartic—expression in the ‘silent’ and unbridled comics form.

The evolution of Thai comics and the stories they tell show the way in which Thailand changed through the decades. Verstappen has provided a comprehensive narrative to go along with the comics published in this book and displays a variety of illustration styles that range from black and white figures to those that resemble manga in vibrant colors. In the foreword, renowned cartoonist Sonny Liew writes that comics are traditionally seen as American-Anglican, Belgian-French, and Japanese. With this new book from Verstappen, Liew writes that

The work of excavation, exploration and scholarship done here opens up rich new spaces for readers to appreciate and ponder—to empower us, perhaps, to make up our own minds about what an alternative history of the medium might look like.

Susan Blumberg-Kason is the author of Good Chinese Wife: A Love Affair with China Gone Wrong.

 Susan Blumberg-Kason 2 August 2021  Non-Fiction

How a Canadian superhero brought queer representation to Marvel Comics

December 17, 2019 5.23pm EST


Northstar’s marriage was prominently displayed on the cover of ‘Astonishing X-Men #51.’ (Marvel)

Marvel Comics is frequently referred to as “the house of ideas,” yet the idea of a queer superhero did not fully arrive at Marvel until the 1990s. Despite Marvel’s reputation as a campus phenomenon and as a hotbed for liberal — even subversive — discourse, Stan Lee’s comics publishing juggernaut would not feature a canonically gay character until some 30 years after the debut of The Fantastic Four.

There’s a reason for that.

The 1954 Comics Code Authority — a censorship bureau that policed comics content — explicitly banned “sex perversion or any inference to same,” which comics scholar Hilary Chute notes is “a clear reference to homosexuality.” The Marvel Universe as we know it began in 1961, with the launch of Fantastic Four #1. Thus, Marvel Comics was, from the outset, actually prohibited from depicting gay characters.

So how do you a write a queer character at a time when comics are expressly forbidden from featuring queer characters?

In a word: delicately.

The slow coming out

It wasn’t until 1992 — three years after a major revision to the Comics Code officially opened the door to depictions of LGBTQ+ characters — that Marvel had their first openly gay superhero. In Alpha Flight #106 written by Scott Lobdel, the character Northstar (alias Olympic ski champion Jean-Paul Beaubier) declared: “I am gay.”

Even then this move was met with outrage by Marvel’s corporate leadership, Marvel Comics historian Sean Howe explained in his book Marvel Comics: The Untold Story.

Twenty years later, Northstar would also feature in Marvel’s first same-sex marriage, an event that was prominently depicted on the cover of Astonishing X-Men #51.

Astonishing X-Men #51. Written by Margaret Liu and illustrated by Dustin Weaver, published June 20, 2012. (Marvel)

A hotbed for queer subtext

Northstar had debuted way back in 1983 as part of the all-Canadian, government-sponsored superhero team, Alpha Flight. The team first appeared in the pages of X-Men, brought to life by Canadian artist and writer John Byrne and iconic X-Men writer Chris Claremont.

At the time, X-Men comics were already a hotbed for queer subtext. Comics scholar Ramzi Fawaz notes that Claremont’s X-Men “articulated mutation to the radical critiques of identity promulgated by the cultures of women’s and gay liberation.”

Another comics scholar, Scott Bukatman, puts it more simply and says: “mutant bodies are explicitly analogized to … gay bodies” in Claremont’s X-Men. It is no surprise then, that Marvel’s first gay superhero should emerge from this series.

Marvel’s first gay superhero emerged from the X-Men series. (Marvel)

Byrne described the impetus of Northstar’s sexuality:

“There needs to be gays in comics because there are gays in real life. No other reason …. The population of the fictional world should represent the real world. That’s why I created Northstar — I felt the Marvel Universe needed a gay superhero (even if I would never be allowed to say it in so many words in the comics themselves), and I felt that I should create one, rather than retrofitting an existing character.”

Validation through storytelling

Northstar’s sexuality first surfaces in Alpha Flight #7 (1983) when he meets up with “an old friend” named Raymonde who is strongly hinted to be a former lover. In the story, written by Byrne, Raymonde comments on Northstar’s good looks. He also references the secretive nature of his relationship with Jean-Paul: “Then you have not really told your sister all about me, after all, Jean-Paul? I thought that would have been odd.”

From Alpha Flight #7 (Marvel)

When Raymonde is later murdered, Northstar snaps with blind rage. The narrative caption tells us: “And Raymonde had led him out of that dark fear, into the bright clear light of self-acceptance.”

In 1983, the narrative of a former lover being murdered and thus spurring the superhero to action and emotional eruption was already a comics cliché. But staging that through a same-sex couple establishes a sort of subtextual validation of Northstar’s relationship as something more than the Comics Code Authority “sex perversion” label.

Two years later, in the 1985 limited series X-Men and Alpha Flight, Northstar’s sexuality is once again woven into a key story, this time written by Claremont. After having his consciousness briefly absorbed by the X-Man Rogue, Northstar becomes furious that she now knows his “secrets.”

In a misguided attempt to help Northstar, Rogue then asks him to dance at a very public reception. When Northstar’s own teammates make fun of the incongruity of Northstar dancing at a ball with a woman, Rogue thinks “None of y’all understand him the way ah do.”

In the face of this ridicule, a stoic Jean-Paul takes Rogue up on the dance. She remarks “You don’t have to,” to which he replies, “Yes, Rogue. I do.”

From X-Men and Alpha Flight #1 (Marvel)

Northstar

On the literal level, Northstar is being ridiculed for his general disinterest in heterosexual romance. But Claremont is crafting a story of a man who struggles with his closeted sexuality in the face of social pressures.

It’s a sympathetic portrayal of the character that helps to normalize the concept of a gay superhero, even if Marvel couldn’t identify him that way at the time.

Whether through delicate subtext or comics covering wedding events, Northstar holds a uniquely prominent and, at times, poignant position in the history of LGBTQ+ superheroes.

As we come to understand the importance of diverse representation within the superhero genre, this is a character that needs to be known, discussed and hopefully appreciated.

How a Canadian superhero brought queer representation to Marvel Comics
December 17, 2019 5.23pm EST
Author
J. Andrew Deman
Professor, University of Waterloo

Disclosure statement
J. Andrew Deman receives funding from SSHRC to study the X-Men comics of Chris Claremont.

Partners
University of Waterloo


University of Waterloo provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation CA.


SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=LGBTQ

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=GAY

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=COMICS

 

Adulting, nerdiness and the importance of single-panel comics

Author cites ‘The Far Side’ as one comic that broke barriers

Ohio State University

COLUMBUS, Ohio – While comics have become a culturally popular and widely studied art form in recent decades, one format remains overlooked: the single-panel comic.

 

Comics like “The Family Circus,” “Ziggy” and “Little Lulu” are often seen as simplistic and not worthy of critical attention, argues Michelle Ann Abate, author of the new book Singular Sensations: A Cultural History of One-Panel Comics in the United States.

 

“There tends to be a belief there isn’t much to analyze there. You don’t need a lot of critical thinking skills to see ‘Little Lulu’ slipping on banana peels and get the joke,” said Abate, who is a professor of literature for children and young adults at The Ohio State University’s College of Education and Human Ecology.

 

And while some one-panel comics do rely on slapstick gags, wordplay, and simple puns, Abate said she found while researching Singular Sensations that there’s much more to many of the one-panels.

 

Even comics like “Ziggy” that don’t have a lot of cultural cachet have something to offer when read critically. 

 

“‘Ziggy’ was often about the hassles of ‘adulting’ before adulting was even a word. ‘Ziggy’ has a lot of clever humor about the everyday setbacks that most people can relate to,” she remarked.  “There’s a lot that resonates even now, decades later.”

 

As Abate notes, perhaps no other single-panel comic has been more acclaimed and loved than “The Far Side” by Gary Larson.

 

“It was among the first places in our culture that really celebrated and showcased nerdiness.”

 

While “The Far Side” doesn’t have a recurring cast of characters, it did have recurring types of characters: mainly nerds of all kinds, from geeky middle-aged scientists to dorky adolescent schoolchildren.

 

At the time when Larson started “The Far Side” in 1980, nerdiness was not at the center of popular culture and valued in the way it is now, according to Abate.

 

Even though Larson’s series relied on wordplay and puns, “it was the kind of puns and wordplay that nerds in particular would enjoy and that you don’t see in other single-panel comics before it.”

 

But it wasn’t just the nerdiness that made “The Far Side” stand out, she said: It was the aesthetics, the way Larson drew the characters, particularly the humans. As one critic said, “his people are grotesque.”

 

The very first “Far Side” comic showed the combination of nerdy subject matter and awkward, gangly, and even sometimes “ugly” humans that made Larson famous. The foreground showed two crabs talking to one another, while two human youngsters build a sandcastle in the background.

 

The two crabs were drawn to look friendly and adorable, Abate said. But the kids were distorted and didn’t look cute like the children depicted in most comics. And the caption was true nerdiness: One crab was telling the other, “Yes … they are quite strange during the larval stage.”

 

The way humans were drawn in “The Far Side” was novel at the time.

 

“In Larson’s series, no child was cute, no man was handsome, and no woman was beautiful by conventional standards,” Abate wrote.

 

“The odd, unusual and even unsightly appearance of ‘The Far Side’s’ human characters did not distract readers from the content of the panel. On the contrary, such depictions echoed and even amplified the theme, topic or message.”

 

Abate said Larson’s aesthetic style defied a longstanding trend in American newspaper comics. Much of the emphasis has been on making the case for comics as fine art. And indeed, many cartoonists, especially graphic novelists, are known for the beauty and skill behind their incredible artwork. But Larson’s drawing is intentionally unflattering and awkward.

 

“It just really went against the grain of what was happening in comics,” she said.

 

“It gets readers to think about the aesthetics of ugliness and — paradoxically — what might be called the beauty of ugliness.  Moreover, it also invites us to ponder what we deem ugly and why. It may even get us to learn to value what we thought of as ugly, rather than denigrate it.”

 

While many people have rightly focused on Larson’s impact on nerd culture, Abate hopes to call more attention to his contribution in the realm of comics aesthetics.  The awkward, unflattering, and gangly way that Larson rendered his nerdy characters, Abate argues, is just as important as the nerdiness of their personalities.  Many online comics — such as “The Oatmeal” and “Hyperbole and a Half” — render their human figures in ways can be seen as echoing and even extending Larson’s style.

 

Beyond just “The Far Side,” Abate said that single-panel comics deserve more recognition as an important type of cartoon art. Many of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed titles over the years — from “The Far Side,” “Ziggy,” and “The Family Circus” to “Heathcliff,” “Marmaduke,” and cartoons in The New Yorker — have been single-panel.  Comics as we know them and especially as we love them in the United States would not be the same without the single-panel form. 

 

Singular Sensations examines an array of popular one-panel comics from the 1890s through the present day.  In addition to her discussion of “The Far Side,” she has chapters on political cartoons, comics from The New Yorker, “The Family Circus,” “The Yellow Kid,” “Little Lulu,” the groundbreaking series “Patty-Jo ‘n’ Ginger” by Jackie Ormes, “Ziggy,” and “Bizarro.”

 

“Single-panel comics are not only comics,” Abate’s book asserts, “they are examples of the medium at its most concentrated, compact and concise.”

 

Gary Larson — and his nerdy characters — would likely agree.

FORENSIC FUNNIES

Explaining science in court with comics

Making forensic science accessible—one panel at a time.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Sissa Medialab

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The cover of Understanding Forensic DNA analysis booklet

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Credit: Comic credit: artist Mark Brown Funding credit: Leverhulme Trust and Arts Council England

Imagine being summoned as a juror in a murder trial. The expert responsible for analyzing DNA traces at the crime scene has just explained that they match the defendant’s profile. “Then the culprit must be them,” you think. At this point, however, the expert adds: “The sample, however, is partially degraded.” What does this mean? How does this information affect your judgment? The scientist further explains that there is a one-in-a-billion probability that other people could match the identified genetic profile. How significant is this new information? Is this probability high or negligible? What is your verdict now?

“The decisions being taken by members of juries are just so vitally important and often they’re shaped by their understanding of the forensic evidence that’s being presented,” explains Dr Andy Ridgway, Senior Lecturer in Science Communication at the University of the West of England, UWE Bristol, and one of the study’s authors. “They often have little to no science background and frequently lack prior knowledge of the forensic techniques they are expected to assess in making their decision.” This is a widespread issue, and scientific literature on the subject suggests that understanding of science in courtrooms is often quite limited.

The Evidence Chamber, the project within which the research described in JCOM was developed, was created precisely to explore how non-experts understand scientific evidence in judicial proceedings, combining forensic science, digital technology, and public engagement. The Evidence Chamber was developed by the Leverhulme Research Centre for Forensic Science at the University of Dundee (Scotland) in collaboration with Fast Familiar, a collective of digital artists specializing in interactive experiences. A team from UWE Bristol, including Izzy Baxter, a student studying for an MSc Science Communication at the time, was involved in analyzing the data collected during the research phase aimed at testing the use of comics as a tool for communicating forensic science.

The study involved about a hundred volunteers who participated as ‘jurors’ in mock trials. The participants participated in an interactive experience that involved different types of evidence; they listened to the expert witness testimony, which focused on DNA analysis and gait analysis (the study of a suspect’s walking pattern for identification). The jury discussion took place in two phases: “First, they received the expert witness testimony. They then discussed it and indicated whether they believed the defendant was guilty or not guilty at that point. After that, they were given access to the comics,” explains Heather Doran, researcher at the Leverhulme Research Centre for Forensic Science, University of Dundee, who was involved in the study. “This allowed us to see how the comics might influence their previous discussion and whether they provided any useful additional information.”

“We conducted an analysis of the discussions among jurors, one immediately after the expert testimony in court and another after they had read the comics,” explains Ridgway. To assess whether comics provided an advantage in comprehension, during the experimental phases, one group received only the traditional expert testimony, while the other had access to both the expert’s explanation and the comics.

The analysis confirmed the effectiveness of comics: participants who read the comics discussed the evidence in greater detail, showing increased confidence in their reasoning and conclusions. In the group that read the comics, jurors made more explicit references to scientific concepts and demonstrated a better ability to connect forensic science to their final decision. In contrast, in the groups that received only the oral explanation, more misinterpretations of the evidence emerged, with misunderstandings related to the meaning of probability and margins of error, whereas the comics helped clarify these concepts. Additionally, discussions in the groups with comics were more balanced and participatory, with greater interaction among jurors.

This experience demonstrates that comics can be a valuable tool for explaining forensic science in court, supporting jurors. It is important to emphasize that this type of material must be carefully designed. The scientific comics used in The Evidence Chamber were developed by specialists at the University of Dundee. “The University of Dundee has an historical link with comics, we worked with our Professor of Comics Studies and artists to create them” explains Doran. “Dundee, the city where the centre is located, has a history in comics. It’s the home of Beano the comic and Dennis the Menace. And the University of Dundee also offers comic courses, with which we have been collaborating for a long time.”

An exerpt Understanding Forensic DNA analysis booklet

Credit

Comic credit: artist Mark Brown Funding credit: Leverhulme Trust and Arts Council England

The Evidence Chamber graphic 

Credit

Credit Guy J Sanders

Journal

Journal of Science Communication

Method of Research

Experimental study

Article Title

Can Science Comics Aid Lay Audiences’ Comprehension Of Forensic Science?

Article Publication Date

5-Feb-2025