Reading Comics

The modern medium of comics throughout its 150 year history (mostly North American). The flexibility of the medium explored through the genres of humorous and dramatic comic strips, superheroes, undergrounds, independents, kids and comics, journalism, and autobiography. Innovative creators including McCay, Kirby, Barry, Ware, and critical writings including McCloud, Eisner, Groenstee. Topics include text/image relations, panel-to-panel relations, the page, caricature, sequence, subjective expression, seriality, realism vs cartoonism, comics in the context of the fine arts, and relations to other media.