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Hey Kids, Comics!


When I was a kid, the phrase "Hey Kids, Comics" frequently showed up on magazine racks in drugstores and supermarkets; most children read them, and most people considered them to be for children. These days, the audience for comic books is smaller and older, but characters and ideas from comics have continued to spread throughout our culture.

I'm excited to be co-teaching this class. I have long been interested in comic books both as an art form and as historical documents (as well as just being a lot of fun); this course will give us a chance to discuss the comics medium in all of these aspects. If you don't know much about comics, I think you'll learn a lot about their significance in this class; you might even develop an appreciation for them. If you're a comics fan already, prepare to take a more critical look at them as we examine how they both embody and critique the problems and issues of the past century.

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