This issue of the award-winning magazine of comics interviews, news, and criticism focuses on the relationship between animation and comics. Gary Groth interviews this issue’s cover artist Cathy Malkasian (Eartha), the PBS/Nickelodeon animation director (Curious George, The Wild Thornberrys) turned graphic novelist, about her first middle-grade GN, NoBody Likes You, Greta Grump. In addition to this issue’s featured interview with Cathy Malkasian, MLK graphic biographer Ho Che Anderson shares his animation storyboards, and Anya Davidson talks to Sally Cruikshank about how the underground comics movement influenced the latter’s aesthetic in a career that encompasses indie shorts and Flash animation, as well as work for feature film credits and Sesame Street. Other features include: an unpublished Ben Sears (Midnight Gospel) comic, and Jem and the Holograms cartoon creator Christy Marx talks about the behind-the-scenes advantages and disadvantages of both art forms. Plus! Sketchbook art by Vanesa Del Rey (Black Widow), an interview with Amazon warehouse worker-turned-cartoonist Ness Garza, Paul Karasik’s essay on an unseen gem, and much more. For more than 45 years, no magazine has chronicled the continuum of the comic arts with more rigor and passion than The Comics Journal.

In this issue, Gary Groth interviews Roz Chast, the New Yorker humor cartoonist turned graphic memoirist (Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?). TCJ #306 focuses on the intersections between comics and politics. It includes op-eds on the importance (and lack thereof) of modern political cartooning. Also featured is a meditation on the creator of the Dilbert newspaper comic strip, Scott Adams; a piece about Daisy Scott, the first African American woman political cartoonist; a gallery of underground cartoonist John Pound’s code-generated comics; portraits of mass shooting victims; a selection of Spider-Gwen artist Chris Vision’s sketchbook pages; and other essays and galleries.

Near the end of World War II and after, a small-town Nebraska youth, Jimmy Kugler, drew more than a hundred double-sided sheets of comic strip stories. Over half of these six-panel tales retold the Pacific War as fought by “Frogs” and “Toads,” humanoid creatures brutally committed to a kill-or-be-killed struggle. The history of American youth depends primarily on adult reminiscences of their own childhoods, adult testimony to the lives of youth around them, or surmises based on at best a few creative artifacts. The survival then of such a large collection of adolescent comic strips from America’s small-town Midwest is remarkable. Michael Kugler reproduces the never-before-published comics of his father’s adolescent imagination as a microhistory of American youth in that formative era. Also included in Into the Jungle! A Boy's Comic Strip History of World War II are the likely comic book models for these stories and inspiration from news coverage in newspapers, radio, movies, and newsreels. Kugler emphasizes how US propaganda intended to inspire patriotic support for the war gave this young artist a license for his imagined violence. In a context of progressive American educational reform, these violent comic stories, often in settings modeled on the artist’s small Nebraska town, suggests a form of adolescent rebellion against moral conventions consistent with comic art’s reputation for “outsider” or countercultural expressions. Kugler also argues that these comics provide evidence for the transition in American taste from war stories to the horror comics of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Kugler’s thorough analysis of his father’s adolescent art explains how a small-town boy from the plains distilled the popular culture of his day for an imagined war he could fight on his audacious, even shocking terms.

Neon Revelations tracks the groundbreaking career of comics innovator and iconoclastic auteur Howard Chaykin and the impact of his work on the transformation of American comic books in the 1980s. Acclaimed (and often controversial) projects such as American Flagg!, Time2, and Black Kiss turned action-packed adventure tales of mainstream comics into a platform for personal expression, political engagement, and aesthetic experimentation. Chaykin remains a vital and prolific artist today, yet despite the original and influential nature of his comics, he has received scant critical attention. Spanning Chaykin’s career from his 1980s heyday to the contemporary period, the first book-length study of Chaykin’s work locates the unique power of Chaykin’s comics in their inventive explorations of the question of authenticity in popular culture. It examines the ways in which Chaykin’s work, which demands a mode of reading that is alive to the distinct affordances of the comics medium and the complexities of its history, reveals the limitations of valuing comics narrowly as "literature."

Contributions by Thomas Andrae, Martin Barker, Bart Beaty, John Benson, David Carrier, Hillary Chute, Peter Coogan, Annalisa Di Liddo, Ariel Dorfman, Thierry Groensteen, Robert C. Harvey, Charles Hatfield, M. Thomas Inge, Gene Kannenberg Jr., David Kasakove, Adam L. Kern, David Kunzle, Pascal Lefèvre, John A. Lent, W. J. T. Mitchell, Amy Kiste Nyberg, Fusami Ogi, Robert S. Petersen, Anne Rubenstein, Roger Sabin, Gilbert Seldes, Art Spiegelman, Fredric Wertham, and Joseph Witek A Comics Studies Reader offers the best of the new comics scholarship in nearly thirty essays on a wide variety of such comics forms as gag cartoons, editorial cartoons, comic strips, comic books, manga, and graphic novels. The anthology covers the pioneering work of Rodolphe Töpffer, the Disney comics of Carl Barks, and the graphic novels of Art Spiegelman and Chris Ware, as well as Peanuts, romance comics, and superheroes. It explores the stylistic achievements of manga, the international anti-comics campaign, and power and class in Mexican comic books and English illustrated stories. A Comics Studies Reader introduces readers to the major debates and points of reference that continue to shape the field. It will interest anyone who wants to delve deeper into the world of comics and is ideal for classroom use.

Chapter 12 Jennifer Glaser, "Art Spiegelman and the Caricature Archive"--Bibliography -- Contributors -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Y

Focusing especially on American comic books and graphic novels from the 1930s to the present, this massive four-volume work provides a colorful yet authoritative source on the entire history of the comics medium. Comics and graphic novels have recently become big business, serving as the inspiration for blockbuster Hollywood movies such as the Iron Man series of films and the hit television drama The Walking Dead. But comics have been popular throughout the 20th century despite the significant effects of the restrictions of the Comics Code in place from the 1950s through 1970s, which prohibited the depiction of zombies and use of the word "horror," among many other rules. Comics through Time: A History of Icons, Idols, and Ideas provides students and general readers a one-stop resource for researching topics, genres, works, and artists of comic books, comic strips, and graphic novels. The comprehensive and broad coverage of this set is organized chronologically by volume. Volume 1 covers 1960 and earlier; Volume 2 covers 1960–1980; Volume 3 covers 1980–1995; and Volume 4 covers 1995 to the present. The chronological divisions give readers a sense of the evolution of comics within the larger contexts of American culture and history. The alphabetically arranged entries in each volume address topics such as comics publishing, characters, imprints, genres, themes, titles, artists, writers, and more. While special attention is paid to American comics, the entries also include coverage of British, Japanese, and European comics that have influenced illustrated storytelling of the United States or are of special interest to American readers.

Offers undergraduate students with an understanding of the comics medium and its communication potential. This book deals with comic books and graphic novels. It focuses on comic books because in their longer form they have the potential for complexity of expression.

For military cartoonists the absurdity of war inspires a laugh-or-cry response and provides an endless source of un-funny amusement. Cartoons by hundreds of artists-at-arms from more than a dozen countries and spanning two centuries are included in this study--the first to consider such a broad range of military comics. War and military life are examined through the inside jokes of the men and women who served. The author analyzes themes of culture, hierarchy, enemies and allies, geography, sexuality, combat, and civilian relations and describes how comics function within a community. A number of artists included were known for their work with Disney, Marvel Comics, the New Yorker and Madison Avenue but many lesser known artists are recognized.