Calling All SDSU Students! I’m Fawaz Qashat. Some of you may recognize me as one of the student researchers for Comics@SDSU, now the Center for Comics Studies! My work with Professor Pollard in History and Comics Arts Curator, Pam Jackson, in the Library began my first year at SDSU in 2020, and inspired me to launch the Comics Studies Club in 2021. Although we are currently an informal student club, we are on the path to becoming a Recognized Student Organization (RSO) through SDSU Associated Students as soon as the remaining officer positions are filled. The club is a branch of the Center for Comics Studies tree and explores the deeper messages of comics as well as facilitating fun events that build community surrounding the comic arts. Drawing on the kinds of skills that HIST/ENG 157 and other comics classes here at SDSU build, the club gathers to explore formalistic aspects of comics such as the cover, paneling, bleed, graphic weight, and splash pages as well as how they speak to various social issues. Most recently, the club has moved to book club style meetings, where we read a comic individually and then gather as a group to discuss. We have an upcoming meeting Wednesday March 22, 2023 from 11:00am to 12:00pm on zoom, at which we’ll be discussing James Robinson’s Scarlet Witch Vol.2 #1 (2015).
The Comics Studies Club is working towards becoming a “Recognized Student Organization,” but we still need two more officers to sign up for the roles of Secretary and Treasurer. Once we have those two officers, we can formalize our status with Associated Students, which will give us the ability to advertise our club, reserve a meeting space, apply for funding, host on-campus events, and so much more! Our plan for the future includes creating fun events to build a sense of community such as trips to comic book movies that can be paid for through fundraising. Another is visiting and supporting a local comic book shop by purchasing comics for the club. If you would like to become a member, we would love to have you join! If the officer positions interest you, please reach out to me and let me know. The details for our next meeting can be found on the flier below as well as my contact information if you would like to join the club.
Written by Dr. Elizabeth Ann Pollard, Professor of History
Figure 1: (left) Amanda Lanthorne (SDSU Library), Beth Pollard (SDSU History and Center for Comics Studies), and TJ Shevlin (Little Fish Comic Book Studio) at the start of their panel at the Comic-Con Museum. (right) Amanda demonstrates how magic lantern slides work.
This past week brought the exciting opportunity to participate in a panel discussion on the history of animation — Cave Paintings to Comics: A Brief History of Animation — to accompany the new Animation Academy exhibit at the Comic-Con Museum in San Diego’s Balboa Park (see S.C. Bard’s coverage in “SDSU Experts to Discuss History of Animation at Comic-Con Museum,” SDSU NewsCenter 21 February 2023). Although I do not profess to be an expert on modern animation — beyond every ‘80s kid’s heavy dose of after-school Hanna-Barbera and in Saturday morning cartoons like the Flintstones, Scooby Doo, Justice League, and Smurfs — I have spent a lot of time thinking about how art from the distant past came alive for its viewers and the ways that artists long ago worked to breathe life into their creations. My research on women accused of witchcraft in the Roman world spurred my initial explorations of life-breathed-into-art and the relationship between representations and realities [E.A. Pollard, “Witch-crafting in Roman Literature and Art: New Thoughts on an Old Image,” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft Vol. 3, Issue 2 (Winter 2008), 119-155]. That professional background aside, my personal interest in the topic is, of course, indelibly marked by my own favorite animated characters … those powerful women who are infinitely more nuanced and compelling than the princess protagonists… namely the witches, from the hand-drawn animation of Art Babbitt’s Evil Queen in Snow White (Disney, 1937) and Marc Davis’s Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty (Disney, 1959) to the stop-motion (make that heart-stopping) Agatha Prenderghast in Paranorman (Laika, 2012). Professional and personal background aside, to prepare for this panel discussion I found myself reflecting on just how far back might the idea and principles of animation go?
One might reasonably argue that animation is as old as art itself, beginning with cave paintings in the paleolithic era. Scholars have long puzzled over the purpose of the beautiful paintings on the walls of caves dating back to more than 30,000 years ago. Are these paintings somehow the religious devotion of shamans? Recollections of a successful hunt? The result of that very human urge to declare “I am/was here!”? Whatever their purpose, there’s no mistaking the accomplished artistry of these works. And, possibly, their status as the earliest animation. Take for instance, the lions and rhinos from Chauvet cave in France from 30,000-33,000 years ago (See Figure 2). Whoever painted this scene carefully overlaid lions (or one lion?) in slightly different poses, moving towards bison and rhinos who similarly are rendered as what look like multiple layered sketches of the same rhino with head and horn in slightly different position, as if running or nodding. The stroboscopic effect of a flickering, and possibly moving, torch — while someone, perhaps a shaman, told a story — would have brought these images to life for their subterranean spectators. Stroboscopic, or light-flickering, effects are key to the development of modern animation, in such devices as the zoetrope and phenakistiscope from the late 19th century. The same principles would have animated the layered images of animals on cave walls.
Figure 3: (left) Lantern slide image of Tomb of Mera, Sakkara, S10_08_Sakkara from Brooklyn Museum’s Lantern Slide Collection. (right) Plate XXI from Norman Davies, The Mastaba of Ptahhetep and Akhethetep at Saqqareh (1900); accessed via Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/mastabaptahhete01davigoog/page/n104/mode/2up Note the progression of images on each register of the line drawing, for instance harvesting papyrus (top left) and wrestling (top right). To a viewer in ancient Egypt or to one pulling the image through a lantern slide three thousand years later these step-by-step progressions may well have produced an animated effect.
Other nods to a deep history for animation might be found in tomb paintings of ancient Egypt, such as the tombs of Mera (or Mereruka) and of Ptah Hotep, from Saqqara of the late third millennium BCE (See Figure 3). The registers on these tomb paintings show repeating images performing the same task/pose and/or images at slightly different stages of the same task, whether collecting papyrus stalks from a marsh or wrestling (among other activities). Whoever may have viewed these images or, as with the paleolithic images whatever their purpose, the sequence of images lends itself toward interpretation as an animated step-by-step scene beyond the narrative of sequential art, which tends to ask the reader to do more closure between panels. It’s almost as if one could place these images on a series of flipped pages and see the scene progress. What’s all the more fascinating and “meta” is that many of the images we have today of these ancient tomb paintings were captured on slides for viewing in magic lanterns which themselves hold a place in the more modern history of animation. If such slides were drawn across the viewer of the magic lantern, they may well have brought ancient Egypt to life for the ca. 1900 viewer, just at a time when Egyptomania was at its height and modern animation was in its infancy. To take the ancient Egyptian example even more “meta”, it’s quite striking that Dreamworks appears to have acknowledged modern animation’s debt to ancient Egyptian artistic aesthetics. The scene in Prince of Egypt (Dreamworks, 1998) in which Moses learns, through his torchlit viewing of Egyptian wall art, of the slaughter of Hebrew children demonstrates in animated form the way that such wall art may have been perceived as animation long ago. [Dreamworks once again paid homage to a different kind of ancient art’s influence on animation in Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011). The final credits consciously echo the style of East Asian and Southeast Asian shadow puppetry, yet another ancient art form that brought static images to life through manipulation of light and shadow. It’s worth noting that Laika’s Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) gives off some serious shadow puppetry vibes, as well.]
Figure 4: Dramatic scene from Dreamworks’ Prince of Egypt (1998) offers an imagining of how torchlight may have animated the repeating images in Egyptian wall art … and shows Dreamworks’ clever homage to a deep history of animation.
In addition to wall art from paleolithic to ancient Egypt (and, the repeated imagery one sees on such classical bas relief as the tribute bearers at Persepolis or on the Parthenon frieze from the fifth century BCE), arguably another type of ancient animation is the imagery on Greek vases. The showpiece François Vase from sixth-century BCE Etruria beautifully demonstrates the storytelling capacity of this medium. Participants at a gathering at which this piece may have been used for mixing and serving wine would have viewed (from top to bottom register): a boar hunt, the funeral games of Patroclus (Achilles dragging body of Hector), the wedding of Thetis and Peleus (with its who’s-the-fairest apple story that started the Trojan War), the ambush and killing of Troilus by Achilles, sphinxes and griffins, and pygmies and cranes. One could argue whether such vase painting is better interpreted as sequential art (more like a comic) or animation (of the repeating type, as described already, in Egyptian, Persian, and Greek wall art). Nonetheless, the Panoply Vase Animation Project has demonstrated the ways that modern animation can bring the stories on these vases to life for modern viewers; with Greek music playing in the background, the project animates the stories on Greek vases showing the action that is implied in the otherwise static images. Such modern animation of ancient vase art provides an imaginative illustration of how vase images might have come to life in the eyes of those who viewed them in antiquity by the flickering firelight of a wine-lubricated symposium.
Figure 5: (left) Sixth-century BCE François Vase, as an example of sequential storytelling bordering on animation on black-figure pottery (from Wikimedia Commons) (right) 1887 Drawing of the François Vase (from Wikimedia Commons)
A final example of ancient animation comes in the form of statuary; in particular, statuary that captures the moment of a transformation. Greek and Roman classical texts record a range of shocking transformations … for example, Callisto transformed into a bear to escape a rapacious pursuer (Ovid, Metamorphoses II.401-ff) or Pygmalion’s statue come to life (Ovid, Metamorphoses X.243-ff). [Side note: Interestingly, Encyclopedia Britannica lists Pygmalion as the legendary first animator for this act of creation (https://www.britannica.com/art/animation).] While statues of these transformational moments existed in antiquity, the 17th-century Bernini sculpture of Daphne’s transformation offers a great example of how a moment captured in stone can embody action in a way that makes it seem almost alive. As a viewer circles Bernini’s statue, what looks like Daphne’s hair and upwards reaching arms become bark and branch of the laurel tree into which she has been transformed. The scene in stone comes alive, in all its action and pathos. Interpreting scenes of transformation captured in stone as a kind of animation might seem a stretch were it not for the reportage of the imaginative second-century writer Apuleius, whose own Metamorphoses (or Golden Ass) tells a magical story of a man transformed into a donkey and then returned to male form through the grace of Isis. Apuleius’s novel recounts the visit of his lead character Lucius to the house of a witch. Apuleius describes the city in which the house Lucius is visiting as a place where it seemed “everything had been transformed by some dreadful incantation” such that “soon the statues and images would start to walk” (Apuleius, Golden Ass, Book II.1-5; A.S. Kline’s 2013 translation of the passage available here). In this passage, Apuleius describes a statue group in which the mythological character Actaeon is depicted at the moment when he is transformed into a stag to be devoured by Artemis’s dogs. Apuleius writes that the statue was so naturalistic that if the viewer gazed into the reflecting pool in which the statue was located, the viewer would have seen in the water’s reflection a “quality of movement.” Whatever one thinks of Apuleius’s story about witches and transformations, he gives modern readers an idea of how an ancient viewer might have seen a statue rendered in the shimmer of a reflecting pool as a kind of animation.
Figure 6: Two views of Bernini’s 17th-century Apollo and Daphne, currently in the Borghese Gallery in Rome (from Wikimedia Commons). Circling the statue gives the viewer different moments in Daphne’s transformation from nymph to laurel tree. And Apuleius’ narrative demonstrates how an imaginative viewer might have seen these dynamic statues as alive, especially when reflecting in a rippling pool.
Animation… the Latin etymology of the word conjures up the idea of the animus, a breath of life infused into an otherwise inanimate object. Taking the time to muse on a deep history of animation breathed life into the topic for me. Torchlit images in paleolithic caves or Egyptian tombs … or even the vases viewed through wine-goggled eyes of symposium attendees or statues observed in rippling reflective waters by fiction authors with overactive imaginations … none of these had the huge audience of twentieth-century and later animation. Nonetheless, these examples do suggest a long history of artists making images and stories come alive.
Elizabeth Pollard is Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence at San Diego State University, where she has taught Roman History, World History, and witchcraft studies since 2002. She co-directs SDSU’s Center for Comics Studies and recently debuted a Comics and History course exploring sequential art from the paleolithic to today. Pollard is currently working on two comics-related projects: an analysis of comics about ancient Rome over the last century and a graphic history exploring the influence of classical understandings of witchcraft on their representations in modern comics. Pollard has co-authored a world history survey (Worlds Together, Worlds Apart) and has published on various pedagogical and digital history topics, including DH approaches to visualizing Roman History.
Written by Ben Jenkins, Lecturer, Rhetoric and Writing Studies San Diego State University
Normally, when I tell my colleagues about the plan for one of my courses, I quickly see their faces drop as they realize that they’re stuck listening to me talk about rhetorical analysis. They’ll usually give me at least a few “that’s really interesting” comments with a nod of the head before they quickly remember that they urgently need to grade some papers or give blood.
But ever since I started telling them about my new course, The Rhetoric of Comics, I see genuine excitement overcome their whole body. They become animated as they forget to ask me about the research and pedagogy and instead focus on their own favorite comics. I’ve had discussions with people about Batman, their favorite manga titles and other works they’ve enjoyed since they were kids. Those discussions usually circle back to a question like “do you think I’d be able to use comics in my course?” It’s at this point that I direct them to the work being done at Comics at SDSU. As part of the NEH Comics and Social Justice Grant awarded to Comics at SDSU, I was able to create a course centered on the rhetoric of comics that allows students to understand the rhetoric used in comics, how that rhetoric helps or hinders marginalized voices, and allows students to practice what they’ve learned as they work on creating their own comic.
Throughout the process of developing this course, I kept trying to recall what I would have wanted to study in a rhetoric of comics course as an undergrad; the development of the three main projects was the key to everything.
With the first project, I centered the focus on exposing students to the visual rhetoric present in comics, and how the medium allows for a level of communication that isn’t possible in film, books, or audio. I developed lesson plans ranging from interpreting color, to general introductions to the concepts of visual rhetoric and sequential art.
Part of the fun of creating this class was coming up with a reading list. The main textbook I chose to use was Scott McCloud’s Making Comics (2006). While the content has some information he covers in his previous book, Understanding Comics (1993), it also contains helpful information on the developmental aspects of creating a comic book. By utilizing the information from McCloud and other scholars, I was able to create lessons that highlight the many rhetorical and creative decisions comics creators make throughout the process.
While I chose a number of comics to highlight as examples of storytelling and technique, the main comic I focused on was The Magic Fish (2020) by Trung Le Nguyen. Nguyen’s limited use of three color palettes paired with three different storylines helps clarify the difference and meaning of each path. With Nguyen’s beautiful work, and with McCloud’s technical explanations, I was able to create lessons that help students see how comic storytelling creates a world for the reader that doesn’t compare to other mediums.
The second project was created with social justice and marginalized communities in mind. For this project I ask students to compose a multimodal essay, comic, or presentation based on their analysis and comparison of two comics that are either about a marginalized community, or feature a main character from a marginalized community. By comparing comics featuring marginalized communities student’s are able to recognize how assumptions and stereotypes play a role in the creation of some comics, and the interpretation of characters by some readers.
Finally in the third major project, I ask students to build upon what they learned as they created a comic of their own. I don’t expect the students to be expert artists, but I do want them to use the visual rhetorical strategies they’ve learned about in McCloud’s text, and to mimic storytelling and artistic techniques they might have seen in The Magic Fish and other comics. Just like Nguyen was able to tell his own story detailing what it was like to come out to his friends and family, I encourage students to tell their own individual stories through the comic medium.
Comics aren’t something one necessarily expects to encounter in a university setting, but they’d be wrong. Comics have been a part of our society for…well, I don’t actually know how long. I’m not a historian, but if you’d like to learn more about the history of comics, we have a course for that here at SDSU, and now we have a rhetorical analysis course on comics as well. It’s been a privilege to be able to create this class. My only hope is that the students who take the course learn to love and appreciate comics as much as I do.
Ben Jenkins completed his MFA in creative writing and his BA in English at SDSU. Currently, he works as a lecturer at SDSU while also teaching English at Miramar College. Ben is a tribal member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. In 2016, he won the new voices Native American writing contest at the literary journal, See the Elephant.
Some of Ben’s interests include: literature and issues pertaining to American Indians and other indigenous people throughout the world, civil discourse, our relationship with technology, social justice, the environment, visual rhetoric, and comics.
Written by Dr. William Anthony Nericcio, Director, MALAS, the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences and Professor, English and Comparative Literature, SDSU — Nericcio is also the publisher of Amatl Comix, the comix studies imprint at SDSU Press.
As I faced the prospect of teaching an English 157 Comics and History course for the third time at SDSU, I was hit with a wave of trepidation: how could I teach the course differently this term? After all, I did not want to fall into a rut. The first iteration of the class had been entitled The Virus Eye/I and had debuted to around 150 students in the fall of 2020. The next iteration of the class, also to some 140 plus students was a little out there–it was called Psychedelic Mirrors: Sex, Drugs, and Rocknroll in the Age of the Televisual. Now I had gotten word, Fall 2022, that the class registrations had been growing and that I would be teaching 270 students in the class–I had to redouble my efforts and hit it out of the park and I had to do so in way that was true to the mission of the class, part of a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, “Building a Comics and Social Justice Curriculum,” co-directed by Elizabeth Pollard and Pamela Jackson, both of whom also lead our university’s Center for Comics Studies.
And though the focus of the course was going to be keyed to social justice issues: racism, discrimination, systemic violence and the like, I did not stress this in the course description, nor did I heavy-hand it to them in the opening days of the class. This was the premise of the class according to the syllabus:
Buckle your seatbelts and order up some eye-protection — this is NOT your grandfather’s “Comics and History” class! Our Fall 2022 experimental comix extravaganza will emerge out of the twisted corridors of something called I/Eyegasm as we explore the deliciously and outrageously twisted psyches, minds, and visions of outrageous women and men in some of the most exotic and eye-opening comix, film, sequential art, photography, and cultural analysis this side of the planet. Our focus (pardon the pun) will be both the “I” and the “Eye”-“I,” the name we give to our complex consciousness and “Eye,” the name of the organ that dominates us in the digital age. Between Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and more, our eyes have never been more saturated, never more filled with stimulus.
Our class will both study and (even possibly) reinforce our shared 21st century electro existential experiences where the mesh of our minds with computer screens, smartphones, and television screens comes to saturate our consciousness. The books and movies and pictures and videos we will experience this term will open our eyes to brave new worlds. But these works are not without their tricks, not without their surprises, and the fractured souls they flaunt before our eyes will test our intellect, imagination, and, most deeply, our emotions–they may even tattoo our psyche! Works to include artist/authors like Art Spiegelman, Gilbert Hernandez, Emil Ferris, Robert Crumb, Marjane Satrapi and more. Open to all majors and minors with no prior expertise with comics or literature anticipated or expected.
But the class featured writers who were transgender, Jewish American, Mexican American etc and it was through the diversity of representative artists–including Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Marjane Satrapi, and Emil Ferris–that I was able to gently inculcate the arcane and troubling histories of social justice and attacks on justice that are part of our legacies as Americans, as denizens of this planet My great colleague, Dr. Gregory Daddis, has written of his class for this same NEH/SDSU initiative something that also guided me in my course-crafting; Daddis writes about “how comics, as cultural products, influenced Americans’ understanding of social justice issues helped shape the fundamental objectives that I hoped my students and I would achieve by course end.” They did for me as well–but as I have taught large lecture classes for 30 years here at SDSU, and to largely non-English major, General-Education-unit-seeking undergraduates, I had learned that you have to let the works do the major lifting when it comes to issues of Social Justice — telling them they had to be thoughtful never works, showing them the benefits of thoughtfulness and empathy always works.
For instance, the class opened with FREUD FOR BEGINNERS by Oscar Zarate and Richard Appignanesi–the titillating enchantments of Freud were used as a kind of sleight of hand to lure students for whom comics are new and alienating into the web of our efforts; here’s a snapshot from my actual day to day course calendar:
I also wanted the students to start thinking about themselves and their own relationship to visual representation, so I had them do an assignment in class where they did their own self portraits. First, using our class Facebook page, I would introduce them to new artists incorporating new approaches to self-representation like Titus Kaphar’s “Shifting the Gaze.”
Then, I would highlight their own incipient graphic efforts–expertise in art was not a requirement!
During the semester I also used social media to underscore connections between the works we were experiencing as in this Tumblr share–it was also a way to introduce them to more artists:
We also ran into challenges during the semester — this was a group of 200-plus freshmen many of whom had not been in a classroom for two years owing to Covid. So we had to come up with ways to test the students without alienating them, and we were largely successful. Here is an example of their first quiz that had little value but that let them know exactly how they would be tested on the mid-term:
By the end of the semester, our hope was that the course, a disguised macro-meditation on the value of empathy would translate months later, after the course was over, into a successful meditation on the value of social justice in a world that, at times, looks down its nose at “woke” or “progressive” values. The secret of social justice focused pedagogy is that it makes better people of us all — one of the reasons that literature and comics play a special role in higher education.
A first-generation citizen of the Ivory Tower, William Nericcio was born in Laredo, Texas, and educated at the University of Texas, Austin, and Cornell University, where he completed his Comparative Literature Ph.D. at the age of 26. Now the Director of MALAS, the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts & Sciences Program, Nericcio also serves as Professor of English and works on the faculties of Chicana/o Studies & Latin American Studies at San Diego State University. Nericcio’s signature book Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the “Mexican” in America, appeared with the UTexas Press (2007). His next books were on playwright Oliver Mayer’s works, The Hurt Business (2008) and Homer from Salinas: John Steinbeck’s Enduring Voice for California (2009). Nericcio’s #BrownTV: Latinas and Latinos on the Screen (2019), co-authored with Frederick Aldama, appeared with Ohio State University Press. He also co-edited Cultural Studies in the Digital Age (2020) for Hyperbole Books.
This quote is particularly fitting for this final blog exploring my process in designing the digital exhibit “Sound of Comics” for SDSU’s Center for Comics Studies. Of all of the academic endeavors I have undertaken while at SDSU, this one has felt the most like a journey. There have been multiple paths to tread, obstacles to overcome, and constant support and encouragement along the way. And now I have reached the end: You can access “Sound of Comics” here.
In terms of multiple paths, some of the most significant decisions I have made in the final part of this curation have pertained to paring down the content. I cultivated a substantial number of collection pieces — far more than could be included — after scouring the materials in the library and beyond. The process then became a task of figuring out connection points between the pieces and organizing them into a proper exhibit. Often, I created a visual guide to help me write down all of my ideas and begin building relationships between avenues of content.
As evidenced by this brainstorm web, I had several different avenues that I wanted to explore with music alone. I also knew that too many subsections would overwhelm my audience with text and images, so I selected specific pieces and paths to pursue, which helped the claims in the exhibit appear more intentional and direct. For instance, one path that I did not pursue outright was the notion of “Dance” in comics, but I still found ways to incorporate the dance-related ideas into some of the collection’s pieces. Each of the exhibit sections received similar treatment, and the end result was three major categories with several smaller subcategories that reinforced the ideas of their parent topics.
With reference to obstacles, most of the barriers that I faced dealt with translating the exhibit into its digital form. As I expected, there was a significant learning curve when first working with WordPress, which is the platform that I selected (having chosen from Omeka, Google Sites, Adobe, and a few other digital exhibit options). I watched several tutorials and made several unsuccessful attempts to figure out the system at the beginning. However, I eventually learned the tools of the platform, as well as figured out how to manipulate those tools to produce the content and design that I desired. Most of this work came through trial-and-error, which was difficult but ultimately rewarding when I was able to see the finished product of each section. In addition, I decided to format the layout of all of the pages before implementing their text and images which proved useful in building my confidence and knowledge of the platform while also ensuring their uniformity. Perhaps most importantly, I was able to overcome these challenges through the support of Dr. Pamella Lach, the Director of the Digital Humanities Center at SDSU. I met with Dr. Lach several times, and she helped me select WordPress as my digital platform, as well as offered advice on best practices throughout the process. Her support was particularly helpful when discussing accessibility with the website and making certain that the exhibit is compatible with screen readers and all other ADA compliances. I am so grateful for her assistance and insight.
To that final point about support, I have been fortunate throughout this entire process to receive advice and encouragement from a variety of sources. Along with the indispensable support of Dr. Lach, several other scholars have offered their perspective in improving my work and helping me examine sound in comics more thoroughly. Over the last month, I have had the privilege to interview several comics scholars, querying their understanding of sound in comics. I interviewed Dr. Barbara Postema, who studies wordless comics, to discuss comics that tell stories when conventional forms of sound are intentionally limited. Dr. Postema explained the role of images, pictographs, and expression lines in replacing alphabetic symbols when figures communicate. For instance, she referenced the dashed dialogue lines in Hawkeye #19, which she labeled “asemic,” or lacking in semantic content, as a key example of this type of wordless sound conveyance. She mentioned the frustration that audiences experience when encountering communication in this form, and I found such insight extremely helpful when creating the “Disability and Sound” section of the exhibit.
I also had the opportunity to interview Dr. José Alaniz, a comics scholar and professor at University of Washington, Seattle. Our conversation covered a wide array of topics pertaining to sound in comics, and one of my biggest takeaways from Dr. Alaniz was the ability of sound to both reinforce and distort the reality of the comic. We discussed the “mimetic function” of certain sounds, such as including a pre-existing song within a scene because it establishes the setting in time and in its similarity to the world of the audience. At the same time, Dr. Alaniz pointed out that depictions sounds are often “toyed with,” as he called them, to underscore the unfamiliarity of the landscape and exacerbate the divide between the world of the comic and the world of the reader. His perspective proved invaluable when I discussed environments in the “Music” and “Sound Effects” sections of the exhibit.
Lastly, this project would have been “dead air” without the guidance and supervision of Librarian Pamela Jackson and Dr. Elizabeth Pollard. Pam Jackson provided me with some of the first comics that I read for the exhibit, and she, along with the rest of the Library’s Special Collections and University Archives team, have been incredibly helpful, thoughtful, and considerate over the course of my research, especially when I spent hours in their archives poring over comics. Similarly, Dr. Pollard always made herself available to answer questions, provide feedback, read over text that I had written, and connect me with people that could support my efforts. I have grown so much as a student, scholar, and fan of comics under her guidance. Lastly, Dr. Pollard and Librarian Jackson have shown genuine enthusiasm for my work throughout the entire process, which has helped me stay motivated and reassured in the steps I had taken, even when I questioned myself.
So, while this may be the end of my journey into sound in comics, I could not be more proud of the work I have done or more appreciative of the people who helped me get there.
Grace deVega (she/her) is a Fourth Year History and Political Science student at San Diego State University. She previously won the President’s Award at the SDSU Student Research Symposium and 1st Place in her Division at the CSU Research Competition for her research into the impacts of the 1986 Philippines People Power Movement on nonviolent revolutions. She has also played clarinet for the past twelve years, including in the SDSU marching and concert bands, which is where her passion for music and aural studies derives.
Written by Dr. Elizabeth Pollard, Professor of History
Every other month from April to December 1955, EC’s Valor transported readers to ancient Rome — as well as other historical periods, including medieval Europe, the Haitian Revolution, twelfth-century BCE China, and Kublai Khan’s Mongol empire — for one-shot stories of gladiatorial combat, veteran soldiers, and imperial intrigue (See Post-Code EC Goes to Ancient Rome). EC’s Al Williamson, Angelo Torres, Joe Orlando, and Wally Wood had found a pseudo-historical formula that worked, and rival publisher DC appears to have recognized a good thing when they saw it. By August 1955, DC’s own foray into “historical” heroism debuted… Brave and the Bold. Just as the cover of Valor #1 had announced EC’s “new direction” with an explanation in the editorial Round Table on the comic’s first page, DC issued an “invitation” on the cover of its first issue: “If you dream of riding in a thundering chariot — if you yearn to explore unknown seas — if you are willing to wield a clashing sword to guard an astounding secret – then The Golden Gladiator, The Viking Prince, and the Silent Knight invite you to join them in blazing adventures from now on as a member of — THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD!” Instead of the one-shot stories of Valor, DC would explore individual heroes across multiple issues. And for its Roman-era comic, readers followed the adventures of a captured shepherd, turned enslaved gladiator, and eventually freed protector of children, women, and even Rome, itself: Marcus Tiberius, the Golden Gladiator.
Across the five issues of Brave and the Bold that featured Golden Gladiator (GG) stories in 1955/56, the creative team was headed up by Bill Finger (writer), Russ Heath (art), and Petra Scotese (colorist). Bill Finger was a legendary DC writer, whose role in co-creating Batman with Bob Kane was officially recognized only very recently (Bill Finger on ComicVine). DC database lists Ed Herron, a prolific writer on such titles as Batman, Superman, and patriotic Star-Spangled War Stories, as a sometime writer for GG (https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/The_Brave_and_the_Bold_Vol_1_1); but Herron does not appear on the by-line on the first page of of any of the GG comics. Artist Russ Heath was particularly well-known for his war comics, westerns, and romance, all three of which genres resonate in the GG stories. Later in his career, Russ Heath drew toy-soldier advertisements that appeared on the back of many comics (https://www.lambiek.net/artists/h/heath_russ.htm). Heath’s advertisement for the 132-piece Roman soldier set is a fury of Roman soldiers, wielding their gladii, shooting arrows, riding in war chariots, galloping on horseback, assaulting a fortified position… with the caption “imaginary battle scene is shown above” (For more on the full range of these plastic soldier ads, see Feb 1, 2019 thread by @jeffs_comics at https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1091505887695511552.html). Petra Scotese (aka Goldberg) was a colorist for a wide range of Marvel comics in the 1970s and 80s. According to WorldCat she’s credited with “145 works in 179 publications” including Wanda and Vision, X-Men, and George Perez’s Wonder Woman. In Finger, Heath, and Scotese, DC was clearly throwing some of their most impressive talent at the Roman hero in DC’s pseudo-historical Brave and the Bold.
Although Brave and the Bold ostensibly followed the storyline of a single hero, Golden Gladiator’s storyline is a bit jumbled, riddled with what appear to be continuity errors and ahistorical elements. Readers meet Marcus in “Thunder of the Chariots” (B&B #1, August 1955) as a young shepherd who is kidnapped by a soldier named Cinna to serve as a patsy for an assassination plot. Condemned to row in the galleys, Marcus saves his fellow enslaved rowers from a Nubian lion bound for the arena in Rome. Marcus ends up in the arena, where he catches the eye of Cinna’s niece Lucia. Marcus fights a bull and races in a chariot race to win his freedom and become “The Golden Gladiator.” In the next installment, “The Sword of Attila,” (B&B #2, November 1955), Cinna nominates Marcus to sneak into “Hunland” and steal the titular sword. Cinna’s niece Lucia sneaks out of Rome to help Marcus on his quest. Marcus ends up in one-on-one combat with Attila, during which Lucia provides the distraction that allows both of them to escape with Attila’s sword. “The Invisible Wall” (B&B #3, January 1956) pits Marcus, no Lucia in sight, against “Crassus the Conqueror,” in a storyline befitting an old western: frontier town filled with women, children, and old men who use their wit, a toy ship and a goat army to stave off attack. Lucia returns in “Captive Champion” (B&B #4, March 1956), where our Golden Gladiator appears inexplicably to be back in the arena, with the evil Cinna suggesting he belongs in the golden menagerie of a collector named Gaius. Lucia helps Marcus escape, and in the comic’s last panel she proclaims: “If I wanted to lead a calm life, my darling, I would have fallen in love with a poet, not a gladiator!” But, in the last appearance of Golden Gladiator in the 1950s, “The Battle of the Pyramid” (B&B #6, July 1956), Lucia is gone (no explanation) and Marcus helps the “Nile Queen” keep the peace with the desert tribes by foiling her prime minister’s plot to cause war. The appearance (and disappearance) of Lucia, as well as Marcus in the arena, out, and then back in again … these apparent inconsistencies would have made it challenging for a reader who was attempting to follow a coherent story-arc for Marcus.
Writer Bill Finger does not appear to have much concern for historicity. A few examples suffice to illustrate this point. Finger names two of the “bad-guys” Cinna and Crassus, appellations evocative of villains (depending on one’s chosen side in the civil wars of the first century BCE). From at least the fourth century BCE onward, Rome had faced threats from the north (first Gauls and then later Germanic peoples), so the story line of “Invisible Wall” feels at least a little believable. But then, the threat faced is a band led by a very Roman-sounding Crassus who, along with his troops, is dressed in wildly inaccurate garb (a strange combination of vaguely Norse, vaguely Saracen, but definitely “other”-looking gear). Similarly, an unnamed but very Cleopatra-like “Nile Queen” (B&B #6) would seem to indicate a first century BCE context. But “Sword of Attila” (B&B #2) had Marcus going toe-to-toe with Attila himself, leader of the Huns in the mid-fifth century CE. While Finger and Heath were creating a comic and not a history book, it’s clear that historical accuracy and even basic chronology were of little importance to them in telling Marcus’s story. More likely they were building a character and storylines consistent with the 1950s zeitgeist: continued suspicion of Germanic/Hunnic peoples post WWII and even Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal in July 1956, the same month as “Battle of the Pyramid” came out!
As for the “look” of the comic, each begins with a first page splash that sets the stage. Subsequent pages feature irregular-sized paneling, although the comic reads mostly left to right, top to bottom. Narrative text-boxes drive the story and word balloons distinguish spoken dialogue and exclamation (encapsulated by a solid line, with nearly every line punctuated by an exclamation point!) from internal dialogue/thoughts (cloud-like appearance). There are plenty of motion lines for the swash-buckling action of punching, sword-slashing, and even pole-vaulting onto a ship that has left port. And the pages ring with fight scene onomatopoeia (snap, crack, klang, clatter, swish, r-rumble, crash, and sprong). Also noteworthy is the attention to horses throughout, which is likely due to Heath’s early work in western comics in the 1940s. And the intertextuality does not end there. While EC’s Valor was in dialogue with the sword-and-sandal epics of its day, DC’s Golden Gladiator appears to have influenced contemporary imaginings of chariot racing. Predating MGM’s Ben Hur by several years, scenes from the movie appear to have used Heath’s vivid imagery almost as storyboards for the film; and the film’s imagery is echoed in later comic versions, including Joe Orlando’s art in Classics Illustrated (#147, in 1958) and that of Juan Escandell in Joyas Literarias Juveniles (#7, in 1970).
After his appearance in “The Battle of the Pyramid” (B&B #6, July 1956), Golden Gladiator unceremoniously disappears from the pages of Brave and the Bold, a series which continues for decades and ultimately introduces such greats as the Suicide Squad (B&B #25, 1959) and the Justice League of America (B&B #28, 1960), among many other DC legends. In Brave and the Bold #7 (September 1956), Finger and Heath began collaborating on a different hero, Robin Hood, who replaced Golden Gladiator in the cycle of heroes whose adventures B&B followed. The next appearance of Marcus is quite recent: Walter Simonson’s The Judas Coin (DC Comics, 2012). Simonson’s graphic novel uses the unlucky shekel from the purse paid to the cursed betrayer of Jesus to weave together a story that includes Brave and the Bold heroes old and new, from Golden Gladiator, to the Viking Prince, to Batman and beyond. Simonson’s treatment settles the questions of temporal context (placing Marcus firmly in the first century CE, as a veteran wandering the frontier with emperor Vespasian) and what ultimately happened to Lucia and Marcus. Lucia, whose bravery had more than once saved Marcus, has died from a plague. And Marcus, the valiant Golden Gladiator, meets his end diving to stop a would-be assassin’s knife throw from killing Vespasian. From the reader’s first meeting of Marcus as a young sheherd accused of an assassination plot, to a grizzled old veteran who foils one, the Golden Gladiator’s story comes to a fitting conclusion.
Note of thanks: Early Brave and the Bold comics are not easy to find. Many thanks to Pamela Jackson (SDSU Library, Comic Arts Curator), as well as Shawn Gilmore and Anna Peppard (both of whom answered a shot-in-the-dark cry for help in finding B&B #6), for their help in piecing together the Golden Gladiator run.
Elizabeth Pollard is Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence at San Diego State University, where she has taught Roman History, World History, and witchcraft studies since 2002. She co-directs SDSU’s Center for Comics Studies and recently debuted a Comics and History course exploring sequential art from the paleolithic to today. Pollard is currently working on two comics-related projects: an analysis of comics about ancient Rome over the last century and a graphic history exploring the influence of classical understandings of witchcraft on their representations in modern comics. Pollard has co-authored a world history survey (Worlds Together, Worlds Apart) and has published on various pedagogical and digital history topics, including DH approaches to visualizing Roman History.
Dr. Noah Arceneaux is a professor in SDSU’s School of Journalism and Media Studies and a big fan of comics! Check out his latest video about his personal collection of Radio Shack Comics! Please Enjoy!
Written by Gregory A. Daddis, USS Midway Chair in Modern U.S. Military History, San Diego State University
Teaching a Cold War comics course for the first time has reinforced what I have suspected for a long time—comics are some of the most insightful cultural products of post-World War II era.
Cold War era comics spoke to fundamental issues of American identity in a rapidly changing postwar society. They illustrated the fears that drove domestic and foreign policies at a time when evil, godless communists seemed lurking behind every dark corner. They expressed anxieties over living in the atomic era, when the possibility of nuclear Armageddon appeared ever more likely each time children ducked and covered under their school desks. And they reflected the possibilities and limits of achieving true social justice when many Americans’ civil rights were being contested by defenders of a stratified prewar status quo.
These representations of Cold War American society informed my course design for HIST 580, “Comics and Cold War America,” taught in the 2022 fall semester at San Diego State University. The course supported a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, “Building a Comics and Social Justice Curriculum,” co-directed by Elizabeth Pollard and Pamela Jackson, both of whom also lead our university’s Center for Comics Studies.
How comics, as cultural products, influenced Americans’ understanding of social justice issues helped shape the fundamental objectives that I hoped my students and I would achieve by course end. Though our study of comics, I sought ways in which we might be better equipped to articulate the domestic impact of the Cold War in the United States and the ways in which this global contest affected American citizens’ conceptions of culture, society, and social justice. And I hoped that our critical engagement with comics as Cold War cultural products would help us evaluate how they communicated the relationship between word and image.
But how to assess student performance and progress while trying to achieve two course objectives simultaneously—evaluating Cold War American society and culture while also engaging with comics as visual cultural products?
The answer, for me at least, was to mirror the medium.
For my mid-term exam, I provided my students with what I thought was an innovative prompt that would allow them to be more creative than simply writing a traditional essay:
“You have been asked by the editor of the Journal of Comics and Culture to develop a pictorial storyboard for a new feature titled “The Cold War at Home and Abroad.” The editor would like you to explain to the journal’s readership how Cold War comics demonstrated a close relationship between US foreign and domestic policies from 1945 to 1965. To do so, develop your story based on the readings from the first half of our course.”
I then offered them instructions for how to complete the exam:
“You must create your storyboard in six successive panels, an example of which is seen below. The top half of the panel should be used for a written narrative while the bottom half should be used for graphic illustrations. Be creative but remember to focus on making an argument and supporting that argument with historical content and analysis. As each panel’s written portion should comprise a full paragraph, ensure you write using complete sentences. Your drawings should support or enhance your written narrative. Manage your time wisely. Have fun.”
Along with the prompt and exam instructions, I attached an 11×17 paper that had six panels—two rows of three columns—laid out consecutively as a reader might see in a comic.
The results showcased how students not only were capable of evaluating Cold War comics on their own merits, but also of expressing their ideas in both written and visual form.
For example, we began the course by analyzing how the “Red Scare” delineated boundaries between acceptable and intolerable social behavior and how, in the process, the anti-communist crusade limited opportunities for those Americans seen as the “other.” We discussed how the Catholic Library Service pamphlet “How Communism Works” from 1938 set conditions for how postwar Americans thought about the threats of communism. Students replicated this “looming paranoia” in their exam answers.
Figures 1 and 2. “How Communism Works,” Catholic Library Service pamphlet, 1938. Excerpt from student exam, used with permission.
During the semester, we also evaluated how the Bowman Trading Card Company’s card set from 1951, Children’s Crusade against Communism: Fight the Red Menace, informally recruited children into the Cold War contest. These cards—relying on text and imagery, just as the comics did—molded political content for a young audience, helping them understand the ideological terms of the Cold War. Indeed, the card box featured an oath for children to swear: “I believe in God, and the God-given freedom of man…. I am against any system which enslaves man and makes them merely tools of the State.” Students made these connections during the exam. They wrote how the Bowman cards “reinforced conservative views for young audiences,” while replicating imagery that made Fight the Red Menace so appealing to Cold War child consumers.
Figures 3 and 4. Bowman Gum Company, Fight the Red Menace: The Children’s Crusade against Communism,trading card #47 of 48, “War-Maker,” 1951. Excerpt from student exam, used with permission.
And, thanks to our exploration of EC Comics, we evaluated how at least some pre-code writers and artists used their pages as critiques against a society that was not living up to its potential for achieving social justice and equal rights. We surveyed science fiction comics and the ways in which publishers used them as allegories for the future of race and morality in the United States. We deliberated how EC “dared to get political” and how the company designed racial polemics that could be read not only by children, but by adults as well.
In discussing EC’s “Judgment Day!” from 1953, for instance, we saw future worlds where racial prejudice impeded the progress of democracy, surely an issue when placed into the contemporary context of a global struggle against communism. Once more, students stepped up with engaging answers on their exam that demonstrated a grasp of our course objectives and, just as importantly, a level of creativity that might not have been realized in a written exam alone.
Figure 5. Final panels from “Judgment Day!” co-authored by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein and illustrated by Joe Orlando. Weird Fantasy, issue #18, March-April 1953.Figures 6 and 7. Excerpts from student exams, used with permission.
By delving into Cold War comics, my students and I have had the unique opportunity to evaluate how these visual arts depicted race, identity, gender, and social justice during a time when many US citizens believed they were engaged in an existential struggle between good and evil. In every class period, we’ve discussed both the history of the Cold War and how contemporary comics reflected and shaped Americans’ understanding of that time period.
Moreover, early in our course, we read a selection from Harriet E.H. Earle’s Comics: An Introduction, in which see argues, persuasively, that comics “draw on the traditions of visual political commentary.” I think she’s right. The challenge for assessing students’ grasp of this important concept lies in how best to evaluate their progress toward realizing course objectives that speak both to the history of a certain time period and how comics depict that history as it is unfolding.
I might suggest that if we do “frame” our exams in a way that does mirror the medium, we can craft assessment mechanisms like a mid-term exam that evaluate progress and performance while also allowing students to be as creative as they wish to be.
Figure 8. Excerpt from student exam, used with permission.
Gregory A. Daddis is a professor of history at San Diego State University and holds the USS Midway Chair in Modern US Military History. Daddis specializes in the history of the Vietnam Wars and the Cold War era and has authored five books, including Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines (2020) and Withdrawal: Reassessing America’s Final Years in Vietnam (2017). He has also published numerous journal articles and several op-ed pieces commenting on current military affairs, to include writings in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and National Interest magazine. He is the recipient of the 2022-2023 Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Award, Pembroke College, University of Oxford.
Written by Dr. Elizabeth Pollard, Professor of History
In my exploration of comics from the last century that deal with ancient Rome, Valor has supplied a fascinating stop along the way. EC Comics’ Valor took its readers to ancient Rome in every issue of its run. The plots are martial, either in the gladiatorial arena or on the battlefield, or both. Men maneuver for power, and women play roles as victim, seductress, political villain, or all three. Surprising, if slightly-off, historical details abound: the range of armor (e.g. lorica segmentata) and fighting styles of different gladiators (e.g. a caestus-wearing fighter), the names of regions (e.g. Calabria, Tuscany, Iberia, and Parthia) and even specific legions (Valeria Victrix), mention of the Lupercal (a Roman holiday), detailed ranks and fighter-types in the military (from primus pilus to hastati, velites, and triarii, as if right from the pages of second-century BCE historian Polybius). Even so, genuine historicity is profoundly lacking. In Valor, ancient Rome became a backdrop, literally and figuratively, for the sumptuous art and complicated storylines with the “snap” endings for which EC was known… and offered an opportunity for EC to go in a “New Direction” for a short time.
Post-Code Context: Entertaining Comics, aka EC Comics — with its Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror, Haunt of Fear, Weird Science, and SuspenStories (of the Crime and Shock variety) — launched Valor in April 1955. Formally-titled Tales of Mortal Combat and Deeds of Valor, the series ran every-other-month for five issues from April through December of that year. Why is the 1955 date significant? Sure, it’s the year that Disneyland opened its gates and Davy Crocket’s coon-skin cap was all the rage. But in terms of comics history, it’s also the year after the Comics Code Authority (CCA) was established, by means of which the comics industry endeavored to oversee its own “decency.” [An earlier attempt in 1948 at self-regulation, by the Association of Comics Magazine Publishers, had not found much traction.] The ideas expressed in Frederic Wertham’s indictment of the comics industry for its purported contribution to juvenile delinquency in Seduction of the Innocent (April 1954) had already found wide circulation in the Ladies Home Journal as “What Parents Don’t Know About Comic Books” (1953) by Wertham himself and earlier, in “Horror in the Nursery” (Judith Crist, in Collier’s Magazine in March 1948). So great was the moral panic over comics, such as those on EC’s publication list, that the U.S. Senate launched an investigation in 1954. [See Amy Kiste Nyberg, Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code, 1998.] With vivid examples, Wertham and his supporters had endeavored to convince parents that comics — through their plots, images, advertisements, and more — were teaching, in step-by-step textbook fashion, their children how to be criminals; more specifically, their sons how to be rapists and killers. EC’s response? Six ‘New direction’ titles lauding other, respectable occupations both current and historical: Impact, Psychoanalysis, MD,Extra!, Aces High, and Valor.
The cover of Valor #1 features a knight holding a banner: “Introducing a ‘New Direction’ in magazines… an entirely novel and unique reading experience!” On the first page of the first issue, the editorial Round Table prided itself on having respected the readers’ “taste … judgment… standards, and… intelligence” with its previous, i.e. pre-CCA (although not explicitly named), EC publications. Responding directly to the critiques that had been leveled against the industry, the editors defended EC’s use of “only the best art work available” and “the clearest lettering” in their production of “stories worthy of being read.” And, they proudly heralded their development of the “‘caption-balloon’ method of narration” and the “‘snap’ ending to each story.” While conceding that many of their now-defunct titles had become a “topic of debate, criticism, and censure,” the editors maintained that they had been giving the readership what it wanted. And now, they claimed, they would continue to do so, but instead with “stories of Chivalry, Mortal Combat, Deeds of Daring, Action, and Adventure… against a background of The Past.” Readers’ first glimpse of this new direction? Turning the page… “The Arena.”
The Creators: The Rome-inspired stories in Valor are the work of the so-called Fleagles, the team of young and collaborative creators making their mark at EC Comics in the 1950s (See Greg Theakston, The Fleagles: The Classic EC Artists, 2011). Three of the five titles — The Arena (#1), The Champion (#2), and Cloak of Command (#3) — credit Al Williamson (with Angelo Torres listed as co-creator of #1). Gratitude (#4) is credited to Joe Orlando, of “Judgment Day” fame (Weird Fantasy #18, March/April 1953). And “Dangerous Animal (#5) is credited to the prolific Wallace “Wally” Wood. Even with the diverse creative team, all five Rome-inspired stories have a similar look and feel: text-heavy plot-description, intricately drawn figures with elaborate clothing (from military armor to matronly robes), historically-evocative (if not completely accurate) backgrounds, to name just a few of the continuities.
Historicity?: While the intricate art of the comics is a highpoint, the precise historicity is anything but. In the opening editorial “Round Table,” the editors had proclaimed that Valor would take place “against a background of The Past” and that the stories would “relive a thousand… thrilling moments in bygone but memorable historical periods” (Valor #1, p. 1). It’s all too easy for a Roman historian to pick apart the historical flaws in a comic created by non-historians for a non-historical purpose, but one does wonder where the Fleagles were getting the content — names, plotlines, look, etc. — they did include. To explore just the plotline of #1, from the first panel in “The Arena” in which the “lovely Agrippina” breathlessly gazes down at a gladiator match digging her nails into the thigh of her husband… Titus Flavius (not Germanicus, in the case of the “real” Agrippina Maior; nor Domitius Ahenobarbus, Passienus Crispus, or Claudius, in the case of her daughter, the “real” Agrippina Minor), the reader knows the comic is not making an attempt at genuine historicity. And yet the scenario — that of an upper-class woman drawn to a gladiator — is not far-fetched. Graffiti from Pompeii extolled the sexual prowess of gladiators (e.g. Celadus, the “girls’ heartthrob” from the Ancient Graffiti Project @ http://ancientgraffiti.org/Graffiti/themes/Gladiators) and the empress Faustina the Younger, wife of Marcus Aurelius, once fell in love with a gladiator, according to hostile source-material (Historia Augusta, Life of Marcus Aurelius 19). Beyond the first-century CE gladiator love story in “The Arena,” there’s what appears to be a first-century CE story of loss and recognition [in “The Champion,” set in the reign of Caligula (37-41 CE) and flashing back to twenty of so years earlier; a first-century BCE (or CE?) Iberian conflict in “Cloak of Command”; a veteran of Legio Valeria Victrix interacting with General Belisarius and Emperor Justinian (from 6th century CE) in “Gratitude”’s scenario that is suited to a mix of the early first century BCE (slave revolts in the Italic countryside) and later Rome (Gothic invasion); and finally, in “Dangerous Animal,” an entirely ahistorical scenario in which the emperor Tiberius (14-37 CE) dies fighting a gladiator who becomes emperor in Tiberius’s stead. Misguided and mistaken, nonetheless a surprising swath of Roman “history” covered for in such a short-lived comic!
Snap-Endings and Visual Reference: Each of the comics has the “snap” ending for which EC was known: in Williamson and Torres’s “Arena” (#1), the freed-gladiator-turned-captain jumps into the arena to die with the slave-woman whom he had fallen in love with; in Williamson’s “The Champion” (#2), the freed-but-going-blind gladiator chooses to return to the arena and is killed by his long-lost son; in Williamson’s “Cloak of Command” (#3), the young leader recognizes that he must listen to his war-grizzled commanders; in Orlando’s complicated “Gratitude” (#4), a soldier who buries wealth he stole from those he was supposed to protect, refuses wealth from the emperor when he is praised for his valor in battle, and then loses his ill-begotten buried wealth when the emperor puts up a statue in his honor and finds the buried treasure in the process; and in Wood’s “Dangerous Animal” (#5), the final panel makes clear that the gladiator-turned-emperor recognizes that the most dangerous animal of all is not the panthers, tigers, or even elephants against whom he fought, but rather the scheming seductress Claudia.
Any study of these comics must examine their artistic style. The backgrounds are truly spectacular, full of carefully drawn Roman temples and intricate crowd scenes. Battle scenes are rendered with a balance of detail and martial fury. Most of the paneling is quite simple, squares and rectangles with prose captions to drive the narrative and plot-rich word balloons. Orlando’s “Gratitude,” however, takes on the usual device of the regular, hard-edged rectangular panels on the first page (when the comic’s story is narrated in the present) and then shifts to irregular, almost scroll-like, panels as the narrator recounts events in the past, with a return to the square paneling at the end when the narrator snaps back to the present. A similar device, shifting from the square panels (for the present time of the comic’s storyline) to borderless panels for flashback and reverie/events-out-of-time had been used to good effect by Williamson in “The Champion.”
The detail rendered by the Fleagles’ artistry spurs one to wonder what were their reference points: the sword and sandal flicks (or peplum films) already dominating the silver screen or, perhaps art that dealt with similar themes? When Williamson, Torres, Orlando, and Wood were working on these comics, movie-going audiences had recently been captivated by films like Fabiola, Quo Vadis, The Affairs of Messalina, and Sins of Rome. It’s not hard to see the visual continuity between the lavish silver-screen productions and the panels of Valor. If not this eye-candy, relatively recent artwork (from Alma Tadema to Joaquin Sorolla) and even ancient mosaics, whose excavations often made headlines (for instance the excavation of the Romerhalle in Bad Kreuznach in the late 19th century, with its detailed gladiator mosaic), may well have fueled the imagination of the Fleagles in their own drawing of ancient Rome.
New Direction, New Influence?: Whatever the reference point, whatever the historical (or not) source material, in EC Comics’ Valor, young readers were treated to a pseudo-historical feast fit for an emperor! EC found a way to preserve its blend of violence and sexuality, mystery and morality, in a way that flew under the radar of the Comics Code Authority and titillated readers in 1955. In the third issue of Valor, readers’ letters to the editorial “Round Table’’ teemed with enthusiasm for EC’s “new direction.” One Ronald Ecker wrote: “After reading the first issue of Valor, it was inevitable that I send in my sheet of papyrus and compliment you on your great achievement. It is astounding what you guys can do with colored panels and captions. You have brought the reader the chivalrous days of past eras never to be forgotten; not in the simple way of your competitors, but with superb art work, elaborate drawn by the best comic artists in the business.” Lest one think that Ecker was a fictitious letter-writer, it appears that young comic-reading Ron of Palatka, Florida grew up to be retired-librarian Ron of Palatka Florida, who himself went on to write screenplays with a flare for historical drama (https://writers.coverfly.com/profile/writer-ae787f48b-151). EC’s Valor comics no longer could be accused of teaching young people how to commit violent crime; but (young Ron, perhaps, excepted), the comics could not exactly be accused of teaching young readers their Roman history, either. Nonetheless, the Fleagles’ work on Valor — with its truly remarkable scenes that envisioned the glory of ancient Rome and its historically evocative, if not accurate, stories — is nothing short of Herculean.
Elizabeth Pollard is Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence at San Diego State University, where she has taught Roman History, World History, and witchcraft studies since 2002. She co-directs SDSU’s Center for Comics Studies and recently debuted a Comics and History course exploring sequential art from the paleolithic to today. Pollard is currently working on two comics-related projects: an analysis of comics about ancient Rome over the last century and a graphic history exploring the influence of classical understandings of witchcraft on their representations in modern comics. Pollard has co-authored a world history survey (Worlds Together, Worlds Apart) and has published on various pedagogical and digital history topics, including DH approaches to visualizing Roman History.
All comic heroes need a compelling origin story: Spider-Man with Uncle Ben, Batman with his parents in the alley, or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with the toxic waste in the sewers. These beginnings shape their characters and lay the foundation for the rest of the series. For exhibits, the beginning stages of curation serve a similar purpose, especially when it comes to sourcing the materials for the collection. These sources serve as both the basis upon which the exhibit will make its argument and the catalyst that compels patrons to interact.
You could say I am on my personal Ninja-Turtle-and-toxic-sewer-waste origin story journey, albeit without the superpowers and affinity for pizza, as I begin to curate materials for my exhibit on depictions of sound in comics. Now that I have completed the bulk of the background research, my main focus has been on sourcing examples from a variety of places. Throughout this process, I have learned how to broaden my approach to sourcing and to tackle topics from multiple, and often new, angles.
If the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ superhero origins stories revolve around an love for pizza, mine would certainly revolve around music. As someone who has both performed in ensembles for many years and conducted previous research on depictions of music in sequential art, I decided to start the curation process with locating materials for the music category because it was a topic with which I was most familiar. Because this exhibit is being developed in coordination with the Center for Comics Studies, I plan to have nearly all of the materials come from SDSU and, more specifically, the comics in the Special Collections that can be found via the SDSU Library’s ComicsHub. I learned early on that the sheer number and variety of comics that SDSU offers meant that I needed to quickly narrow my field in order to find comics about music. In order to achieve this, I created a list of keywords related to music and then began to search for comics that included those words in their titles and synopses. Such words included “band,” “concert,” “instrument,” “singer,” “piano,” “guitar,” and “drums.” From there, it became a process of reading through the selection for any references to music in their imagery, symbols, content, plotlines, and characters. At the same time, I relied on secondary scholarship, namely peer-reviewed articles, that discussed music for further examples. It was, in a sense, a sort of reverse engineering where I relied on the secondary material to find primary evidence that I could then look for and include in my own research. Both of these types of sourcing were invaluable in helping me curate a variety of comics that feature music in different forms.
I then moved on to explore comics that feature onomatopoeia, or words formed from the sound with which they are associated, such as bang, zap, and pow. Whereas music in comics is often plot or character specific, onomatopoeia and sound effects are found in nearly every comic in some capacity, so it is difficult to search by keywords. As such, I had to adapt my process for setting search parameters. One of the easiest ways to limit the comics was to search by national origin. I hope to analyze onomatopoeia in comics across languages and nationalities in the exhibit, so looking through the foreign-language comics that SDSU possesses was a simple but effective way to both find evidence and narrow down the searches. In terms of English-language comics, I provided the repository with specific time period and publisher parameters so that I could curate a cross-section of what I believed represented the different genres, eras, styles, and artists from the collection. The intention behind this search was to use these comics as starting points for finding trends or patterns of onomatopoeiae that I could then go back and look for in the ComicsHub. For example, based on the various noir-style comics that I pulled in my initial search, I found these types of comics often forgo flashy forms of onomatopoeia for the sake of style. Therefore, if I need further evidence of noir-style onomatopoeia or of subtle uses of sound effects in the future, I can search for them in the repository based on the criteria set by these original noir comics. I am still in process with looking for onomatopoeia, particularly in unusual or novel forms, but breaking down the ComicsHub into manageable pieces has been helpful in setting a baseline for my continued research.
In addition to these efforts in the ComicsHub and Special Collections, I have also ventured into sourcing via other means than traditional database mining. Recently, I crowdsourced my question via Twitter, reaching out to the comics scholars that collaborate on that platform. My tweet received substantial engagement from academics that shared their personal and classroom encounters with onomatopoeia in comics. I was surprised by the level of interaction, as well as the specificity of answers. Additionally, it was fascinating to watch the reach of the tweet expand over the course of several days as it became liked and reposted by scholars across the country and even the globe.
Attn all comics and/or history scholars: I'm doing research on depictions of sounds in comics through @comicsatsdsu. Does anyone have any examples of onomatopoeia that they've encountered that they find particularly exciting/unique/important to this type of work?@sdsu_h100
Beyond diving into the digital sphere, I took a physical venture into new sourcing avenues by touring the Comic-Con Museum in Balboa Park, San Diego. All of my other exhibit tours have been virtual, so the Comic-Con Museum offered a fresh perspective on showcasing comics in museum settings. The museum currently features an exhibition on the history and cultural impacts of Spider-Man and includes several different digital displays and activities. I was particularly intrigued by a sound booth that plays the original Spider-Man song through a set of ear pieces. I found many examples of comics that I hope to explore further, as well as learned new comics organization techniques and ways to integrate interactivity into exhibits.
My first visit to the Comic-Con Museum in Balboa Park, San Diego.
Throughout this entire research journey, one of the most surprising aspects has been the fact that this type of curation does not follow a linear path. In contrast to what I believed going into the work, there is no fixed set of steps where one article would lead to an example of a specific comic and that comic would then be sourced and added to the collection. Instead, it is an iterative process: a series of backtracking, starting over, and jumping from idea to idea, which creates a long, complicated, and often cyclical flow of scholarly discovery. Exploring this is an exciting path of research just one of the many lessons I have learned and will continue to learn throughout my academic adventure into the aural.
Grace deVega (she/her) is a Fourth Year History and Political Science student at San Diego State University. She previously won the President’s Award at the SDSU Student Research Symposium and 1st Place in her Division at the CSU Research Competition for her research into the impacts of the 1986 Philippines People Power Movement on nonviolent revolutions. She has also played clarinet for the past twelve years, including in the SDSU marching and concert bands, which is where her passion for music and aural studies derives.
