Category: Elizabeth Pollard

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Elizabeth Pollard

From Wall Paintings to Statues – Animation’s Ancient Past

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?  

Figure 2: On the walls of Chauvet Cave from Paleolithic France, layered and shaded line-drawings of lions (right) and rhinos (left) may well have appeared animated by torchlight. Image above is a screenshot of Ancient Art Archive’s 3-D Sketchfab rendering of the Chauvet Cave (Available at https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/the-lion-panel-of-chauvet-france-91756bf3395542a289c95e0a28d3ef94; accessed 27 February 2023).

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.
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.
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)
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.
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. 

Headshot of Professor Pollard

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.

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Elizabeth Pollard

DC’s Golden Gladiator – Brave(ly) and Bold(ly) Going Where EC’s ‘Valor’ Had Gone Before

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. 

Figure 1: DC’s readers got their first glimpse of the Golden Gladiator on the cover of Brave and the Bold #1 (August 1955). Turning the page, readers are greeted with the first installment of the Golden Gladiator’s story. The first page of each Golden Gladiator comic featured an action-packed splash, along with scene-setting text that ended in the story’s title, in this case “The Thunder of the Chariots!”

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.

Figure 2: (left) Artist Russ Heath’s Roman toy soldier advertisement, which appeared on the back cover of countless comics beginning in the 1970s (right). For comparison, fight scene on the opening splash page of Golden Gladiator’s last appearance in the original run of Brave and the Bold (Issue #6, July 1956).

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.

Figure 3: Opening splash page of “Sword of Attila” (B&B #2, November 1955) and “The Invisible Wall” (B&B #3, January 1956), in which the bad guys are characterized by their stereotypical (and racist) Fu Manchu look. (On Fu Manchu racism in comics, see Eric Francisco’s “How Marvel's Shang-Chi had to ‘destroy’ its own racist origins,” Inverse 26 August 2021; available at https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/shang-chi-racist-origins).

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!

Figure 4: The care and attention to horses in the five issues of Golden Gladiator is quite remarkable and likely a carry-over from Russ Heath’s early work in westerns. Two examples above from (left) “Thunder of Chariots” (p. 8), which also includes some impressive lion and bull drawing, and (right) “Captive Champion” (p. 7).

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).

Figure 5: Scenes from MGM’s 1959 sword-and-sandal epic Ben Hur (images from https://time.com/4430862/ben-hur-original-photos/) compared with panels from “Thunder of the Chariots” (Brave and the Bold #1, 1955). It almost appears as if the movie used the comic as its storyboard! Some of Heath’s paneling decisions are echoed in 1958 Classics Illustrated edition of Lew Wallace’s Ben Hur (CI #147), with art by Joe Orlando, who had worked on EC’s Roman Valor series. And again in Juan Escandell’s art for the version of Ben Hur in the series Joyas Literarias Juveniles #7 (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.

Figure 6: It is fitting that after the exceptional heroine Lucia had saved Marcus’s life multiple times (top left in “Sword of Attila” and bottom left in “Captive Champion”) that we read of her death from a plague on the same page on which we see Marcus’s funeral pyre (Simonson, Judas Coin, p. 23), with no less than an emperor bidding Marcus farewell with the words: “May he too find peace beyond Oceanus in the fields of Elysium. May Lucia be waiting for him.”

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.

Headshot of Professor Pollard

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.

Categories
Elizabeth Pollard

Post-Code EC Goes to Ancient Rome

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.

Figure 1: Valor’s first cover (left) highlights its self-described turn to chivalry and the titular valor. The cover of Valor #2, from June 1955 (right), is the first of the run to be stamped with Comics Code Authority’s seal of approval.

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.”

Figure 2: From left to right, the first page of the Rome-inspired comics in Valor #s 1, 4, and 5 by Al Williamson & Angelo Torres, Joe Orlando, and Wally Wood, respectively. #s 2 and 3 (not pictured here) were credited to Al Williamson alone. The coloring of #5, right, is saturated due to grabbing the image from the modern collection of Valor (EC Archives: Valor, Darkhorse, 2017) whereas the other two are drawn from the Alexander Street database. Note the consistency of text-heavy narration, elaborately-drawn backgrounds, and sumptuously-garbed figures.

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!

Figure 3: Final panel of each Rome-inspired Valor comic (#s 1-3 across the top row, and #s 4-5 on second row) featuring a typical “snap”/surprise ending so characteristic of the EC brand.

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.

Figure 4: Two examples — top from “Gratitude” and bottom from “The Arena” — of the intricately drawn battle scenes, complete with a range of armor, weaponry, and other details, such as a legionary standard. Note the scroll-like panelling from Orlando’s “Gratitude,” one of the few times the Rome-inspired comics depart from rectangular/square panelling. Also worth noting, the scene from “The Arena” (bottom) bears striking resemblance to the “Alexander Mosaic” from Pompeii (excavated in the 19th century and on display at the Naples Archaeological Museum). By coincidence, the mosaic actually appeared on the Greek 1000-drachma banknote in 1956.

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.”

Figure 5: Films of the so-called peplum (or “sword and sandal”) genre — such as Fabulous Fabiola (1949), The Affairs of Messalina (1951), Quo Vadis (1951), and Sins of Rome (1953) — may well have provided the visual repertoire for the Fleagles as they brought “The Past” to life on the pages of Valor. While I’ve not yet been able to track down the artists for three of the four pre-Valor posters here, peplum movie posters — created by the likes of Angelo Cesselon (Fabiola, 1949), William Reynold Brown (Ben Hur, 1959), and Howard Terpning (Cleopatra, 1963) — are practically comic splash pages and their artists were often involved in storyboarding the films.

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.

Figure 6: (left) Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s sumptuous “Spring” (1894; from https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103RC9) is just one of many works in which he captured vivid scenes from antiquity; some, like “Spring,” depict vibrant action against a carefully-rendered Roman backdrop and others peer into small, private gatherings. Echoes of Alma-Tadema’s rich backdrops resound in the background of Williamson’s panels, in “The Arena” (top left) and “The Champion” (top right).

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.

Figure 7: Joaquin Sorolla’s “Messalina in the Arms of the Gladiator” (1886; image from wikimedia commons) compared with climactic panel of “The Arena,” in Valor 1. The rose-festooned, nearly-nude supine body of the woman, head-arced and neck-exposed towards the flexed gladiator bear striking resemblance to one another. This Rome-inspired story (in the only Valor without the CCA seal) is definitely the most sex-infused; later issues focus more on war and gladiator matches.
Headshot of Professor Pollard

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.

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Elizabeth Pollard

Reincarnated Roman Racket-Buster

Written by
Dr. Elizabeth Pollard, Professor of History

For one of my current research projects, I’ve been accumulating comics from the last century that engage in some way with ancient Rome. Among the odder comics I have stumbled across in that enterprise has been “The Dart.” The Dart and his boy side-kick Ace appear in all but four of the twenty issues of Weird Comics, a Fox Feature Syndicate publication. From their inception, Dart and Ace enjoyed a long run on the cover of every Weird Comics and as the first title in each issue, until May 1941 (Weird Comics 14) when the patriotic “Eagle” took the cover for the first time since Dart and Ace premiered. The rising tide of World War II in Europe and North Africa offers the obvious explanation for the ultra-American, flag-draped Eagle’s eclipsing of a reincarnated Roman superhero, especially given Italy’s increasing role in the war. Germany, Italy, and Japan had officially become the Axis powers via the Tripartite Pact on September 27, 1940. What’s really surprising, in that 1940/41 context, is that Dart stayed on the cover of Weird Comics for as long as he did!

Figure 1: (top) Readers get the only glimpse at Caius Martius in his Roman context on the second page of “The Dart” in Weird Comics 5 (August 1940). (bottom) In only a few of the later issues, for instance here in Weird Comics 7 (October 1940), the Dart’s modern alter-ego, Roman History teacher Mr. Wheeler, recalls his life back in ancient Rome.

So, just who is this Dart? The full-page splash on the Dart’s first issue includes a text box that first introduces us to this “new” hero: “Out of the hidden shrouds of history comes a legendary man who dedicates his life to fight crime and racketeers — the invincible Roman, Caius Martius, who takes the name: The Dart” (Weird Comics 5, August 1940). Turning the page, readers were immersed for one page — in fact, the only page of the entire sixteen-issue series — that takes them back to Caius Martius’ origins as “the terror of Roman racketeers” in the early first century BCE. Readers learn that Caius was a supporter of Sulla, who is presented here as the good guy, not the death-warrant-issuing dictator whose bloody reign resulted in the murder of thousands of Romans in the 80s BCE. Sulla’s rival Marius (here the “evil” guy) orders his henchman Lucius to do away with Caius Martius. Sulla’s troops are too late to save Caius before he is dissolved into a stone table by a hooded ritual expert. The magical spell is supposed to last 2200 years; and at the bottom of the page the reader’s eye moves from a panel in which his would-be rescuers mourn “Rome’s saddest loss” to a panel in which 20th-century museum-goers scatter in fear as the body of Caius Martius rematerializes on the same stone table. Nevermind that the math is incorrect (an early 80s BCE spell that lasted 2200 years would expire ca. 2110, not 1940); Caius leaps right into action against tommy-gun wielding gangsters who have orphaned a boy named Ace Barlow, whom we see mourning his parents shot dead in the street (shades of Bat-Man’s origin in DC 33 from late September/November 1939). Ace becomes Dart’s wooden bat-wielding side-kick. When he’s not hurling his Roman gladius like a projectile, the Dart wields his signature weapon in his right hand, stabbing cars, punching through walls, skewering the skulls of criminals (quite vividly), and even collapsing a bridge. 

Figure 2: Title splash pages for (left) the first episode of “The Dart” in Weird Comics 5 (August 1940), with the one Jerry Abus byline, later changed to Jerry Arbo for every other issue except (right) Weird Comics 19 (November 1941), when Alex Boon gets the byline.

To whom should we offer our thanks for this gladius-brandishing Roman “racket buster”? The signatory author of “The Dart” ranges from Jerry Abus (Weird Comics 5) on the splash page of the first Dart comic; to Jerry Arbo (Weird Comics 6-18 and 20), with one attributed to Alex Boon (Weird Comics 19, November 1941). The consensus across various comics databases is that Jerry Abus/Arbo is a house name or pseudonym used by Luis Cazeneuve (1908-1977), an Argentinian comic artist known for his work on “Quique, el Niño Pirata” in Argentina and then later in the U.S., creating work for National/DC (e.g. Aquaman), Harvey Comics (e.g. Phantom Sphinx), and other Fox Feature Syndicates (e.g. Blue Beetle). [see Luis Cazeneuve” in Lambiek Comiclopedia (updated 1-18-2018); https://www.lambiek.net/artists/c/cazeneuve_l.htm]. Alex Boon, the byline for Dart in Weird Comics 19, is likely Alex Blum, a Hungarian-American who worked for Eisner & Iger at the same time as Cazaneuve (late 1930s and early 1940s) — notably drawing “Samson” and “Eagle” and going on to work on Classics Illustrated, including Homer’s Iliad (#77) and Midsummer Night’s Dream (#49). [see Alex Blum,” in Lambiek Comiclopedia (updated 7-15-2021) and CCS Books, https://ccsbooks.co.uk/]

Figure 3: (left) Contrast the first page of “The Dart” from early in the series (Weird Comics 6, September 1940) with (right) the first page from the final issue (Weird Comics 20, January 1942).

Although attributed to the same name for nearly every issue, the style changes dramatically across the sixteen appearances of “The Dart,” from his debut in August 1940 to his last adventure in January 1942. This stylistic change is easily glimpsed with the juxtaposition of a first page from early in the run with one from ten months later (Figure 3). From Dart’s second appearance in Weird Comics 6 (September 1940) through through Weird Comics 16 (July 1941), the first page of each Dart comic includes a half-page scene-setter, with an introductory text box reminding readers of the Dart’s past as “ancient Roman racket buster Caius Martius” (although in Weird Comics 16, he’s mis-named as Cassius Martius!).  Beginning with Weird Comics 17, in August 1941, and through the end of the run in January 1942, the text box reminding the reader of Mr. Wheeler’s ancient Roman past life disappears and the first page becomes far splashier. 

Figure 4: Contrast the paneling from one of the early issues (left, from Weird Comics 7, October 1940) with that ten issues later (right, from Weird Comics 17, August 1941).

The change in “The Dart”’s style across its run is also manifest in its panel scheme (Figure 4). A simplistic two by four framing pattern characterizes the majority of pages throughout the sixteen issues of “The Dart.” Each panel neatly contains the figures and word balloons, as the action plods forward from scene to scene. Towards the end of the run (mid 1941), however, the paneling becomes more complex. Word balloons and body parts extend beyond the panel, drawing the reader’s eye to the next stage of the action and even pointing the way, when the paneling becomes more complex. For instance, on one page from “The Pushcart Drug Pusher” (August 1941) an ax provides the continuity from panels 3 to 4. Then Mr. Wheeler’s knee points the reader to the fifth panel. The hand of Mr. Wheeler’s punched fellow teacher then points the way from panels 5 to 6. Jeff Dean’s foot bleeds from panel 4 to 7, essentially escaping that panel into the last panel on the page, where he has evaded capture by the Dart. What might have precipitated this change? No doubt, the dynamic and imaginative framing, energy, and action that leaped off the pages of Jack Kirby’s revolutionary Captain America #1 in March 1941 had an immediate influence on Luis Cazeneuve, the artist behind the Jerry Arbo house-name ascribed to all but a few of the issues of “The Dart.”

Figure 5: First row - Miss Tillbury is punched by a villain (Weird Comics 10, January 1941, p. 9/2); Miss Tillbury’s hair is yanked by her criminal uncle (Weird Comics 11, February 1941, p. 5/5); Miss Tillbury is kidnapped (Weird Comics 13, p. 2/4). Second row - Miss Tillbury taunts Mr. Wheeler’s manliness time and again, as her parting words in each comic - left (Weird Comics 7, October 1940, p. 10/8); middle (Weird Comics 11, February 1941, p. 10/8); right (Weird Comics 12, March 1941, p. 10/8).

There is much more that I’ll say when I incorporate “The Dart” into my larger project of ancient Rome in comics, but a few final issues to note. Particularly shocking to a modern reader is the casual, repeated, and explicit violence to Miss Tillbury (Figure 5). Her life is threatened many times; she is punched; she is yanked around by her arm and hair; and she is abducted. This level of disturbing violence in comics is one of many issues the Comics Code Authority of 1954 sought to minimize. Paired with this violence against women is an ongoing discourse on masculinity… in particular, the much-abused “love interest” and fellow teacher Miss Tillbury’s frequent impugning of alter-ego Mr. Wheeler’s manliness, in favor of the Dart’s. Miss Tillbury needles Mr. Wheeler: “If I were a man, I’d get that state witness back” and at the end of the same issue, “There’s a real man… The Dart! Look what he did to the Black Spot Gang! Don’t you wish you were like him?” (Weird Comics 7, October 1940, p. 2/4 and p. 10/8). And as if that weren’t enough, in the next issue Mrs. Tillbury responds to Mr. Wheeler’s request to take her to dinner with “Thank you… But I prefer to go out with men… Good morning!” (Weird Comics 9, December 1940, p. 1/3). In that same issue, Tillbury tells Dart: “I wish Gaius Martius Wheeler were a man… like you!” (Weird Comics 9, p. 6/8). After Mr. Wheeler expresses his incredulity that someone so brave as the Dart exists, Miss Tillbury exclaims: “[S]omeday you might meet him and you’ll see what my idea of a real man is!” (Weird Comics 11, February 1941, p. 10/10). Miss Tillbury’s repeated maligning of Mr. Wheeler’s masculinity continues through to the end of the run, with parting shots like “… if I had depended on you, I’d be dead by now” (Weird Comics 12, March 1941, p. 10/8) and “Whenever a man’s help is needed, you’re not around!  I’m getting tired of this!” (Weird Comics 18, September 1941, p. 10/9) and even her last words in the last issue “I’ve seen jelly fish [sic] display more courage than you!” (Weird Comics 20, January 1942, 10/8). This discourse on manliness and even absent masculinity is particularly striking as the United States was considering full-on engagement in World War II. Perhaps readers lost their interest in such taunting after Japan’s attack on the U.S. at Pearl Harbor. “The Dart,” and the long-emasculated Mr. Wheeler, sees only one more issue after that infamous day. Mr. Wheeler’s claim to his students, “There’s no excitement in the world at present… not like ancient Rome” in October 1940 — just after the Tripartite Pact formalized the Axis powers —  likely rang too false once thousands of American soldiers were killed and wounded on December 7, 1941.

Figure 6: Roman History teacher Mr. Wheeler, aka Caius Martius, “The Dart”, attempts to distract his students from the worries of the day; namely, October 1940, just after the Tripartite Pact formalizes the axis of Germany, Italy, and Japan in September 1940.

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.