I am a comics historian, studying the social and cultural history of comics readers and reading. I am especially interested in the vast networks of young comics readers in the United States during the mid-20th century, a time when comics were the most popular form of print culture. I enjoy sharing the results of my research with both scholarly and general audiences.
I have an article on the cartooning contests in OPEN ROAD FOR BOYS in the 1930s and 40s. You can find it in the Eisner Award-winning comics magazine HOGAN’S ALLEY (#22, 2019). These contests helped jumpstart the careers of cartoonists including Reed Crandell, John Stanley, and Mort Walker.
My overarching project concerns how young people from the 1930s through the 1950s transformed and were transformed by the medium of comics. For this, I draw on extensive archival sources, readers’ recollections, historical studies (many of which have for too-long been overlooked), and other relevant materials to understand young people’s comics readership, and their participation in early comics fan cultures. Additionally, this project engages with how adult gatekeepers of children’s reading – including librarians, teachers, and comics creators – understood young people’s relationships with comics.
My 2012 research that documented falsified and distorted evidence in the writings of anti-comics psychiatrist Fredric Wertham – the author of 1954’s Seduction of the Innocent – brought me and my work international attention. If you’re curious, check out the article by Dave Itzkoff about it in the New York Times or the Annalee Newitz article on i09.
In 1948 ,teenager David Wigransky wrote and drew an original comic book that poked fun at the criticisms being levied against comics at that time. Nearly 70 years later, I came across the comic in the archives at Ohio State University and wrote about it for Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum.
You can learn more about my published research (including the work I do in areas such as education for librarianship and information seeking and use) by visiting my Google Scholar profile.