Well, the Spring of 2025 has been a hectic semester of library work, scholarship, writing, service, travel, political happenings, life events, and general work-life imbalance, but I did manage to squeeze in some comics-related activities and events, both here at UNT and elsewhere in our comics community. So here’s a little recap of what I’ve been up to…

Back in January, I attended my first Modern Language Association Conference in nearly a decade, in the haunting and beautiful city of New Orleans, to participate in a roundtable on “Poe and the Archives”, organized by the Poe Studies Association. Along with six other notable Poe scholars, I discussed my ongoing research and book project on Poe & comics, with a particular focus on how archives, libraries, and special collections play a vital role in this kind of research. I shared my experiences working with online collections and digital archives, especially those provided by some of the world-class comics research collections like those at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at Ohio State University and the Comic Art Collection at the Michigan State University Libraries. I shared some of the early newspaper comic strip adaptations of Poe’s stories that I’ve discovered and how they set the stage for the boom of comic book and graphic novel adaptations to come in the second half of the 20th century. I got some great leads and feedback from my fellow panelists and was impressed by the range and depth of the work they were doing in archives and special collections as well. 

In March, I attended the Comics Sans Frontières conference at Rice University, hosted by their Comic Art Teaching & Study (CATS) Workshop. It was an intimate but diverse event featuring artists, publishers, academics, librarians, and students from all over the world, discussing comics as a global language that transcends borders and political boundaries. The keynote speaker was the great Art Spiegelman, who talked about his career as a comics artist and writer, an innovator of the graphic novel form, and a critical observer of history, politics, and society. One of the highlights for me was receiving an autographed copy of his classic book Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, the haunting story of his family’s experience of the Holocaust, told in comics form. They also featured two fascinating exhibits during the event: one of the late Jack Katz’s (The First Kingdom) original artwork, which has been donated to the Rice University Woodson Research Center, and the other of original newspaper comic art also housed at Woodson. Besides all these great learning opportunities, I was thrilled to meet so many interesting artists and scholars from different places, some of whom I’ve started collaborating with on other projects.

In April, we hosted a screening of two short documentary films by UNT alum, Todd Kent: The Dallas Marvels and How to Move a Comic Book Store, at our own Willis Library.  The first explores a series of Marvel comics newspaper giveaways in the 1980s, sponsored by local businesses and newspapers, that featured Marvel superheroes having adventures in and around the Dallas/Fort Worth area, including a visit by the X-Men to the Texas State Fair and Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends attending a performance of the Nutcracker. I remember a similar series of giveaway comics in the Houston newspapers when I was a kid, so it was fun to learn more about these rare and fun artifacts from that time. The other short film documented the process of moving an iconic Dallas comic book store to a new location and the logistics and labor that goes into such a move.  Todd stuck around after the screening to chat with some of our librarians and students about his lifelong interest in comics and filmmaking, which was a treat for all of us.

Our monthly Comics Studies Reading Group, which meets one Saturday afternoon a month via Zoom, stayed active through the Spring as well. Below are the books we read and discussed, each selected by one member of the group and made available through our library or for personal purchase. We try to select a range of genres, formats, styles, and themes for these discussions, but often look for new or notable books that have received attention in the comics media or award nominations, like those on this year’s Eisner Awards list. This semester’s selections included personal memoirs, mythic & fantasy narratives, and even an anthropological essay written as a comic (Light in Dark Times). 

• January: Blandine Le Callet and Nancy Pena, Medea (2024)
• February: Alisse Waterston and Charlotte Corden, Light in Dark Times: The Human Search for Meaning (2020)
• March: Nick Drnaso’s, Acting Class (2022)
• April: H.A.’s, The Chromatic Fantasy (2023)
• May: Maria Sweeney, Brittle Joints (2024)
• June: Maureece Vellekoop, I’m so glad we had this time together: A Memoir (2024)

Besides all this, our UNT Comic Book Club has been extremely busy this Spring, but I’ve invited them to write their own blog post to share all their activities and the work that they’ve done on their second comics anthology, to be published later this summer. Keep an eye on our blog for more details!

Next up for me will be a June trip to Comicpalooza in Houston to participate in a panel discussion on “Archives, Libraries, Pedagogies, Communities, and Engagement” as part of their new Comicpalooza University initiative. More details on that to come as well.

And later, in July, I’ll be attending the 2025 Comics Studies Society Conference in East Lansing, Michigan, attending and moderating panels, and hopefully doing some research in MSU’s amazing comic book collection while I’m there!

We’ve got lots more planned for next Fall, so keep an eye on this blog for more news and happenings from our comics studies community.