Comic-Con 2014

Robert C. Harvey (Meanwhile: A Biography of Milton Caniff, Creator of Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon) reviews the career of Bill Hume: sculptor, artist, actor, playwright, magician, ventriloquist, author, clown, newspaper man, photographer, animator, television and film producer, corporate art director and cartoonist, and artist of pretty girl cartoons featuring the friendly relations between American G.I.'s and the female population of Japan. Melissa Loucks (University of Florida) reminds us of the work comic strips do toward thwarting the distortions and suppressions of the dominant civil rights narrative, looking at the work of Oliver Harrington, George Herriman, and Jackie Ormes. And Dwain C. Pruitt (University of Louisville) considers the roles that Matt Baker's race and sexual orientation may have played in his work and in his most celebrated contribution, the "Baker Girl," asserting that Baker's work was shaped by the unique African-American expressive and visual culture of 1930s-1950s Harlem.