Z616 Comic Books and Their Readers, Spring 2025

Digital and Empirical Methods for Studying Readership and Fandom.

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Week 1: Introductions

Summary

This week we will go over some of the course basics, syllabus, and assignments. Following that we will begin to explore some basic topics related to studying comic books and their readers. We will discuss some read and discuss some introductory essays about comic book readers, discuss our own experience as comics readers or consumers/fans of other media, and introduce some of the research methods we’ll be exploring this semester.

Weekly Learning Objectives

  • Discuss our own experience as comic book readers or consumers/fans of other media.
  • identify research methods that may be applied to the study of comic book readership and fandom.
  • outline a broad history of the comic book, as presented in Hatfield’s chapter.

Define and identify the following terms

  • panel
  • word balloon, thought balloon

  • caption

  • writer, scripter
  • artist, penciller
  • inker
  • colorist

  • letterer

  • Platinum Age
  • Golden Age
  • Silver Age

  • Bronze Age

  • floppy
  • trade paperback
  • underground comix
  • pulps / pulp magazines
  • direct market

  • fanzine

  • Fredric Wertham
  • Percival Chubb
  • Seduction of the Innocent (1954)
  • Comics Code and Comics Code Authority
  • the “Dell Pledge”
  • the kawaii aesthetic
  • Graphix
  • TOON Books
  • Classics Illustrated
  • funny animal comics

Before class: Readings, resources, and tasks

  • Hatfield, Charles (2020). Comic Books. Comics Studies: A Guidebook (pp. 25-39). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
  • Nel, Philip (2020). Children and Comics. Comics Studies: A Guidebook (pp. 126-137). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
  • Duncan, R., Smith, M. J., & Levitz, P. (2015). The Comic Book Readers. The Power of Comics (2nd ed.) (pp. 297-326). London: Bloomsbury.

In class