Today is a landmark for me, academically and professionally speaking. A few hours from now, I will be teaching the first class in my tenth semester as a professor at UMBC. It’s also ten years since I first introduced my course in Comic Book Literature to the university, and although the reading list has transformed over the years, more so in the last two than ever before, most of the class and its structure has remained pretty much the same. I’ve been gratified by its popularity and staying power in an environment that still tends to look askance at subjects other than the accepted literary canon (although I should add that the UMBC English department, where I completed my undergraduate degree, has always been a rather cool place to work, so I’ve never encountered much difficulty there). And although I’m reaching the end of a decade, I’ve never grown tired of meeting a new group of students and talking with them about comics for a few months. What could be better? 

Years ago, when this course was in its infancy, I wrote a series of articles for a superb (now defunct) UK-based periodical on comics called Borderline. I basically discussed the initial conception of the course, how I chose the reading list, and whatever other thoughts I had about the ways in which teaching comics as literature can help to improve the medium’s standing in the academic world. I plan to present those articles again here in this column for the next few weeks, but updated to my 2008 reading selections and mindset as I look forward to another ten years at the front of that classroom.

Next time, I’ll talk about how the class was conceived and pitched in the first place, back during a time when there weren’t very many college-level courses on comics at all, though when they were there, they were invariably in the Art department and not English. Then we’ll look at the reading list and why these comics/graphic novels were chosen. And if any of you reading this ever took my class in the last ten years, please email me and offer your thoughts on the course for inclusion in this column.

See you next week in the 1990s… 

ITEM #2: In the Special Edition gallery at Geppi’s Entertainment Museum, we’re stepping “Out of the Box” and allowing visitors both young and old to get hands on with pop culture by giving everyone an up close look at the characters that are popular right now with toys that you can actually touch and play with. Those toys you see in the stores today and all those TV shows and movies you’re watching now are going to be the subject of museum exhibitions themselves before we know it…so why not get a head start on the process? It won’t be as easy to play with them when they’re locked behind glass! “Out of the Box” runs until December 2008. 

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Don’t forget to

Visit Geppi’s Entertainment Museum online at www.geppismuseum.com

or in person at

301 W. Camden St.
Baltimore, MD 21201
(410) 625-7060