By Any Other Nerd

In this interview, I chat with Matt Smith and Randy Duncan, the co-authors of The Power of Comics ; a resourceful text that explores comics through a variety of lenses and serves as a great source for stepping into the field of comic studies. Lance Eaton:  What was the genesis for the book? Matt Smith:  I'd written two textbooks before, one an introduction to general communication studies and the other for computer-mediated communication, and realized when I had the chance to teach my first comics course that there was nothing of the ilk in the field of comics arts studies. After cobbling together readings from various sources in that first iteration, I wanted to see a book that addressed the field and worked up a proposal. As fate would have it, I met Randy Duncan at Comic-Con International that summer and we began talking about chapters he had already written for just such a book. Our visions for what this text should look like overlapped by 80%. All we had to do...

The following is an excerpt from another blog I run on AdjunctNation.com : While time management is a challenge for everyone, for Frequent Flyers, it’s particularly vexing as we dart from campus-to-campus, classroom-to-classroom, leaving trails of ungraded (or graded) papers in our wakes. There are two major types of “dead time” that I contend with, and I suspect you do, as well. The Commute:   Whether on foot, bike, bus, or car, an awful lot of our time is consumed with transporting ourselves. Some days, I hit three different campuses in three different cities (and sometimes three different counties ). This balancing act of classes and commuting is central to the formula we create in deciding our course loads at the various schools each semester. But commuting can swallow up a good deal of vital time.  So how to maximize that time? K eep reading?  Cl ick on through ! Did you enjoy this read? Let me know your thoughts down below or feel free to browse around and...

As I grew increasingly interested in comics, I also became aware of a whole other form of visual storytelling:  woodcut novels.  I found the works of Frans Masereel, Lynn Ward, and others to be beautifully steeped with powerful storytelling through images (highly influenced by German Expressionism) and impressively deep with what they communicated.  George Walker helped me gain a further appreciation of this particular form in publishing Graphic Witness, which not only had 4 great works of these assembled but also had a fantastic essay that further elaborated on the history and craft of woodcut novels.  Herein is an interview with George Walker about his work on Graphic Witness as well as the recently crafted and published, The Book of Hours, his own woodcut novel. Lance Eaton:  How did you get into woodcut novels? George Walker:  The inspiration for the woodcut novel was the Belgian artist, Frans Masereel. I first came across his work at an exhibi...

Facebook, for all our praise, fears, neurosis, and hookups that we can attribute to it, continues to be a compelling intersection of culture, identity, technology, and history.  On my mind today is one of the latest features that Facebook unloaded:  A history of your account activity.  I found out about it when listening on the radio and the crux of the discussion was “fear Facebook, they now allow you access to your entire history.”  Nothing like old media trying to scare us from new media; next they’ll be telling us it’s bad for our eyes and will lead to juvenile delinquency…ooops, they already do.   Upon hearing about this new feature, I went to Facebook and checked it out.  Under account settings, there is now an option “Download your information.”  Clicking through allows to make the choice to keep your history and download it.  I went forward and selected to download it.  However, since it can take some time to accumulate, you don’t ...