This post is a continuation of my coverage of the MSU Comics Forum 2009, which began in my previous post.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 11:12 AM

I arrive as the artists in the “Artists Alley” are setting up their wares. The panel appears to be taking place in the food court, rather than in the rinky-dink “Spartan rooms,” which live down to their name. The bulk of the nerds have yet to wander in. One of the photographers on hand is the father of one of my school friends. I might say hello, if I manage to struggle out of my shell of curmudgeonity that I’ve carefully constructed over the years.

I would consult an online dictionary in order to find out whether or not “curmudgeonity” is actually a word, but I can’t get an Internet connection for some reason. This campus has a wireless router in every closet, so this is mildly disturbing.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 11:26 AM

No such luck. We are in one of the rinky-dink Spartan rooms.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 11:31 AM

I coax my retardedly uncooperative computer to restart itself in the nick of time. The same unintroduced introductory speaker is back for another engagement, plugging the American Studies major that sponsors this event.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 11:39 AM

This panel is on trends in scholarly comic book studies. One of the panelists is Dr. Randy Scott, curator of the MSU library’s comic book collection—apparently the largest in the world. Dr. Scott appears to share lineage with Jerry Garcia and James Randi. The gentleman currently speaking, Dr. Gary Hoppenstand, reminds me of Steven Spielberg but looks more like George Lucas. In his graduate days, his educators torpedoed his attempt to study comics as an academic subject, leading him in through the side door: pulp heroes and comic strips. Comic books themselves were a verboten subject, surprisingly among fans as much as stodgy academics. And the panel moderator is Joseph Darowski.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 11:45 AM

Superheroes: the Evolution of a Genre is the first graduate dissertation (that these guys know of) related directly to the comic book form, and it is in publication. This bears looking into. On a side note, the broad sitting next to me keeps creaking her chair and loudly chewing her nails. I hope the sound of my typing is sufficiently irritating to her.

Dr. Hoppenstand perceives a sense of conflict between “fan writers” and “scholarly writers.” Fans perceive scholars as being impermissive to their interests, and scholars view fans as having no critical sense. I’d say this is an accurate observation.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 11:48 AM

The broad next to me has been on her Blackberry for several minutes. She is fidgeting. I’m sure she’s here strictly as a class assignment, and I’m pretty sure I want to rip her jittering legs out of their sockets.

Hoppenstand has name-dropped Understanding Comics. We’re going to be hearing a lot about this book today. He also name-drops Will Eisner, for the first time in this event and hopefully not the last.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 11:58 AM

Other areas covered in academics are biographies of important figures in the comics field and studies of comics as a social history. The latter is particularly interesting, as comics were interwoven within 20th century culture in a less obvious but no less important way as films were. Summarizing everything this guy has to say would be an exercise in tedium, so perhaps I’ll write more about it at a later date.

The next category, and one that Dr. Hoppenstand feels is underrepresented, is on character-specific studies. I would personally not be interested in seeing spend too many sleepless nights dissecting the finer points of the X-Men, but to each their own. The reason these books either don’t exist or are underwhelmingly superficial might be because there isn’t enough depth to most superheroes to provide a rigorous study. Feel free to challenge me on this.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 12:07 PM

I have moved to a different seat, leaving the babies to their bottles. The current subject is cultural studies of comics (a euphemism at this point for the cultural theory of superheroes). Hoppenstand is mercifully critical of the “___ and Philosophy” book series, which exists on the dubious merit of providing superficial criticism of pop culture in the major bookstores, by way of lucrative marketing tie-ins.

Randy Scott takes the floor. His personal history of academia and popular culture goes back about a decade further. Scott went from a modest typist to a curator in the library’s special collections department, and is majorly responsible for making MSU an early adopter of comics as a legitimate medium of art and entertainment. He’s certainly responsible for making it the largest collection of comics from around the world, in the world. Bigger than the Library of Congress, even, which keeps only American comics.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 12:16 PM

Scott returns to the subject of fan suspicion, characterizing himself as more of a fan early on than a scholar. It is of possible interest that this was occurring very close to the time of Eisner’s return to comics with A Contract with God. Scott contends that fan scholarship was the only kind of scholarship that existed at the time. Fan scholarship ironically begat the academic scholarship that soon provided its opposition.

His goal, simply put, is to “get everything. Good, bad, bring it all in.” But, he says, there must be a limit, and he’s appealing to his audience to help him decide where to go from here. My personal answer is to find titles that encourage people to believe in the immense artistic potential of comics, to get them to see that talents equivalent to Dickens, O. Henry, or Clarke can be—and, in some cases, have been—applied to the comics medium. I’m not so concerned with getting people to take the Flash seriously as a subject of historical and cultural significance, because that’s such a specialized area of interest. Get them to treat comics as a leading form of art and entertainment that affects the world at large, like film did in the 20th century.

I haven’t fully collected my thoughts on this yet, so I may email him rather than bend his ear now. I’m sure he’s dying to hear from me.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 12:30 PM

According to Dr. Hoppenstand, we’re in the midst of a golden age of comics scholarship. He states, with optimism, that while the field is currently dominated by superheroes, serious scholarship about the minority of literary comics is on the rise, and that the field is wide open. I hope he’s right. Perhaps we’ll see where things are at the MSU Comics Forum, 2019. It does rankle me that there is a an academic course on superhero comics, but not on the so-called independents (i.e. anything not from the tights ‘n’ flights publishers).

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 12:40 PM

An interesting contention from Darowski: literary titles like Maus have encouraged superheroes as an academic subject. I’m not sure how I feel about that. He may be right, but I’m at a loss as to whether or not it’s ultimately a good thing. It may reinforce comics as being forever the territory of superheroes, which is restrictive at best and harmful at worst.

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 1:00 PM

The current panel is over. Ironically, although the food court is right outside, only Subway is open. Never mind that the food is disgusting; it’s currently overrun by people here for whatever, so it looks like I’ll have to skip the next panel and go find some food.

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