Archive - Panels and Prose

Flesh, Fantasy, Fetish: 1930s and the Return of the Repressed

The sheer horniness of the otherwise circumspect American newspaper comics in the 1930s is as unmistakable as it is overlooked in the usual histories.

Jun 22 •

Reframing Star Wars: From Manning to Williamson

Even taking a superficial glance across Russ Manning’s introduction of Star Wars to newspaper comics and Al Williamson’s subsequent pick up of the…

Jun 11 •

May 2025

EC Sci-Fi At Scale: Taschen’s XXL Weird Science

The EC science fiction titles hold a special place in American pop culture.

May 3 •

March 2025

The Maturing of Milton Caniff

Milton Caniff’s landmark adventure Terry and the Pirates has been among the most reprinted newspaper strips of all time…and deservedly so.

Mar 30 •

February 2025

Tijuana Bibles: The Alternative America of Lust

The underground sex comics of the Great Depression were not just an interesting sidebar to comics strip history.

Feb 27 •

The Fabulous Furry Revolution

The United States has never made a bold move forward without anchoring it in a reading of the past.

Feb 10 •

Mickey Mouse Diplomacy: Disney’s Ambassador of American Exceptionalism

By the summer of 1937, Disney’s Mickey Mouse cartoons and the syndicated strip had already become worldwide ambassadors of American mass media.

Feb 1 •

January 2025

Peak Segar: Plunder Island (1934)

The Plunder Island sequence of Thimble Theatre Sundays that ran from December 1933 to July 1934 was E.C.

Jan 17 •

The Democratic Genius of Clare Briggs

The great Clare Briggs (1875-1930) continues to impress me as perhaps the most under-appreciated figure in American comics history.

Jan 12 •

December 2024

Shelf Scan 2024: Can’t-Miss Comic Book Reprints

We go a little off the reservation this time to embrace a few pre-code comic book reprints and underground favorites that have come back into print this…

Dec 22, 2024 •

Shelf Scan 2024: Reviving Calvin, Nancy, Flash, Mandrake and Popeye…Again.

There are now generations of young adults who have no memory of daily newspapers, let alone that back page and Sunday section of comics.

Dec 15, 2024 •

Shelf Scan 2024: Necessary Reprints – From Anita Loos to Betty Brown

Moving through this year’s shelf of notable titles for comics aficionados, I wanted to call out several projects that revived forgotten or previously…

Dec 12, 2024 •

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