Survey of the Drawn Story I essays…

Hello all, Stephen Bissette here. I’ve been part of CCS since its initial summer classes (2005) and pioneer year (2005-2006), and since then I’ve been teaching and co-teaching (with Robyn Chapman) our comics history course, Survey of the Drawn Story. Initially, Survey was a single-semester course; it’s now a two semester course, which allows for far greater depth and expanse of coverage.

As of our Spring 2010 semester, my former co-instructor Robyn Chapman began the practice of posting select essays from our students concerning aspects of comics history. I’m carrying on that “tradition” (we’ll make it one yet!) starting tomorrow here at the Schulz Library blog, offering a selection of essays—some in written form, some in comics form—from this fall’s Survey of the Drawn Story I class.

This first batch of essays focus exclusively on various comic strips of the 20th Century. I’ll be posting them in roughly chronological order according to when their subject matter was either launched or in its heyday. I hope you’ll enjoy these essays, some of which will be posted complete, some of which I’ll offer excerpts from (to avoid repetition, to eliminate factual errors, or to focus on the meat of a given paper).

Please take them in the context in which they were written and/or drawn: these were deadline assignments, reflecting just one of the many projects the students are juggling in a given period of time here at CCS. There’s much good work and solid writing and cartooning here, but this isn’t what they would create for publication or for a more professional venue, given proper research time and a paying venue.

Nevertheless, all these essays provide engaging, enlightening, and entertaining reading, and we hope you’ll find something of interest here in the coming days…

– Stephen R. Bissette, Mountains of Madness, VT