For the past couple of years, it has been my joy to teach comic books and graphic novels at Chapman University in Orange, California. These classes had their beginnings when I was a graduate student at the school. I was studying English literature and creative writing. I made no bones about the fact that although I loved older literature, my true passion was pop culture, and in particular, comic books. A portion of the application process was to provide fiction for the acceptance committee to consider. I provided a series of prose pieces, as well as the complete script for a six part comic book miniseries. Before I even arrived at the university, I had already established myself as the comic book guy.

Every chance I got, I wrote my papers about comics. I compared Moby Dick to the modern day superhero comic. I discussed post-colonial discourse in Superman and Jewish imagery in The X-Men. As time went by, my reputation spread. Eventually, I was asked by one of my professors to guest lecture for her. She was going to be teaching Art Spiegelman’s seminal work, Maus, in one of her undergraduate classes and thought that I could provide the students with a solid background on the comic book industry and the features of a comic book. I was honored to be given this experience. The class sessions that I led went so well that discussion began about the possibility of me teaching my own courses on comics. In January of 2010, with the help of many of my former professors, I began teaching at Chapman. Read more