For the past three years, I’ve written blog entries covering the events of the MSU Comics Forum. From their website:
Held every year on the beautiful campus of Michigan State University, home of the largest public collection of comic books, The Michigan State University Comics Forum is a 2 day event that brings together scholars, creators, and fans in order to explore celebrate the medium of comics, graphic storytelling, and sequential art.
Due to unfortunate events, those entries were recently destroyed. To compound the trouble, I was unable to retrieve the text of the 2011 editions from archives, meaning that they’re gone for good.
Fortunately, I have managed to retrieve the entries from the 2009 and 2010 Comics Forums, which I have restored and provided here.
Note: any and all internal links (not leading to sites that exit I Evolved Into This) in the following articles will either be broken or lead to the wrong place. They were copied as-is from the archives along with the text and formatting.
MSU Comics Forum, 2009 (Part 1)
MSU Comics Forum, 2009 (Part 2)
MSU Comics Forum, 2009 (Part 3)
MSU Comics Forum, 2010 (Part 1)
MSU Comics Forum, 2010 (Part 2)
MSU Comics Forum, 2010 (Part 3)
A few recollections from 2011:
- The keynote speaker was Nate Powell. I was unable to attend his opening speech, but I was present to hear him speak at the creators panel, where he struck me as a tremendously individualistic talent.
- I spent much time (and money) at the “Artists Alley”, the meet and greet featuring a number of local and Michigan artists. In particular, I visited with Jim Mackey and Matt Feazell at the Amazing Cynicalman table, where a multifaceted, endlessly undulating conversation was held.
- I attended a panel called “Outside the Mainstream”, which included Alexandra Newman’s critical analysis of the French comic Aprés la pluie, a feature on comics in the age of the Internet by Fiona Smith, a discussion of the relationship between comics and the U.S. government by Richard L. Graham, and developing sociological research into narrative comics by Rachel Marie-Crane Williams.
- During the forum, the Lookout! Gallery in Snyder-Philips Hall was decorated with a number of historical (i.e. pre-1938) comic selections, generously provided by the MSU Libraries Comic Art Collection.
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Aug 29, 2011 @ 23:36
