3rd semester in a row teaching this @ Parsons

Michael DeForge, April 28, 2026 at 7pm EDT The 452nd meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, April 28, 2026 at 7 pm EDT. ONLINE PRESENTATION VIA ZOOM. Please email comicssymposium@gmail…

Next Tuesday! 4/28! FREE! The New York Comics Symposium welcomes the great Michael Deforge. Register by emailing:
comicssymposium@gmail.com
or go to this link
nycomicssymposium.wordpress.com/2026/04/20/m...

no

i dont know :) tbh, I was sorta just pointing out a phenomenon I've experienced for 32 years as a comic fan, treatment regimen is beyond me.

yes. I was just using the large Hogarth book they did today...I make a practice of buying any pictorial archive book from Dover I see, they're dirt cheap and every page is loaded with valuable stuff. The real equation is Dover>Craphound

I like a lot of commercial comics, I'm interested in everything. I just wish there was as much interest from the other side in our miniverse...for THEIR sake. Art comix ppl can obviously appreciate a good superhero comic, capes ppl just dont see enough good stuff to change their prejudice.

La Cérémonie

It also started in the 80s

Dover Books>Taschen

i dunno, i think superhero genre artists are just as self conscious as 'art' cartoonists, but they choose to deal with that self consciousness by doubling down on an enclosed world of 'Byrne, Quitely, Michael Golden' as the only truth, even discarding Golden Age work in the process.

i think that cliff got a lot steeper during trumps 2nd term…

hahaha yeah, ive heard that logic. it doesht explain why they’re shedding incoming students to the point where it’s debilitating enrollment but either they dont care or dont see that.

'they can't conceive of LOWERING cost to attract more students...all they think of is to have remaining students pay more to make up difference.' With all these schools failing, it's suprising that at least one doesnt cut tuition in half to attrsct students. That thought doesn't enter conversation.

Had a conversation with a fellow teacher about the school we both teach at---the school is facing about 1/3rd of a loss of students, due to extremely low enrollment for incoming freshman class. Entire departments getting slashed in response. School is ALSO raising tuition. My fellow teacher said...

yeah that's very true. my favorite comic of all time, Life? Or Theater?, was done by someone who had no knowledge of comics and more or less (re)invented them in isolation, it's rare you see 'art comics' without the mark (from childhood) of commercial comics...

oh i agree with that, but wasn't responding to 'older work' but 'nostalgia'. I assume you meant older work that only appeals because of the comfort it provides because of memory of simpler time vs older work that is timeless and ever relevant, which I see as the same as all other work that I love.

yeah but even though I'm a huge sucker for nostalgia and spend hours of my time searching for comfort in old media, in the end it only really depresses me and feels basically worthless. but im totally susceptible to it...

I cannot separate art from my perceived view of it as a counter to this. And this is not advocacy for political art, which I mostly dislike. Instead, I see art as containing a richer movement within it that can expose & repudiate the insufficiency within the crudeness of the opposing disintegration.

There is a constant, powerful current of movement disintegrating us, and that movement is crude in its intentions but deeply specialized in its execution.

An EP Thompson passage recently that I really connected with. Thompson shows that in 1790s, textile workers went from living comfortably (some even owning summer homes in addition to their regular residence), suddenly found themselves all but destitute----all the while still working and producing.

marxist theory is annoying to everyone (which makes sense!) but the most beautiful part can be siloed from critique: the idea that there's always another step, but that step involves a tangle of varied movement. work that presents 'a step forward' simplistically & denies complex movement repels me.

and i assume this is everyone else's experience as well...& then of course i have to confront, over and over, that this isn't the case (& of course it doesn't need to be). I make another mistake in thinking that it *can* be a universal experience if people are more patient...but why should they be??

i think (some of) my problems begin with this notion of art as having real earth changing power, and assuming everyone is on the same page with that. and the art that has enacted real change upon me has been work that struggles to articulate itself in opposition to the standard mode of expression.

of course it doesn't work that way. people like what they like, anything that counters that isn't something they should feel compelled to look into, it's just an annoyance at best/a threat at worst.

but the traditional side of comics doesn’t have enough masterpieces to its credit to justify this indifference.

the fringe side of comics constantly has to answer the question as to why it doesn't embrace the commercial side, whereas the commercial side remains totally unbothered by notions of change.

it's insane to me how any notion of 'art' comics constantly has to apologize for itself. 'haha, i don't just like this stuff, i like mark gruenwald too' or 'yes, sure, john romita is a great storyteller, i just think ___ tells stories in a different way'. other side of comics makes ZERO apologies.

i get very lost but once i stop worrying about that i enjoy it a lot