Thanks to @evankindley.bsky.social for shepherding this into print. www.chronicle.com/article/peer...
Teaching Assistant Professor at UIUC, Editor of the @vaultofculture.bsky.social (https://www.vaultofculture.com/), Executive Secretary of the Comics Studies Society, NTFC Local #6546 steward, comics scholar, and a ton of other stuff. Views own.
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Thanks to @evankindley.bsky.social for shepherding this into print. www.chronicle.com/article/peer...
I enjoyed this. And what an infectious laugh. â¤ď¸ "Reporter left speechless after witnessing Japan's new $70 million Maglev train in action at 310 mph"
âExtrajudicial killings and human rights violations committed, laundered by news mediaâ - fixed your headline for ya
Just the plot of Clear and Present Danger, but at sea. Notably, one analyst who understands both international law and moral decency tries to do something⌠youtu.be/jS5WBBDtwXA?...
And these illuminated manuscript pages blew my mind. I was in total aweâthe reference points for these are so specific, the narratives are delightful, and the level of detail is astonishing. These are *arguably* my favorite pieces in the whole book.
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Childbearing is physically dangerous & painful for women; childrearing is an exhausting, degraded, isolating, and impoverishing endeavor that annihilates womenâs other opportunities & goals. When women are free, they choose fewer children. There is no way to make them have more that is not violent.
In addition to boards in the Batcave [NST #40], a variety of string boards appear in the Gotham City PD headquarters in Batman: Arkham Origins (WB Games Montreal, 2013): www.vaultofculture.com/vault/nst/20...
Worrywart now live on Kickstarter! 32 pages of action-fantasy royal intrigue, cartoon violence and contemplations of happiness by me, @lanedraws.bsky.social and @lettersquids.bsky.social. Earlybird discounts for the first 24 hours! Run! www.kickstarter.com/projects/nic...
New product on my shop, The Longest Cat. This is a set of four stamps to create cute mutant cats. guypradel.fr/produit/the-...
40% off Verso's Critical Theory back to school list! www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/3...
My interview with @aaup.org Center for Defense of Academic Freedom newsletter about the new Southern âstate runâ accreditation group open.substack.com/pub/academic...
One of my Supreme Court reform takes is they should be completely barred from taking any outside income (incl. publishing deals) and it should be particularly frowned upon, normatively, to be writing books. Memoirs are for writing after you retire, not five years into a lifetime appointment.
Zines are not a Crime! Free Des Revol! from @free.des.revol on insta archive.org/details/free... For almost eight weeks, Des Revol has been held behind bars in a federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas. Heâs also on an ICE hold. His alleged crime? Zines. >
willburrowsart.com/product/boss...
Repost for Labor Day! ââ¤ď¸âđĽđ
Certainly illegal actions/orders, which could be appealed to the NLRB if 1) it currently functioned, or 2) wasnât about to be dissolved by a Supreme Court recklessly disregarding the Constitution and precedent
The only work I allow myself to do on Labor Day is union workâredrawing turfs for our Fall organizing drive
Classic connections appear in Yuichiro Chino/Moment (via Getty Images)âs lead illustration for Nicole M. Bennettâs âWhen the government can see everything: How one company â Palantir â is mapping the nationâs data,â in The Conversation (27 August 2025): www.vaultofculture.com/vault/nst/20...
Always a great day to walk with my union, NTFC Local #6546! Happy Labor Day and solidarity forever. â
The Fourth Knot (ca. before 1521) by Albrecht DĂźrer, Academy of Leonardo da Vinci. Source: @metmuseum.org Available to buy as a print. https://pdimagearchive.org/images/06905d11-925b-43cd-a068-b34ddf6c3326 #loops #labyrinths #woodcuts #knotwork #ornament #design #pattern #art #publicdomain
Happy Labor Day, comrades đŤĄ
Happy Labor Day! Today, we celebrate workers and the power of the labor movement in securing fair wages, safe workplaces, and better lives for people across the country. đ ď¸đŞ #UnionStrong
If you are in or near Baltimore you should know that the Walters Art Museum (which is free!) has a small but wonderful exhibit about cats in medieval manuscripts
the fatal flaw with the Bluesky is dying proposition is that it ignores the broader truth that I am also dying, as are you, and everybody you know. By dying Bluesky lets us know that itâs one of us, that it shares in our beauty and our pain. Grow or die? No, there is no âor.â Bluesky understands
I have an opinion piece in the New York Times today on how the labor movement has failed to step up to the moment in countering Trump, even as Trump unilaterally strips public sector workers of collective bargaining. Labor will die as a movement if this continues. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...
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Quick reminder: Writing is labour Rewriting is labour Editing is labour Reading is labour Teaching is labour Syllabussing is labour Thinking is labour Academic work is labour
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YOU WERENT MEANT TO BE HUMAN comes out in 9 days 𪹠still canât believe I wrote a horror novel to explore my fear of pregnancy & childbirth as a transgender man post-Roe V Wade, it sold for six figures to a huge publisher, and itâs gonna be on shelves so soon. what the fuck
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Remember - âLiveâ spelled backward isâŚ
Shazam! Itâs Hostess Twinkies time!
i also like Cracker Barrel more than I like any opinion columnist
Sometimes things just overwhelm, and you need to share a #sculpture from last year titled "Pumpkin House." #art #needlefelt #fiberart #mouse #pumpkin #fall #stunday #OrangeSun #orange #ArtYear #EastCoastKin
Some reflections on replicas, the internet's untethering of information from reproductions of works of art, and a lovely email I received from a stranger one year ago. sonjadrimmer.com/blog-1/2025/8/30/will-the-real-hildegard-von-bingen-please-stand-up-its-replicas-all-the-way-down
See what a difference a headline makes? I far prefer @hyperallergic.comâs coverage. hyperallergic.com/1031310/home...
If you saw my earlier posts with this same intro header, Tasks for the National Guard in Chicago, they have become the latest Public Collectors zine. I finished it this morning. It's a single folded sheet and I made 425 copies. Get one free on 8/31, 11-6 at the Hairpin Arts Center, at #ZineMercado
Will Eisner's The Spirit from August 31, 1952. Art by Wally Wood and letters by Ben Oda.
Tapping the sign: bsky.app/profile/gipp...
đđŻ University presidents, take note & start getting in front of microphones, en masse, now:
Selection of illustrations from Variae Architecturae Formae (1636), a series of architectural studies after the works of Hans Vredeman de Vries, a Dutch Renaissance architect, painter, and engineer: publicdomainreview.org/collection/v...
As Captain Tootsie is in the public domain, feel free to use, as Erik Larsen did for Savage Dragon #241! pdsh.fandom.com/wiki/Captain...
I just learned of the delightful Captain Tootsie!
I really hope this becomes the black eye it deserves to be www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
That elides quite a bit of history. Trust did take a hit during Vietnam and Watergate, but it fluctuated after that for a few decades and then spiked after 9/11. It was Iraq, Katrina, and 2008 that caused it to fall off the cliff.
On one hand, reducing car use reduces urban pollution. But on the other, everyone likes it and cities become more livable
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Neal Adams - Superman PSA, From Tarzan Family 62 (1975). The intent and meaning are evergreen.
#MADC
Good.
Side note: I look forward to Chicago and any other schools suspending PhD admissions and hiring also suspending publication requirements for current faculty in those fields since such reqs presuppose the existence of an adequate pool of peer reviewers
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Iâll be showing up to the AAUP chapter meeting next week with âan invitation to join in study.â Thanks for this @andyhines.bsky.social
finally, i reviewed Caza's 500+ page masterpiece, Arkadi and the Lost Titan, a book I've been making my way through for the better part of the year, savoring every complex, psychedelic, and gorgeous page of this massive sci-fi/fantasy storytelling achievement www.comicsbeat.com/trade-rating...
This is good: With Trump/RFK destroying CDC, JB Pritzker's officials are exploring the possibility of buying Covid vaccines from manufacturers and distributing them in-state themselves, source tells me. Dem govs must step up and fill the void. New piece from me: newrepublic.com/article/1998...
Iâm so grateful that I have tenure and the academic freedom to call it like I see it. âDr. Kathleen Bachynski, a professor of public health at Muhlenberg College, described Kennedyâs comments as âabsolute gibberishâ and slammed the HHS secretary as a âdangerous buffoonâ who is âthreatening us all.â
Weâre on the second year of the agreement, but this has our newer logo and dope Lincoln quote. â
Love a print copy of a collective bargaining agreement (for my excellent union, NTFC Local #6546)!
Murphyâs fries (plus horseradish) donât miss đ
William Maxwell, superintendant of NY public schools in 1913 being a BOSS.
Fall semester, Week 1 in the bag:
An upcoming edition of Pierre Bourdieuâs Imperialisms: The International Circulation of Ideas and the Struggle for the Universal (Polity, 2025), translated by Peter Collier, features a string-like network of linked nodes on its cover: www.vaultofculture.com/vault/nst/20...
Next week, we will consider the complications of narrating/periodizing artists' lives and work, beginning Charles Hatfield's Hand of Fire (2012) and Tom Scioli's graphic biographies of Kirby and Lee. #comicsteaching For reference, our full syllabus is available here: www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/7sdox...
Finally, we looked at some comics studies terms, starting with page compositions, using Martha Kuhlman's "Design in Comics" (2020), which brings together Will Eisner, @scottmccloud.bsky.social, and @bpeeters.bsky.social--we will return to these formal approaches next week. #comicsteaching
Adding some context for the studio system, we read from @fredvanlente.bsky.social and @ryandunlavey.com's Comic Book History of Comics, also watching a clip from the 2023 Stan Lee documentary (dir. David Gelb). #comicsteaching
Working on how to describe comics pages and art, in the back part of the week were Captain America Comics #1 and #3 (1941), where Kirby and Lee begin to fully overlap. We juxtaposed the content and context of these pre-War comics with Lee's 1947 recounting in Secrets of the Comics. #comicsteaching
Marvel Tales Annual #1 (1964) reprints chunks of comics from the previous couple of years (with a loose use of "exactly"), both pointing backward to the growing Marvel catalog and forward to how to keep up with Marvel characters. It also documents the Marvel Bullpen of the moment. #comicsteaching
Comics of Kirby and Lee, Week 1: some course setup and jumping right into the middle of things, focusing on a reprint comic from the middle of Kirby and Lee and Marvel, Marvel Tales Annual #1 (1964). #comicsteaching
At the end of each week this semester, I'll be briefly recapping my comics studies course, The Comics of Kirby and Lee, being taken by juniors and seniors (and a couple of grads) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. If you want to follow along, these posts will use #comicsteaching.
For those interested: www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/hmscb...
Trump admin planning to change student visas from lasting for duration of academic program to fixed 4-yr term, and then much harder to renew Could destroy US ability to attract global talent, particularly those seeking advanced degrees in STEM. The median time to complete a PhD is 5.7 yrs per NSF.
I gave a talk this summer on the use of superhero symbolism by insurrectionists on January 6. Between the time I propose the talk and gave it, they had been pardoned and Babbitâs family got $5M. In case anyone has forgotten the details, or would like confirmation that the insurrection was a success:
Hilma af Klint, De tio stÜrsta, nr 10, à lderdomen, grupp IV, 1907 [Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Š Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk, Stockholm. Photo: Albin DahlstrÜm / Moderna Museet]
Itâs not that the sequel trilogy has a deeply ambitious politics, but it did really nail the âcosplaying the fascism of the past as the fascism of the presentâ bit. At least Rian Johnson understood the assignment:
Stephen Miller:
See also the First Order
In addition to a memory wall [NST #692], a couple of classic string maps appear in Jurassic World Dominion (dir. Colin Trevorrow, 2022): www.vaultofculture.com/vault/nst/20...
Civility discourse is a war on thinking and writing clearly. None of this is in defense of nuance. What civility pundits want is to be absolved of responsibility for the content of what they say, provided it's expressed in a particular way. Their fight is against judgement itself.
I will never understand how American elites managed to convince themselves that uncivil debate â not fascism, not impunity and not widespread indifference to facts â is the defining problem of our time. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/o...
Hard time to believe in facts, meaning, and consequencesâŚ
Matt Seybold 