presenting
My Captain America:
A Granddaughter's Memoir of a Legendary Comic Book Artist
in conversation with HILLARY CHUTE
https://www.harvard.com/event/virtual_event_megan_margulies/
DateSep 3 Thursday September 3, 2020 7:00 PM | LocationJoin our online event (or pre-register) via the link in the event description. | Tickets Free - $3 contribution suggested at registration |
Harvard Book Store's virtual event series welcomes writer MEGAN MARGULIES for a discussion of her debut memoir, My Captain America: A Granddaughter's Memoir of a Legendary Comic Book Artist. She will be joined in conversation by author and comics expert HILLARY CHUTE, author of Why Comics? From Underground to Everywhere.
While payment is not required, we are suggesting a $3 contribution to support this author series, our staff, and the future of Harvard Book Store—a locally owned, independently run Cambridge institution. In addition, by purchasing a copy of My Captain America on harvard.com, you support indie bookselling and the writing community during this difficult time.
In the 1990s, Megan Margulies's Upper West Side neighborhood was marked by addicts shooting up in subway stations, frequent burglaries, and the "Wild Man of 96th Street," who set fires under cars and heaved rocks through stained glass church windows. The world inside her parents' tiny one-bedroom apartment was hardly a respite, with a family of five—including some loud personalities—eventually occupying the 550-square-foot space.
Salvation arrived in the form of her spirited grandfather, Daddy Joe, whose midtown studio became a second home to Megan. There, he listened to her woes, fed her Hungry Man frozen dinners, and simply let her be. His living room may have been dominated by the drawing table, notes, and doodles that marked him as Joe Simon the cartoonist. But for Megan, he was always Daddy Joe: an escape from her increasingly hectic home, a nonjudgmental voice whose sense of humor was as dry as his farfel, and a steady presence in a world that felt off balance.
Evoking New York City both in the 1980s and '90s and during the Golden Age of comics in the 1930s and '40s, My Captain America flashes back from Megan's story to chart the life and career of Rochester-native Joe Simon, from his early days retouching publicity photos and doing spot art for magazines, to his partnership with Jack Kirby at Timely Comics (the forerunner of Marvel Comics), which resulted in the creation of beloved characters like Captain America, the Boy Commandos, and Fighting American.
My Captain America offers a tender and sharply observed account of Megan's life with Daddy Joe—and an intimate portrait of the creative genius who gave us one of the most enduring superheroes of all time.
"A tender and heart-aching account of coming-of-age, and of aging, and of a vanishing New York City, as well as a much-needed corrective to myths concerning the origins of some of our most iconographic pieces of 20th-century popular culture. Thank you, Megan Margulies, for getting it all so right." —Jonathan Lethem, New York Times bestselling author and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award
"Read Megan's memoir if you care about Captain America and Joe Simon's other other-worldly heroes from Comics' Golden Age. Read it for a granddaughter's stirring love poem to her Daddy Joe. Read it for writing as compelling as the storytelling. Read it because you, like me, need an escape today, and this is one that'll transport you to an uplifting setting and moment." —Larry Tye, author of Superman: The High-Flying History of America's Most Enduring Hero
"Megan Margulies's beautifully rendered chronicle of a charmed friendship brims with the illustrative skills that she so admired in her grandfather. Painting with the indelible details of city dwelling—gurgling coffeemakers, wooden taborets, and rooftop stargazing—she brings to marvelous life the bonds of three generations of restless, complicated New Yorkers, with and without their shields." —Sean Howe, author of Marvel Comics: The Untold Story
Call for Essays:
Libraries, Archives, and Librarians in Graphic Novels, Comic Strips and Sequential Art edited by Carrye Syma, Donell Callender, and Robert G. Weiner.
The editors of a new collection of articles/essays are seeking essays about the portrayal of libraries, archives and librarians in graphic novels, comic strips, and sequential art/comics. The librarian and the library have a long and varied history in sequential art. Steven M. Bergson's popular website LIBRARIANS IN COMICS (http://www.ibiblio.org/librariesfaq/comstrp/comstrp.htm; http://www.ibiblio.org/librariesfaq/combks/combks.htm) is a useful reference source and a place to start as is the essay Let's Talk Comics: Librarians by Megan Halsband (https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2019/07/lets-talk-comics-librarians/). There are also other websites which discuss librarians in comics and provide a place for scholars to start.
Going as far back as the Atlantean age the librarian is seen as a seeker of knowledge for its own sake. For example, in Kull # 6 (1972) the librarian is trying to convince King Kull that of importance of gaining more knowledge for the journey they about to undertake. Kull is unconvinced, however. In the graphic novel Avengers No Road Home (2019), Hercules utters "Save the Librarian" which indicates just how important librarians are as gatekeepers of knowledge even for Greek Gods. These are just a few examples scholars can find in sequential art that illustrate librarians as characters who take their roles as preservers of knowledge seriously. We will accept essays related to sequential art television shows and movies e.g., Batgirl in the third season of Batman (1966); Stan Lee being a librarian in The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) movie.
Some possible topics include:
Libraries and librarians in the comic strip Unshelved.
Oracle/Batgirl as an information engineer in the DC Universe.
Libraries and Librarians in the Marvel Universe
Archives in the Star Wars Comics
Archives/Librarians in the X-Men series
The Librarian in Neil Gaiman's Sandman series
The librarian in the Buffy Comics
Libraries and Librarians in early and contemporary comic strips
Libraries and Librarians during the Golden Age (1940s/1950s) comics.
How is information seeking portrayed in graphic novels?
Librarians/Libraries in independent comics and graphic novels.
The use of graphic novels such as Matt Upson, C. Michael Hall, and Kevin Cannon's Information Now.
Webcomics and Libraries and Librarians
In what other ways is the traditional role of librarian portrayed in other types of characters in comics? (oracle, seer, three witches, etc.)
These are just a few suggested topics. Any topic related to librarians/archives/librarians in comics and sequential art will be considered.
We are seeking essays of 2,500-5,000 words (no longer) not including notes in APA style for this exciting new volume.
Please send a 300-500-word abstract by November 15th to
Carrye Syma Carrye.Syma@ttu.edu
Assistant Academic Dean and Associate Librarian
Texas Tech University Libraries
Two Wednesdays: September 23 and 30, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
This class brings together two must-read memoirs about politics, nation, childhood, and belonging: Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis and Trevor Noah's Born a Crime. Persepolis, a graphic novel, is a witty yet haunting childhood memoir of growing up in revolutionary Iran and being sent to Europe to escape a country fractured by war, fundamentalism, and the morality police. Born a Crime is The Daily Show host Trevor Noah's fast-paced, touching, and humorous memoir about his boyhood days in South Africa. These coming of age stories are brimming with joy, humor, and sadness, depicting worlds where children are forced to grow up all too quickly. Two Wednesdays: September 23 and 30, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Online Class.
Reading Schedule:
9/23: Persepolis
9/30: Born a Crime
Books
Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
Trevor Noah, Born a Crime
Supriya Goswami teaches courses in literature (with special focus on Africa and South Asia), culture, and politics at Georgetown University. She has previously taught at California State University, Sacramento and at George Washington University. She is the author of Colonial India in Children's Literature (Routledge, 2012), which is the first book-length study to explore the intersections of British, Anglo-Indian, and Bengali children's literature and defining historical moments in colonial India. She is currently working on her second book, Colonial Wars in Children's Literature. She has also published in such scholarly journals as the Children's Literature Association Quarterly, South Asian Review, and Wasafiri.
REFUND POLICY: Please note that we can issue class
Announcing the 2020 Ringo Awards Final Ballot BALTIMORE, MARYLAND - August 26, 2020 - The 2020 Mike Wieringo Comic Book Industry Awards are to be presented on the evening of Saturday, October 24, 2020. While normally a part of the fan- and pro-favorite convention, The Baltimore Comic-Con, the 2020 Ringo Awards will be presented virtually, via Facebook and YouTube video. The Ringo Awards has completed the 2020 nomination process, which was inclusive of fans and comic book professionals alike, and both communities continued to show strong support, both in promoting the nomination process on their websites, blogs, and social media feeds, and by submitting their nominations. |
| Voting on the 2020 Final Ballot is restricted to comic book industry creative community -- anyone involved in and credited with creating comics professionally. We now present the 2020 Mike Wieringo Comic Book Industry Awards Final Ballot.
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Ensign Sam Rutherford (Eugene Cordero), Ensign D'Vana Tendi (Noel Wells), Ensign Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome), and Ensign Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid) in the new CBS All Access animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks.
The mega-franchise Star Trek has produced a slew of movies and ten different TV series — the latest of which is a brand-new animated comedy called Star Trek: Lower Decks. The show was created by Mike McMahan, who worked on Rick And Morty, and it tells the story of some of the least powerful officers on Starfleet's least important starship, the U.S.S. Cerritos. In Star Trek: Lower Decks, we get a group of young oddballs and hotshot senior officers, with a cast that includes Tawny Newsome, Jack Quaid, Noel Wells, Eugene Cordero, Dawnn Lewis, and Jerry O'Connell. And, because it's animated, we also get epic battles, space zombies, and spectacular mass destruction.
Show Notes:
Note: We will be covering Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra in two separate upcoming episodes — and we want your questions about each series! If you have a question, email us a voice memo at pchh@npr.org.
The audio was produced and edited by Mike Katzif and Jessica Reedy.
Leah Ly
