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The Michigan State University Comics Forum is proud to announce another set of dual keynote speakers for our 11^th Anniversary event to be held on the final weekend of February 2018.

Our Creator Keynote Speaker, Lucy Knisley, is a critically acclaimed, award-winning comic creator who specializes in personal, confessional comics and travelogues. She attended The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Merit Scholar, BFA 2007), followed by The Center for Cartoon Studies (Diamond in the Rough Scholar, MFA 2009).  To date her work has been published by several major publishers, including French Milk (2008, Touchstone/Simon & Schuster), Relish (2013, First Second [MacMillan Comics Imprint]), An Age of License (2014, Fantagraphics), Displacement (2015, Fantagraphics), and Something New: Tales from a Makeshift Bride (2016, First Second [MacMillan Comics Imprint]).

2018’s Scholar Keynote Speaker, Diana Schutz, is an award-winning editor who has been working in comics for almost forty years. She was senior executive editor at Dark Horse Comics, where she was on staff from 1990 to 2015. She was Frank Miller’s editor on Sin City and 300, Matt Wagner’s editor on Grendel, Stan Sakai’s editor on Usagi Yojimbo, Paul Chadwick’s editor on Concrete, and Larry Marder’s editor on Beanworld. She applied her knowledge of romance languages to edit international material in translation such as Blacksad and The Manara Library. She has worked with authors Michael Chabon, Neil Gaiman, Harvey Pekar, and Harlan Ellison, among others. She was fortunate to have been Will Eisner’s Dark Horse editor until his death in 2005. She is also an adjunct instructor of Comics Studies at Portland State University, a published author of both comics and prose, and the first woman to be inducted into the Canadian Comic Book Creator Hall of Fame. Semi-retired, she now works as a literary translator of European comics, including work by Moebius, Manara, Muñoz & Sampayo, and more.

Our Creator Keynote Address will take place on the evening of Friday, February 23rd.  Our Scholar Keynote Address will be delivered midday on Saturday, February 24th.  Check back for an updated schedule.

The Michigan State University Comics Forum seeks proposals for presentations, which may include but are not limited to:

Individual submissions
– Each presenter will have 15 minutes to discuss his/her topic along with 5 minutes for questions
– Presenters will be grouped with other participants into a panel

Panel Sessions
– Will run for 1 hour and 15 minutes
– Must include at least 3 presenters
– Presenters must discuss similar or connected topics
– Those proposing a panel are responsible for finding their own panel session members

Roundtables
– Will run for 1 hour
– Must include at least 3 participants
– Presenters must discuss one specific topic
– Those proposing a roundtable are responsible for finding their own session members

Submissions from a broad range of disciplines are encouraged; however, presentations must be focused on the medium of comics. The MSU Comics Forum is seeking a multitude of perspectives that represent the diversity of comics and the medium’s social, literary, artistic, and theoretical contexts.

Individual submissions require a 250-word (maximum) abstract of the topic as well as name and affiliation. Panel sessions require one 250-word abstract for the overarching topic and a unique abstract for each presenter’s specific topic, including name and affiliation, e-mailed together. Roundtable proposals should include a 250-word abstract that includes an explanation of the topic and the names and affiliations of the participants.

Due to the visual nature of the comics medium and diverse community engagement in the Forum, we ask that all presentations integrate visual content.  Panel presentations should be .ppt, slides, .pdf, or .presi, and on USB or accessible online

Proposals are due December 10, 2017 by 11:59 PM EST

Please submit proposals to the 2018 MSU Comics Forum Panel Coordinator, Zack Kruse, at: msucfpanels@gmail.com

Presenters will be notified of acceptance by December 22, 2017.

For more information visit comicsforum.msu.edu

This year’s MSU Comics Forum Artists Alley will be taking place on Saturday, Feb. 24th, 2018. There is no cost to request table space for the MSU Comics Forum.

To request table space complete the requested information at the following form by Sunday,  December 10, 2017 11:59 PM EST:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScPhgRa1amgrSMrOd8EoWpgwEAy1RxP3RNzQcR_tOWAm0pd2g/viewform?usp=send_form

Due to limited space the Artist Alley is juried and not all requests will be met. Once the application is received it will be reviewed and you will be notified via e-mail by Friday, Dec. 22nd, 2017 as to whether or not we are able to meet your request.  Accepted Artists will receive table space free of charge.

For those unable to attend this year’s event, the 2017 MSU Comics Forum Keynote speeches have been archived:

2017 MSU Comics Forum Creator Keynote Speech – James Sturm:

2017 MSU Comics Forum Scholar Keynote Speech – Charles Hatfield:

Thanks, again, to our keynote speakers, James Sturm and Charles Hatfield!

The 2017 MSU Comics Forum has come and gone and I wanted to take a moment to reflect on last weekend, as well as thank the folks who made it possible.

Our Creator Keynote Speaker, James Sturm, took the stage on Friday, Feb 24th:

And spoke to a healthy crowd of comics scholars, artists, and community memebers.

Our two keynote speakers (James Sturm and Charles Hatfield) were part of a limited tour of the MSU Special Collections Library (the largest public collection of comic books in the world) on the morning of Saturday, Feb 25th.  Charles Hatfield in foreground, below:

Randy Scott, MSU Special Collections Comics Bibliographer, administers the tour while James Sturm, 2017 MSU Comics Forum Creator Keynote Speaker, looks on in the foreground:

After the tour, both keynote speakers sign some of their work pulled from the MSU Special Collections Library:

Shortly after noon on Saturday, Feb 25th, our Scholar Keynote Speaker, Charles Hatfield, spoke to a full room about “Collage in Comics”:

After the event was over, I recorded a couple of interviews with our keynote speakers for season #2 of the MSU Comics Art and Graphic Novel Podcast, which will air next academic year.  I was joined by Zack Kruse, MSU Comics Forum Panel Coordinator, for the interview with Charles Hatfield.

There was also an exhibition of Underground Comix which ran from Feb 20th-Mar 3rd.  Selections were pulled from the MSU Special Collections Library and the exhibit was curated by Susan Bandes’ Museum Studies course:

In closing, I’d like to thank all of our sponsors for helping this event to take place, all of the artists who exhibited their comics in our Artist Alley, the book discussion on Ms. Marvel that was sponsored by Muslim Studies (an event from which, sadly, I do not have pictures), the MSU Comics Forum Promotions Committee for helping spread the word and take care of event planning details on our big weekend, both of our accomplished keynote speakers who not only helped to make our 10th year a benchmark but were incredibly giving of their time throughout the weekend, and finally the MSU Comics Forum Core Committee; Jay Jacot, Zack Kruse, and Jason Larsen, this couldn’t happen without you.  I’m extremely pleased with our 10th anniversary event and I’m looking forward to the next decade and beyond.

Sincerely,
Ryan Claytor
MSU Comics Forum – Director

Due to the recent travel ban, a number of our international scholars are unable to participate in their originally scheduled panel discussions. Based on this news, the panel discussions have been reorganized. Please see the Schedule page for the updated panel discussions. We appreciate your understanding regarding these circumstances, and we wish our international colleagues the very best.

Zack Kruse
MSU Comics Forum – Panel Coordinator

If you’re unable to attend the Comics Forum this year, both keynote speeches will be LiveStreamed at:

go.cal.msu.edu/msucomicsforum

James Sturm
2017 MSU Comics Forum Creator Keynote Speaker
Starting at 7pm EST, Friday, Feb 24th

Charles Hatfield
2017 MSU Comics Forum Scholar Keynote Speaker
Starting at 12:15pm EST, Saturday Feb 25th

The 2017 MSU Comics Forum schedule and Artist Alley list are now completely up-to-date for this year’s events.  We hope you’ll take a moment to familiarize yourself with what we have lined-up at the end of February.

All events are free and open to the public.

It is my pleasure to formally reveal the 2017 Michigan State University Comics Forum poster illustrated by this year’s keynote speaker, James Sturm.

James’ keynote address will place on Friday, February 24th from 7-8:30pm in the Residential College of Arts & Humanities Theater.

Feel free to repost this electronic image to help us promote the many events surrounding this year’s MSU Comics Forum.

Finally, if you are a business owner or manager and would like to receive a few posters to hang in your place of business, please contact me (Ryan Claytor, MSU Comics Forum Director at rclaytor@msu.edu) by Friday, Jan. 20th, 2017 to be added to our mailing list.

Sincerely,
Ryan Claytor
MSU Comics Forum – Director

The Michigan State University Comics Forum is proud to announce not one, but two keynote speakers for our 10^th Anniversary event to be held on the final weekend of February 2017.

Our Creator Keynote Speaker, James Sturm, has garnered many awards for his work including a Xeric grant, an Eisner Award, and Time Magazine’s Graphic Novel of the year. He’s also a founder and teacher at the Center for Cartoon Studies and has worked for a number of comics publishers including Marvel Comics, Fantagraphics, First Second Books, and Drawn and Quarterly to name but a few.

Our first Scholarly Keynote Speaker, Charles Hatfield, is the author of Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature (2005) and the Eisner Award-winning Hand of Fire: The Comic Art of Jack Kirby (2011), as well as many articles and book chapters. He is co-editor of The Superhero Reader (2013) and Comic Book Apocalypse: The Graphic World of Jack Kirby (2015), and curated the US’s largest-ever Kirby exhibition at CSU Northridge in 2015. A longtime contributor to The Comics Journal and The Jack Kirby Collector, Hatfield has been writing about comics for more than twenty years. At CSU Northridge, he teaches courses that specialize in comics, popular culture, and children’s literature. Hatfield has served on the boards of the International Comic Arts Forum and the MLA Forum on Comics and Graphic Narratives, and is the founding President of the Comics Studies Society. He is now collaborating with Bart Beaty on a guidebook to comics studies and with Craig Fischer on a study of cartoonist Eddie Campbell.