The Power of Comics and Graphic Novels: Culture, Form, and Context

About Paul LevitzPhD Matthew J. SmithPhD Randy Duncan

Randy Duncan is Ellis College Distinguished Professor and Director of the Center for Comics Studies at Henderson State University. He is co-author of Creating Comics as Journalism Memoir and Nonfiction (2015). He is co-editor with Matthew J. Smith of Critical Approaches to Comics: Theories and Methods (2011) Icons of the American Comic Book (2013) The Secret Origins of Comics Studies (2017) and More Critical Approaches to Comics: Theories and Methods (2019). Dr. Duncan is co-founder of the Comics Arts Conference held each summer in San Diego. Matthew J. Smith is Dean of the College of Humanities and Behavioral Sciences and Professor of Communication at Radford University USA where he teaches the introductory Comics Studies course. Along with Randy Duncan he is a co-editor of the Routledge Advances in Comics Studies Series and co-curator of the traveling exhibition Marvel: Universe of Super Heroes. Paul Levitz is a former President and Publisher of DC Comics and has written for many of DC's major comic books series including Superman and Justice Society. His story Legion: The Great Darkness Saga was voted one of the top 20 best comic stories of the last century by readers of The Buyers' Guide. He teaches a course in the American Graphic Novel at Columbia University and was named to the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 2019.