I remember the first comic book I read. It was a Looney Toons comic from the comic shop where my brother would hang out and play Magic: The Gathering. I picked it up, my parents bought it, and by the time we got home from the comic shop ten minutes later, I’d finished it. I still remember my parents asking… Read more →
Author: jdesteph

Sexual Content: Graphic Novels vs. Books
I still remember the day someone took my copy of Watchmen and waved it in front of my math class claiming I was reading pornography. I was lucky to have a teacher who knew what Watchmen was and explained to this student that, no, it wasn’t pornography, it was literature. If it had been another teacher or administrator, I would have gotten in… Read more →

Graphic Novels and The Jewish Disapora
In junior year of high school, I took an english elective course on diaspora. My original course had been cancelled so I had been randomly placed into an elective I knew nothing about. I learned that, in short, diaspora meant displacement and a lot of the stories we’d be exploring involved cultural or religious diasporas. It was then that I… Read more →

The Evolution of Webcomics
I got into the webcomic world in a really unconventional way. One of my favorite authors tweeted an XKCD comic and I clicked it. I was young and didn’t understand all the humor, but I worked in an office and needed something to do, so I pored over all the comics. When I ran out, I scrolled to the bottom… Read more →