The 1976 Project: A Year in Comic Book Publishing

"In this presentation, I will describe, in general terms, my current large project – an examination of comic book publishing in 1976. Such an examination exists at the confluence of a number of disciplines. First, the focus on a single year draws on methodologies from book history, notably Sydney Shep’s model of model of production, distribution and consumption that focuses on “the complex dynamic intercrossings between people (prosopography), places (placeography) and objects (bibliography).” The rhetorical nature of Shep’s ideas, combined with the necessity of situating comic book publishers as sponsors of multimodal literacy within such a model, means that this project draws on methodologies and ways of thinking from a variety of fields, including Comics Studies, Rhetoric and Composition, Literacy Studies, and Book History.

By focusing on a single year, I endeavor to show how and why it is important to examine the history of comics and the literacies surrounding that history in ways that go beyond the creation of a canon of great works in comics, and why using a diverse set of methodologies is crucial in such an examination. This presentation will give a glimpse into some of the research and thinking I have done to this point, both in terms of specifics from 1976 and the larger methodological and interdisciplinary implications outlined above."