Comics and Stereotypes: Another Chapter in the History of an American Pastime

No doubt my obsession with stereotypes is a hangover from my early days as a comic book fetishist--days when Little Dot, Richie Rich, Big Lotta, Superman, Batman, and Plop filled my days, afternoons, and nights with pleasure and that inspired me to be a cartoonist; unfortunately, my academic career as a literary critic and, now, film studies writer intervened and I have to rest content designing books and web-pages on the side as a way of assuaging this passion for india ink and paper inside. I have tried to put the two loves together at times--my work on Los Bros. Hernandez in Tex[t]-Mex and my long theoretical piece on comics, "Artif[r]acture," that was published by Mosaic in Canada.

The downside of comics of course, puerile medium that it can be at times, is that it plays right into the hands of "comics"--funny comics often feature funny looking folks, and a damn lot of these jocular representations just happen to be of people of color.

Now revealed? A primer to "Typery"--a kind of introduction to stereotyping revealed and archived in a recent flickr photoset by Dave Blog (yes, that's his real name.)