Critical Fanscape

Examining the opportunity presented by the largest publicly accessible comic book collection in the world, Critical Fanscape is an ongoing critical making project conducted in my courses at Michigan State University (MSU). This project is focused on publications about comics in our collection. Engaging students with this project allows them to recognize the ways archive practice shape culture and brings them into a position of critical reflection on how the archive can foster new narratives about popular culture.

Fall 2018: ENG 492H Superheroes and the American Experience

In this course, we worked with Amazing Heroes, a fanzine within the MSU Comics Arts Collection. Each student in ENG 492H researched and scanned a sample from the collection. In creating the collection students were asked to craft descriptions that engaged with course readings. In the mode of Critical Making, this is an outcome that asks students to bring together multiple elements from the class to create the descriptive language in the collection. They were told to keep in mind the audience would have limited background with superhero comic book history, fandom, or cultural history, so this commentary must provide a clear and grounded insight.

Fall 2019: ENG 342: Readings in Popular Lit

In this course, the critical making project aligned critical and creative practice by asking students to create zines exploring black comic book characters in the United States. The zine project primed students to explore character, theme, and design in comics and encourage them to consider how the visual legacy linked to black people helped to shape meaning in U.S. culture. The final project outcomes from this course in a physical zines that was added to MSU library Comic Art Collection and digital version that we uploaded to Critical Fanscape. The digital template for the zine acts as the basis for new collection that provides information on lesser known black comic characters while showcasing how database process can create complexity around meaning.