MAGGIE’S WORLD Maggie’s World 017: Organizing Memories I’m in the midst of one of those gigantic, never-ending projects that are among the duties and joys of life. Which is to say: I’m tackling the project of organizing memories. It started when I was going through family papers, came across a small, professionally framed photograph, and […]

MAGGIE’S WORLD Maggie’s World 016: From National Disgrace to National Treasure May 8, 1940, Sterling North (eventually to write the children’s Newbery Honor Book Rascal) wrote in the Chicago Daily News that “color ‘comic’ magazines” were “a national disgrace” and that “parents and teachers throughout America must band together to break the ‘comic’ magazine.” Mind you, it’s only […]

MAGGIE’S WORLD Maggie’s World 015: Girls Allowed Even seven decades ago, comic books were a storytelling art form like other storytelling art forms. Comic books encouraged the girls in their readership to imagine themselves as adventurers, as buddies, as friends with goals just as diverse as the goals of any kid. In the 1940s, mind […]

MAGGIE’S WORLD Maggie’s World 014: Exploring the Comics World The comic books that I read as I was growing up were drawn and written in the United States. But my parents had a subscription to Punch, and I soon became a fan of such British cartoonists as Roland Emett (1906-1990), Ronald Searle (1920-2011), and Norman Thelwell […]

MAGGIE’S WORLD Maggie’s World 013: New Year: Past and Future Ah, January! Named for Janus, the two-faced Roman god of transition who looks simultaneously to the past and future … It’s a traditional time for rebooting our lives: analyzing what was great about the past and what the projects are that we’d like to do […]

MAGGIE’S WORLD Maggie’s World 012: It’s a Gift! “Here we sit in this dumpy little house, waiting for Christmas to come!” My family’s holiday celebrations didn’t feature the gloom that Donald Duck and his nephews faced in Dell’s Four Color #178. To add to the fun, ours invariably featured comic books as part of the tradition. While […]