Foreword Introduction The Comic Page, Values and American Society PART I. THE INNOCENTS: THE FIRST GENERATION OF COMICS The Yellow Kid: Urban Poverty in the Good Old Days The Katzenjammer Kids: Infantile Disorders of the Left and Right and Center Mutt and Jeff: The Politics of Failure Krazy Kat: The Social Dimension of Fantasy PART II. THE MODERN AGE COMICS: THE SECOND GEERATION--OR AFTER THE FALL! Little Orphan Annie: The Abandoned Years Buck Rogers: The New Renaissance Hero of the Space Epics Blondie: The Irrelevance of the American Husband Dick Tracy: The Avenger--Evangelical Protestant Style Flash Gordon: The Triumph of the Democratic Will Batman and the Archaic Ego: The Aristocrat as Reformer Pogo and His Friends in the Okefenokke Swamps: A Study in the Irony of Democracy Peanuts: The Americanization of Augustine PART III. THE AGE OF CONFUSION: THE THIRD GENERATION OF COMICS Marvel Comics: Machines, Monster, and the Myth of America Eroticomics: Or "What Are You Doing with That Submachine Gun, Barbarella?" Mr. Natural and His Friends From the Underground: Infantile Disorders of the Cerebellum and the Crotch.
I was born in Boston and kept moving west as I got educated: western Mass (the University of Mass at Amherst), Iowa (the University of Iowa in Iowa City), Minnesota (The Univ. of Minnesota) in Minneapolis). I landed a job teaching at San Francisco State and have been in the Bay Area since 1965. I've been married for 49 years, but it only seems like 47 or 48 years, to a former philosophy professor. I've kept a journal since 1956 and all my books have come out of the journals. I'm an artist and illustrate my books and books by other writers from time to time. I have two children and four grandchildren. Now, in 2009, I've got five books in various stages of publication:
1. Bali Tourism. Routledge. To be published in March, 2011 (I hope).
2. Japan Tourism: An Ethno-Semiotic Analysis. Published in 2010.
3. The Cultural Theorist's Book of Quotations. Published in 2010.
4. The Objects of Affection: Semiotics and Consumer Culture. 2010.
5. Seeing is Believing: An Introduction to Visual Communication. 4th
edition. To be published in 2011.
