James Sturm, co-founder of the Center For Cartoon Studies and a three-decade veteran of the graphic arts with an impressive body of work to his name, will be giving a guest lecture tonight at VCU’s Singleton Center. Sturm’s work doesn’t have much to do with the superhero subject matter many people associate with comic books and graphic novels–indeed, throughout his career, he’s done a great deal to expand the general public perception of what a comic book can be.
James Sturm, co-founder of the Center For Cartoon Studies and a three-decade veteran of the graphic arts with an impressive body of work to his name, will be giving a guest lecture tonight at VCU’s Singleton Center. Sturm’s work doesn’t have much to do with the superhero subject matter many people associate with comic books and graphic novels–indeed, throughout his career, he’s done a great deal to expand the general public perception of what a comic book can be. In 1988, fresh out of college, he published an anthology called Commix, which featured some of the first published work by Chris Ware (Acme Novelty Library) and Scott Dikkers (The Onion). He soon landed a gig as a production assistant on Art Spiegelman’s RAW, and had multiple stories in some of the earliest issues of legendary alternative comics magazine Drawn & Quarterly.
Sturm’s profile has only increased since those early days, with his historically focused graphic novels, such as The Revival (1996), The Golem’s Mighty Swing (2001), and Market Day (2010) receiving widespread acclaim. The Golem’s Mighty Swing was awarded Best Comic of 2001 by Time Magazine. Sturm’s Unstable Molecules, a 2004 mini-series featuring Marvel’s Fantastic Four, which he created in collaboration with Guy Davis, was the winner of an Eisner Award. Even this exploration into the world of superheroes was not typical comic book action, though–Sturm reimagined the characters as ordinary humans interacting in a small mid-20th century town; the plot of the mini-series revolves around a cocktail party.
Along with Michelle Ollie, James Sturm founded the Center For Cartoon Studies in 2004. In addition to offering one and two year certificates, Master of Fine Arts degrees, and summer programs, the Center hosts the Schulz Library, a collection of comic art-related publications housing many rare titles, as well as producing the books in the Adventures In Cartooning series, co-authored by Sturm and CCS alumni Andrew Arnold and Alexis Frederick-Frost.
Sturm comes to VCU courtesy of the School of Arts and Humanities, the Department of Communication Arts, and VCU Libraries. His lecture will compliment a class headed by writer Tom DeHaven and illustrator Kelly Alder, in which graduate students from the Department of English and students from the Department of Communication Arts come together to create a graphic novel. The event is free and open to the public, and begins at 7 PM at VCU’s Singleton Center, located at 922 Park Ave. For more information about James Sturm and the Center For Cartoon Studies, go to cartoonstudies.org.
