MSU Comics Forum

Come on out to 2024 Michigan State University Comics Forum Artist Alley (FREE) today! Open until 5 pm inside the Main Library.

Tonight's keynote with Keith Knight is on the 4th floor of the west side of the Main Library in the library green room.

Artist Alley roll call, part 6! (last one!) Come see all of our fantastic artists this Saturday at 2024 Michigan State University Comics Forum Artist Alley (FREE) !

Sean Dempsey – Sean Dempsey is a Chicago based sequential artist. His independent comics focus on curiosity and adventure through traveling or misfit characters. Whether in a comic, illustration, or cartoon, Sean’s stories embrace a balance of innocent and cynical protagonists. He hopes to create diverse, relatable characters that the audience can witness their inner growth, discovery, and individuality.

Suzanne Baumann – Back in a time and place when a student had no reference for what a comics-releated senior project should look like, I muddled my way through one and first comic book. Since then, cartooning has been a constant in my life: a way to share stories,make readers laugh and scratch their heads, experiment with art, develop craft, and continuously try to outdo myself. It’s been years since I’ve been to the Comics Forum, but I have great memories of the show and my interactions with the attendees there.

David Caldwell – I’ve been making comics seriously since 2016. I work in different genres including science fiction, horror and autobiography. I’m currently writing my next comic that could take the form of a graphic novel.

Lisa Naffziger is a graphic novelist and children’s book illustrator from the Midwest. In 2014, She graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design with a BFA in Sequential Art. Her previous comics work includes the 2018 self-published travel memoir I Don’t Wanna Puke in Tijuana and the 2019 YA crime thriller Minus (a Junior Library Guild selection).

Another comic event this Saturday!

Calling all comics lovers! This Saturday, 2/3, at 6 p.m., we’re hosting cartoonist/author José Alaniz as he discusses his most recent book, Puro Pi**he True Fictions. This hybrid book collects short stories and comics, mostly set in the Rio Grande Valley along the Texas/Mexico border. The stories reflect his upbringing in this region as a second-generation Mexican American, at times fusing folk beliefs with Bradbury-style science fiction.

Alaniz is also the author of The Phantom Zone and Other Stories (2020) and The Compleat Moscow Calling (2023), both from Amatl Comix. His comics have also appeared in The Stranger, the Seattle anthology Dune, Tales From La Vida: A Latinx Comics Anthology (2018), BorderX: A Crisis in Graphic Detail (2020) and SCARFFF. He is a professor at the University of Washington and has published three academic monographs, including Death, Disability and the Superhero: The Silver Age and Beyond (UPM, 2014) and Resurrection: Comics in Post-Soviet Russia (Ohio State University Press, 2022).

Joining us for the evening will be our special guest and good pal Zack Kruse (), a comics scholar and creator, who will facilitate a conversation with Alaniz about comics as art and narrative. Kruse is the author of the Eisner-nominated book Mysterious Travelers: Steve Ditko and the Search for a New Liberal Identity (University of Mississippi Press, 2021), and is currently at work writing a revival of Steve Ditko’s Static with artist Mike Norton.

We’re running this event adjacent to the fantastic annual shindig that is the MSU Comics Forum (). The forum runs from 2/2-2/3 at the MSU Library, and will feature two keynote addresses from award-winning comics artists and scholars; two days’ worth of academic panels; an artist’s alley (coordinated by A Novel Concept regular ); and an exhibition of comic art. Head over to the page for more information!