Two talks by Warren Bernard
1. Training The Armed Forces: The Work of Lt. Robert Osborn and Sgt. Will Eisner
Some of the first large scale institutional training utilizing comics was by the Army and Navy in WW2. Lt Robert Osborn for the Navy and Sgt. Will Eisner for the Army created materials used to teach pilots, mechanics and front line troops how to properly use and care for their equipment. Both of them used their work on training materials during the war to refine their craft that was integrated into their post-war work.
2. Before Pearl Harbor: Cartoons and Comics Respond to The War In Europe
This lecture focuses on how cartoons and comics reacted to global events during the run-up up to the opening of World War Two, as well as the two years of the war that the United States was a neutral power, prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. We will look at the movement of the response to these events from the world of political cartoon on the editorial page to the pop culture worlds of comic books and comic strips, by looking at works by Milton Caniff, Milt Gross, Peter Arno, William Gropper, Herblock, Alex Raymond, Joe Shuster, Alex Schomberg, Winsor McCay, David Low, Jack Kirby and many others.
Warren Bernard is a comics historian as well as the Executive Director of Small Press Expo. Warren has written for The Comics Journal on the influential cartoonist John T. McCutcheon, as well as an extensive article with newly uncovered information about the Senate Comic Book Hearings. Last year Warren co-curated, with Bill Kartalopoulos, the successful and critically well-received retrospective on Alt-Weekly Comics at the Society of Illustrators. He has contributed research and images from his own extensive collection to over a dozen books on comics history. Warren has lectured on comics history at the The Center for Cartoon Studies and the Library of Congress, where as a long-time volunteer, he has cataloged over 1300 political cartoons. He recently released his first solo book, Cartoons for Victory from Fantagraphics, which is the story of the home front in the United States during World War II as told through comics and cartoons. His first book, Drawing Power, the story of cartoonists work in the advertising field, was co-written with Rick Marschall and nominated for an Eisner Award.
The 171st meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposiumwill be held on Tuesday, November 29, 2016 at 7pm at Parsons The New School for Design, 2 West 13th Street, in the Bark Room (off the lobby).
Free and open to the public.