May 16, 2003

The New Scholarship of Comics

By PAUL BUHLE

The late historian-philosopher C.L.R. James enjoyed quoting Hegel's aphorism that the old man repeats the nightly prayer of his childhood -- but with a lifetime of experience. James, my intellectual inspiration for decades (and the subject of my earliest biographical volume), was doubtless speaking of himself as well. Today, students who come to a campus with Spider-Man on their minds may have trouble believing it, but they share the superhero with middle-aged professors. For, in our

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