Henderson Oracle

Issue date: 8/31/09 Section: Features

Media Credit: Ashleigh Mayes With great "Power..." - Dr. Randy Duncan displays a copy of his newly-published book, "The Power of Comics." Duncan and co-author Matt Smith spent more than two years planning, research- ng and writing the book. Duncan plans to use the book for Comics as Communication, a class he has taught for 18 years. The book is available for purchase on publishing company's Web site, continuum- books.com, as well as Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.

Every other year in the spring semester, Professor of Communication and Theatre Arts Randy Duncan teaches the Comics as Communication course.

Duncan made the decision to develop his own comics course when he heard that similar classes were being taught back in the 1970s.

"There was one at Berkley and one in the popular culture department at Bowling Green State University," said Duncan.

"And one that I later discovered was taught by the current producer of the Batman movies, Michael Uslan." Ever since he was eight years old, Duncan has been reading comics and has a
long academic history with the medium.

While at Louisiana State University where he received his M.A. and Ph. D. in rhetoric, Duncan wrote one of the first doctoral dissertations on comics, titled "Panel Analysis: The Rhetoric of Comic Book Form."

In 1992, Duncan co-founded the Comic Arts Conference, the first U.S. academic conference devoted to comic books and graphic novels.

Duncan has also been presenting papers on comics and graphic novels at the Comics & Comic Art area of the Popular Culture Association for two decades, and this year he won the organization's Inge Award for Comic Scholarships.

He has also made presentations on comics at various academic conferences throughout the U.S. as well as Scotland, Greece and France.

Duncan has a copy of the mimeographed syllabus from the BGSU, Bowling Green State University, class. That syllabus, combined with his dissertation, was the starting point for developing his own class.

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