Comic Books at Columbia University

I was initially pretty interested in the comic book exhibit at Columbia University because comics are not one of the most popular and discussed art forms. Most comics tend to have cult followings and many people don’t understand how influential some comics have been on American culture.

Unfortunately I was a little underwhelmed by the exhibit at Columbia. I expected it to be a lot larger and more engaging. The curation was well intended but it didn’t grab my attention and what seemed like the rest of the class as well. I wished there was more variety in the comics. There was a nice timeline going in the first few windows, however, this became less clear in later ones and the exhibit felt cluttered. Also the curator’s narration was monotonous and assumed we had knowledge of comics which we didn’t.

The thing I found most interesting was the display of what was considered one of the first comics which was found at King’s College, now called Columbia University. The crude humor of the comic which depicted a professor telling a female student to get an abortion was surprising to me because of the date the comic was created. Also the fact that it was found in the records of the school and then given to the exhibit was pretty neat.