ln this episode I use Alain Saint-Ogan's bande dessinée "Zig et Puce" as a springboad for a discussion of colonialism in the French bandes dessinées. I start, of course, with the 1814 Treaty of Paris and the 1814-1814 Congress of Vienna and proceed from there through the two French Colonial Empires, the mission civilatrice, the possible/likely body count of the French imperial venture, the unpopularity of the French colonial venture with most French in the 1920s and how French thought-makers and opinion-shapers reacted to that unpopularity, the use of popular fiction (including bandes dessinées) as a bullhorn for colonialism and imperialism, the evil of the comic strip "Blanche et Noire," how colonialism and imperialism and racism manifested themselves in "Zig et Puce," the influence of Saint-Ogan and "Zig et Puce" on later creators of bandes dessinées, the colonialism and imperialism in the Tintin bandes dessinées, the colonialism and imperialism of the bandes dessinées after World War Two, the Algerian War and the tremendously appalling actions of the French in it, how the bandes dessinées reacted to Algerian independence, and how slow the French have been to examine the colonialism and imperialism in "Zig et Puce" and other treasured bandes dessinées. Among other things.

In this episode I discuss the publication of Superman #1, the first comic book dedicated to the stories of one character. I talk about why this is significant, what DC Comics was probably thinking about when they published Superman #1, the issue's immediate success, why its contents are significant, how Superman #1 is the start of a major change in the portrayal of Superman, and alllll about the Jewishness of Superman, from Siegel & Shuster's immigrant parents to the antisemitic atmosphere in which Superman appeared to where Superman lands on the assimilation-vs-acculturation continuum to the various very Jewish elements of Golden Age Superman to which Jewish denomination Superman belongs to.

To help celebrate Juneteenth, I made an episode in which I discuss Black creators of paraliterature, which (as I'm sure you know) is all of that literature which is not "respectable" or within the margins of "recognized literature." Naturally, there's too much to say to limit myself to only Black comics writers and artists, so I went back to the 17th century and started there. I discuss the Purtians, chapbooks, slave narratives and the work of "free Negroes," The Black Vampyre: A Legend of St. Domingo, novelettes of the Mexican-American War, dime novels and the story of the sole Black dime novel author we know about, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, how much we don't know about the authors of the pulps, which science fiction pulps were popular in which Black neighborhoods, and various Black artists of comics' Golden Age, including Adolpe Barreaux, E.C. Stoner, Robert Savon Pious, and Jay Paul Jackson, and then finally Iceberg Slim.