John Lent on academic research:
'Comic art is everywhere, go out, dive into the archives'
Rik Sanders
Professor John Lent (b. 1936) is the driving force behind The International Journal of Comic Art (IJOCA). Since the ‘80s he has been active as a scholar in the field of comics and cartoons, affiliated with the Temple University in Philidelphia. He has seen academic research grow and become global. But, he says, there is still a lot of unexplored territory. His advice to researchers: 'comic art is everywhere, go out, dive into the archives'.
The 89-year-old John Lent has long since retired but is still going strong. He has just finished two new books and visited the Solomon Islands, Samoa and the Cook Islands in Oceania for a new book. He is still very much in the academic world.
John Lent: Seven days in the swing, that's how it feels sometimes. But there is still so much to discover and do. I still teach, edit, including articles for IJOCA, and am still working on new books. Asian Erotica and Comics is expected to be published by Fantagraphics in the fall of 2026, and I have just completed my studies on comic art in Oceania. That is being discussed by the University Press of Mississippi. This publisher will first publish my book Comics Art in the Caribbean in the course of this year. It also features stories with a Dutch context. In Curaçao, for example, there was a cartoonist, Roald - Ati - Schotborgh, who worked anonymously for 35 years because the country is small; It was only after his death in 2011 that his name was revealed. It says something about the sensitivities in small communities.
Historically, those islands had newspapers early on; St. Eustatius, for example, as early as the eighteenth century. And at some point, cartoons and comics also appeared in those newspapers. A great source for research.
You are called a pioneer of academic research into comics and cartoons. When did you start doing that?
Especially from the ‘80s onwards. I wasn't the first, by the way. Comic strip research had been done for some time, but mostly by loners and often outside the university. At that time, a real academic research field, with training and PhDs, did not yet exist in the US. In Europe, they were even ahead of the game, with researchers in Germany, Spain, France and Great Britain, among others. And in Brazil, the University of São Paulo already offered a doctorate in comic studies, few people know that.
Tom Inge, who passed away a few years ago, has been an important pioneer of comics as an academic field of study in the US. He specialized in research on popular culture, humor and comics, including at Michigan State University and Virginia Commonwealth University, and was co-founder of the PCA, the Popular Culture Association.
In the ‘80s, there were still few academics. In the ‘90s, it also started to flourish in the US. The University of Connecticut produced PhD students including Gene Kannenberg, Charles Hatfield and Wendy Goldberg. At Temple University, where I attended, I started a course in comics in the ‘80s. And in the early ‘90s, the first PhD students came along who wrote entirely about comics - a Chinese PhD student was the first. This was followed by students from India, Turkey, China, Korea, Bangladesh, among others; my university attracted many students from abroad, especially Asia. They researched comics from their own country and ignored the superheroes. This also resulted in the first books on Asian comic art, among other things. There was also a PhD student from Kenya; he wrote the first dissertation on Kenyan comics and now teaches about it in his country.
Snobbery
What was the treatment of research into comics and cartoons in the academic world?
Difficult in the early years. Academic snobbery exists! In the ‘50s and ‘60s, television and film were laughed off as objects of study in scientific circles and in the media as were other 'low culture' expressions such as comics. Fortunately, there were go-getters like Ray Browne, co-founder of the PCA and affiliated with Bowling Green State University. He wanted to be involved in popular culture from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, but was thwarted and mocked and continued anyway. He was a shining example for many popular culture researchers and later dealt with his critics in his review Against Academia.
And look: popular culture, and comics in its wake, is now a serious discipline at universities. What played a role is that a research community has also emerged. For example, the PCA got a comics section in the ‘80s; In the 1990s, more papers were also published that were originally presented at symposia. Most of them were about comics in America. I tried to change that with my students, but then there were only a few people at those meetings in their presentations. I wrote about this in a newsletter at the time: 'People, there are comics in other parts of the world too.' It took a while for that message to land.
I have done a lot of research outside the US and written books about Asian comics and cartoons, especially China and Korea, but also about African and Latin American comics. In 1996 I founded the branch 'Asian Popular Culture' within the PCA. Since then, we have been organizing a number of conferences a year with a lot of attention to manga and anime, especially from Japan, but also from Thailand, China, Korea. That helped broaden the field. Interest in Asian popular culture has also increased considerably, especially in the 21st century. Comics research has become truly global.
You also started a magazine.
Yes, in 1999 we started IJOCA, the International Journal of Comic Art. PhD students asked for a publication platform, but did not have the money to set up an academic journal. In 1998, I made a flyer about the need for such a magazine and took it to a PCA meeting. There was interest; People were willing to pay 25 dollars for such a product. After the first announcement, it grew by itself. I didn't really have a budget for international distribution; fortunately, libraries picked it up. The reach is now worldwide, as far away as Australia and the British Library. The Journal is international, multidisciplinary and broad in scope. IJOCA aims to publish scholarly and readable research on every aspect of comic art, defined as animation, comic books, newspaper and magazine comics, caricatures, cartoons and political cartoons, humorous art, and humor or cartoon magazines. The articles are about a variety of topics. For example, the upcoming issue contains a piece about the comic history in Fiji, where I was in February. This shows once again that the American assumption that comics started in the US is simply not true. The British researcher David Kunzle has devoted a few important publications to this.
More fine-grained studies
In the Netherlands, there are clear dividing lines between comics, cartoons, animation, caricatures and other forms of drawing. You don't use those?
I use comic art as an umbrella term: it all falls under it for me. However, in studies it is important to indicate which forms are discussed and what you mean by them. There are also international differences: for example, a caricature in the US is only understood to mean a drawn face, while in Europe it also refers to other cartoons.
These different meanings also apply to specific comic terms, or the language of the comic strip. Mort Walker of Beetle Bailey once made The Lexicon of Comicana about this. His son Brian has expanded and updated this comic lexicon, and the update was published last autumn.
Has the scientific field changed?
Absolutely. In the early days, it was mainly about broad research, because there was little basic [research to work from]. Now you see more fine-grained studies appearing on a variety of subjects: from sexuality, the environment and political ideologies to aesthetic aspects and philosophical perspectives - I just read something about existentialism in Australian comics. Unfortunately, the old guard has largely passed away, think of people like the aforementioned Tom Inge and David Kunzle, Maurice Horn, Wolfgang Fuchs, Martin Barker and others. But fortunately, there are new recruits with fresh, new perspectives.
Maurice Horn made a name for himself with his role as editor of The World Encyclopedia of Comics (1976), The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons (1979) and other publications on comics and cartoons. Did you know him well?
Yes, I was a good friend of his. He emigrated to the US and was already researching comics in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. A good guy, funny, and thoroughly French. I remember that we had breakfast once and I had made toast for him. He looked at it and said, 'That's not toast.' I said: Why not? 'It's not brown enough'. Haha. Every word of French I pronounced, he also corrected.
Maurice sold more than a hundred thousand copies of The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons and was able to buy an apartment on Madison Avenue in New York with the proceeds. He managed to sell it afterwards for much more money, only in his new apartment, he had less space. He allowed me to take over some of his books. Among them were the necessary early publications about comics and cartoons from France, Italy and Spain. I am still grateful to him for that.
In the Netherlands, you can see that in recent years more attention has been paid to comics and colonialism. Is that also the case in other countries?
Certainly. It is a fascinating and painful subject. The imagination of indigenous populations was usually racist. I recently got my eyes on the Australian weekly The Bulletin. The magazine, founded in 1880 and with the necessary cartoons, profiled itself as a champion of 'Australia for the White Man' - stereotyping was standard in it. There are many other examples of racist spending. You have to track down and study such materials in archives, museums and libraries. Much is not yet available online.
Unexplored territory
Where do you still see blank spots in academic research?
There are still plenty of them. A lot of historical research can still be done, such as on colonialism in comics. But advertising comics and cartoons are also underexposed subjects, as are educational comics. There are interesting productions among them. Think of the comic Joe Dope that Will Eisner made for the American army during World War II. That strip contained instructions on how the maintenance personnel had to handle equipment, based on the idea that comics are an accessible form of training. Another unexplored area of research is merchandising: toys, stickers, dolls, tableware and other products derived from cartoon characters. I have not yet seen a thorough study that maps this out broadly. There is work there!
What would you like to say to young comic academics?
First of all: don't get stuck in subjects that have already been researched a lot, such as superheroes in the US, but focus on the blank spots in scientific research into comics. Second: You can't just do research behind your desk. Go to libraries and museums, feel and smell the paper, see the colors, look at the context, talk to comic creators and cartoonists. Third: Diversify your topics and be comradely with colleagues. In the past, comic book researchers worked in isolation, now there are networks, academic conferences, magazines and comic cons, all places to exchange ideas.
My insight after all these years of research is that comic art is everywhere: historical, social and geographical. And that we only really understand its role and value when we look beyond our own country and our own genres. The most beautiful discoveries are not made online, but by pushing open the doors of archives and collections. Like a true comic book archaeologist!
Collection management
You are also a collector...
My house has three floors with nine rooms, full of packed shelves with books and magazines from the past decades. The Library of Congress and Ohio State University both expressed interest in acquiring my collection in due course, about twenty years ago. But now there appears to be no more money or space. My children can't manage it and don't want to. That's why I decided to house the collection in China. Through my network, I came into contact with Ray Feng, a grandson of Feng Zikai, the godfather of the Chinese cartoon. His foundation has about one hundred and fifty million dollars to build a museum in the birthplace of his grandfather, in the south of China. He wants to take over everything from my house and set up a library in the museum, especially for my collection - possibly named after me. We'll see. The most important thing is: it is preserved.
Conservation of comics and collections has always been a thorny issue. A lot of originals have been thrown away in the past; comics were still seen as a kind of wrapping paper. Fortunately, that has improved, and there are beautiful collections and archives in the world, often arranged by people who had an eye for it. But structural attention to preservation and management is highly desirable.
You have interviewed cartoonists worldwide. What are they like?
Comradely, cooperative, down-to-earth, open, with a big heart. No matter how famous, they never behave arrogantly or pompously in my experience. Take Mohammad Nor bin Mohammad Khalid, better known as Lat from Malaysia: a giant there, with all kinds of high awards, he is also internationally known with the autobiographical The Kampung Boy, but remained an ordinary person. He was here once with his wife and four adult children. We had a fantastic time. Such encounters make this work rich.
In the Netherlands, artist, cartoonist and writer Peter Nieuwendijk is a good friend. I was there in 1996 to interview a number of cartoonists he knew from his large network. Peter always said that I was especially impressed by his large marijuana plants, haha. That wasn't right, you know. I was impressed by more things. Through Peter I met Willy Lohman, among others. A nice guy. He gave me a set of three beautiful cartoons, they are called Penny for your Thoughts: dreams of ordinary people, very funny and human. Including, of course, a drawing in which a man dreams of naked women and his wife asks him: 'What are you thinking about?' Haha.
Being under pressure
Are cartoonists under more pressure because of geopolitical tensions?
Yes. I am concerned about freedom of speech, also in the US. With Donald Trump as president - I am obviously not a fan - cartoonists have access to rich material to comment on that, but the media are under attack. You've had the situation with The New York Times International publishing a cartoon by Portuguese António Moreira Antunes in 2019 about the relationship between US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He drew an image of Netanyahu as a dog on a leash, Star of David around his neck, held by a blind Trump wearing sunglasses and a kippah. According to critics, it was an anti-Semitic drawing. The newspaper stopped publishing cartoons after all the fuss. An absurd decision. And then there was the case of Ann Telnaes who resigned from The Washington Post in protest in early 2025 because her cartoon was scrapped in which she criticized the newspaper's owner, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and other media executives who tried to curry favor with Trump.
You also notice a great fear at universities of Trump and the Republicans of being dealt with financially and legally in what they consider to be unwelcome publications. For example, Dwayne Booth, a lecturer in communication sciences at the University of Pennsylvania who publishes cartoons online under the name of Mr. Fish, was told that after eleven years there was no longer a budget for his work. He made critical cartoons about Trump and the war in Gaza. Worrying developments. In my editorial for the upcoming issue of IJOCA I write that comic art is also affected when freedom of expression is under pressure. In my 89 years, I have never seen such a situation in my country. Compared to Donald Trump, Richard Nixon was a choirboy.
Can Trumpism be compared to McCarthyism?
Yes, but this time it is worse. In the 1950s, it was a witch hunt against alleged communists, unleashed by Senator Joe McCarthy. McCarthyism also had a negative impact on freedom of speech, and there was a fear of being on McCarthy's list. But newspapers could still challenge him. Now it is not just a senator, but the executive state that can use all kinds of suspicions and all means against its opponents. So, you see media bending their knees. I've stopped drinking and smoking for 51 years, but when we're rid of Trump, I'll open a beer and light a Cuba cigar.
Biography
John A. Lent studied journalism and, in the sixties, got various teaching jobs at various universities. He also received a scholarship to study in the Philippines for a year, where he developed his great interest in Asian media. In the early 1970s, he was the founder and coordinator of the first mass communication program in Malaysia at the Universiti Sains Malaysia. This was followed by other posts at universities in the US, Malaysia and China before joining the faculty of Temple University, where he was a professor of media studies from 1976 to 2011.
Lent has written several publications on comics and cartoons, including Asian Comics, Comics Art in China and The First One Hundred Years of Philippine Komiks and Cartoons. As an editor, he also compiled numerous studies, such as Pulp Demons: International Dimensions of the Postwar Anti-Comics Campaign.
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