Resume of Dr. John A. Lent (2025)

 John's wife, Xu Ying, provided this to me tonight, writing, "This is the one Dr. Lent proofed and edited by himself ... in 2025."

Dr. John A. Lent, born September 8, 1936, taught journalism and mass communication from 1960 to 2011 in universities across the United States (West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Pennsylvania); in the Philippines in 1964-1965, where he initiated the first journalism courses at De La Salle College; in Malaysia, from 1972-1974, as founder and director of, and lecturer in, the nation's inaugural academic program at Universiti Sains Malaysia; in Canada, in 2000, as holder of the first Rogers Distinguished Professorship at the University of Western Ontario; in China, since  2005, as doctoral supervisor in the School of Animation at Communication University of China, and in Malaysia and China, where he has held visiting professor posts at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Shanghai University, Jilin Animation Institute, Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, Qingdao Film Academy, among others. He is professor emeritus at Temple University.

Professor Lent's graduate students hold university and other professional posts worldwide, in South Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Turkey, Lebanon, India, Yemen, Kenya, etc. Although they hail from different countries and regions, they have one thing in common: Professor Lent is the person they respect the most. He not only teaches them how to do research and study, but more importantly, how to be a good person. Throughout his teaching career, Professor Lent has changed the lives of many students and helped countless students be employed and promoted. However, no matter how many people have benefited from him, he has always been so simple and humble.

Dr. Lent's educational background includes a PhD in mass communication from the University of Iowa (1972), a bachelor's degree (1958) and a master's degree (1960) in journalism from Ohio University. He has studied for extended periods at Syracuse University, Guadalajara Summer School in Mexico, University of Oslo, and Sofia University in Tokyo, Japan. As an advisor to various educational and governmental organizations, he also served as a judge and chair of juries for international comics and animation competitions held in the United States, South Korea, Cuba, Slovakia, Brazil, Ukraine, Mexico, Serbia, Cyprus, Italy, Poland, Iran, Canada, Thailand, and China. He has given hundreds of speeches and lectures to various academic groups and colleges and universities in at least 72 countries around the world, been the editor of book series with Westview, Hampton, and Palgrave presses, author of many book chapters and about 800 plus articles.

Dr. Lent has written and edited more than 90 books, some of which have won awards, such as the Pat and Ray Browne Popular Culture Book Award, IIAS Art Award, Broadcast Industry Conference Awards, Southwest Popular Culture Association Best Book Award, three Eisner Award nominations, etc. His most recent books include, Comics Art of the Caribbean, Asian Political Cartoons, Comics Art of China (with Xu Ying), Asian Comics, Cartooning in Latin America, Cartooning in Africa, Animation in Asia and the Pacific, and 10 volumes of Global Comic Art Bibliography. His works have been the first books published on topics such as: Asian broadcasting, Asian newspapers, Asian film industry, Asian popular culture, Asian animation, Asian comics, Caribbean mass communications, Caribbean popular culture, Caribbean comics art, and Oceania comics art. His works cover many other areas, such as the division of labor in media and international labor studies, transnational communication, women and mass communication, the world video industry and so on.

Professor Lent has interviewed many hundreds of animators and cartoonists in more than 50 countries on five continents, and has collected many valuable first-hand research materials. Over the years, many of the artist friends he interviewed have passed away, and he has written many memorial articles. His interview materials have become a rare historical record. He has been interviewing Chinese cartoonists and animators since the 1990s [with Xu Ying since 2000] and has made many famous master friends, such as Liao Bingxiong, Te Wei, Zhang Ding, and Mai Fei, who were active in the anti-Japanese Salvation Cartoon Propaganda Brigade in the 1930s; Hua Junwu, Ding Cong, Chen Huiling, Jiang Yousheng, and Han Shangyi, who fought with comics during the War of Resistance against Japanese aggression and the War of Liberation in the 1930s and 1940s; cartoonists and animators active at the time of the founding of the People's Republic of China: Fang Cheng, Wang Fuyang, He Wei, Bi Keguan, Huang Yuanlin, Zhu Genhua, Chen Yuli, Li Qing 'ai, Zhang Songlin, Zhan Tong, Qian Yunda, Chang Guangxi, Yan Dingxian, Lin Wenxiao, Ma Kexuan, Qu Jianfang, Hu Jinqing, Chen Jianyu, Hu Yihong, Cao Xiaohui, and the young and middle-aged cartoonists Zheng Xinyao, Xu Pengfei, Zheng Huagai, Xia Dachuan, and so on. Fortunately, Mr. Lent has introduced Chinese animation masters and their masterpieces to the world through his articles. He has published many articles in journals that he founded, published, and edited (International Journal of Comic Art and Asian Cinema), introducing the history of Chinese animation, the Wan brothers, the leading figure of New China's animation, Te Wei, the golden age of Chinese animation, as well as a comprehensive account of Chinese female cartoonists, comics from the "Cultural Revolution," the War of Resistance against Japanese aggression, Chinese peasant comics and the "Frog Comics Group," Chinese workers' comics, and the comics edition of Workers' Daily.

He has given speeches at many international conferences introducing Chinese cartoonists and Chinese comics. In October 2005, he invited the renowned cartoonist, Fang Cheng, to the United States to give lectures and introduce Chinese comics and their works at the International Comics Art Festival in Washington, D.C. and two universities in Philadelphia, and in 2006, Fang Cheng went to Singapore and Malaysia to participate in comic week events hosted by Mr. Lent. In October 2010, at a symposium in Washington, D.C., to commemorate Chinese cartoonist, Ding Cong, Mr. Lent made an important speech based on his interviews with him. He was not only passionate about the promotion of Chinese culture, but also spared no effort.

In addition, Professor John A. Lent is actively involved in various academic activities around the world that initiate or enhance the level of professional research. In addtion of the International Journal of Comic Art, founded in 1998, and Asian Cinema, started in 1994, he founded the Malaysia/Singapore/Brunei Studies Group in 1976 and its periodical Berita in 1975, which he published/edited for 26 years; co-founded and served as managing editor of WittyWorld International Cartoon Magazine from 1987 to 2001; co-founded and chaired Asian Cinema Studies Society, from 1994-2011; founded and chaired the Asian Popular Culture section of the Popular Culture Association (PCA), from 1996 to present; founded and chaired the Comic Art Working Group of the International Association of Media and Communication Research, 1984-2016, and is one of the longest-serving members of the board of Cartoonists Rights Network International. He was the co-organizers of three International Silver Fly Animation Week events in Lviv, Ukraine and Florence, Italy; co-founder and co-chair of the Asian Youth Animation and Comic Contest in Guiyang, China, 2007-2017,and chairman and co-founder of the Asia-Pacific Animation and Comics Association; he served as a judge for the Pulitzer Prize for political cartoons two consecutive terms, 2007-2008.

Professor Lent has been rewarded for his service with awards from Colombia (Calicomix "Diplome de Humor"), Cyprus (Golden Olive Humor Service Award), Peru (Premio "SIMEON"), Spain (Premio John Buscema Amar el Comic), Singapore (AMIC Asian Communication Award), and China (AYACC Award); a festschrift; books dedicated to him published in India and the U.S.; sections in books and periodicals detailing his career (in Netherlands, Bangladesh, U.S., Hong Kong); the Lynn Bartholome Eminent Scholar Award; and prizes in his name with the Popular Culture Association Comics Section, the International Comics Art Forum, and Malaysia/Singapore/Brunei Studies Group.

“David Kunzle Page” on Töpfferiana Website for Early Comics

 Michel Kempeneers 

Fig. 1. Screenshot of the “David Kunzle Page” on the Töpfferiana website. 

 

Introduction 

In order to pay tribute to comics history pioneer, David Kunzle (1936-2024), the “Töpfferiana” website takes a unique initiative and shares most of Kunzle’s writings on early comics on a dedicated “Kunzle Page,” thus making them available to scholars and researchers.

Though, in 2025, comics are widely spread and the subject of significant academic interest, “early comics” remain a field apart, and a highly specialized one.

Since Kunzle started his academic career in the 1960s, he has always remained an important voice in this field, maybe even the only one reaching a broader, not necessarily, academic audience. More importantly, Kunzle probably was the only high-profile author trying to get books on the subject published.

This has never been easy, though, not even for a researcher of Kunzle’s reputation. In his early years, because Kunzle demanded his “Early Comics” volumes be published in a huge format, (to do justice to the reproductions of broadsides), even though most of them still required a reduced format to fit them on the “early comics” pages. But even in the new millennium, Kunzle complained, among insiders, of a lack of interest by his publisher, who kept postponing the publication of, for example:  his Cham book, without ever providing a satisfactory explanation for yet another delay. Surprisingly, Kunzle was always worried that his publisher would no longer be interested in his next book, which also shows how keen he was on sharing his findings with an interested audience, even long after he had officially retired as an academic.  

David Kunzle (Tribute) Page 

The organizers of the yearly, “Platinum Meeting,” which is organized in the margin of the Angoulême “Festival de la BD,” end of January, found it appropriate to start their gathering of Platinum Age[i] scholars with a tribute to Kunzle. Participants shared testimonies and anecdotes, and one researcher wondered if anyone in the audience was aware of the status of Kunzle’s two landmark books on early comics. “Kunzle 1” (1973) and “Kunzle 2” (1990), as these are commonly tagged, had been out-of-print for ages, and nothing seemed to indicate that the University of California Press was ever going to reprint them. The answer was negative, and the meeting’s organizers promised to reach out to Mrs. Marjorie Kunzle and inquire.

They quickly found out that Mrs. Kunzle holds the rights to all of David’s articles, and, it later turned out, that the same goes for both “early comics” volumes. Mrs. Kunzle was completely in agreement with the suggestion that both volumes be spread as pdf files among the early comics community, though she would not actively participate in any concrete project to make that happen.

During these exchanges, the idea grew to grab the occasion and to really pay tribute to Kunzle’s legacy of half a century of research on early comics. And, why limit the effort to Kunzle’s first two major works, when it seemed possible to stretch it to all of Kunzle’s writings on the subject and share these on one platform? This way, scholars would have a single point of access, and, thus, be able to more easily advance with their own research projects.

As we were convinced that Kunzle himself would have loved that idea, and with Mrs. Kunzle backing it, the “David Kunzle(tribute) Page” (DKP) was born. “Töpfferiana.fr” seemed the logical place to host it, for the site shares a focus on early comics, and since, for a couple of years, it also organizes the Angoulême “Platinum Meeting.”

So, we set out to compile Kunzle’s comics bibliography. It seemed easiest to kick off with articles and book chapters, as we were already sure that there would not be any rights issues with these. Moreover, we discovered that, in February 2024, independent scholar, Hillel Schwartz, published a draft of Kunzle’s complete bibliography, all subjects included,[ii] i.e., not only comics, but also posters, arts, and even corsets(!). Schwartz imposed only one important limitation on this cv; it would not include the many reviews written by Kunzle.[iii]

From Schwartz’s overview, we retrieved all comics-related articles and book chapters, and ordered chronologically in an Excel table. Such an underlying table will allow researchers to also easily search the set for specific data, or extend their own copy with extras for personal use. That may sound trivial for a corpus consisting solely of early comics articles, as it will probably consist of little more than some 40 entries. But, if ever the list is extended to other areas in which Kunzle’s expertise led to publications, that may quickly change, so it seemed better to foresee such potential extensions in the specifics of the current table. Besides, it is not impossible that, at some point in the future, the current project scope is extended to include reviews, both by and of Kunzle.

All in all, it took less than a week to gather about 15 articles, which presumably already contained most of the essential ones. At the DKP Go Live on March 2, the counter stood at 26 articles/chapters out of 38 pieces identified, and early June (deadline for this article), these figures are 37 out of 45, i.e., almost 82 percent, with a couple more files to come. But, the real gems are the pdf versions of “Kunzle 1” and “Kunzle 2,”[iv] which were added on April 6 and, as such, can be regarded as a first highlight of the DKP.  

Structure 

All shared articles are in pdf format. We harmonized their presentation, as well as the way the corresponding files are named. Moreover, we made it a point to only share searchable files, for this characteristic is one of the prime reasons for researchers to be keen on e-versions of reference materials. We also made sure to document all such specifics in the detailed Excel table. That file is only aimed at visitors needing more details; the overview on the DKP of all articles and book chapters identified (and their download links) will be more than sufficient for most people.

On top of that, we explicitly marked every article which we have not been able to locate; this way, scholars and researchers who consult the DKP, or its Excel table, and discover that they have a pdf copy available of one of the Kunzle writings still missing in our offer, can reach out and share, so that we can add it to the DKP at the next update. In fact, this already happened almost immediately after we publicized the initiative on the Platinum discussion list. 

Fig. 2. Excerpt of the article bibliography on Töpfferiana’s “David Kunzle Page.” 

It is also worth pointing out that the overview makes no distinction between languages (English, French, Spanish, ...), and does not try either to establish a logic between articles with the same subject. Indeed, as is the case for most academics, no subjects were ever really “completed” for Kunzle. He kept reworking them, leaving out parts, updating others, and adding new finds and insights, possibly reacting to fellow researchers. Kunzle made no distinction between languages while doing so:  any journal wanting to publish his--then current--insights, was entitled to a state-of-the-art article, regardless of language. (Kunzle was fluent in four or five languages.) 

Future

 An inherent danger of any tribute initiative is that it outgrows its purpose; tribute has been paid, check. People have no obvious reason to return; they have visited the site, secured all the extras they wanted, or found the information they were looking for. Full stop.

Töpfferiana is very much aware of this pitfall and wants to avoid it by approaching the DKP as work-in-progress. In practice, the DKP team will try to add novelties on a regular basis, and will notify its core community of any such updates. In a sense, this boils down to giving the DKP some of the characteristics of a periodical. The aim is to share something bound to interest the early comics community every three months or so.

So far, the DKP has not only shared Kunzle articles; it celebrated its first update by also adding some Kunzle tributes spontaneously offered to the DKP by researchers who had known Kunzle for a long time. More tributes will be added in due time.

Furthermore, Philippe Kaenel of Lausanne University (Switzerland), a long-time friend and colleague of Kunzle, recently suggested to Töpfferiana to open up the DKP to other historic research on Töpffer, other reference articles on Töpffer which have become very difficult to find unless one has easy access to a good research library.

Rodolphe Töpffer (1799-1846) was already on the radar of Kunzle’s mentor, Ernst Gombrich (1909-2001), the influential art and culture historian, and he is probably the artist whom Kunzle studied for the longest time. And, logically, Töpfferiana itself would find it difficult to hide or deny its sympathy for this Swiss comics pioneer. Kaenel shared several of his own articles on Töpffer with the DKP team, who probably have added them already. On the other hand, chances are that the DKP will be able to share the articles of the Töpffer coffee table book, published in 1996 by (then) Swiss publisher, Skira. That book accompanied the celebrations for the 150^th anniversary of Töpffer’s death, and has been out-of-print for decades.[v]

Obviously, it would be beneficial if the missing Kunzle articles were to be added. As they are not readily available on the academic e-platforms, that may turn out to be complicated, but we are confident that researchers will contribute, because Kunzle has left a strong impression with generations of them, especially the ones who were lucky to meet him. We also hope that we will be able to add Kunzle publications in less obvious languages, e.g., German, as we have also identified some of these. That would be helpful, especially because Kunzle always had a keen interest in seeing his writings spread as widely as possible. For him, that wasn’t a matter of ego, but he was very much aware how little has been written about early comics, and how important it is to make Töpffer & Co. available to audiences who don’t know French.

The DKP team decided to also add an atypical, unusual contribution of the “early” Kunzle, which we believe tells a lot about his drive then, and, which is definitely worth pointing out.

In 1972, before “Kunzle 1,” Kunzle translated an article by the French author, Francis Lacassin (1931-2008), for the Fall issue of Film Quarterly.[vi] In this article, Lacassin argued that the “language” of the comic strip shows many similarities, and even some historical priorities, over the language of film. Curiously, it turns out that there is no genuine source article by Lacassin:  in fact, Kunzle combined a recent article and a huge chapter from a new book, both by Lacassin, directly into an English summary. In the process,  he added a couple of small footnotes, and, more importantly, extended his Lacassin summary with four more pages of comments, even adding illustrations, as he wanted to update some of Lacassin’s findings by his own, not yet published, ones. Obviously, he did so with the consent of the journal, which even publicized this unusual translation in the article’s introduction.

If similar unexpected finds pop up, we will make sure to add them to the DKP, as they definitely have historical importance. 

Opportunity 

It may not be obvious at first, but the DKP also offers a test case for “collaborative improvement” or “enrichment” of these source materials. Indeed, it seems that this specific format for a tribute page, with shared materials, has never been deployed before. The DKP offers opportunities to probe how such a project might evolve, when it appeals to its reader community, not only for them to fill holes in the current offer, but also to investigate which added value a community can offer to factually improve key works, such as “Kunzle 1” or “Kunzle 2,” and how their findings can best be shared with the early comics community. A first attempt to do so is on the DKP already, for interested researchers to discover.[vii] Similarly, it can help to offer added value to users by providing bookmarks, e.g., of the publication’s structure, or to add pagination when missing, so that these users do not have to re-invent the wheel. The point here is to see if the community feels like participating to the effort, and if it does so spontaneously, or, on the contrary, it must be stimulated and encouraged to do so.

 The DKP can be consulted here:

http://www.topfferiana.fr/2025/03/david-kunzles-bibliography.

The “Platinum Age Comics” discussion group is hosted by Google Groups:

https://groups.google.com/g/platinum-age-comics.

---

[i] Roughly anything pre-World War II, but, especially, because European comics focus is mostly on 19^th Century production.

[ii] See, https://www.academia.edu/114691723/David_Kunzle_A_Bibliography (accessed Jan. 15, 2025).

[iii] One notable exception is Kunzle’s review of Thierry Groensteen’s “M. Töpffer invente la bande dessinée” (Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2014) for European Comic Art, 7-2 (Autumn 2014). This review also contains a personal biographical account of the origins of his own interest in Töpffer. Hence, it seemed worth adding to the list.

Similarly, Kunzle’s “Review Essays” for the International Journal of Comic Art (IJOCA) have been withheld. For, indeed, as the name indicates, this particular IJOCA format is more than merely a review, and is like a lengthy article triggered by a new publication, as reviews get considerably less space in the IJOCA.

[iv] Contrary to popular belief, Kunzle’s final book, Rebirth of the English Comic Strip:  A Kaleidoscope, 1847-1870 (University Press of Mississippi, 2021), is not the last volume of his History of the Comic Strip series, which had been announced as a trilogy. Rebirth... does not contain any such reference, and the description of the would-be content of this volume in Ian Gordon’s Kunzle tribute on the IJOCA blog makes clear that this third volume, unfortunately, never materialized (see, https://ijoca.blogspot.com/2024/01/ian-gordon-remembers-david-kunzle.html, accessed on March 16, 2025).

[v] Even though, in 1996, Kunzle had already been an established international Töpffer authority for several years, he did not contribute to the Skira book. For administrative reasons, it was not possible to include an article by him.

[vi] “The Comic Strip and Film Language,” Film Quarterly. 26 (1, Fall 1972): 11-23. As hinted by Michael Connerty on the Platinum discussion list March 5, 2025.

[vii] For example, in his “Kunzle 2” (Note 19, p.109), Kunzle (notoriously) states that he did not find a copy of Gustave Doré’s Holy Russia at the French National Library (BnF), which, he found surprising. In the Internet era, it is easy to establish that Kunzle was wrong, but not really so, as it turns out that the BnF does have a copy, be it not in book format, but as loose sheets (prints). Hence, the BnF’s Holy Russia set is kept in the Prints Department.

 ________________________

Michel Kempeneers is an independent Belgian comics scholar. After several decades of comics journalism in the national press, he has turned his focus to proto-comics and 19^th-Century illustrated press, the latter especially through e-versions shared online by major reference libraries. A version of this article will appear in IJOCA 27-1.

Graphic Novel Review: Socrates by Francesco Barilli and Alessandro Ranghiasci

Reviewed by Cord Scott, UMGC Okinawa

Socrates by Francesco Barilli (w) and Alessandro Ranghiasci (a).  Miami, FL: Mad Cave Productions, 2025. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Socrates/Francesco-Barilli/Becco-Giallo/9781545821671

Any historically-based graphic novel must walk a fine line between known facts, re-creations for storytelling or effect, and the need to balance a compelling story with engaging art.  When one then includes a significant historical figure and a discipline that is often considered “deep” - such as philosophy – the likelihood of problems is compounded.  However, the story of Socrates is one that works to meld these issues into a story which sheds light on the famous philosopher that also has resonance in today’s world.

A translation of the original Italian version Socrate, which was released in 2019, also contains a historical forward by Stefano Cardini, explains the events in which we enter the story.  Socrates was brought up on charges of not recognizing the old god, as well as corrupting the youth of Athens. This was in the aftermath of the Thirty Tyrants uprising (abetted by Sparta).  The actual reasons for Socrates’ arrest and trial were probably due to jealousy and divisions within Athenian society.

One of the biggest issues with a biography of Socrates is that he did not write anything down. Much of what is known about his philosophy comes from his most famous student, Plato. Why he never wrote anything down is not discussed or speculated about in this book.  Plato’s version of his oratory skills are clearly demonstrated in the script, and the creators of this graphic novel worked to make a flowing story arc with narration and conversations borrowed from later written works. 

The story starts directly with the trial.  As the trial is taking place, chapter sections go back to past memories or aspects of Greek gods; instances in the past are presented in black and white, while the sections about Greek gods or lore are illustrated to look like a Grecian vase artwork.

Much of Socrates view on the issues of the world are applicable not only to his Athens, but still today.  One of Aristotle’s biggest complaints was that no matter what their status, everyone he talked to considered themselves an expert on a variety of subjects. He personally thought that “the wisest is he who knows he knows nothing.” (p. 29). He also noted that while many people may feel that laws benefit everyone, the prevailing truth was that the strong always dominate the weak, be it in nature or in a society of laws.  Reportedly, Socrates even predicted his own arrest and trial due to people around him.  To that end, Socrates noted that rather than being driven by power or money, he wanted to live his life pursuing the truth.  “Not to have riches or honor but to seek wisdom and truth” (p. 55) was an aspect of Socrates’ creed for a just life.

Socrates’ trial was one in which the true motives of those who opposed him or his ideals (or were simply jealous) were brought to light.  The nature of the charges was disputed through logic and reason, yet made no difference in the end.  His sentence was one of three options: exile from Athens, a monetary fine (which many of his disciples were willing to pay) or death by poison, in this case hemlock. Socrates argued that he was too old to live in exile, especially with his wife and children still in Athens, nor was he rich enough to pay any sort of fine imposed upon him.  He accepted death, and this story is relayed in a simple, yet almost dreamlike manner. 

The entire book is under 150 pages, while the last part is a section that deals with the historical basis of both the story itself, as well as discussing the art. Rough sketches are included to give insight into the process.  One passage stood out in this section, and it seems especially apt in today’s climate; Barilli writes, “a free and rigorous intellectual always makes those who hold power, in whatever way it is exercised, uncomfortable.” (p. 139).  As so many institutions of higher learning, let alone politicians, are questioned for their rigor, or lack thereof, this story from 2,500 years ago still serves as a guide for good moral governance and living.