Books

Comics in Wisconsin

By Tao Mori
January 10, 2011 - 22:18

    I admit that I knew little about the origins of comics in Wisconsin, but soon discovered (after reading this book) that I had read several comics that were originally from Wisconsin. One of my favourite comic book series of all times was written there, Nexus along with another favourite, The Badger. Nexus, I learned came out at a time when comics in Wisconsin were in their heyday.

    Another comic book from back in the day was about a boy named Skeeziks, only I never knew the name of the comic (Gasoline Alley), though I remember the character affectionately made fun of from MAD, called Skizziks, which spelled backwards is skizzikS. I found Buhle’s work to be a comprehensive look at the history of comics in Wisconsin starting with comic strips that appeared in newspapers in the early years of the 20th Century. Comics evolved from there and these comics differed from the mainstream series that came out later on in the 1950s such as Marvel, DC or MAD. In some ways Weird Comics (featured a bit in the book) were similar in their bizarreness and art style to that of MAD magazine, but of course they had different artists and writers.

    There was also a series of underground comics that came out in the troubled 60s and 70s that were produced with a social and political slant. I had thought that this had been more of a western movement, but learned that Wisconsin played a role in this as well.
    Within the book is a smattering of comics ranging throughout history, but unfortunately these were just snippets and there were very few of them. It’s hard in a book like this to create a balance between actual comics and the text about history. Of course more comics would have been better, but then this would’ve had to been a larger more costly book. For what it was it did its job well as it presented the history of comics in Wisconsin.
    There isn’t much I can say about the artwork as the artwork in the comics was contributed by many different artists. I found the cover to be amusing as it has the funny hippy woman asking the logger to please save the tree that’s he’s about to knock down.
    The only real critic I can scrounge up about this book is that I would’ve liked more comics, but at the same time I found that the balance worked well so its more of a plea than a critic. If you want to know more about comics in Wisconsin then grab this book, sadly I don’t think that appeals to many people, but for those of you that it does appeal to then go grab it.

Rating: 9 / 10

Last Updated: November 29, 2025 - 16:51