Dispatches from th’ Planet Wisconsin: A Review of "Comics in Wisconsin" by Paul Buhle

Paul Buhle | Comics in Wisconsin | Borderlands Books | 2009 | 100 Pages

During a fictionalized visit to Sparta, Wisconsin in the year 2000, surrealist comic strip character Zippy the Pinhead remarks to the town’s colossal statue of a man riding a penny-farthing, “Yow! Are you one of those giant wheeled beings from th’ planet Wisconsin?” Indeed, it’s a common adage among us plucky Wisconsinites that if you ask someone from out of state what comes to mind when they think of America’s Dairyland, the answer typically goes something like this: “Cheese, beer, brats, the Packers, and Ed Gein/Jeffrey Dahmer.” Not always in that particular order, of course, but the general sentiment remains the same. 

In Comics in Wisconsin, author Paul Buhle wonders why we might not tack on comics to that list of popular associations with Wisconsin. Published in 2009 through Borderland Books in Madison, Wisconsin, Buhle’s book engages readers in a history as colorful and varied as the comic strips at the book’s core. While the scope of the history Buhle tells tends to wind in and out of a Wisconsin-centered focus, the work’s historical breadth and diverse research show a near-complete assessment of Wisconsin’s heretofore un-argued place in the historiography of comic strips and comic books. 

A retired American Studies lecturer from Brown University now living in Madison, Buhle’s primary focus is the history of the American left. One of his most frequent (and by all accounts most cherished) engagements, however, is his editing or writing involvement on graphic biographies of leftist figures—Eugene Debs, Che Guevara, Rosa Luxemburg, to name but a few. Buhle posits in his introduction that the book contains “no giant claim, but instead. . .a narrative,” and from the first, readers find themselves steeped in a warm sense of place as Buhle explores the history of the “fabled vacationland” of Wisconsin and the art and artists from its lands.

The book has four chapters divided by two thematic sections. Chapters one and two are more direct histories of Wisconsin’s comics connections, while the latter two are broader reflections on academic considerations of comics and continuity and change over time in Wisconsin comics as well as the trajectories of the folks who work on them. In a chapter appropriately titled, “How It All Began,” Buhle traces the development of the comic medium back to Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruggel, before decidedly marking Swiss cartoonist Rodolphe Topffer as the proper starting point for scholarly consideration. The stretching to Bosch and Bruggel, as well as inclusion of Topffer,  complicates the narrative somewhat, and would have better served in an introduction—Buhle even recognizes the tenuous connection he attempts to make, noting “It is too much to claim [Topffer] for the Swiss-German Wisconsin mentality, but too tempting not to try.”

Some notable artists and comics in the first chapter are Sidney Smith’s The Gumps (Smith was a transplant to Wisconsin), and Frank King’s Gasoline Alley, the latter of which still finds itself in syndication. Following in his aforestated desire not to make any major claims, Buhle’s presentation of the comic strip historians is largely uncritical besides a parting shot at King for turning Gasoline Alley into a vessel for conservative virtues despite the author growing up in Wisconsin during the Progressive Era. Buhle does, however, make aesthetic judgments of the main strips that he presents, noting The Gumps’ low-quality art and the lack of artistic development in later years from Gasoline Alley.

Accordingly, Chapter two is the more engaging of the historically-oriented chapters, drawing heavily from Buhle’s formative years as a participant in the radical student movements that typified the University of Wisconsin during the 1960s. Buhle retains a fondness for the underground comic, showcasing some of his favorite underground stories in a 2015 interview with Verso Books. Buhle’s start in the underground world came from his idea to publish Radical America Komiks as a special issue of his Radical America journal in 1969.

An unnecessary but interesting historical aside is Buhle’s brief explication of  how anti-comic attitudes formed, and how they percolated into the 1954 Senate Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency and Comics Code, and how that code, with its strict provisions against depictions of sexual and violent imagery, led with time to the onset of underground comix through the impact of MAD. Buhle is an acolyte of Harvey Kurtzman, MAD’s creator, and Radical America Komiks’ first issue pays homage to the cover styling of Kurtzman’s EC Comics work. During this chapter, the book begins to feature reproductions of comix stories, sometimes for pages at a time. At some points, this was something of a nuisance, where prose would abruptly shift to seven  or eight pages of reprinted comic material and instantly snap my engagement with Buhle’s narrative direction. Like the Topffer referenced earlier, this is a minor criticism, and the longer selections could have been relegated to an appendix.

The narrative lynchpin of Chapter two and indeed the rest of the book as a whole is Buhle’s presentation of Denis Kitchen, cartoonist and founder of Kitchen Sink Press, a venerable publishing house that published not just underground comics but reprints of now-famous comics and graphic novels like Will Eisner’s A Contract With God and Art Spiegelman’s Maus, in addition to Eisner’s groundbreaking newspaper comic The Spirit. After some meaningful historiographical tracking of the increasing respectability afforded the comic book, the tail-end of the book reads as a greatest hits section--of Kitchen Sink Press and of Buhle himself, who should rightfully talk about his involvement, whether as an editor or writer, in the return of long-form non-fiction comics and graphic novels after 2000. In fact, it feels a bit serendipitous to me to be reviewing Buhle’s book, as the 2008 graphic novel A People’s History of American Empire, which Buhle and a team of other lefty Madisonians wrote, drew, and edited, was the book that, more than any other, got me interested in politics and history as a high school student.

All in all, Buhle’s work was a joy to read. Authoritatively written from decades of life experience in and around radical politics, comics, Wisconsin, and comics in Wisconsin, Buhle’s work is optimistic, deeply informative, and very accessible. Moreover, the book is written with a timeless levity and wry wit that makes its 10-year age irrelevant. Those with an interest in Midwestern (see: Wisconsin) history, underground comics, or the history of the New Left will find themselves satisfied by this brief, yet excellent book.

This review is part of our series on Midwestern history, a collection of reviews on texts of historical significance in the region. Writers interested in contributing to this series are encouraged to contact its editor, Jacob Bruggeman.