All this year, Rain Taxi Review of Books has been running a series of articles on the last 250 years of American literature. For their fall 2026 issue, I contributed a (very incomplete) history of the U.S. comic book industry:
When the United States was founded, bound books with text (and occasionally some illustrations) were already a cornerstone of Western civilization. But the comics trade—based largely on brief, serialized, staple-bound booklets targeting youthful audiences with fully illustrated adventure or comedy stories—was largely an American invention. The thin profit margins and constant need for new material created a business marked by frantic pacing, soap-operatic storylines, and the elusive quest to set trends. As the medium developed artistically, it offered instances of rote uniformity and daring experimentation in equal measure, another way comics held the mirror up to the young country’s social and political life—especially in the tumultuous twentieth century…
You can get the print issue here.
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