The Comic Art of James Swinnerton, March 18, 2025 at 7pm EDT

with Pete Maresca, Michael Tisserand, Paul C. Tumey, Eddie Campbell and Rick Marschall

The 417th meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, March 18, 2025 at 7 pm EDT. ONLINE PRESENTATION VIA ZOOM. Please email comicssymposium@gmail.com to register for this event. Free and open to the public.

Jimmy! How comics pioneer James “Jimmy” Swinnerton finally got his due.

with Pete Maresca, Michael Tisserand, Paul C. Tumey, Eddie Campbell and Rick Marschall

James “Jimmy“ Swinnerton is one of the most creative, respected and prolific comic artists from the first half of the 20th century — yet his work has seen little reproduction until this year. Jimmy!, new from Sunday Press Books, re-introduces Swinnerton’s six-decade career in comics, from his beginnings as a sports/editorial cartoonist for William Randolph Hearst in San Francisco and New York City, to his long-running strip “Little Jimmy,” to his years cartooning and painting in the America’s Southwest desert.

The team behind the new volume — publisher Pete Maresca, co-editor Michael Tisserand, and contributors Paul C. Tumey, Eddie Campbell and Rick Marschall — will discuss what Swinnerton’s life and work means to comics.

Peter Maresca is the multiple Eisner and Harvey Award-winning editor and publisher of high-quality reproductions of classic American newspaper strips. He has contributed to more than 100 books and magazines on comic strip history. Maresca changed the concept of comic reprints in 2005 with his original-sized Little Nemo in Slumberland: So Many Splendid Sundays. He has since published over 20 volumes through his Sunday Press, including the upcoming re-edition of the acclaimed Society Is Nix.

Eddie Campbell is a Scottish comics artist and writer now living in Chicago. Probably best known as the illustrator of From Hell (written by Alan Moore), Campbell is also the creator of autobiographical comics such as The Fate of the Artist, in which the author investigates his own murder, lately teamed in a flip book with The Second Fake Death of Eddie Campbell, described as a “Pandemic Graphic Novel.” Campbell also has authored histories of cartooning including the exhaustive and authoritative sports cartooning book The Goat Getters and last year’s Kate Carew: America's First Great Woman Cartoonist.

Rick Marschall is the author of 75 books, most on popular culture — cartoon history, comics, country music, television history — as well as biographies, Christian apologetics, and politics. A former political cartoonist and comics editor of three newspaper syndicates, he has written for Disney and was an editor with Marvel Comics. Numerous honors include, most recently, the Inkpot Award from Comic-Con International. Among the magazines he founded and edited are Nemo, the Classics Comics Library and Hogan’s Alley, and he is currently "putting to bed" the premier issue of the revival of Nemo for Fantagraphics Books. Marschall never met Jimmy Swinnerton, but did talk to him on the phone, arranged by Milton Caniff.

Michael Tisserand's Eisner Award-winning Krazy: George Herriman, A Life in Black and White, explored the art and life of the creator of the comic strip “Krazy Kat.” His other works include The Kingdom of Zydeco, which received the ASCAP-Deems Taylor award for music writing; the Hurricane Katrina memoir Sugarcane Academy; and the photography book My Father When Young. Current projects include a biography of the New Orleans cartoonist Bunny Matthews and a narrative nonfiction account of Charlie Chaplin and the making of the movie The Great Dictator.

Paul C. Tumey is a multiple Eisner-nominated comics historian and author of books including Screwball! The Cartoonists Who Made the Funnies Funny, called a “heroic” work by Art Spiegelman and chosen by Panels & Prose as the year’s best book on comic strips. He co-edited The Art of Rube Goldberg and Foolish Questions, and is a frequent contributor to books on comics. His latest book, The Art of Milt Gross: Volume 1, will be released in 2025.