Arlen’s Events Blog
*Click on each Event to enlarge!*
JOKER-BATMAN free webinar 5/10
“THE 50th ANNIVERSARY OF THE GREATEST JOKER-BATMAN STORY” free webinar!
NEW YORK CITY in COMICS webinar via NY Adventure Club 5/19
Friday, May 19 @ 5:30pm EST:
“NEW YORK COMICS: Images of the City in Comic Art History” webinar via NY Adventure Club!
As much as the original superheroes themselves, New York City itself has played a prominent role in the history of American comic art!
So come join New York Adventure Club and illustrator & comic book/pop culture historian Arlen Schumer (author/designer, The Silver Age of Comic Book Art), as he presents a verbal and visual overview of images of New York City in comic art history!
•••CAN’T make it LIVE? Register and get access to the full replay for ONE WEEK!
VIVIAN MAIER webinar via NY Adventure Club 5/3
Wednesday, May 3 @ 5:30pm EST:
“VIVIAN MAIER: The Greatest Photographer of the 20th Century?” webinar via NY Adventure Club!
The life, career, and truly unbelievable story of American photographer VIVIAN MAIER (1926-2009) gives truth to the adage that “truth is stranger than fiction.”
How else to describe how a woman with no formal artistic training could take over 100,000 photographs in her lifetime, hardly develop or print any of them, die unknown and unmourned—and then, in the quirkiest of fates, have her works accidentally discovered posthumously by a young photographer, who brings them to public exposure and subsequent acclaim, fame and renown?
So join New York Adventure Club and pop culture historian Arlen Schumer (author/designer, The Silver Age of Comic Book Art) as we explore the life and career of Maier, and how her esteemed body of photographic works measures up to some of the greatest photographers of the 20th Century!
•••CAN’T make it LIVE? Register and get access to the full replay for ONE WEEK!
1964 webinar (Part 2) via NY Adventure Club 4/27
Thursday, April 27 @ 5:30pm EST:
“1964: When The ’60s Became The ’60s (Part 2: July-Dec)” webinar via NY Adventure Club!
While the 20th century is packed with culturally defining moments in American entertainment history, no year was more transformative than 1964!
In a single year, American popular culture changed forever with musical moments like The Beatles’ debut on American television and Bob Dylan’s declarative “The Times They Are a-Changin’”; theatrical debuts like Fiddler on the Roof and Funny Girl (featuring Barbara Streisand); and film debuts like Mary Poppins and Goldfinger! And so much more!
So join New York Adventure Club and pop culture historian Arlen Schumer (author/designer, The Silver Age of Comic Book Art) as we go month-by-month through the year (Part 2 covers July-December, while last week’s Part 1 covered January-June), presenting a plethora of classic still images and vintage film clips, to uncover the artistic moments and stories that shaped 1964 into one of the greatest years in American pop culture history!
•••CAN’T MAKE IT LIVE? Register and get access to the full replay for one week!•••
1964 webinar (Part 1) via NY Adventure Club 4/20
Thursday, April 20 @ 5:30pm EST:
“1964: When The ’60s Became The ’60s (Part 1: Jan-June)” webinar via NY Adventure Club!
While the 20th century is packed with culturally defining moments in American entertainment history, no year was more transformative than 1964!
In a single year, American popular culture changed forever with musical moments like The Beatles’ debut on American television and Bob Dylan’s declarative “The Times They Are a-Changin’”; theatrical debuts like Fiddler on the Roof and Funny Girl (featuring Barbara Streisand); and film debuts like Mary Poppins and Goldfinger! And so much more!
So join New York Adventure Club and pop culture historian Arlen Schumer (author/designer, The Silver Age of Comic Book Art) as we go month-by-month through the year (Part 1 covers January-June, while next week’s Part 2 covers July-December), presenting a plethora of classic still images and vintage film clips, to uncover the artistic moments and stories that shaped 1964 into one of the greatest years in American pop culture history!
•••CAN’T MAKE IT LIVE? Register and get access to the full replay for one week!•••
CHRIST in COMICS webinar via NY Adventure Club 4/7
FRIDAY, APRIL 7 @ 5:30pm EST:
“CHRIST IN COMICS” webinar via NY Adventure Club!
“For Jor-el so loved the world he gave his only begotten son, with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men!”
Ever since superheroes first burst upon the American scene in the late 1930s, they have always used their mighty super powers defending the causes of “truth, justice and the American way,” to quote the famous motto of the first superhero, Superman.
But there is something more, something embedded in the superhero mythos that goes deeper than their surface feats of derring-do. Because for all of their mighty displays of super-strength, speed, flight, heightened senses or occult, supernatural powers, the greatest superpower of them all is the power of love: the love every superhero has for the people they’re protecting from harm or rescuing from the forces of evil.
Some of the most memorable stories in the history of comics have been about superheroes sacrificing their lives for their friends, families, or mankind itself. “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” from John 15:13, is one of the most memorable passages in The New Testament.
So come join comic book-style illustrator and historian Arlen Schumer (author/designer, The Silver Age of Comic Book Art) as he explores how superheroes in American comic book history have always reflected Christological aspects of heroism and self-sacrifice, whether overtly, subconsciously or unconsciously; you’ll see some of your favorite superheroes and comic book art in ways that will make “all seem new again”!
JEWS & COMICS webinar via NY Adventure Club 4/4
TUESDAY, APRIL 4 @ 8:00pm EST:
“JEWS & COMICS: a Past & Present History” webinar via NY Adventure Club!
One day in 1933, printing salesman Max Gaines (nee Ginzburg) came up with a novel idea for newspaper promotion: he took pages of some tabloid-sized Sunday newspaper comics, folded them over twice, and stapled them on the side—creating the comic book as we know it!
That same year, two 18-year-old aspiring newspaper cartoonists from Cleveland, writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, created a character whom they hoped to sell to the very newspaper syndicates who worked with Gaines: Superman! Thus began the history of comic books and superheroes, largely created by American Jews like Gaines, Siegel and Shuster, and so many others that followed!
So join comic book and pop culture historian Arlen Schumer (author/designer, The Silver Age of Comic Book Art) as he explores the specific Jewish creation of the American superhero and its antecedents in older, ancient myths—from the Golem to Ben Grimm, as it were—and how they sparked a 20th Century American pop culture explosion that has only gained in prominence and popularity here in the 21st Century!
COMIC BOOKS & THE TWILIGHT ZONE free webinar 3/22/23
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22 @ 6:00pm EST:
COMIC BOOKS & THE TWILIGHT ZONE free webinar!
According to Rod Serling’s widow, Carol, Serling was “…an admirer of fantasy and horror tales…his library was full of books by Poe and Lovecraft, Shelley and James, and work by their ‘great-grandchildren,’ published in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Galaxy and If.”
But did Serling’s library include comic books, like the 1950’s E.C. science-fiction stories with twist endings that so many Twilight Zone episodes resemble?
For the answers to these and other questions—like how The Twilight Zone influenced comic books that came after the series—come to comic book and Twilight Zone historian (Visions from The Twilight Zone and The Silver Age of Comic Book Art) Arlen Schumer’s free webinar, and you’ll see The Twilight Zone, and the comic book stories that both influenced, and were influenced by, the legendary series, in ways that will make you see them all as if for the first time!
ZOOM MEETING: https://bit.ly/3ZxjqON
MEETING ID: 856 0593 2628
PASSCODE: 621743
GENE COLAN free webinar 12/22
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 22 @ 5:30pm EST:
THE MARVELOUS MILIEUS OF GENE COLAN free webinar!
With the obvious exception of Jack Kirby, no other Marvel Comics artist defined the look of as many major characters as GENE COLAN (1926-2011) did during The Silver Age of Comics (1956-70)!
Upon his arrival at Marvel comics in 1965, Colan first drew the underwater hero Sub-Mariner; Colan’s figures, graceful yet powerful, were perfect for an athletic swimming hero, and gave the character a regal aura that suited his title, Prince Namor. When Marvel gave Iron Man to Colan in 1966, he commented after, ”I wanted the reader to feel his emotion at times, not just be a metal figure always looking the same. So I took some poetic license. I tried to be very subtle with it, add a little humanity to the face.”
This quality of bringing to superheroes a realistic, human side made Colan perfect for the nascent Marvel style of heroic—yet somewhat tragic—protagonists. The blind hero Daredevil blossomed under Colan’s stewardship, because he convincingly depicted the swashbuckling side of the character as well as his civilian alter ego of lawyer Matt Murdock. And Colan’s Dr. Strange stories, drawn in cinematic, chiaroscuro shadings, with panel layouts and compositions that wended and warped their way through the page, befitted the ectoplasmic, otherworldly dimensions they were set in, and are a testament to Colan’s atmospheric style, one of the most unique in the history of comic book art.
So come join comic book art historian Arlen Schumer (author/designer, The Silver Age of Comic Book Art) as he presents an overview of Colan’s illustrious Silver Age career, dynamically displaying his comic book panels, pages and covers so that you’ll feel like you’re seeing them for the first time!
ZOOM MEETING: https://bit.ly/3uO9LX2
MEETING ID: 880 8172 3705
PASSCODE: 628618
1964 webinar (Part 2) via NY Adventure Club 12/19
Monday, December 19 @ 5:30pm EST:
“1964: When The ’60s Became The ’60s (Part 2: July-Dec)” webinar via NY Adventure Club!
While the 20th century is packed with culturally defining moments in American entertainment history, no year was more transformative than 1964!
In a single year, American popular culture changed forever with musical moments like The Beatles’ debut on American television and Bob Dylan’s declarative “The Times They Are a-Changin'”; theatrical debuts like Fiddler on the Roof and Funny Girl (featuring Barbara Streisand); and film debuts like Mary Poppins and Goldfinger! And so much more!
So join New York Adventure Club and pop culture historian Arlen Schumer (author/designer, The Silver Age of Comic Book Art) as we go month-by-month through the year (Part 2 covers July-December, while last week’s Part 1 covered January-June), presenting a plethora of classic still images and vintage film clips, to uncover the artistic moments and stories that shaped 1964 into one of the greatest years in American pop culture history!
•••CAN’T MAKE IT LIVE? Register and get access to the full replay for one week!•••