250 Years of Cartooning in Boston

Join us for a presentation on how comics and cartooning have shaped Boston's social and political history. Dan Mazur and J.L. Bell survey the Revolutionary period through the modern era showcasing the comics medium's power to skewer, rally, and entertain Bostonians over the last 250 years.

About the Presenters

Dan Mazur is a comics artist and historian. He was the artist and co-writer of the graphic novel, Will Eisner: a Comics Biography, with collaborator Stephen Weiner. His previous graphic novels are Lunatic (2020) and Hannabell Hobb and Her Horrible Heads (2021). His history book, Comics, A Global History: 1968 to the Present (2014, co-written with Alexander Danner) has been translated into seven languages. He received the Comics Studies Society Article Prize in 2019 for Ibrahim Njoya: a Comics Artist in Colonial-era Cameroon. He is co-founder and co-director of MICE, the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo and co-founder of the Boston Comics Roundtable. He grew up in and currently resides in Cambridge.

J. L. Bell is a writer specializing in the history of Revolutionary New England and author of The Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War. He contributed a chapter on how Boston youth became involved in politics in the New York University Press volume Children in Colonial America, and had published articles on colonial boys’ journal-writing, town watchmen at the Boston Massacre, and how Boston celebrated the 5th of November. He is heading a historic resource study for the National Park Service on Gen. George Washington’s command of the Continental Army during the siege of Boston in 1775-76. Bell has given talks about the American Revolution at many historic sites, including the Old State House, Old South Meeting-House, Minute Man National Historical Park, Boston National Historical Park, Paul Revere House, and Longfellow National Historic Site (Washington’s Headquarters).