Dozens of comic book characters are dancing of the page and onto displays at Hill Memorial Library as part of a new exhibit.
Graphic Sensibility, the collection of illustrations and comics located at the Hill Memorial Library, aims to make the discussion of race, identity and location more
accessible through art.
To show off the large collection of graphic art available in the LSU Libraries Special Collections, the library staff and guest curator and associate professor of English Brannon Costello assembled various works ranging many types of visual styles. The overarching theme of the exhibit is made to discuss diversity in illustrated works, Costello said.
“The point of the exhibit is to highlight the wide variety of graphic art holdings in the libraries so it is intended to be a wide range and diverse,” Costello said.
The library incorporates comic book illustrations into the exhibit. An entire floor of the exhibition is devoted to diversity in superhero comics, with a dedicated section devoted entirely to the Fantastic Four division of graphic novels. There also is a section of comics highlighting how the South is represented in horror comics and
superhero comics.
“In the ‘Comics in Southern Fiction’ essay that I wrote, I talk about how the history of race in the superhero and horror genres that are set in the South are used as ways of getting at the fundamental racial tensions in American society more broadly,” Costello said.
Accompanying the superhero comics on the lower floor is a section on the upper floor filled with other illustrations including
political cartoons.
Part of the upcoming “Fantastic Four” film was shot at Hill Memorial Library, making the section dedicated to the party of four relevant to students who are fans of the heroes. Since the recent church shooting in South Carolina, the exhibit becomes more relevant regarding the racial themes in America as the focus on southern morals in comic book
history.
“The section on comics in the South are relevant to the debates over the official memory of what the Confederate flag stood for,” Costello said. “It talks about the attempt to make a character named Captain Confederacy in the 1980s when Captain America was replaced by a Southerner. It also talks about a more recent series called ‘The American Way,’ an alternate history about there being superheroes during the Civil Rights Movement.”
Costello said comic books make these issues more accessible to the average person because of their prior stigma of being
entertaining to children.
“People assume that comics are free from politics,” Costello said. “Superhero comics, especially the ones we are talking about, have always been deeply invested in the political arguments of the day, sometimes overtly and sometimes more implicitly. Just the notion of images are a powerful way that help us confront the ways we think about and talk about race.”
Graphic Sensibility will be on display at Hill Memorial Library until Sept. 26. The exhibit also will include a symposium on Sept. 22 titled “New Faces Under Old Masks: Race, Gender, and the Future of Superheroes” featuring graphic novel scholars and comic book creators with more details being announced as it approaches.

Gallery • 10 Photos

Javier Fernández

Comic books are shown during the Graphic Sensibility exhibition on Monday, July 6, 2015 in the LSU Hill Memorial Library.