Graphic Novels - Professor Jonathan Gray

graphic novels, their evolution, and their increasing centrality within popular culture

Professor Jonathan Gray
Professor Gray teaches the only comics course offered at CUNY’s 27 

"Watchmen" and the Geek Label

Jonathan Gray is a professor of English at John Jay College who’s a specialist in comics and a self-proclaimed fanboy of "Watchmen.

What Color Is a Superhero? More black people are obsessing over comic books than ever before.

“Black urban youth have always identified [with superheroes], partly because the audience is downtrodden, and partly because [superheroes] always live in cities,” says Professor Jonathan Gray, who teaches a class on graphic novels at John Jay University. “The cops are hassling Spider-Man. Well, the cops harass me. Spider-Man rides the C Train, I ride the C train … This is sort of a native audience.”

Gray, a tall, slender man with long dreadlocks and a speckle of gray in his goatee, was attending a panel set up by BET to promote their new prime-time animated series inspired by Marvel Comics’ Black Panther. Black Panther, a Stan Lee creation whose first appearance in 1966 predates Huey’s party, is the comic world’s first black superhero and a sometime member of Marvel’s flagship superhero team, The Avengers. Black Panther is an African king who resides in the fictional nation of Wakanda, and his advanced technology sent would-be colonizers fleeing in terror.

Elmcitytree 

Elmcitytree is the alias of Jonathan W. Gray, Ph D, assistant professor of English and Gender Studies at John Jay College/CUNY. I am an Academic, a Scholar, a Fanboy, and a Hip Hop head and the topics I cover will reflect my interests and sensibility. Thanks for stopping by.