High School Confidential
by Jeet Heer
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Read Comments (2)
Teddy Shearer cartoon.
Will Eisner went there, as did James Baldwin and Richard Avedon. Bob Kane went there, as did Bert Lancaster and George Cukor. Bill Finger went there, as did Neil Simon and Lionel Trilling. Stan Lee went there as did Stanley Kramer and Irving Howe.
DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx has a storied past as a hothouse incubator of all sorts of artistic talent, in both comics and elsewhere. So I was delighted to find a website that reprints material from the schools literary magazine from 1929-1941. Go there and see the juvenilia of James Baldwin, Stanley Kauffman and Robert Warshow, among others. For comics fans, of especial interest will be the cartoons of Teddy Shearer and Mel Casson.
Speaking of Warshow, I’ll remind everyone of something Tim usefully pointed out awhile back, that Warshow’s brilliant essay “Paul, The Horror Comics, and Dr. Wertham” is available online. It’s a central document for discussing comics history.
