NewsPress Release - 3/8/2000Horror Comics is Topic of Marlboro Lecture Series

MARLBORO, VT -- The first in a series of three lectures by cartoonist and illustrator Stephen Bissette will be presented at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 30, at Marlboro College's Whittemore Theatre. "Journeys into Fear" will explore the multicultural roots and the rise in popularity of horror comics, from twelfth-century Japanese ghost scrolls to post-modern horrors.

Bissette has been a working professional in the comic book industry for more than twenty years, and writing professionally for more than a decade. His early work as an illustrator appeared in the pages of Heavy Metal, Marvel Comics' Epic and Bizarre Adventures, Scholastic Magazines' Weird Worlds and Bananas (illustrating stories written by Goosebumps founder and author R.L. Stine), and the graphic novelization of Steven Spielberg's motion picture 1941( Simon and Schuster, 1979).

Bissette is best known for his multiple award-winning collaboration with writer Alan Moore and inker John Totleben on DC Comics' Saga of the Swamp Thing (1983-87). He subsequently collaborated with Moore on the Image Comics' series 1963 (1993), and worked briefly on Mirage Studios' Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; the character "Tokka" which appeared in the second TMNT feature film, Secret of the Ooze, was based upon his drawings.

As a writer, Bissette's interviews, film criticism, and articles have appeared in Rutherford, Gadfly, Comics Interview, Fangoria, and others. He also contributed chapters to the books Clive Barker, Illustrator (1990), Cut! Horror Writers on Horror Film (Berkeley, 1992), The BFI Companion to Horror (Cassell/British Film Institute, 1996), and others.

Bissette writes regularly for the Entertainment section of the Brattleboro Reformer and is an original shareholder and an assistant manager and buyer at First Run Video of Brattleboro. He currently lives in southern Vermont with his teenage children, Maia and Daniel, who also write and draw their own comics and stories.

The lecture, presented in the fully accessible Whittemore Theater, incorporates hundreds of slides and relevant archival video clips. Donations are welcome to help the Marlboro Elementary School eighth-graders raise money for their trip to London. The second and third lectures in the series will take place on April 6 and 13, respectively. For more information, please call (802) 257-4333. The Marlboro College events calendar can be found on-line at www.marlboro.edu/calendar/calendar.html.