For Tom Inge (1936–2021)

Abstract

I met M. Thomas Inge in 1989 at the conference of the Popular Culture Association of the South after I chaired a panel on the antebellum comic writer George Washington Harris. I had tried to put the panel into MLA's national conference but was turned down. Another fan of Harris and his creation, Sut Lovingood, Tom arranged to have the panel added to the regional conference: typical of Tom's generosity. After the panel, he suggested a collection of essays on Harris, which I agreed to work on if he helped; that was one of the best deals I ever made, for it was the start of a collaboration that was part mentorship, part friendship. I doubt my career path would have been the same if I hadn't tried to shoehorn Harris and his rowdy character Sut into MLA. Tom and I also shared a passion for the work of William Faulkner, yet another fan of Harris and Sut.Tom was an indefatigable scholar and author of over fifty books. Twenty-five years ago, I once had a copy of his bibliography, which was then more than forty pages long. It is no exaggeration to say that he was a force majeure in American literature, especially in Southern literature, humor studies, and comic books. He was a founding member of the American Humor Studies Association, started American Humor: An Interdisciplinary Newsletter in 1974 with Larry Mintz, and later was the editor of Studies in American Humor.But it was in the arena of comic books and popular culture that Tom truly stood out. His book Comics as Culture (1990) was foundational for the now burgeoning academic field of comic books and graphic novels. I have this memory of him saying that he had to rent a place to hold his collection of original comic artifacts. I understand Virginia Commonwealth University will be the repository for the collection, making it an instant Mecca for research on comics in American culture. As mentioned in the VCU Libraries tribute to Dr. Inge, “The collection features correspondence from noted artists and writers such as Art Spiegelman, Mort Walker, Bruce Duncan, and Harold Foster in addition to manuscripts of Inge's scholarly works. … In 2018, he received the Lynn Bartholome Eminent Scholar Award, the highest honor offered by the national Popular Culture Association that recognizes distinguished scholars who have made significant and lasting contributions to the study of popular and American culture” (“Thomas Inge, Pioneering Comics Scholar and Former Professor, Dies at 85,” VCU Libraries, May 24, 2021, https://www.library.vcu.edu/).Tom's sense of the comic in American literature was large: he once coaxed me into participating in a special issue he was editing on humor by Nathaniel Hawthorne, not the only time I benefited from his projects. Edgar Allan Poe is perhaps more obvious than Hawthorne as a subject for unexpected humor as a theme and a topic, and here Tom's extensive collection demonstrates its impact. Tom gave the Poe Museum thirty-six comic books, including issues of Classics Illustrated, Edgar Allan Poe's Haunt of Horror, Roman Dirge's Lenore, and Weird Tales of Horror. He also donated a page of original artwork for a Zippy the Pinhead comic strip and a Lenore doll based on the character in the Lenore comics. Some of his other comics formed the core of the Poe Museum's exhibit “Poe in Comics.” Similarly, items from his collection created “Mark Twain in the Comics: An Exhibition” for the 2009 State of Mark Twain Studies.In many ways, Tom was a legend in the part of academia that worked on comics and pop culture, or Southern literature, or humor studies in general, but what I will remember most is how approachable Tom was, always friendly and always gentlemanly in his demeanor. I was lucky our paths crossed, for he provided a model of how scholars in the humanities should work and play.