USA Today takes a look at colleges that are offering comic art classes:
As a fine arts graduate student in the early 1980s, Carol Tyler felt she had to hide her interest in cartoon drawing from teachers. An art form associated with comic books and comic strips wasn’t considered college material.
Now a professional cartoonist and graphic novelist, Tyler began teaching the University of Cincinnati’s first comics art class last year.
Other colleges also have started such classes as critical and academic respect for comics has grown. Courses that began in 2005 at the University of Alaska Fairbanks are starting to draw professional artists and public schoolteachers. Monroe Community College in Rochester, N.Y., will start its first course this spring.
Applications have increased by at least 50% at The Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vt., which was founded two years ago and won state approval this year for a master in fine arts degree
The article talks about the growing popularity of comics and graphic novels, and even slips in a little bit of sales data for Dark Horse:
The comics publishing industry has grown with the broader range of comic types and outlets. Dark Horse Comics’ sales were primarily through the comic book specialty market for years, but now about half of sales are through bookstores, Diana Schutz, a Dark Horse executive editor, said.
