Chris Gavaler Explores the Multiverse of Comics, Pop Culture, and Politics
I am the topic of an article published on the website “Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis,” or “CAMERA.” The headline reads: “Washington and Lee Professor Spreads Big Lies in Small Town Paper.” It references my commentary “Gaza and Genocide,” published in the Lexington News-Gazette in July. I had not heard of […]
First, a thank you to Kristopher Mosby for his kind letter about The Color of Paper. He raises several great points, so with his permission, I’m including his email here, followed by my wandering response. Kristopher wrote: “I just finished reading your latest book, The Color of Paper: Representing Race in the Comics Medium, and I […]
When Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell did not lower interest rates as Trump demanded (Trump posted that Powell was a “TOTAL LOSER” and “TOO ANGRY, TOO STUPID, & TOO POLITICAL, to have the job”), Trump’s DOJ opened criminal investigations into Powell’s testimony about a building renovation. In March, a judge blocked subpoenas because “their dominant […]
“Genocide” has a legal definition that was unanimously adopted by the United Nations in 1948. It means “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to […]
I started posting Trump losses in 2025. It’s more of a job than I expected. After taking periods off, including in spring, I started again with a June 8th ruling. This time I tried to be systematic and find and post every single case. I stopped again on July 7 (though, like mail-in ballots, a […]
I’m the comics editor of a literary journal, and when we received a certain submission in spring, I nearly accepted it. In fact, I was pretty excited. I was co-teaching Creating Comics at the time and had just been talking about different kinds of “hinges,” and so I loved how the surrounding backgrounds of the […]
First and foremost, a massive thank you and congratulations to Robert James Russell for guest editing Shenandoah 75.2’s comics section. I sometimes tell my classes, the ultimate goal of any course is to make the teacher irrelevant. A version of that aphorism is proving more true of my eight-year role as Shenandoah‘s comics editor. Which […]
Thank you to my local paper, the Lexington News-Gazette, for inviting me to write a monthly guest column this summer. My first commentary appeared last Wednesday and focused on Juneteenth. My small town hosted another wonderful celebration on Friday. I can’t wait for next year’s — and what I hope is a massively better political […]
Leigh Ann Beavers and I taught our hybrid studio-arts/creative-writing course for the fifth time this spring. We were three years out of practice, but we already wrote a book on the course, which our former selves mapped out meticulously. I’m also comics editor of Shenandoah magazine, so our reservoir of online comics keeps getting deeper. […]
Supreme Court Opinions are routinely violating popular opinion and undermining two centuries of American trust. In 2020, Pew polling showed 70% of Americans viewed the Court positively. By 2025, approval dropped to a 48% historic low, where it remains. That shift in approval parallels the Court’s shift in ideology. National Academy of Sciences studies show […]