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James Sturm (1965- ) was born in Manhattan, NY and latter attended the University of Wisconsin where he intended to give up reading comics. His friend, Victor Raboy, gave him a collection of underground comixs, which changed his world forever as he discovered, amongst others, Robert Crumb, Bill Griffith and Kim Deitch for the first time. Inspired, James produced his own strip Down And Out Dawg for the campus newspaper, The Daily Cardinal, which he later self-published in a single collected volume. After graduating in 1987 with a Bachelor of Arts, he attended the School of Visual Arts for two years in New York City, which he saw advertised in the back of RAW magazine, which in turn lead to an internship at RAW magazine itself as part of the SVA's curriculum. Receiving a Masters of Fine Art, James moved to Seattle where he became part owner of and contributor to the alternative weekly The Stranger and produced the eight issues of his first major work Cereal Killings, a high concept dissection of the American love for consumption. In 1997, he began a four year period of teaching comics at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Georgia. After leaving the SCAD he founded the National Association of Comic Art Educators (NACAE) with the aim of promoting comic art programs within higher education. He is also the founder of The Centre For Cartoon Studies, which opened in 2005, based in Vermont, USA and offers students a two year course on the creation and dissemination of comics, graphic novels and other manifestations of the visual narrative. His most significant comics work to date is his Americana trilogy, dealing with the painful human dreams and dramas in America's past. Beginning in 1996, The Revival is a short story set in the early 19th century outdoor evangelical revivalist movement. In 1998, Hundreds of Feet Below Ground explores the tensions in an old Western mining community. Finally, The Golem's Mighty Swing completes the trilogy and looks at the religious tensions encountered by The Stars of David, a Jewish touring baseball team in the 1920's. It was was named the best graphic novel of 2001 by Time.com. In 2003, Marvel Comics published his mini-series, later collected into a graphic novel, Unstable Molecules, where James repays his debt to Jack Kirby and Stan Lee for the comics of his youth by offering a radically different perspective of the classic title The Fantastic Four. James lives in Vermont with his wife and two daughters and is currently working on his next graphic novel, Our Promising Future, and continues to self-publish a variety of mini-comics. Interviews: Resources: Reviews: |
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ESSENTIAL READING: |
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"James Sturm is one of those rare creatures who, in combining
words with images, raises the comic book to the level of literature. The
Golem's Mighty Swing is smart, suspenseful and a really
good read." "2001 Best Graphic Novel." |
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 Above & BelowDrawn & Quarterly, 2004 Before his breakthrough book, The Golem's Mighty Swing, James Sturm produced two bold and remarkable short stories set in different periods of the American frontier. The first story, The Revival, is a devastating examination of religious fundamentalism at the turn of the 19th century. The is followed by Hundreds Of Feet Below Daylight, a story of voracious greed set against the backdrop of an Idaho mining town built on the blood of massacred Chinese. Both stories are collected together for the first time in this eighty page deluxe book. |
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| SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY: | ||
James Sturm's
America: God, Gold & Golems (2007) |
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