Valentino L Zullo
Biographic Data
| ID | 4055284 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Valentino L Zullo |
| GIVEN NAMES | Valentino L |
| FAMILY NAME | Zullo |
| SIGNATURE | ZULLO V L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ursuline College |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Special section introduction – Superman, an American archive
“Superman has always been in my life; I remember just staring at him as a kid”
In Fall 2023, as part of the ‘Superman’s Cleveland’ celebration of 85 years of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s creations, Sina Grace shared his recent book, Superman: The Harvests of Youth. We sat down with Grace to discuss his creative process for his retelling the story of the youth of world’s first superhero in the twenty-first century, in his hometown of Smallville. During our discussion, we talked about Grace’s move from autobiography and ind…
“It's that guttural, human voice; that's comics”
In Summer 2022 we met with Ken Krimstein, cartoonist of The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt: A Tyranny of Truth and When I Grow Up: The Lost Autobiographies of Six Yiddish Teenagers. We discussed his process creating comics, his personal history with sequential art, and what led him to create in the form. He also shared insight into his forthcoming work on Franz Kafka and Albert Einstein and how he chooses his subjects. Finally, we considered the …
‘History is not over; we are made of it.’
In Spring 2022 we met with Nora Krug, Professor of Illustration at the Parsons School of Design, to discuss her graphic narrative, Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home about the history and future of German cultural identity. We also talked about her collaboration with Timothy Snyder on the graphic edition of On Tyranny and her future projects. Krug shared with us her process of creating Belonging, uncovering her family history, and …
“I don’t know how to process experiences unless I put them into comics”
In Spring 2023, we sat down with Raina Telgemeier, #1 New York Times bestselling, multiple Eisner Award-winning creator of Smile, Sisters, Guts and many other comics to share our love of her work and how she has changed the conversation around comics. She shared with us her journey into comics, why the form lends itself so well to life writing, and her thoughts on the formal elements of sequential art. We also talked about how she creates her com…
“You can’t escape the formalism of comics”
In Fall 2023, we sat down with Dave Chisholm, cartoonist and trumpet player, as his new book, Miles Davis and the Search for the Sound was about to be published. We discussed his journey into comics and music, researching the stories of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis for comics, and the connections between music and sequential art. He shared insights into his use of colour in comics, what comics and music can teach one another about time, and a l…
The interview issue redux
How do we connect to comics? This question prevails in comics studies having, for better or worse, organised the thoughts of even some of the earliest critics of the form including such strange bed
Special issue
When ‘a comic book movie’ is coming out, there is a general presumption that this refers to a superhero movie. The association of the superhero genre with the comic book medium has become so close
“My career has been defined by embracing tangents”
In Spring 2025, we sat down with Tessa Hulls just days after she won the Pulitzer Prize for her comic memoir, Feeding Ghosts. She is only the second comics creator – the first was Art Spiegelman – to have won the prize. Hulls has also been honoured with the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize for the first book in any genre, and won an Eisner Award. Her work also won the 2025 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award presented by the Cleveland Founda…
“I think that fun, poppy, feminine, colourful stories can change the world”
In October 2023, as part of the Superman’s Cleveland series of events celebrating 85 years of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s creations, we sat down at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with Sarah Kuhn, writer of the recent Girl Taking Over: A Lois Lane Story (with artist Arielle Jovellanos). Kuhn shared her personal story growing up with comics as a young girl and her journey into working with the medium today. She reflected on her process working as …
“I’m reminding us of where we came from”
In Fall 2022, we sat down with Nick Sousanis, Eisner-Winning comics author, and the creator of Unflattening to talk about his forthcoming work, Nostos. He shared with us his research process and the formalistic challenges he has given himself to explore the capabilities of comics to document and display. We talked about making comics as a way of thinking and processing ideas including the birth of the universe, conception, and the development of …
“Something happened”
In Fall 2022, we sat down with MacArthur Genius Award winner, cartoonist Lynda Barry to share our admiration for her work and learn about her advocacy for cartooning and creativity. We talked about comics, her work in the classroom, and the techniques she uses to help students expand their visual focus and their imaginative capacity. In this interview, we think about child development and the nurturing of children’s imagination, our favourite car…
“There’s always that hope”
In Summer 2023, we sat down with Terri Libenson, New York Times bestselling author of The Pajama Diaries and the Emmie and Friends series. She shared with us a bit about her early interest in comics, her journey into comics-making, and the difference in her readers as a comic strip creator, and a middle-grade cartoonist. Together we think about what it is about the form that lends itself so well to processing traumatic experiences in a way that c…
“You’re not afraid of a line drawing, are you?”
In the summer of 2024, we sat down with Eisner Award-Winning comics creator and self-proclaimed monster, Emil Ferris. After the incredible success of My Favorite Thing is Monsters Book One in 2017, the much anticipated My Favorite Thing is Monsters Book Two was released in May 2024. In this interview, we revisited Whitney and Emil’s 2020 interview, and Emil shared how her world has changed over the past few years. This conversation considers the …
‘Maybe making comics is a way of trying to recreate what happens when you’re dreaming’
In Spring 2025, we met with Roz Chast, 2024 recipient of the National Humanities Medal and2015 National Books Critics Circle Award for Autobiography for her graphic memoir, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? Chast is known for her New Yorker cartoons as well as her long-form comics works including Going Into Town: A Love Letter to New York and I Must Be Dreaming. When we spoke with Chast, we learned about her early relationship with com…
‘My claim to fame is footnotes’
In Spring 2020, Vera Camden and Valentino Zullo, American editors of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics sat down with Derf Backderf to discuss his new book, Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio. Highlighting how important this work is as a graphic monument to the 50th anniversary of the May 4 shootings, they spoke with Derf about his journalistic training, his development as a cartoonist, and his interest in depicting regional events that sustain …
‘I made the scene’
In early 2021 we met with Carol Tyler over Zoom to discuss her comics, her participation in the underground comix community, and her forthcoming work, The Ephemerata: Shaping the Exquisite Nature of My Grief. Tyler shared her experiences making Fab 4 Mania: A Beatles Obsession and the Concert of a Lifetime as well as Soldier's Heart: The Campaign to Understand My WWII Veteran Father : a Daughter's Memoir while we communed over our love of comics …
‘I’m trying to make a really pleasant garden path for you, a “Trojan horse” for history!’
As 2020 came to a close we sat down with Thi Bui over Zoom to discuss her graphic narrative, The Best We Could Do, her recent collaboration on a children’s book, A Different Pond (co-created with Bao Phi) and the urgency of her works in progress on climate change and immigrant detention and deportation. We discussed our generational responses to the Viet Nam War and her determination to reclaim the history of this American war from the perspectiv…
‘I try to stay true to my memories, even if it means making a mistake’
As we entered 2021, we interviewed Riad Sattouf about his Arab of the Future series, reflecting on how comics explore memory and the importance of narrative storytelling not limited to 280 Twitter characters or conforming to rigid and oversimplified ideology. Sattouf shared how he understands elements of comics, including the thought bubble and the uses of colour in his comics, as well as his many comics influences. There is an urgency in his wor…
The interview issue
‘The Interview Issue’ marks the first time the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics has dedicated an entire issue to the voice of the cartoonist. When we were asked to become American Editors of th
Keeping Horror in Mind
Comics on the Couch
Comics on the Couch:Introduction Vera J. Camden (bio) and Valentino L. Zullo (bio) Psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu said that psychoanalysis gave him a new "geography," a "map to guide through the internal continent" (1991, p. 26, as cited in Segal, 2018, p. xxii). Anzieu echoes Freud's metaphor of the "dark continent" (1926, p. 212) to chart the unknown terrain of his inner life. In a prolegomenon to his work on what he called the "skin ego," Anzieu …
Do the Gods Wear Capes? Spirituality, Fantasy and Superheroes (review)
Reviewed by: Do the Gods Wear Capes? Spirituality, Fantasy and Superheroes Valentino L. Zullo Saunders, Ben . Do the Gods Wear Capes? Spirituality, Fantasy and Superheroes. New York: Continuum, 2011. 187 + xi pp. hbk $90.00 (USD); pbk $24.95 (USD). ISBN: 978-0826441980. Saunders's book enters an ongoing discussion on superheroes and their relationship to studies in classical mythology as well as theology. In the past decade, numerous critical mon…
No prominent works on this page.
Do the Gods Wear Capes? Spirituality, Fantasy and Superheroes (review)
Reviewed by: Do the Gods Wear Capes? Spirituality, Fantasy and Superheroes Valentino L. Zullo Saunders, Ben . Do the Gods Wear Capes? Spirituality, Fantasy and Superheroes. New York: Continuum, 2011. 187 + xi pp. hbk $90.00 (USD); pbk $24.95 (USD). ISBN: 978-0826441980. Saunders's book enters an ongoing discussion on superheroes and their relationship to studies in classical mythology as well as theology. In the past decade, numerous critical mon…
Comics on the Couch
Comics on the Couch:Introduction Vera J. Camden (bio) and Valentino L. Zullo (bio) Psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu said that psychoanalysis gave him a new "geography," a "map to guide through the internal continent" (1991, p. 26, as cited in Segal, 2018, p. xxii). Anzieu echoes Freud's metaphor of the "dark continent" (1926, p. 212) to chart the unknown terrain of his inner life. In a prolegomenon to his work on what he called the "skin ego," Anzieu …
‘My claim to fame is footnotes’
In Spring 2020, Vera Camden and Valentino Zullo, American editors of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics sat down with Derf Backderf to discuss his new book, Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio. Highlighting how important this work is as a graphic monument to the 50th anniversary of the May 4 shootings, they spoke with Derf about his journalistic training, his development as a cartoonist, and his interest in depicting regional events that sustain …
‘I made the scene’
In early 2021 we met with Carol Tyler over Zoom to discuss her comics, her participation in the underground comix community, and her forthcoming work, The Ephemerata: Shaping the Exquisite Nature of My Grief. Tyler shared her experiences making Fab 4 Mania: A Beatles Obsession and the Concert of a Lifetime as well as Soldier's Heart: The Campaign to Understand My WWII Veteran Father : a Daughter's Memoir while we communed over our love of comics …
‘I’m trying to make a really pleasant garden path for you, a “Trojan horse” for history!’
As 2020 came to a close we sat down with Thi Bui over Zoom to discuss her graphic narrative, The Best We Could Do, her recent collaboration on a children’s book, A Different Pond (co-created with Bao Phi) and the urgency of her works in progress on climate change and immigrant detention and deportation. We discussed our generational responses to the Viet Nam War and her determination to reclaim the history of this American war from the perspectiv…
‘I try to stay true to my memories, even if it means making a mistake’
As we entered 2021, we interviewed Riad Sattouf about his Arab of the Future series, reflecting on how comics explore memory and the importance of narrative storytelling not limited to 280 Twitter characters or conforming to rigid and oversimplified ideology. Sattouf shared how he understands elements of comics, including the thought bubble and the uses of colour in his comics, as well as his many comics influences. There is an urgency in his wor…
The interview issue
‘The Interview Issue’ marks the first time the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics has dedicated an entire issue to the voice of the cartoonist. When we were asked to become American Editors of th
Keeping Horror in Mind
Special section introduction – Superman, an American archive
“Superman has always been in my life; I remember just staring at him as a kid”
In Fall 2023, as part of the ‘Superman’s Cleveland’ celebration of 85 years of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s creations, Sina Grace shared his recent book, Superman: The Harvests of Youth. We sat down with Grace to discuss his creative process for his retelling the story of the youth of world’s first superhero in the twenty-first century, in his hometown of Smallville. During our discussion, we talked about Grace’s move from autobiography and ind…
“It's that guttural, human voice; that's comics”
In Summer 2022 we met with Ken Krimstein, cartoonist of The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt: A Tyranny of Truth and When I Grow Up: The Lost Autobiographies of Six Yiddish Teenagers. We discussed his process creating comics, his personal history with sequential art, and what led him to create in the form. He also shared insight into his forthcoming work on Franz Kafka and Albert Einstein and how he chooses his subjects. Finally, we considered the …
‘History is not over; we are made of it.’
In Spring 2022 we met with Nora Krug, Professor of Illustration at the Parsons School of Design, to discuss her graphic narrative, Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home about the history and future of German cultural identity. We also talked about her collaboration with Timothy Snyder on the graphic edition of On Tyranny and her future projects. Krug shared with us her process of creating Belonging, uncovering her family history, and …
“I don’t know how to process experiences unless I put them into comics”
In Spring 2023, we sat down with Raina Telgemeier, #1 New York Times bestselling, multiple Eisner Award-winning creator of Smile, Sisters, Guts and many other comics to share our love of her work and how she has changed the conversation around comics. She shared with us her journey into comics, why the form lends itself so well to life writing, and her thoughts on the formal elements of sequential art. We also talked about how she creates her com…
“You can’t escape the formalism of comics”
In Fall 2023, we sat down with Dave Chisholm, cartoonist and trumpet player, as his new book, Miles Davis and the Search for the Sound was about to be published. We discussed his journey into comics and music, researching the stories of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis for comics, and the connections between music and sequential art. He shared insights into his use of colour in comics, what comics and music can teach one another about time, and a l…
The interview issue redux
How do we connect to comics? This question prevails in comics studies having, for better or worse, organised the thoughts of even some of the earliest critics of the form including such strange bed
Special issue
When ‘a comic book movie’ is coming out, there is a general presumption that this refers to a superhero movie. The association of the superhero genre with the comic book medium has become so close
“My career has been defined by embracing tangents”
In Spring 2025, we sat down with Tessa Hulls just days after she won the Pulitzer Prize for her comic memoir, Feeding Ghosts. She is only the second comics creator – the first was Art Spiegelman – to have won the prize. Hulls has also been honoured with the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize for the first book in any genre, and won an Eisner Award. Her work also won the 2025 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award presented by the Cleveland Founda…
“I think that fun, poppy, feminine, colourful stories can change the world”
In October 2023, as part of the Superman’s Cleveland series of events celebrating 85 years of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s creations, we sat down at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with Sarah Kuhn, writer of the recent Girl Taking Over: A Lois Lane Story (with artist Arielle Jovellanos). Kuhn shared her personal story growing up with comics as a young girl and her journey into working with the medium today. She reflected on her process working as …
“I’m reminding us of where we came from”
In Fall 2022, we sat down with Nick Sousanis, Eisner-Winning comics author, and the creator of Unflattening to talk about his forthcoming work, Nostos. He shared with us his research process and the formalistic challenges he has given himself to explore the capabilities of comics to document and display. We talked about making comics as a way of thinking and processing ideas including the birth of the universe, conception, and the development of …
“Something happened”
In Fall 2022, we sat down with MacArthur Genius Award winner, cartoonist Lynda Barry to share our admiration for her work and learn about her advocacy for cartooning and creativity. We talked about comics, her work in the classroom, and the techniques she uses to help students expand their visual focus and their imaginative capacity. In this interview, we think about child development and the nurturing of children’s imagination, our favourite car…
“There’s always that hope”
In Summer 2023, we sat down with Terri Libenson, New York Times bestselling author of The Pajama Diaries and the Emmie and Friends series. She shared with us a bit about her early interest in comics, her journey into comics-making, and the difference in her readers as a comic strip creator, and a middle-grade cartoonist. Together we think about what it is about the form that lends itself so well to processing traumatic experiences in a way that c…
“You’re not afraid of a line drawing, are you?”
In the summer of 2024, we sat down with Eisner Award-Winning comics creator and self-proclaimed monster, Emil Ferris. After the incredible success of My Favorite Thing is Monsters Book One in 2017, the much anticipated My Favorite Thing is Monsters Book Two was released in May 2024. In this interview, we revisited Whitney and Emil’s 2020 interview, and Emil shared how her world has changed over the past few years. This conversation considers the …
‘Maybe making comics is a way of trying to recreate what happens when you’re dreaming’
In Spring 2025, we met with Roz Chast, 2024 recipient of the National Humanities Medal and2015 National Books Critics Circle Award for Autobiography for her graphic memoir, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? Chast is known for her New Yorker cartoons as well as her long-form comics works including Going Into Town: A Love Letter to New York and I Must Be Dreaming. When we spoke with Chast, we learned about her early relationship with com…
Art (20 works) · Comics (19 works) · Comics and Graphic Narratives (17 works) · Literature (17 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Visual arts (12 works) · Art history (11 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Media studies (10 works) · Law (8 works)