Matthew Levay

@matthewlevay.bsky.social

2000 Followers 982 Following

Professor of English at Idaho State University. Modernism, comics, popular forms. Author: The New Old Style (U Nebraska P), Violent Minds (Cambridge UP). Co-Editor: Journal of Modern Periodical Studies. You can call me Matt. matthewlevay.com

SAVE 40% with code 6AS26 at nebraskapress.unl.edu
“The modernist studies and crime fiction market is significant”
Two digital tickets for The Odyssey
A sign reading “Caution! Please be aware of snakes in this area,” posted to a fence in front of a rocky expanse of sagebrush.
A stack of paperback copies of my book, The New Old Style: Anachronism in Contemporary Comics.
Doc Samson sits in a chair while instructing the Hulk, who lies on a steel couch, to breathe.
Flyer for The New Old Style with 40% discount code attached. The code is: 6AS26
Contract with Cambridge University Press, for the Cambridge Companion to American Comics.
Display of taxidermy (black bear, assorted birds) along with rows of fish and amphibians preserved in jars.
A mint green road bike set against a tree.
A stack of paperback books: the six volumes of Anthony Trollope’s Chronicles of Barsetshire.
Small fawn dog wearing a leash and chest harness, looking up at the camera with a wild underbite.
Small zine page, featuring a comics panel in which a man (me) is reading a newspaper and listening to an old Bakelite radio. The caption reads “instead, you need a full range of creative expression to understand what culture looked like in an increasingly distant past.”
A wooden sign reading “Hemingway Memorial,” standing in front of the Sawtooth Mountains and a blue sky
A small white house with a green lawn, flanked by trees.
Richie, a golden little curly-haired dog in a purple harness, looking at the camera with love and confusion as he sits in the back seat of a car
Poppleton the pig wearing a red hat, blue oxford, and green sweater. From Cynthia Rylant and Mark Teague’s Poppleton in Spring.
Me, a middle-aged white man with a mostly gray beard, wearing a teal Seattle Mariners cap
Stacked paperback books: Sigmund Freud, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life; Clarice Lispector, Too Much of Life; and Eugène Sue, The Mysteries of Paris.
Proof copy of the title page of my book, The New Old Style: Anachronism in Contemporary Comics
Looking down at a pair of cross country skis and poles in the middle of a snowy set of tracks
Child’s drawing of a “wash musheen” with tiny dots, aggressively labeled “crums,” underneath it.
Orange brick building flanked by evergreen trees, all covered by snow flurries.
Still from the Twin Peaks opening sequence, with “FRASIER” presented as the title.
Ethan Hawke in cool clothes.
A snowy ski hill with the sun just beginning to rise about the mountain. Pebble Creek Ski Area, in Inkom, Idaho.
My ranking of the new MLS kits, from best (Seattle and RSL) to worst (Nashville and Colorado).
Roger from 101 Dalmatians: a man in a sweater vest smoking a pipe, writing something down in evident frustration.
The logo of DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint
Behold, a small brown poodle/schnauzer mix, lying in the sun in front of an open door.
Me, a white man wearing a blue hat, green coat, and scarf, awkwardly taking a selfie in front of hills, brush, and a small river. I have a few snowflakes on my coat.
Paved walking path curves alongside the Portneuf River, with tall yellow grasses on both banks. Mountains are visible in the far distance, under a cloudy sky.
Clusters of honeycrisp apples growing in a tree whose leaves are just beginning to turn gold.
Mulder and Scully, brooding in the woods
Wooden cutout of the state of Idaho, with the phrase “the cutest spud in Idaho” written above a small potato
A dark, cloudy sky, in which light is somehow filtering through to light up the gold and orange leaves of trees. An arid mountain range is in the distance.
Front window of the Million Year Picnic comic shop, with two rows of comics on display.
Photo taken from the esplanade along the Charles River, with some of the Boston skyline visible in the distance.
Cover of a book titled The New Old Style: Anachronism in Contemporary Comics, by Matthew Levay. The cover features three vertically-arranged panels. The middle features the book’s title against a black background, while the top and bottom feature colorful drawings of a boy with white circles for eyes, done in a style clearly reminiscent of 1920s and 1930s-era newspaper comics and designed to appear as if they are printed on old newsprint.
Two kids and a small dog hiking along a rocky trail, with aspens and evergreens in the near distance. Leaves are just beginning to turn red and gold.
A brown Ankole Watusi cow with mammoth horns, sitting in its enclosure.
Penguin paperback edition of Montaigne’s Complete Essays
Small pins featuring Skeezix and Walt from “Gasoline Alley,” originally a giveaway in Kellogg’s cereal boxes. Circa 1945.
Battered copy of the September 1937 issue of the pulp magazine Popular Detective
White fence running along a paved path, with dry pastures and a mountain range in the distance.
Copy of Eike Exner’s book Manga: A New History of Japanese Comics
Copy of Grant Morrison and Duncan Fegredo’s Kid Eternity (1991)
Outdoor performance of Henry V, near sunset, on a stage in front of a brick building.
Looking up into the sky, through a cluster of evergreen trees
Larry McMurtry, seated, in jeans and cowboy boots, in the middle of a cluttered office
Hardcover copy of Society is Nix: Gleeful Anarchy at the Dawn of the American Comic Strip, 1895-1915
Assorted single issues of comics. Titles include: The Question, Adventures of Bob Hope, Underworld, Dalgoda, Blackhawk, Doc Savage, and History of the DC Universe.
A brown peekapoo with a blue collar and a serious underbite.
Napoleon Dynamite, on his sweet bike, pulls his brother, Kip (on rollerblades), into town.
BBC Sport graphic, with photos of Leeds United players in all their glory, and the word “Promoted” prominently displayed in the center of the image.
Two large hardback comics collections: Stan Mack’s Real Life Funnies and Caitlin McGurk’s Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins
Tattered folder marked “Peter Arno” containing clippings of comics by and miscellaneous articles on that cartoonist.
Dozens of people on a cloudy winter day, packing supplies into boxes.
Red socks with the Real Salt Lake logo
Cover of Seth’s It’s a Good Life, if You Don’t Weaken