Articles by Charles Solomon

ALTHOUGH HE’S the hero of one of the most popular manga series in the U.S. and Japan, Ichigo Kurosaki has little in common with conventional good guys. Read more

Noriaki Kubo, who draws under the name Tite Kubo, is the creator of one of the most popular manga series in the world. Read more

IT’S strange to recall that during the early 1970s Ralph Bakshi was hailed as the filmmaker who would revitalize the American animated feature. Read more

INEVITABLY, David Guterson’s new novel, “The Other,” will be compared to “Snow Falling on Cedars,” his spare, evocative 1994 debut about vivid characters caught in the aftermath of racial injustice. Read more

Oliver Martin “Ollie” Johnston Jr., the last living member of the celebrated “Nine Old Men” of Disney animation whose work set the standard by which all character animation is judged and a recipient of the National Medal of Arts, has died. Read more

ALTHOUGH his name is hardly a household word, Winsor McCay ranks as a giant among 20th century cartoonists and illustrators. Read more

Benjamin FRANKLIN is credited with publishing the first political cartoon in the future United States: the famous image of a fragmented serpent whose body parts bear the initials of the colonies over the motto “Join, or Die.” Read more

Kyle MacDONALD’S saga of bartering a red paper clip for a small house reads like a cumulative nursery rhyme, along the lines of “This Is the House That Jack Built”: He traded a paper clip for a fish-shaped pen, the pen for a doorknob, the doorknob for a camping stove and so on. Read more

David Hilberman, whose union activities at Walt Disney Studios and brief membership in the Communist Party led to his blacklisting and shadowed a long career that included founding the innovative United Productions of America studio, has died. Read more