When your field of study is superheroes, it's sometimes hard to walk the walk.

But UO English professor Ben Saunders did his best while attending the Rose City Comic Con expo recently. Saunders is the founder and director of the UO's Comic Studies program, which offers the country's first undergraduate minor on the subject.

He gave four presentations at the convention, including one on Batman and another on the politics of secret identities. During a talk on comic studies as a college course, he told listeners that the prevalence of comics over history shows that they “constitute one of the most powerful forms of human communication ever devised,” and the onus is on skeptics to prove otherwise.

For a complete report, visit the College of Arts and Sciences web page here.