JOE TURNER

Joe Turner was born into a family of Kentucky transplants. According to family lore, his great grandfather was involved in the infamous Turner-Howard feud in Harlan Co., Ky, which led his grandfather to resettle in Baltimore, MD. Two generations later, Joe earned a PhD at the University of Delaware before taking his job as an English professor at the University of Louisville. 

Joe first became interested in comics in 5th grade, when the X-Men cartoon began airing on Saturday mornings. His full-fledged love for comics developed when he found Neil Gaiman’s Sandman a few years later. Now he regularly teaches courses on comics, where he gets to share his love for the medium. The most recent version of that course (Spring 2019) surveyed such classics as Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns alongside newer releases such as My Favorite Thing is Monsters and Nat Turner. He is convinced that comics is one of the few remaining media in which innovation remains truly possible. 

Although born in Baltimore, Maryland, he has been happy to call Kentucky home for the last five years. When he’s not reading comics, you can probably find him walking the trails or volunteering at Jefferson Memorial Forest.