We’re saddened to learn of the loss of SAW’s original history instructor, John Ronan, who passed away May 6, 2024. We send our love and well wishes to his family, wife Jana, and children, Daniel and Elizabeth.

When I began to think about starting a school in Gainesville, I immediately knew I could join with John and his immense love of the medium..

John LOVED COMICS! And he loved OLD Comics! He had giant stashes of them, and he would bring them in and let students rifle through them.

During our in-person year-long program, which ran from 2011-2020, we welcomed dozens of students, each who had the utterly unique experience in comics education, of handling literally hundreds of publications 50 years or older, many nearing 100 years or older.

In the below photo, students from 2018 are looking at Puck magazine from the 1880s.

In the below slideshow, we see students sorting hundreds of underground comics from the late 1960s to late 1970s. It had the amazing effect of creating a 3-d sculpture out of history. We stacked up all the comics by year: 1967 and 1968 had one or two comics, then many more by 69-72 and huge explosion from 73 to about 75 and then a winding down in the late 70s as fanzines and sci-fi and the mainstream comics market took a larger share of the culture’s imagination. The students, in handling sorting, and reading these comics over this session, learned history in an embodied way. They got to understand their own presence in it.

John was a clumsy, but giant-hearted and generous soul. He loved the students as he loved his kids. He wanted them to have the experience of being excited by the culture as he was.

He’ll be missed greatly here. Thank you so much, John. Be free.