By: Franklin Bruno

He preferred thieves and roués to bosses, bureaucrats, and burghers.

By: David Smay

Romita freed Spider-Man to swing — literally — through Manhattan.

By: Lynn Peril

Pianos plink and glide, strings zigzag into space!

By: Mark Kingwell

He tracked the “lines of flight” that ideas can take up against power.

By: Joshua Glenn

He began as a critic of Middlebrow, but was suborned by it.

By: Brian Berger

His U.S.A. trilogy is the ne plus ultra of avant-garde historical fiction.

By: Franklin Bruno

His bulk and blokeishness made him the perfect frontman for Madness.

By: Tim Carmody

“Media always offers gains, though offset by losses.”

By: Brian Berger

He fused old-timey vernacular, post-Dylan poetics, and orchestral pop.

By: Greg Rowland

His vision glued together the most complex mythological narrative ever.

By: David Smay

He wrote poetry of love glimpsed as a mystery from within the teeth of sex.

By: Tom Nealon

He’s the antidote to the excesses of molecular gastronomy.

By: Joshua Glenn

He once described his own act as “Chomsky with dick jokes.”

By: David Smay

His work was caustic and loopy, acid and infinitely plastic.

By: Peggy Nelson

Her perspective anticipated how we think, work, and communicate.