Jim Thompson

James Thompson is a graduate of Pepperdine School of Law and has had his own Los Angeles law practice for over 25 years. Juggling two careers, he also attended graduate school at The University of Southern California School of Cinematc Arts and was the faculty director of the semester-“abroad”/Los Angeles program for Duke University for 15 years (from 1999 - 2016), which included his teaching a course on genre theory, as applied to film, television and comics. Mr. Thompson also included comic studies in other film courses he taught, such as horror/science-fiction film, while an adjunct professor at Cal State - Fullerton. He has presented film and comic focused papers at Society of Cinema and Media Studies Conferences in Toronto, London, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc. He is a regular contributor to the Comic Arts Conferences in San Diego and Anaheim, having given papers on international Poe adaptations, the works of Alberto Breccia, South American interpretations of Dracula and a series of panels with other attorneys on the behind-the-scenes impact of attorney on character creation myths. Mr. Thompson also frequently does non-academic convention panels such as VS., a battle-style panel he’s been doing for years with writer/journalist Hannibal Tabu and he co-organized the SDCC panel “Seduction of the Immigrants: How the recruitment of Spanish and Filipino Artists impacted the Comics Industries Here and Abroad." He has been quoted frequently by the New York Times as an authority on comic book-related film and has been interviewed for comic-related documentaries including one on Harvey Publications. In terms of comics journalism/history preservation, he has been the moderator and a major contributor for the Comic Book Historians Group, a facebook group of over 10,000 members, since 2015. He and Alex Grand, founder of CBH, also do long-form pocast and video interviews covering all aspects of comics. Mr. Thompson currently has the honor of serving as one of the six judges for the 2021 Eisner Awards.