Leonard Rifas papers, 1982-1999

Leonard Rifas is an American comics creator and artist rooted in the Pacific Northwest. He was born April 16, 1951. In 1976, he published All-Atomic Comics #1, a comic book about the use of nuclear energy. He also created Corporate Crime Comics, Tobacco Comics, Food First Comics, AIDS News and many others. In 1976, he started Educomics, a publishing label for educational comics. Rifas is also the author of books and articles about comics, such as "The Forgotten War Comics: the Korean War and American Comic Books" (1991).

Rifas has a Ph.D. in Communications from the University of Washington. He teaches cartooning and comics history at Seattle Central Community College and the University of Washington, Bothell. As a comics scholar, he has focused on the anti-comics movement of the 1950s, the underground comix movement, representations of race, and Korean War comic books.