Since 1985, Static Fish has served as a proving ground for Pratt illustrators and storytellers, one magazine at a time. The student-run comic club publishes a call for submissions each semester, with selections compiled into an anthology and celebrated at issue-launch parties. But this year, to mark its 40th anniversary, on top of its usual spring publication, the club’s officers decided to create a special zine honoring the club’s legacy—and it required a deep dive into Static Fish history.
The first stop was the Pratt library. “They have an archive of every single issue since 1985,” said club president Jimmy Li, BFA Communications Design (Illustration) ’26, who served as a project manager of the “zine team” formed to execute the special publication. “We found names that were prominent through the issues, we emailed them, and all of them responded.” Students then set up Zoom interviews with these alumni.
“It was a really fun experience because we got to learn about what Pratt was like back then,what the club was like, and the process of making everything, because it was all analog,” Li said.
From the initial planning stages to printing and assembling the issue, the project was so intense that students joked it felt like a “self-imposed thesis.” It was also highly collaborative. “We all pitched in, in terms of developing the plot, researching, writing, and then sketching and everything,” said Ashely Yu, BFA Fine Arts (Printmaking) ’25, a zine team project manager. “It’s a group effort that this all happened. And it’s all produced here at Pratt.”
The result is a riso-printed zine, made in Pratt’s Reprographics Lab and titled Midlife Crisis. It follows Statty, the club’s piscine mascot, now 40 years old and reckoning with personal and artistic failures. After rediscovering an old issue of Static Fish, Statty sets out to trace the club’s journey over the decades. He traverses New York City to interview the club’s founder, Marc McLaurin, BFA Fine Arts (Illustration) ’86, who went on to write and edit for Marvel Comics; alumni from different eras of the club’s history; and its current advisor, Floyd Hughes, adjunct associate professor (CCE). Inspired by his conversations, Statty picks up his pencil anew.
At the 40th anniversary celebration on May 9, dozens of students milled around the Student Union, reading copies of the latest anthology and the Midlife Crisis zine, chatting with alumni, drawing, enjoying refreshments, and posing for pictures with large cardboard cutouts of Statty and other characters while a DJ spun tunes. Attendees purchased goodie bags, hand-designed and printed by Yu, containing the special issue and accompanying marine-themed memorabilia. The club’s officers delivered speeches thanking the alumni for their participation and introducing the students who will take over for officers graduating this year.
One alumnus who returned to campus for the occasion was Bill Wrigley, BFA Fine Arts (Painting) ’96, who contributed stories to Static Fish and now teaches comics at Stuyvesant High School in New York City. When he came to Pratt in the ’90s, “Comics were in kind of a weird cultural moment. There was massive mainstream appeal, but mainly because people were selling them as speculative collector’s items, rather than reading stories,” he said. He found this commercial aspect off-putting, and instead, “I got involved in independent stuff. People drew in sketchbooks and published them on a cheap Xerox. I wrote for Static Fish.”
Wrigley, who makes an appearance in the anniversary issue, has enjoyed reconnecting with the club and with Pratt, and has been perusing old issues of the magazine online. (Pratt Institute Libraries is working to post the entire Static Fish archive on JSTOR.)
“When I was doing my training to be a teacher, I knew that comics were something I wanted to teach,” said Wrigley. “I want people to understand that drawing is more than rendering. You don’t have to be able to draw like a camera to be able to make really good work.”
Static Fish may have reached middle age, but its future looks bright. Li has seen the club evolve to enjoy a higher profile since he joined as a first-year student. Club meetings have better attendance, and they receive more submissions. He credits this to a bigger staff and to hosting events like bringing speakers to campus—a recent guest was comic editor and writer Sebastian Girner—and outings to art festivals and museums.
“When I first joined the club, we published our largest issue yet, which was like 80 pages,” said Li. The following semester’s issue was 200 pages long.
Though club membership evolves and technology changes, the expressive power of comics keeps bringing students back to the drawing table.
“The most fun part about comics is the world-building,” said Yu. “It’s like I can do whatever I want. It doesn’t have to be entirely realistic. It could be very fantastical. It could be very abstract. It’s always just so awesome to see different interpretations of this kind of sequential storytelling form.”
For one member of the zine team, Keanu Bantegui, BFA Communications Design (Illustration) ’26, putting together the anniversary issue was “an important and emotional journey.”
“It’s 40 years worth of content and work behind what the club is today,” Bantegui said. “I feel so proud to have been a part of it.”
For updates on Static Fish, follow the club on Instagram @static_fish.
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