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PRIMITIVE ARCHER MAGAZINE
Hunting Through
Medieval Literature

 
INTERDISCIPLINARY HUMANITIES
Peter Pan

HORSE & RIDER MAGAZINE
A Whisper and a Prayer

CONFERENCE PAPER
The Masculine Mind
of Shakespeare's Women

COURSE CURRICULUM ARTICLE
Christine de Pizan

CONFERENCE PAPER
Nature to the Rescue in the
Hero(ine)'s Journey

CONFERENCE PAPER
Hostages in the Rose Garden

COMICS for the College Classroom

Visual displays of information encourage a diversity of individual viewer styles and rates of editing, personalizing, reasoning, and understanding (31).
                                       Edward R. Tufte                       Envisioning Information

I do not teach comic books, I teach English using comic books--there is a difference. The following list of works provides a basis for college level critical thinking and metacognitive exploration.

American Born Chinese
by GENE LUEN YANG
In American Born Chinese, Gene Luen Yang creates a braided trilogy to explore racism in the ethnic identities of a hyphenated society where American pop culture is juxtaposed with Chinese mythology and teenage angst. Yang creates an American work, not a hyphenated Chinese-American piece of literature, but a purely American story of Horatio Algier proportions
          The book's artistic style is Nickelodeon Asian fusion where crisp lines and bold colors form panels that are sequenced into a perfect square on each page, a square that is topped by a small red Chinese seal floating on generous white space. This is not anime' nor a DC/Marvel imitation, this is something wholly different, something distinctly American born Chinese.
           At first glance American Born Chinese appears to be a simple cautionary tale with some subtle and not-so-subtle themes. But in reality it is about eastern roots bumping into western ideals, an intersection that creates tension for the characters. Yang attempts to explode stereotypes through character transformations only to discover that you can't change who you are. As the Monkey King says, "I would have saved myself from five hundred years' imprisonment beneath a mountain of rock had I only realized how good it is to be a monkey" (223).
          Click here for handout: >Questions for Exploring Identity in ABC.

Bayou Vol. One
by JEREMY LOVE
All I can say is, "Where is volume two?"
          The first few panels of Bayou tell it all . . . moving from a confederate flag displayed in 1933 Charon, Mississippi to a close up panel of a pair of decaying black feet, you get the feeling about what to expect. Or at least, that's what this reader thought.
          After her father is accused of kidnapping and close to being lynched, the young heroine enters an alternative swamp peopled with fairies and monsters, or does she? Is this a fantasy? Or is this a hallucination? Is this how the protagonist escapes the horrors of pre-World War II southern life? I can't tell, but it is interesting to speculate.
         Love describes Bayou as "a southern fried odyssey, inspired by African-American folktales, African mythologies, the Uncle Remus stories recorded by Joel Chandler Harris and Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland." 
          I can see using Bayou Vol. One to explore themes of racism and social justice, but I can also see having students answer the question, "So how do you think this story ends?"
           Click here for handout: >Prereading Questions for Bayou

Epileptic
by DAVID B.
I'm not big on graphic novel memoirs because they are usually about some angst-ridden twenty-something who is not only writing, but also publishing graphic novels--there's an oxymoron in there somewhere, BUT Epileptic is different. It is a truly poignant story about two brothers growing up under the specter of epilepsy.
          The artist's parents try every alternative medicine from macrobiotics and magnetics to psychoanalysis and alchemy to cure their son, but nothing works. David B. expresses his inner rage by drawing beautifully illustrated epic battle scenes to avoid giving into the madness surrounding him. His melancholy frankness about the resentment he feels towards his brother is honest and refreshing.
          For the college classroom, this could fit easily into any nursing or healthy living cluster where questions of treatment and holistic alternatives are discussed. It is especially valuable to those treating the whole family. While Epileptic is a bit hefty at 363 pages it's worth the visually powerful and honest ride.

The Eternal Smile
by GENE LUEN YANG and DEREK KIRK KIM
Smile explores fantasy as reality, but unlike American Born Chinese, where Yang uses braided storytelling, Eternal Smile presents three separate tales, done in three different styles to explore not only how people (or amphibians) set out to conquer their dreams, but also what happens when they do. Often touching, readers can easily relate as the stories travel from pure fairy tale fantasy to a rather Aesop style tale of an avaricious frog to something akin to reality where a painfully shy young office worker fantasizes about romance. What's more the plot twists mean these stories don't quite end the way we expect.
          Students could explore this book while thinking about how they will accomplish their career and academic goals, and at the same time think about how to make good decisions (everybody/thing is making decisions, both good and bad). There are globalization issues at work here, "What happens if religious zeal goes global, and can nationalism become a religion?" and "What happens if you answer that email from Nigeria?" -- in other words, how does the internet and globalization make our world flatter as asked by Thomas Friedman?
          Humble Comics - Home of Gene Yang, author of American Born Chinese and The Eternal Smile.

First Moon
by JASON McNAMARA and TONY TALBERT
Werewolves in Berkeley? You may think those are just goth or emo kids wandering the streets, but . . .
           Since historical fiction is my favorite, but not necessarily fictions peopled by zombies and vampires, I wasn't sure if I would like this history-bending graphic novel about America's sixteenth-century Roanoke colony and its present-day werewolf descendants, BUT I loved it. While I haven't yet used this one in the classroom, I can see a creative assignment where students pick a chapter of history they either know a lot about, or want to study ("Inform and Explain") and after writing that paper, create a separate narrative or a graphic novel where they bend that history to their liking. Sounds like fun.
           This GN can also lead to discussions on social justice (What about those Native Americans?) and globalization (How did globalization start?).
           The graphics are reminiscent of the "Tales from the Crypt" comic serials in black-and-white and the book contains a final chapter outlining "A Brief History of the Roanoke Colony", which isn't all that brief, and is an excellent summary of the colony's demise.

Kafka's Metamorphosis
adapted by PETER KUPER
A review by the Chicago Tribune sums up the relevance of this work. "An utterly literary comic . . . A fully realized effort meant to be read as literature, albeit a kind of literature we haven't seen before."
           In the college classroom, when reading this graphic novel I focus on the theme of alienation and Kuper's graphic adaptation of Kafka's Metamorphosis closely emulates this original theme. When Gregor Samsa awakens from disturbing dreams to find himself transformed into a bug, he is instantly alienated from his species, not to mention his family, friends, and co-workers.
          In addition, this graphic novel allows instructors to use any college level study guide created for the myriad texts and contexts of this classic work, including those that include vocabulary. "Vocabulary?" you say, "How is that possible?" I have students find visual definitions within the graphic novel and explain how those visuals display the definition of words, such as "vermin" or "admonish".
           After studying this visual text, the first essay assignment for intensive writing students is a narrative about a time when they felt alienated, which they then have to turn into a graphic novel of their own.
          Metamorphosis - Companion website to Peter Kuper's (Spy vs. Spy) graphic adaptation of Kafka's classic novella.
           A good study guide can be found at >The Metamorphosis by McGraw Hill (24 page .pdf).

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Volume One
by ALAN MOORE, KEVIN O'NEILL, BEN DIMAGMALIW, BILL OAKLEY
Extraordinary League is a great way to introduce students to Victorian literature, by assigning the texts associated with the main characters. The members of "The League" include Miss Mina Murray, who appears in Bram Stoker's Dracula, while Hawley Griffin is better known as The Invisible Man of H. G. Wells. Captain Nemo commands the Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Mysterious Island written by Jules Verne, while Allan Quatermain, the great Victorian explorer, searches for King Solomon's Mines in Haggard's classic. Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde allows Extraordinary League to explore barely suppressed inner personalities.
           Some incidental characters are allusions to future generations of adventure lit, such as Campion Bond, the grandfather of Ian Fleming's, James Bond. But the majority are pure Victorian, from Ishmael, the narrator of Moby Dick, to Mycroft Holmes, the brother of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective.
           The volume itself is beautifully crafted with lots of "bonus" material reminiscent of old-time serial magazines, including a novella by Alan Moore featuring the purplish prose of the Victorian era, advertisements for products, such as Ogden's "tab" cigarettes (these days, an advertising artifact), and a paint-by-numbers portrait whose key, of course, is linked to Wilde's, Picture of Dorian Gray.
        Extraordinary Gentlemen is not for the feint of heart, there is some graphic violence. However, that didn't stop this reader from engaging in a Victorian lit scavenger hunt. One student, after reading the graphic novel, said, "I'm glad I took Victorian Literature, otherwise I wouldn't get half the jokes." All-in-all a great workout for "those little grey cells."

Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth
by APOSTOLOS DOXIADIS and CHRISTORS H. PAPADIMITRIOU
Logicomix calls itself an "historical novel and an accessible introduction to some of the biggest ideas of mathematics and modern philosophy" as it probes the life and mind of Bertrand Russell while he struggles with his "Promethean goal: to establish the logical foundations of all mathematics."
           Sound boring???? Well, I have to say I finished this 347-page tome in one sitting. The classic color cartooning makes it easy to slip between Bertrand's personal life, his examination of the foundations of mathematics, Aeschylus's Oresteia, the philosophies of the Vienna circle, and, oh yeah, Russell's own Paradox. The mathematical theories are scaffolded, building upon prior concepts as it moves towards logic and the incompleteness theorem. Logicomix contains an excellent glossary. I even understood most of the math concepts, at least while I was reading.
          Math majors would enjoy Logicomix after they got over the fact that it is a graphic novel -- yes, they can be a bit priggish.

Nevermore: A Graphic Adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's Short Stories
Edited by DAN WHITEHEAD
Visual adaptations of Poe's scariest tales seems like a slam-dunk, but for many of my students, Nevermore serves as an introduction to the original stories. Poe's pre-Victorian language is difficult for intensive writing students to navigate, but once they begin to get the hang of it, they find the intensity of Poe's inner visions (and demons) scarier than some of the graphic adaptations.
           The adaptations in Nevermore are "reset" and penned in different styles by different illustrators. A few have little in common with the original (check out "The Pit and the Pendulum") and this leads to excellent analysis papers comparing the original with the visual version--when students share there is often spirited disagreement about which was better. Good questions for students are, "Why do you think the adapter chose the new setting? How does it add to your understanding of the story? How does it change the story? Which do you like better, the original or the graphic adaptation? Why?"
          There is a forward by Roger Corman, who directed many Edgar Allan Poe based movies, especially those starring Vincent Price. After watching Corman's Pit and the Pendulum (another effort that hardly represents the original), I have students spot as many symbols and themes from the nine stories studied in Nevermore, including madness, justice, being buried alive, etc. There are great short introductions before each story.
         Like any collection, some stories are better than others, but overall a good tool for learning.

One! Hundred! Demons!
by LYNDY BARRY
An "autobifictionalography" of a childhood that is more bitter than sweet. Barry was inspired by a Zen monk's painted demon scroll. Barry gave ink stones a try, and voila, "the demons began to come." Layered collage title pages introduce stories of lost friendship, lost loves, adolesence, mother/daughter dysfunction and head lice. The epilogue includes a lesson on painting your own demons.
          The stories offer a way of introducing narratives and narrative subjects as well as descriptive inspirations from someone who describes herself as "weird". Students will see themselves in some of the stories from strained parental relationships to first jobs.
          One! Hundred! Demons! also offers a good way of showing students that narratvies must answer the question "So what?" as Barry learns from her own life lessons.

The Rabbi's Cat
by JOANN SFAR
"The preeminent work by one of France's most celebrated young comics artists, The Rabbi's Cat tells the wholly unique story of a rabbi, his daughter, and their talking cat-a philosopher brimming with scathing humor and surprising tenderness. Rich with colors, textures, and flavors of Algeria's Jewish community, The Rabbi's Cat brings a lost world vibrantly to life-a time and place where Jews and Arabs coexisted-and peoples it with endearing and thoroughly human characters, and one truly unforgettable cat."
           Critical thinking is one the goals of college instructors and students can explore themes of religion, differences between and across faiths, tolerance, and community, alongside love, sex, family relations and obligations all wrapped up and set in 1930s Paris and Algeria. This is a mature work with some nudity and explicit sex--even if it's just cat nooky.

Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow
by JAMES STURM & RICH TOMMASO
Powerful graphics compliment a straightforward story of discrimination in America. "Told from the point of view of a fictional sharecropper, this compelling narrative follows Paige from his earliest days on the mound through the pinnacle of his career. A tall, lanky fireballer, he was arguably the Negro Leagues’ hardest thrower, most entertaining storyteller and greatest gate attraction. Playing for dozens of teams, Paige vanquished thousands of batters; but his part in helping strike out Jim Crow may be his most lasting legacy." Click here for an excellent companion website with teacher's guide and links to Jim Crow and Satchel Paige.
          Paige would be a worthwhile addition to a section trio that includes works like A Man Named Pearl, a documentary that tells the story of Pearl Fryar a self-taught topiary artist (magician really) who grew up in South Carolina. "There's always gonna be obstacles. The thing is, don't let those obstacles determine where you go."
          A good third choice is Gordon Parks' autobiography A Choice of Weapons, a composer, filmakker and photo journalist. His is a life seen through the lens of a Time/Life and fashion photograper who "chose my camera as a weapon against all the things I dislike about America -- poverty, racism, discrimination."
           All of these media tell the story of men who overcame Jim Crow to excel in their fields of endeavor.

Stitches
by DAVID SMALL
Stitches' byline as "a memoir . . .", is a graphic novel genre I usually try to avoid. There are too many twenty-somethings creating angst ridden graphic autobiographies, which are too often about "wasted days and wasted nights" to quote Freddy Fender. But when thumbing through Stitches, the full-page panel of David's first view of the results of his surgery reflected in a bathroom mirror is striking. This revelation is followed by a series of panels of ever-closer zooms focusing on David's stitches makes his surgery all too claustrophobically real and reminiscent of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. After reading David Small's memoir; it can easily be juxtaposed with Shelley's masterpiece and its theme of forbidden or dangerous knowledge.
          David's childhood home is a house swarming with secrets and dangerous knowledge. His mother's lesbian affair, David's cancer, each family member's unhappiness, never spoken, but loudly reflected by screeching tires, punching bags, drums, and slamming kitchen cupboards, are outward manifestations of their secret tortures. His father's confession that he gave his son cancer through overdoses of X-rays culminates a series of bad events, including his mother's lesbian affair and his grandmother's pyrotechnics, events that finally drive David out of this house of horrors. It is then that he creates himself by following his artistic desire and exorcising his psychotic family through Stitches.
          >Comparative lit questions for Stitches and Frankenstein.

300
by FRANK MILLER
Contemporary fanboy culture takes on Herodotus's story of ancient Sparta's suicide mission against the Persian, Xerxes. 300 is a great way to launch into ancient history or cultural studies where themes of West vs. East (especially the Middle East) can be explored--a political subject scrutinized by everyone from the western media to Middle Eastern governments.
          "That was especially the case for 300", according to the LA Times, "an Iranian government spokesman described [300] as a cultural slur of the highest order." Persians are portrayed as merciless, while Spartans are honorable and duty bound.
          Students can explore the limits of free expression and the arts. Should we bridle western pop culture in order to avoid offending other societies? Are all cultural properties "fair game" for contemporary analysis and/or parody? Should artists be allowed to depict Allah, or should they censor those portrayals like the creators of South Park did recently? How important is free expression? Is it worth dying for?
           According to Miller, he was making "a deliberate propaganda piece . . . [and] when it comes to '300' I make no apologies whatsoever."

The Watchmen
by ALAN MOORE and DAVE GIBBONS
The Watchmen is one of the most commonly found graphic novels in the classroom and it seems one of the things that attracts academics is its complicated literary format. It isn't just a graphic novel, its pages are rife with literary genres from fictional autobiographical "tell-alls," to scholarly essays, ornithological journal articles, corporate correspondence, personal notes and letters, newspaper articles, arrest and accompanying psychological records, interviews, marketing materials, materials that make the characters come alive.
           The Watchmen's diegetic, a Nixonian 1980s created after the United States wins the Vietnam war, is a society that has finally tired of masked vigilantes and asks, "Who's watching the Watchmen?" Teachers often assign Watchmen alongside other dystopics like Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World. Historicists teach students about Vietnam, the Cold War, and the Manhattan project, providing a grounding not only in the Watchmen's alternative society, but also our own. Cultural critics often explore family dynamics; the original Silk Spectre is a single mother in post World War II America, whose relationship with her daughter is strained, a seemingly common problem mimicked in our own living rooms, or, alternatively students can examine the connection between Rorschach and his prostitute mother.
         But perhaps we should be asking, "Who's watching The Watchmen's women?" A good question to ask students might be, "What if female superheroes were real human beings just like us?" Would the Silk Spectres fit the bill? The Silhouette? Perhaps a good assignment for students, especially young women is, "What kind of superhero would you be?"
          Click here for handout: >Questions exploring Feminism in The Watchmen

If you have any suggestions for graphic novels in the college classroom please email me. I'm always looking for fresh reads.

CONTRIBUTOR
Graphic Novel Reporter

COMIC Reporting

Op-Ed: Once Upon a Midnight Dreary: Teaching Poe in the Intensive College Classrom

Op-Ed: So The What Happened?

Op-Ed: Graphic Texts in the College Classroom

Best [GNs] of 2009

COMIC Associations, Journals, Websites & Blogs

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
A 501(c)(3) organization devoted to protecting the free speech rights of comic book artist, authors, creators, and other members of the comic community

Comic Book Resources
Lots of reviews, buys, previews, conventions, articles, blogs. Geared towards serial comic geeks and those who just wannabe. They also have a great monthly column Comics College where they "provide an introductory guide to some of the comics medium's most important authors and offer our best educated suggestions on how to become familiar with their body of work."

The Comics Journal
Blogs, essays, interviews, and reviews of graphic novels, comics, and the industry.
          You won't find any "pompous, jargon-laden literary theory in an essay about V for Vendetta" because the editorial staff rejected it "with howls of derisive laughter."

Graphic Novel Reporter
Reviews of the latest graphic novels and comics as well as interviews with today's best creators. There are OpEd pieces for and by teachers who use graphic novels in their classrooms.

The Hero Complex
for your Inner Fanboy
Produced by the LA Times, this blogsite will keep you up-to-date on contemporary comics, webseries, cartoons, interviews, and related entertainment.

Journal of American Culture
"Multidisciplinary in focus, The Journal of American Culture combines studies of American literature, history, and the arts, with studies of the popular, the taken-for-granted, and the ordinary pieces of American life, to produce analyses of American culture with a breadth and holism lacking in traditional American studies."

Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics
"The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics is a peer reviewed journal covering all aspects of the graphic novel, comic strip and comic book, with the emphasis on comics in their cultural, institutional and creative contexts.
           Its scope is international, covering not only English language comics but also worldwide comic culture. The journal reflects interdisciplinary research in comics and aims to establish a dialogue between academics, historians, theoreticians and practitioners of comics. It therefore examines comics production and consumption within the contexts of culture: art, cinema, television and new media technologies."
          >Inaugural issue free online.

Journal of Popular Culture
Peer reviewed, scholarly journal that explores all of popular culture, comics and graphic novels included. "The popular culture movement was founded on the principle that the perspectives and experiences of common folk offer compelling insights into the social world.
           The Journal of Popular Culture continues to break down the barriers between so-called "low" and "high" culture and focuses on filling in the gaps that a neglect of popular culture has left in our understanding of the workings of society."

The National Association of Comics Art Educators
"In the last several years the comics art form has flourished, generating much interest from the literary, art and educational communities. The number of schools teaching comics is growing quickly and this site is a resource for individuals and institutions interested in teaching visual storytelling."
          There are some really great reading lists, handouts, and sample syllabi at this site.

Ohio State University Cartoon Library and Museum
with links to its annual conference, collections, and publication series on comics and cartoons.

Women in Refrigerators
The creator of this website, Gail Simone, started WIR when it "occurred to [her]that it's not that healthy to be a female character in comics . . . These are superheroines who have been either depowered, raped, or cut up and stuck in the refrigerator."

COMIC Conferences

College Art Association Conference
Annual - February - Location varies
"The College Art Association supports all practitioners and interpreters of visual art and culture, including artists and scholars, who join together to cultivate the ongoing understanding of art as a fundamental form of human expression."

Comic Arts Conference
Annual - July - San Diego, California.
Held in conjunction with San Diego's yearly Comic-Con International. Good luck searching through this mega-program.

Comics Conference at UF
Annual - March - UF Florida, Gainesville.
"What began as a symposium featuring Will Eisner and dedicated to the question of the graphic novel has become an annual conference that brings together both artists and scholars to discuss issues centered around what is a unique theme each year related to comics, graphic novels, animation, digital media and visual culture. These conferences are interdisciplinary and examine subjects from a wide ranger of formal, historical, literary, sociological and economic perspectives."

International Comic Arts Forum
Annual - October - Chicago, Illinois
An international forum devoted to studying all varieties of comics. "ICAF is proud to support the principle of peer review and the development of solid, academically grounded comics scholarship, and at the same time to maintain a collegial and welcoming environment for scholars at all levels and from all disciplines."

Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association
Annual - ? - Location varies
"The PCA/ACA is a group of scholars and enthusiasts, who study the popular culture--writing, sharing, and publishing in the field. The PCA/ACA offers a venue to come together and share ideas and interests about the field or about a particular subject within the field."
        PCA/ACA produces the Journals of American Culture and Popular Culture.

If you'd like your conference included, please email me.

COMIC Calls

Comic Arts Conference
Abstract Deadline: N/A
Conference: July 2011 in conjunction with ComicCon in San Diego. "The conference is designed to bring together comics scholars, practitioners, critics, and historians who want to be involved in the dynamic process of evolving an aesthetic and a criticism of the comics art form."

College Art Association's Call for Participation, NYC Conference
Abstract Deadline: May 3, 2010
Conference: February 2011

Graphic Novels, Comics and Popular Culture PCA/ACA & Southwest/Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Associations Joint Conference
Deadline December 15, 2010
Conference: April 2011

Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, New in 2010
Deadline: June 18, 2010
New deadline: N/A

Popular Culture - The University of Pennsylvania maintains a "Calls for Papers" website for various conferences and journals. Click on link for popular culture papers, panels, and conferences that includes comics and graphic novels.

If you have a comic call you'd like included on this list, please contact me.

COMIC Events

Free Comic Book Day
occurs every year on the first Saturday in May at a comic book store near YOU! Participating comic book shops across North America and around the world give away comic books absolutely FREE to anyone who comes into their stores.

WonderCon
is the San Francisco Bay Area's alternative to ComicCon. Of course, it is nowhere near as big, but it's big enough (and lots of fun).

COMIC Schools

The Center for Cartoon Studies
offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in the language of comics. "Cartoonists are visual linguists who use (and add to) a pictorial vocabulary" where "simple abstract marks and shapes trigger memory and imagination."

School for Visual Arts
Learn the craft of comics from the best, like DC legend Carmine Infantino, who created the first Batgirl comics, or study the new form with people like Ben Katchor, winner of a coveted MacArthur "genius" award. SVA's cartooning faculty is the biggest and the best of any arts college, which is only fitting, since they were the first to offer a degree in cartooning.

COMIC Book Stores

If you really want to find out more about graphic novels, your best resource is your local comic book store. The best in California's East Bay is Flying Colors.

COMIC Gizmos

Toondoo
Cartoon strip creator. Don't try this one with dial-up, but an awesome site with lots of bells and whistles.

Toonlet
Comic strip generator. Create your character and you'll have a web comic in minutes.

South Park Studios
Lets individuals create their own South Park alter egos.

________________________

GRAPHIC Essays for the College Classroom

Bums
by PETER BAGGE
Bums appeared in Reason Magazine in April 2007. I use this as an introduction to graphic texts because it is a serious subject treated in what students believe is a "comic" way.
           Students can answer reading comprehension questions, such as, "What is the life expectancy of a chronically homeless person?" And since the thesis is implied, I have students write out the main idea and then share their answers before determining the complete thesis as a whole class.

Compulsory Reading
by ALISON BECHDEL
Entertainment Weekly (I think) featured this narrative essay about a young woman being force-fed "literature" by her English teacher father. It details the subsequent guilt she feels for the book list she hopes to read and explores how one woman evolved a reading list of her own.
           Students can examine the reading lists they had as children, what their parents/school thought they should read, and what they'd like to read in the future -- hopefully, there's some graphic novels included. Students can also examine how people resist being force-fed material and how that effects our decision making processes.

A Red Envelope Day
by NATHAN HUANG
New York Times (Feb. 18, 2007)
Red Envelope examines the Chinese New Year tradition, sadly a tradition that comes to a screeching halt in Huang's family due to "financial survival".
           By viewing a specific tradition, students can explore how people define themselves through family. Students can study their own traditions and how they influence self-definition while exploring how outsiders see those traditions.

COMIC Material for the College Classroom

The History of Visual Communication
is a beautifully designed website that explores the human need to visualize texts from cave paintings and illustrated pages to 3-D science data modeling and gaming interfaces.

Michigan State University Comic Art Collection
"The Comic Art Collection holds over 200,000 items. Most of these items are comic books, but also included are over 1,000 books of collected newspaper comic strips, and several thousand books and periodicals about comics.
           Local students and advanced scholars from around the world find this collection to be the primary library resource for the study of U.S. comic book publications.

Visual Rhetoric/Visual Literacy: Writing About Comics and Graphic Novels
Duke Writing Studio produced this handout and it is a great introduction to "reading" visual essays, graphic novels, and comic books. It gives students a vocabulary from which to base writings as they critically approach graphic narratives (4 page .pdf).

TEXTBOOKS teaching Comics

Drawing Words &Writing Pictures: A definitive course from concept to comic in 15 lessons
by JESSICA ABEL and MATT MADDEN
"College literature courses and textbooks are increasingly making a concerted effort to bring comics into the fold alongside contemporary works of fiction, poetry, and drama" (xiii). True enough.
          I have to admit I was attracted to the title of this work, only to discover this is not a textbook for the English classroom. With the possible exception of the chapter "Every Picture Tells a Story", this textbook is designed for the student who wants to learn to draw comics. I completely enjoyed this work because one of my fantasies is to draw a strip, even though its title would be "But I Can't Draw". A few words of caution - this text does not teach storytelling and if the story is no good, it doesn't matter how good the artist.
          But all is not lost! For instructors teaching comic creation this is an accessible textbook utilizing sidebars, lessons, and detailed instructions. There is also a companion website (www.dw-wp.com) with sample syllabi for ten and fifteen week courses. Included is a section about writing comics with some good exercises for getting the story right.

Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative: Principles and Practices from the Legendary Cartoonist
by WILL EISNER
"Stories are used to teach behavior within the community, to discuss morals and values, or to satisfy curiosity. They dramatize social relations and the problems of living, convey ideas or act out fantasies. The telling of a story requires skill" (Eisner 1). I ask you how is this is different from what we try to teach in the text-only classroom?
           Graphic Storytelling can be used to teach narrative in any medium or mode, but Eisner, being Eisner, focuses on visual narratives and in so doing sets up the reader for a roller coaster ride through text and visuals showing students (and instructors) how to create good stories.
          Topics include symbolism, modes of development (Eisner is not just talking narrative as English instructors think of narrative-telling a story or giving an account of a fictional or historic event-he also includes process and slice-of-life modes of development), audience and its role in developing the story, the writing process where "the dialogue supports the imagery" (Eisner 113), voice, and of course, visual style.

The Power of Comics: History, Form & Culture
by RANDY DUNCAN & MATTHEW J. SMITH
"This is a textbook about comic books" declares Duncan and Smith (vii). And it is.
           Its comprehensive 346 pages includes detailed chapters on the history of the comic medium and fandom, genres from superheroes to classics illustrated, and more advanced sections on the ideology of comics and propaganda. There is even a chapter about researching comic books. The final chapter explores comics culture around the world. Clearly stated objections are outlined at the beginning of each chapter and extensive reading lists are tucked inside.
          While I would recommend this to anyone needing a crash course in comic books, or as a textbook devoted to a class on the comic book medium, this textbook is fairly advanced and would not be appropriate for a remediation class utilizing graphic novels. Having said that I would recommend The Power of Comics to serious students and teachers looking for a crash course in comics.

Understanding Comics
by SCOTT McCLOUD
McCloud's work is the seminal grammar and syntax book for graphic novelists and those who just want to understand comic "grammar". Like mainstream textual handbooks this is a dense work that requires careful thought and analysis, but unlike other writer's resource books, Understanding Comics is written in a comic book format.
           McCloud defines comics as "juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer" (9) and then goes into great detail to explain comic vocabulary, icons and symbols, concepts of comic time, closure, Japanese versus western comic styles and their ramifications, movement and action, visible emotions, and the future of comics as a graphic medium.
          This is a must read for any instructor using graphic novels in the classroom.

COMIC Movies

Comic Book Literacy
directed by TODD KENT
Excellent documentary that focuses on how comics promote literacy. From interviews with librarians to comic historians to comic book artists, over and over the message is, "This is a legitimate medium with a lot to offer." I was struck by one librarian who said, "I was unable to get kids off the computers until I installed a shelf of graphic novels."
          The hour-plus movie goes a long way to legitimize comics and graphic novels with interviews by, among others, the Pulitzer-prize winning Art Spiegleman of Maus fame, and discussions on how comics can and are being used in the classroom.
           While the focus is on encouraging younger readers to "hit the books"--albeit comic books, college age viewers came away feeling like they weren't wasting their time reading a "comic book" in their college English class.

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