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GRAMMAR
For the College
Classroom
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
GODDESSES
IN WORLD CULTURE
The
Maiden with a
Thousand Slippers
CONFERENCE
PAPER
Hostages
in the Rose Garden
COMICS for the College Classroom
Visuals
can communicate complex ideas with clarity, precision, efficiency and
convey the most knowledge in the shortest time in the small space . .
. . Visual displays of information encourage a diversity of individual
viewer styles and rates of editing, personalizing, reasoning, and understanding.
Edward
R. Tufte
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, as well as opportunities to teach some basic English skills.
The Adventures
of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need
written by DANIEL PINK
drawn by ROB TEN PAS
Part advice guide, part career guide, The Adventures
of Johnny Bunko, can help young people navigate the real world before
they get there. Daniel Pink, the author of Drive, helps explain
life with his patented life lessons. From "There is no plan"
(not to be confused with "Don't make any plans"), to "Make
excellent mistakes," students quickly learn that life often takes
unexpected detours.
The
book is done in a manga-esque black-and-white style with each chapter
devoted to one of life's lessons. Johnny Bunko's website offers
a good discussion guide with pullouts for each chapter.
A writing
assignment to work alongside this text is a process paper asking students
to describe the procedure they must follow to accomplish their career
goal, from schooling to job hunting to employment forecasts. It is always
amazing how many students have no idea how much schooling it takes to
be a lawyer, doctor, or psychologist, or how much a personal trainer makes
(not much).
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
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
Bayou
Vol. Two
written and drawn by JEREMY LOVE
Just got it! Will post soon!
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?
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
written by ALAN MOORE
drawn by KEVIN O'NEILL, BEN DIMAGMALIW, BILL OAKLEY
Extraordinary
League is a great way to introduce students
to Victorian literature. 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.
In
the classroom, students can read one of the "big five" Victorian
novels and after writing a 14-line summary of an assigned chunks, get
into groups and write a best sentence summary. What is a best sentence
summary, you ask? Like a best ball golf tournament, each person in the
group must contribute a sentence to an overall 14-line "best"
summary they share with the class. At the end of the book, they combine
all these summaries into a single summary of the entire work. Why? Because
they have to write a compare/contrast paper comparing and contrasting
two original characters with their counterparts in The League,
and since they have only read one original work, they have to pay attention
to the other groups' summaries.
Level
Up
written by GENE LUEN YANG
art by THIEN PHAM
Dennis
Ouyang is a video game enthusiast whose late night tournaments lead to
his collegiate demise, but not to worry: four greeting-card angels soon
put him back on the path. In spite of the angels’ incessant coffee brewing,
Dennis soon quits medical school and takes up gaming professionally, so
why isn’t he happy? He discovers happiness lies in doing good things for
others. He gives up gaming and reenrolls in medical school where his video
skills collide with gastroenterology in a gross yet gratifying fashion.
The art of
Level Up is completely different from American Born Chinese
or Eternal Smile. Thien Pham uses a felt pen line washed with
watercolors for a childlike effect to accompany a grown up work.
This is another
story about life choices and life lessons. So often I see students
committing to careers because of two things; 1) their parents told them
to become a nurse or an accountant; and/or, 2) they think they will make
a lot of money. However, too often students have no idea what it takes
to become an accountant, let alone what the job prospects are like once
they do, or what certain professionals make -- and money is a valid consideration.
Have students
write a process essay describing how they are going to accomplish their
career goals from college to workplace and how much they can expect to
earn (that often is the most shocking to them and not in a good way).
Life
and Times of Martha Washington in the Twenty-First Century
written by FRANK MILLER
drawn by DAVE GIBBONS
Martha
Washington is
a 600-page omnibus collecting decades worth of material. Too much? Not
enough, I say (I'm hoping the creators go back and fill in some of Martha's
life in future serials).
Martha is
not your typical superhero -- she is born into poverty, joins the army,
and then saves the world. This is a psychological tour de force, and can
be used in the classroom as such, giving students a way to think beyond
the text.
Ala
Campell, Martha's classic hero's journey begins in the rhetorical jungle
known as the Cabrini Green projects. She is separated from her mother
after joining PAX, an entity with magic-like powers that can lift anyone
out of the muck. She crosses the threshold into the belly of the whale
as she fights Fat Boy in the jungles of Brazil. Martha never atones with
the father figure projected by the Surgeon General; she is never going
to become a replica of a doctored replica, even though he literally "regrows"
our hero. Martha is reborn after confronting the mechanical physician
and realizing the government is behind society's problems. It isn't until
Martha's death that she becomes master of two worlds when she is physically
transported "home" on a lightening bolt and given the freedom to live
with the creators.
For a Freudian
spin, Martha's instinctual id breaks out when needed to keep the battle-hardened
soldier alive, while her ego is kept in line by a superego that holds
her to the highest standards. In the end, Martha is literally a human
superego who transcends into a god(dess).
There is lots
of graphic violence and a love story that will break even the hardest
of hearts. Gibbons provides lots of commentary and extras to fill in the
space between the panels.
The
Light Brigade
written by Peter J. Tomasi
drawn by Peter Snejbjerg
colored by Bjarne Hansen
What can I say? This is one awesome book. It is
Lord of the Rings meets Band of Brothers only better. A
group of WWII US GIs gets mixed up in the heavenly fight between good
and evil. They save the day, but not before being attacked by zombie Nazis
and having their ranks are reduced to two single survivors.
The story
takes place in winter time France and the snow scenes are beautifully
rendered--the light is just right. The battles between zombies (Nazis,
knightly Crusader, Visigoths, and Huns) and human GIs alongside their
heavenly hosts are beautifully drawn displays of gore, uniforms, and weapons.
I'm not sure
how I'd use this one in the classroom, maybe to teach genres. Narrative
nonfiction, historical fiction, fantasy, golden age comics, it's all there.
If you were teaching military history, this would work because of the
zombie mash up that marches across eras into and out of European history.
If I were teaching comic books, well, this would be a no-brainer.
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 LYNDA 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, adolescence, 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 narratives 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,
filmmaker and photo journalist. His is a life seen through the lens of
a Time/Life and fashion photographer 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.
Shutterbug
Follies
by JASON LITTLE
Shutterbug Follies
began life as a weekly web comic delivered each Sunday with a cliffhanger
that kept readers coming back for more. Little dubbed his mystery "bubblegum
noir" and that's just what it is.
Bee works
as a photoprocessor who often keeps copies of the more lurid photos she
develops, and her voyeurism gets her tangled up in a murder mystery.
The art is
Hergé's TinTin meets Raymond Chandler, with strong lines
matched by solid colors.
Visual narratives
are a big part of my classroom. I usually have students begin with a narrative
about everyone's favorite subjects (ME) and then have them use that as
a script for their own graphic novel. But a big part of this new thing
called visual literacy is voyeuristic in nature. People put their most
intimate details with photos to match on Facebook or some other social
networking site.
I ask students
to create a visual narrative from their stories by using only photos they
find on the web. They can add speech or thought bubbles and text boxes
to make the story work.
They always
say it can't be done, but soon end up realizing not only is it easy to
find a picture that fits their situation, they should also clean up their
own Facebook pages.
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
Feature Story: Living to Create at APE 2011
Level Up Debuts with Epic Draw-Off
Feature
Story: Happy Birthday, Wonder-Con: A Review of the Show
(25th
Anniversary, SF, April 1-3, 2011)
Op-Ed: Once Upon a Midnight Dreary: Teaching Poe in the Intensive College Classroom
Op-Ed: Graphic Texts in the College Classroom
COMIC Writing
April 2012 - Critical Survey of Graphic Novels: Heroes and Superheroes featuring two essays, one on Light Brigade by Peter Tomasi and Peter Snejbjerg and another on Frank Miller's The Life and Times of Martha Washington in the 21st Century (a personal favorite).
COMIC Artists, Creators, and Authors
Frank Miller - the best of the best from Martha Washington to Batman his heroes define the meaning of the word at a time when we could use some genuine guts.
COMIC Contests
Diablo
Valley College's
O'Keefe Prize for Graphic Literature
is
offered in memory of Diablo Valley College's beloved English professor
who taught comics as literature and raised hell among us for far too short
a time. Details about contest rules, links to former winners as well as
cartooning tips.
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."
Comics
and Graphic Narratives - MLA Discussion Group
The group seeks to build on the growing interest
in comics studies within the academy, an interest attested to by rapidly
increasing opportunities for book and journal publication, the proliferation
of conferences in the field, and the expanding professional conversation
about the teaching of graphic narratives.
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."
The
Comics Reporter
Tom Spurgeon's Web site of comics
news, reviews, interviews and commentary includes a comprehensive list
of comics-related events.
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.
Studies
in Comics
Studies
in Comics aims to describe the nature
of comics, to identify the medium as a distinct art form, and to address
the medium’s formal properties. The emerging field of comics studies is
a model for interdisciplinary research and in this spirit this journal
welcomes all approaches.
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 Schools/Museums
Cartoon
Art Museum of San Francisco
The Cartoon Art Museum’s key function is to preserve,
document, and exhibit this unique and accessible art form. Through traveling
exhibitions and other exhibit-related activities — such as artists-in-residence,
lectures, and outreach — the museum has taken cartoon art and used it
to communicate cultural diversity in the community, as well as the importance
of self-expression.
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."
Great website including a blog, events, student work (this isn't amateur
hour), summer workshops, and "The
Language of Comics".
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 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(s)
Annual - Summer- San Diego, California at Comic-Con.
& Annual - Spring - San Francisco, California at Wonder Con.
Held
in conjunction with the two major comic conferences, Comic-Con International
and Wonder-con.
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 - Various
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 (dore.ripley@gmail.com).
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."
Graphic
Novels, Comics and Popular Culture PCA/ACA & Southwest/Texas Popular Culture
and American Culture Associations Joint Conference
Deadline: December 01, 2011
Conference: Feb. 8-11, 2012
Location:
Albuequeque, NM
Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics
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 (dore.ripley@gmail.com).
COMIC Events
Big
Wow-Comic Fest, San Jose, California
May
19th & 20th, 2012. Two great days of Comic Book, Art, Anime, Sci- Fi,
Fantasy, Gaming and Cosplay FUN! Many of the country's best vendors of
all things cool and collectible will tempt your wallets with the perfect
gifts for Geek Grads and Dads!!!
Comic-Con,
Wonder-Con, & APE
Portal to all three conferences.
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
(except 2012)
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 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
Comic
Master
Creates
entire graphic novels, but you are limited to four on-site characters.
Marvel
Super Hero Squad
Kid-sized heroes and great page layouts showing
newbies that comic books are made up of more than just a series of panels
separated by gutters.
South
Park Studios
Lets individuals create their own South Park alter egos.
Speechable
is a free photo service that lets you easily upload and add speech bubbles
to your photos and share them with friends via email or on Facebook®,
MySpace®, Orkut, blogs, and message boards.
StripGenerator.com
Black and white, lots of extras, recognizable
style.
Superlame
Add comic balloons to your photos. It's easy, fast,
cool, and even free. What more could you ask for? So, they could tell
you how great this little web tool is, how it let's you upload your photos
and pictures, add comic style word balloons, then save them and use them
for whatever you want. But, just check out the app for yourself. Enjoy!
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.
________________________
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.
>Compulsory
Reading questions for study and discussion .pdf
A
Prayer for Uganda
by LIZBETH BROWN
Winner of the 2011 O'Keefe Prize for Graphic Literature,
A Prayer for Uganda describes the horrible conditions of war torn
Uganda through the eyes of a naive aid worker.
Students can
observe how U.S foreign policy impacts other nations causing misery. In
this case, "we" seem to be adding to the already wretched conditions
of war torn Uganda, a country that has been waging a civil war between
the government and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) since the 1980s.
Students can see how visual information delivery can evoke a powerful
visceral response in readers.
>A
Prayer for Uganda questions for study and discussion.pdf
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.
A
Short History of America
by ROBERT CRUMB
This classic first appeared in Co-Evolutionary
Quarterly in 1979 with an epilogue added a year later.
Students can
identify cause-and-effect elements as well as making predictions about
the future. This is a way to begin a discussion about what is going on
in the urban centers where many students live, or having them think about
how neighborhoods change.
>A
Short History questions for study and writing.pdf
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 lexicon 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.
There is so much more to include . . . check back often.
