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How to Teach Comics

  
 
semioticrobotic
16:35 / 22.01.06
This week in my graduate course in visual rhetoric, I've volunteered to teach/lead a small discussion among my fellow students about sequential art and the medium of the comic. Assigned reading (what my professor assigned for everyone) is the final chapter of McCloud's Understanding Comics.

I've prepared a short (very short) presentation on the differences between representational art and sequential art (terminology from McCloud), specifically regarding the way both forms handle time and motion (for this, I drew on an earlier chapter of McCloud).

I'm looking for advice on particularizing my arguments, and perhaps some accessible examples I can show to the class. All offers welcome; I'm hoping this thread can grow into a resource for others looking to work comics into the classroom.
 
 
Nomad93
13:54 / 23.01.06
What a coincidence! Last month I taught comics in my MA seminar - the first time I ever taught the medium. The results were fairly ok given the fact only 2 or 3 students in the group of 14 read comics with any sort of regularity and several don't at all.

In terms of theoretical preparation I had the group read the entire "Understanding Comics," which they took in quite well. As an example I used the pairing of a literary text and its comic book adaptation (the seminar is devoted to the story in cross-media adaptations): Paul Auster's "City of Glass" (from New York Trilogy) and its Neon Lit series adaptation. The comic book is ingeniously inventive, especially since "City of Glass" is not necessarily an adventure/event-driven text. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in comics.

In class, we first briefly discussed the short story and then went through the comic book, paying attention to selected scenes/parts and discussing in detail how they have been translated into a visual medium. Serendipitously, the examples given by McCloud for some of the comic book techniques are very parallel to the frames/sections in the graphic version of Auster's story, which made it far easier for the students to understand the comic book idiom.

I'll be happy to share any other tips if you're interested.
 
 
semioticrobotic
15:02 / 23.01.06
Two versions of the same text running parallel to one another is an excellent heuristic device. I wish I had my entire collection of comics at school with me; I bet I could find some examples such as the ones you describe.

I also wish my class had the opportunity to read the entirety of _Understanding Comics_; but, I will do my best with their limited knowledge of the final chapter.

I have Comic Life on my iMac, so I've created some comics from pictures of my classmates to make the initial part of my visual presentation directly relevant to even the folks who haven't ever read a comic (I get the feeling there are a few in the class). At some point, however, nearly everyone has been exposed to sequential art in some form -- in the newspaper, etc. -- so if I can find examples of the _form_ that resonate with everyone, I can probably keep everyone engaged (I'll only geek out when I pull some examples from graphic novels I'm bringing).

My first visual shows a representational image, and we'll discuss its temporal duration (a moment). And then with the click of a mouse, word bubbles appear on it, and the temporal duration changes. I hope to use this as a springboard into multiple-panel sequences, the notion of "closure" and its impact on motion, etc.

I'm really looking forward to the presentation Thursday. I only have a half-hour, but I think we can make the best of the time. What would you recommend as far as group activities are concerned? I was thinking of passing out a few graphic novels and having a sort of "scavenger hunt," where the students search for interesting juxtapositions of elements, verbal and iconic images, etc.
 
 
Good Stuff
11:47 / 26.01.06
This is an incredibly important thread!

[Bryan - this touches on something I have been mulling over myself lately. (I just need to get it off my chest. It won't be much direct help to you, I don't suppose).]

The preamble:
I have read some glorious comics - well-conceived, well-executed - and I would love to share them which my friends - particularly those who would never 'deign' to read comics.
Everyone who does enjoy those kind of comics suffers due to the (regrettably accurate) image that most comics are weak, facile, etc, etc. There are just too many bad (lazy? lowest-common-denominator? I'm not sure) comics being produced to change that image.
(This is all according to my own snobbish sensibility of course, and I don't want to dwell on the issue of middle-aged collectors/fans destroying/supporting the industry by buying all the titles they always have, regardless of quality. I am sure that it is covered elsewhere in Barbelith.)
Though I feel that all media are in the same state - literature, television, etc are full of crap quality work that gets eaten up by the masses.
What else is holding western-style comics back from the mainstream, then? I mean, there is a ton of poor-quality manga available in Japan, and at the same time it is mainstream.

So:
What I am working towards is, "I feel the problem is that the general public just doesn't know how to read comics."
In the same way that I might enjoy a performance of opera and ballet, I still couldn't tell a great show from a weak one (except where those qualities are equivalent to those in film and television, like 'natural' acting - and even then such the 'quality' would often be counter-intuitive). I have no context.
Us lot (it take I can speak for the majority here at "Comics Books" in this case) have been reading comics for a fair bit of time, whereas a newbie trying to read the text and view the pictures is partly dislocated from experiencing the narrative by barriers like having to read the text and view the images simultaneously. Like for someone who is not a fluent reader (as everyone has been for a period), the effort of absorbing the narrative into one's head presents a dis.
Listening to music, reading comics and books, watching TV and cinema, I am no longer aware of that there is a medium between myself and the narrative, because I am used to it. But there are other rarer modes that I come away from hardly comprehending/remembering what has been communicated to me, unless I was actively focusing my concentration.

So to go back to the beginning:
I never feel that my pals are able to get the most out of great, wonderful comics that I lend them, because they haven't spent years reading comics (of all levels of quality). Their reaction is most often, "It's alright."

(Now I know that a lot of this is predicated on an objective sense of quality, rather than a subjective one - that isn't really what I am interested to hear about, but this being Barbelith I expect to be challenged on it.)
 
 
semioticrobotic
15:26 / 26.01.06
G.S.-

I don't think your post is necessarily _too_ tangential to mine; after all, I suppose I _am_ secretly hoping that by speaking of comics (in a lucid, breathtaking and enthusiastic way, fo course) to my class I can foster a sense of appreciation for the medium. I only have a half-hour, though, and this will be neither easy nor practical.

The question you ask -- How can I get others to see in this what I see? -- is certainly not specific to comics. It's a perennial struggle (and a question I constantly ask myself as I chug through a thesis on videogaming). It's _hard_ to simply _tell_ another person how "good" something is (or will "be for them"). You've got to give someone a comic (which, for reasons you begin to outline above, is easier said than done). I'm going to distribute a few examples as part of my presentation/discussion (this evening already!), and simply hope that which emerges in dialogue is enough to make at least one person in the class glance slightly longer at the books and say "Hm, well. Perhaps there _is_ more to these things than I realized."

I suppose that's all I can do.

One thing about which I continue to wonder: A few students in my class are avid comic _strip_ readers (Sunday funnies, page-a-day "Far Side" calendars, etc.). How can I draw on this familiarity to foster a richer understanding of the medium as a whole?
 
 
Nomad93
17:32 / 26.01.06
Bryan, apologies for not responding to your post before today - the end of term is murderous but I'm really curious how your presentation went and how others in the group took it.

As to what Good Stuff posted - yes, I think the "conversion" of new readers of sequential art is a very pertinent issue and I generally agree with the reasons you gave why most non-comic readers are at least initially put off the medium.

In general, the same applies to most non-mainstream (which does not have, in fact, denote mere sales figures but may also imply the centrality - or marginality - of the medium's/form's technqiues, strategies and repertoire to the mainstream cultural discourse) forms and genres, including literature. E.g. in order to get the maximum readerly pleasure from ost of experimental/postmodern writing one needs to simply learn to them as most reading strategies learnt while reading realist literature simply don't apply. And it's not just techniques - it's also the expectations of the readers - the "story" (of curse, there are many definitons of it)is a perfect example of one such expectation. Looking for a "story" in many of Stein's, Burroughs' or Acker's writing gets the readers exactly nowhere. One way or another, new "converts" simply need to make some effort to learn how to read and interpret the forms that are new to them. Which is precisely why McCloud's "Understanding Comics" and "Reinventing Comics" are such central titles.

Having said that, designing such learning process can be a tricky thing and largely depends on the cultural background and education - I suppose the strategies of teaching how to read comics in Poland and the US would have to be vastly different to be truly effective given the major differences in the reading cultures of both countries.
 
 
semioticrobotic
01:08 / 30.01.06
Nomad-

I definitely agree. I recently loaned my girlfriend a graphic novel, and her first comment upon completing it was, "I loved it...once I got used to how you're supposed to _read_ it."

The presentation/lecture/discussion went very well. My classmates were very interested, particularly, in the notion of time in sequential art, and made some very insightful comments regarding speed/tempo/motion they felt when moving between panels. I was impressed with how quickly they were able to un-train themselves and see images in ways that didn't invoke a representational gestalt.

Not sure if anyone will pick up comics from here on out, but some folks were definitely reflecting on their youth, which was great.
 
  
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