EVERYTHING BUT IMAGINARY #178: CAUGHT READING COMICS IN CLASS

[Blake Petit]

As anyone who follows my comings and goings with rabid scrutiny knows by now, I’ve recently begun a new career. When most of you met me, I was Blake Petit – mild-mannered reporter for one of the crappiest newspapers in all the state of Louisiana. But now I’ve got a job that actually allows me to respect myself in the morning – teaching English to a bunch of ninth-graders who wish they were at home asleep instead. I usually don’t blame them for that part.

Yes, friends, that’s right – I am now a high school English teacher. And I’m here to make a confession – I’m kind of a subversive one. I’m the teacher who sneaks in teeny references to geek culture. The school’s theme this year is “Hollywood,” so when I was decorating my classroom I made sure to slip in a Superman Returns poster. (I also slipped in a Serenity poster, a Marx Brothers tin sheet and a framed poster of Abbott and Costello doing their “Who’s on First?” routine my sister gave me for Christmas some years ago. I am shameless in supporting my pet preferences.)

I drop in comic book comments when I teach as well. When I discussed what an “archetype” was, I used Superman as an example of the archetypical superhero. When I talked about story structure, I pointed out that the pattern of set-up, rising action, climax and denouement applies not only to short stories, but to novels, movies and – yes – comic books. A few times, I even felt a real thrill when I got a trace of recognition. My class was assigned Richard Connell’s classic story “The Most Dangerous Game,” and when we finished reading it we talked about other stories that might have elements in common. One girl knew what I was talking about when I asked if anyone had ever read a book or Manga series called Battle Royale. The same girl gasped and had knowing smile on her face when we talked about point-of-view, and I said that the only story I’d ever read with a First Person Omniscient narrator was a comic book called Kingdom Come. Another student, noticing my Superman watch, informed me that Spawn was a better character. While that is demonstrably untrue, clinically proven in numerous laboratory studies, the fact that he’s got those characters on his radar at all at least gives me hope.

Now I’ve only been at this school for a week and a half – I’m not really in a position to begin suggesting curriculum changes yet. I figure you should be there at least a month first. But someday I would absolutely love to include a graphic novel unit in a high school English class. Between August and May we cover short stories, nonfiction, epics, poetry and drama. I can’t believe we couldn’t squeeze in just two weeks on a graphic novel. A lot of high schools and colleges already teach graphic novels – Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns being among the most popular choices. I’d like to go in a different direction, if for no other reason than that it’s been done. Art classes are also known to study Scott McCloud’s brilliant books Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics – wonderful books, but not really the sort of thing I’d use in an English class. I want something with more literary elements – Kingdom Come with its massive Biblical allusions, for example, or some of Will Eisner’s early graphic novels like A Contract With God… or even some Spirit stories. Heck, for fantasy epics, I’d love to bring Jeff Smith’s Bone into the classroom (I’ve noticed a few students already reading the new color editions printed by Scholastic). I’m not sure how many of them would ever make it through the gargantuan one-volume edition, though.

Of course, there’s an obvious question that should be asked here. “Blake,” you ask, “how can you tell the difference between a dangling infarctive past predicate and a transatlantic chronic effluviant gerund?” Also, “Why do you want to teach graphic novels?” Well I’ll tell you this much, guys – it ain’t to make myself the “cool teacher.” First of all, the first time I took attendance and sent my pen cap flying halfway across the room by accident, that ship pretty much sailed. The closest I’m getting to “the cool teacher” is the one kid in my class who has apparently decided to attempt to stump me with pop culture trivia on his way out of the room every day. (Thus far he has failed.)

Second… I think most people who become teachers, especially high school teachers, harbor a desire on some level to become that guy from Welcome Back, Kotter. Not John Travolta, the one with the mustache and the afro. We’d like to be the teacher the students respect and look up to and pal around with. But the truth is, friends, you can’t try to be that sort of teacher. You can try for respect – in fact, if you can’t get respect then you’re never going to be able to control them -- but you can’t set out to be the students’ friend, if for no other reason than because most of them walk through the door with an “us against them” mindset built right in. You’re a teacher. You’re the enemy. If they’re willing to let you be a friend, it’s worth a try, but you’ve got to be a teacher first.

The reason I want to teach graphic novels, friends, is simply because I believe from the bottom of my heart they have something important to offer, something worth studying. Yesterday, I reviewed with my class the different elements of a story: character, plot, setting, point of view and so forth. And as I looked at the dry-erase board where I’d mapped out these elements, I thought to myself, “There’s no bloody reason in the universe why I can apply these lessons to something as dry as Jane Eyre but not to something as incredible as Doug TenNapel’s Creature Tech. Yes, let me teach Romeo and Juliet, but let me teach Maus or Sandman too!”

Comic books have virtually every element that you study in school: protagonists, antagonists, alliteration, allusion, flashbacks, conflict, comedy, tragedy – even poetry and pathos. For God’s sake, I could talk just as effectively about how to interpret The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck as I can Brave New World, and most of the students would enjoy it a hell of a lot more!

From the first day I sat down at my keyboard and began writing this column, one of my driving motivations has been to try to help comic books break out of their status as a subculture and help them gain mainstream acceptance. You study novels in school. You study short stories and poems. You study plays, paintings, music, sculptures, you can even take classes in film and television. So give me one reason that a good teacher can’t use comic books as a tool for education.

C’mon. I’m waiting.

If this becomes a long-term career for me, guys, maybe someday I’ll have the pull to try to get graphic novels slipped in. Until then, though, the subversive activities continue. I’ll drop the characters when I can. I’ll recommend the stories when I compare books. I’ll add a selection of trade paperbacks to my classroom library. And if someday, I happen to see a student I taught walking around at a comic book convention… well, I’m not too humble to take a little pride in that.

Spotlight Comic

It’s back – the Everything But Imaginary Spotlight Comic! Like I said, this feature is going to pop in whenever I find a new comic that I think is worth taking a look at, and that’s very much the case with Viper’s new series A Dummy’s Guide to Danger. I’ve been waiting for this book ever since Jessie Garza told me it was in the works back at Wizard World Dallas in 2004, and it was worth the wait. Written by Jason M. Burns with art by Ron Chan, this is the story of private investigator Alan Sirois – a rather classic gumshoe character trying to track down a brutal serial killer. There’s one catch – Alan’s partner is a ventriloquist’s dummy named Mr. Bloomberg. Alan believes that Bloomberg is paraplegic after having been shot in the spine, unaware that the dummy is (apparently) just a facet of his own subconscious. Imagine the Batman villain as a good guy (with more muscles) and you can probably guess the basic flavor of this book. The first issue came out last week, and it’s a really bizarre, really entertaining read. I’m looking forward to the rest of the series.

Favorite of the Week: August 16, 2006

It was difficult to select a favorite out of last week’s crop of comics, guys, and not really for the reason you want it to be difficult. Although there were a lot of solid comics, there wasn’t anything particularly mind-blowing or memorable. After some deliberation, I’m awarding “favorite” status to Green Lantern Corps #3, the conclusion to the new series’ first story arc. Dave Gibbons – between the lead-in miniseries and these first three issues – has done a really good job of building a new group of Lanterns for the fans to invest themselves in. Soranik Natu, Isamot Kol and Vath Sarn are all intriguing characters in their own right, and turning Guy Gardner into a trainer, a leader for this Corps, makes the story even more interesting. This issue a Lantern is restored and a new one recruited, and the first case of this new series ends up being a particularly satisfying one. Although the main Green Lantern title has gotten a lot better since One Year Later, this is still the book to beat in that family.

Blake M. Petit is the author of the superhero comedy novel, Other People's Heroes, the suspense novel The Beginner and the weekly “Think About It” humor column at Think About It Central. His new comic, Evertime, is coming soon from Tightlip Entertainment. E-mail him at Blake@comixtreme.com and visit him on the web at Evertime Realms.

[Mark Blicharz]

One of your best columns Blake. There are so many comics/graphic novels that can easily fit into what an English teacher teaches. They have the exact same architecture that a novel has with a story that the kids would actually want to read. There are novels that need to be taught, like Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, but stories like Kingdom Come or Dark Knight Returns offer the same literary value and the kids may actually care about them.

[Walt Kneeland]

Excellent piece...

With this attitude, you'd've been my favorite teacher, I think.

I can think of a handful of times that I actually spoke up in a high school english class to answer any posed-to-the-class questions...and generally, they were for examples/interpretations of certain literature terms and elements...and I'd "get" them because I'd apply them to comics for my own understanding, then turn and reapply them to the class material.

And though I didn't comprehend it at the time, I was actually introduced to The Sandman by a classmate, who'd read a friend's copies of the single issues. She had a lot of good to say about it, but it wasn't until years later that I rediscovered it and actually read it on my own.

[Justin Byrd]

Great article, Blake!

And did you smack the kid who thought Spawn was better than Superman?

[Joe Illidge]

Congrats on the new job, and a great one, it is!

In terms of first person narrative, DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN would be a good one for you to read. Not only is it first person, but Miller actually has the narrative change from first person to third person, back and forth, seamlessly.

Graphic novels in school-wise, I've heard that MAUS is on the reading list of various colleges.

If you're interested in suggestions, I'd say Y, THE LAST MAN would be a great choice. It's subversively educational, I think, and it would start up lots of great discussion in class.

Oh, and to a high school kid, Spawn would be a better character than Superman, dude.

[T. Paul Stiles]

Reminds me of third grade priamary school... MY GOD!!! TWENTY YEARS AGO!!!

Anyway, I was reading an issue of Excalibur in class and we had a fire drill. I didn't even notice and kept reading. The teacher got mad and ripped my comic into shreds. I cried

[Dalarsco]

Reminds me of my 10th grade English teacher. The easiest way to get him distracted to waste class time was to mention comics. He even did a couple of little projects involving comics. Here in Canada English also involves media literacy types of things, so he had us try to analyze the images on a couple of pages of the "silent issue" of Amazing Spiderman. I forget exactly why. He then gave us the script for the page where the mime leader addresses his minions and had us each do our own interpretation. After that we were told to take any theme we wanted and make a comic on a page of 11 x 17 paper. He is one of my favorite favorite teachers. We actually shop at the same comic shop and he got me hooekd on Daredevil a few months ago by lending me the first four issues of Brubaker's run. He actually isn't the only comic loving teacher at my school. There are two social studies teachers who were lapsed fans who have both gotten back into comics by reading CW issues lent to them by me and the English teacher.

[Blake Petit]

Originally Posted by SupesAF

Great article, Blake!

And did you smack the kid who thought Spawn was better than Superman?

Heck no! I disagree with him about that, but he's also the one who keeps hitting me with the pop culture questions after class. Today he actually asked me if I knew Superman's father's name. I smiled and said, "Jor-El. You're not gonna stump me with a Superman question, man."

[Andrea Speed]

See, you think comics would be a natural for getting reluctant kids to read. Some could argue that it's not "literature", but look at all the awards Maus and Sandman won. It's hard to attack them.

(Or what about Joe Sacco's Safe Area Goradze or Palestine, which are essentially jounalistic reports in graphic form ...)

[T. Paul Stiles]

Originally Posted by Andrea Speed

See, you think comics would be a natural for getting reluctant kids to read. Some could argue that it's not "literature", but look at all the awards Maus and Sandman won. It's hard to attack them.

(Or what about Joe Sacco's Safe Area Goradze or Palestine, which are essentially jounalistic reports in graphic form ...)

My five year old daughter would mauch rather sit down to an issue of Green Lantern Corps than read the hungy caterpiller or whatever.

[Downfall]

Man, I miss tenth grade English... we read Dark Knight Returns in the second semester. I kind of forget how it played into the stuff we were reading about in our textbooks, but she was teaching a lesson in there somehow.

Ahh, yes, that would have been the subsequent paper we had to write analyzing the 'themes' of the story. But still, reading comics in class... awesome. Ms. Linda Dull rocks, y'all!

Edit: Oh, and, er, good luck with the chil'uns, Blake.

[Blake Petit]

Oh, I'll whip 'em into shape yet.

The kid who tries to stump me has subsequently asked me the Flash's real name (My answer: Which one? Jay Garrick, Barry Allen, Wally West or Bart Allen?); Spawn's real name (Al Simmons); Spawn's arch-enemy (Violator) and how the Silver Surfer got his powers (he begged Galactus to make him his herald to spare his planet). I'm rather enjoying this little tete-a-tete.