Tomorrow I'm giving a quiz on the first chapter of Understanding Comics and our vocabulary words. Today we reviewed for the quiz, and they read a three page Frank comic by Jim Woodring. I already shared the last page of it here. I chose this because it's short and it's wordless. I want them to practice reading the pictures. To make sure they looked at each panel, I had them number their papers 1 - 22 and write a one sentence summary of what happened in each panel.
Jim Woodring is basically a genius, but I'm afraid you don't really get that from reading just three pages. If you ever get the chance, read the slightly-longer "Frank and the Truth About Plenitude." It's one of my all-time favorite comics, a surreal vision of an imaginary but internally consistent world, and oh my god man it will totally BLOW YOUR MIND.
I once met Jim Woodring. Are you impressed? Yeah, the kids weren't, either.
In other news, I'm going to write about Grant Morrison's Supergods one of these days. In the meantime, here's Morrison being interviewed by Rolling Stone. It seems like he tries to avoid expressing his rage at Mark Millar, so I was surprised by the part where he basically said he'd like to hit Millar with his car.
OH my god I want to be in your class.
ReplyDeleteI remember meeting the great Mr. Woodring with you. It was a moment that I will never forget. He talked about how he got his ideas, and I believe he said something along the lines of, "I just reach up and pluck them like butterflies."
I remember it as "catch them like butterflies" but, yeah, that's always stuck with me.
ReplyDeleteWow! It must have been an incredible honor to meet Woodring. I actually, just finished a post about The Truth About Plenitude. I wish I could have had a high school class like yours!
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