The Thing That Shouldn't Exist!!!

We had parent-teacher conferences today, so I was at work all day. Now that I am home I don't have much energy for blogging. Let's see . . . we read more Persepolis today. The students enjoy when I cast them in parts and they read the story out loud. The classes are small enough, and there are enough minor characters (Teacher, Student, Bearded Guy on TV, Woman in Store, Second Woman in Store) that almost everyone can have a part.  Today we read "The F-14s," about the war with Iraq, and "The Jewels," about the domestic effects of the war.

And I forgot to mention--I graded those Persepolis quizzes from Tuesday, and almost everyone did well. It went much, much better than that last Understanding Comics quiz. Did I ever say how that quiz turned out? No? Well, it wasn't pretty. Let us just say that the students were not heavily invested in the last three chapters of Understanding Comics, and that Persepolis is going much better by comparison.

Please enjoy this picture of ZZUTAK, THE THING THAT SHOULDN'T EXIST!!!, by Mr. Steve Ditko.

Quiz Time!

We barely had time for Persepolis today, because the Understanding Comics quiz took longer than I anticipated. I haven't graded them yet, but judging from the students' comments, some of them did not do very well at all. There was no multiple choice or matching, so if you didn't know the material, you were pretty much out of luck. I'm hoping that the students who didn't pay attention in class and then bombed the quiz will learn a valuable lesson. We live in hope. 

Here, let me show you the quiz . . .

Chapter 6
1. Describe the transitions people make, according to McCloud, from the books they read as children to the books they read as adults.


2. Describe how words and pictures drifted apart over time.


3. What is “the curse of all new media”?


4. Draw an example of a Word Specific panel.

5. Draw an example of a Picture Specific panel.


6. Draw an example of an Interdependent panel.  


7. Compare and contrast the Duo-Specific type to the Additive type of panel.


Chapter 8
 8. The “reasons for the stormy relationship between comics and color . . . can be summed up in two words.” What are they?


9. Once the standard four color process took over, what became “the look of comics in America”?

10. What effect does traditional flat comic book coloring have on a comic? How does it change the reader’s experience?

Chapter 9
11. Why, according to McCloud, should we try so hard to understand comics?

12. How does comics compare to other forms of mass communication?

13. Why is communication so important?

14. What role do cartoons play in comics? What role does realism play?

15. Who joins Scott McCloud in the last panel of the book?

Bonus Extra Credit Questions!
A. What are the three subtractive primary colors?

B. Name three of the masters of flat-color comics (according to Scott McCloud).

C. Explain Herge’s “democracy of form.”

Sometimes You Just Don't Know

We finished watching Batman Year One today. Here is my criticism of the movie: The scene where Gordon begins his affair with Essen is immediately followed by the scene where Gordon breaks off the affair. It happens so fast you say, "What, really? It's over already?" They should have put another scene in between. Something with Bruce Wayne.

I liked it overall. And this concludes my discussion of Batman Year One on this blog. For real! For real.

Now I have a logistical issue. I have two days left in the week. I had planned on reviewing for our Understanding Comics quiz on Thursday and then giving the quiz on Friday. But there's a pep rally Friday, which means one of my classes won't have time to take the quiz. I don't want the other class to be a full day ahead, so no quiz on Friday. And I make it a policy not to give quizzes on Monday, since they tend to forget things over the weekend. So Monday will be review day and Tuesday will be quiz day. You follow me so far?

That leaves me with two days to fill with valuable academic content. Well, one day, and then a pep rally on Friday, but there will be one class that's not during the pep rally, so I need something for them to do that the other class can miss. Also I have to plan the pep rally, but that's a concern outside the scope of this blog.

The next book we're going to read is Persepolis. I picked up the books from the library today, so I'm ready to go . . . except that our first Persepolis activity is going to be going to the computer lab and doing some research on Iran in the 1980s. And the computer lab is already booked for tomorrow and Friday.

So, as I write this, I'm not sure what we're going to do tomorrow. Rest assured, however, that I will figure it out before class begins.

The Book Is Better than the Movie

Can you believe I didn't post anything yesterday? How embarrassing. In case you were wondering, we spent yesterday finishing up the last chapter of Understanding Comics.

Overall, the students are not big fans of the book. You would think teenagers would be eager to read an investigation into an art form's history, mechanics, and aesthetics, but . . . okay,  no, you probably wouldn't think that. Why would you think that? I should have realized they would find it boring, but I was blinded by the fact that I loved Understanding Comics when I was their age. It was published during my senior year of high school. I remember reading previews of it in Amazing Heroes and The Comics Buyer's Guide, and I couldn't wait to get a copy. I bought it as soon as it came out and probably read it in one sitting. It blew my mind. I guess I had hoped it would have a similar effect on my students, but sometimes I forget that I was not a normal teenager.

In other news, the animated adaptation of Batman Year One just came out a week or so ago. This is serendipitous, as we just finished reading Batman Year One a couple of weeks ago. It was clearly a sign, perhaps from the gods themselves, so I bought the DVD and we're watching it in class. I'm having them list differences between the book and the movie, but it's a very faithful adaptation, so we haven't found many so far. One thing I noticed is that Gordon smokes in the book, and so far the movie is tobacco-free. And they cut narration and dialogue. Some of that old school Frank Miller writing works great on the page, but is not so hot when spoken aloud.

Blah blah blah. It seems like every one of my blog posts ends up being about Understanding Comics and/or Batman Year One. Soon, dear reader, soon I will move on. Starting in just a few days, every blog post will be about Persepolis.

Under a Bright Yellow Sky

When I've asked the students to describe different artists' styles, the most common descriptions are "detailed" or "not detailed." I figured I should show them what detailed really means, so I took in some Geof Darrow. He's one of those artists whose name has become a shorthand explanation. Any comics artist who uses lots of detail is inevitably compared to Geof Darrow--"it's hyperdetailed. . . .you know, a Geof Darrow kind of thing." But, unlike so many, Darrow makes it work. I took in Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot, because it is appropriate for all ages, unlike Hard Boiled. I told the students how long I expect it took for Darrow to draw a page, and they didn't believe me.

The class finished drawing their examples of the seven types of word/picture combinations, and we moved on to Chapter 8, which is about color. I have read many a black-and-white comic in my time, and in many cases have preferred black-and-white to lousy coloring, so I forget how hung up on color most people are. Some of the students have complained from the beginning about how Understanding Comics is black-and-white. Today their dreams came true, though, because we made it to Chapter 8, the chapter about color, which is the only color section in the book.

McCloud makes some good points about how color changes the way we see the image, and how it emphasizes specific objects. He also talks about how the two main factors in the history of color in American comics were "commerce and technology." Color is expensive and hard to pull off. (This is something I used to have to explain regularly to my Journalism students, who constantly insisted that the only way to make our school newspaper worth reading would be to print it all in color.) McCloud explains why, historically, American comics had such lousy color reproduction. And since there were such limitations to the color, the artists who did the best work with flat coloring were "masters of form and composition." McCloud specifically mentions Jack Cole, Winsor McCay, and Jack Kirby.

Here's an example of a page by Jack Kirby:

Even though the coloring is basically terrible--an orange monster against a yellow sky? Blue people standing on white ground?--the power of the drawing remains intact. It's still a satisfying picture, because it's Jack Freakin' Kirby.

Tomorrow I'll give them handouts with questions about Chapter 8. I know, I know . . . "Handouts with questions? How is that challenging them to learn in new and exciting ways? You've got to move higher on Bloom's Taxonomy! Instead of giving them sheets of questions, you should be assigning them to write and perform puppet shows that express their feelings about the material you've covered!"

Well, Straw Man, what you have to realize is that we teachers in the real world face many limitations. You can't do puppet shows every day; sometimes you've just got to get them to demonstrate that they've read the material.

They Can't All Be Winners

In class today, the students split into groups. Each group chose one of the seven types of word/picture combinations I mentioned yesterday and drew a panel demonstrating that type of combination. They didn't all finish, but once they do I'll hang the drawings up on the wall. Won't that be festive? 

We're skipping Chapter 7 of Understanding Comics, and Chapters 8 and 9 are short, so it's possible we'll make it through the book by the end of the week.

I had wanted to share some more thoughts on aesthetics and pedagogy, but I'm very sleepy. I've been staring at the screen for ten minutes trying to think of something to make this blog post about. Now I'm afraid I'm going to cut my losses, give up, and hope for something better tomorrow.

Scattershot!

And in class today, we read the second half of Understanding Comics Chapter 6. In this section, McCloud describes seven different ways that words and pictures can be combined in comics. They are . . . parallel, and additive, and . . . uh . . . I didn't bring a copy of the book home, and I don't know them off-hand. I'll probably have them memorized soon, though, since we're going to do an activity with them tomorrow.

Right now my daughter is menacing me with a stick, so I'm somewhat distracted. Why does she even have a stick in the house? Who's in charge around here?

Okay, you're right, I can probably Google "McCloud word picture combinations" and get a list. And . . . yes, that worked. Here you go! Seven types of word-picture combinations.

Right now there is thunder outside, and my daughter is very excited. It's hard to focus on writing. Now she's playing with a tiny toy Wotan. Not the god, the comic book villain. He's pretty obscure, but I bet I can find a picture . . .

There we go. We got our Wotan toy at Target. He came packaged with Doctor Fate.

What was I talking about? I don't know, but my daughter is kind of scared of thunder, so I gotta go. See you tomorrow.

Aesthetics & Pedagogy

We're midway through the semester!

Overall, grades were good. And the grades had enough of a normal distribution that I must be doing something right.

Last week we finished Batman Year One; next week we begin Persepolis. In the meantime it's back to our old standby, Understanding Comics. Today we started reading Chapter 6, Show and Tell, which is about the relationship between words and pictures.

McCloud writes, "Traditional thinking has long held that truly great works of art and literature are only possible when the two are kept at arm's length. Words and pictures together are considered, at best, a diversion for the masses, at worst a product of crass commercialism."

He goes on to trace the history of words and pictures, from their mutual beginning as cave paintings, up to the 19th century when words and pictures had grown extremely far apart. Then, according to McCloud, they started to move back together. Eventually we begin to see a fusion of art and literature.

If you're going to talk about comics, you need to think about the relationship between words and pictures. The problem with this chapter is that it assumes a familiarity with at least the concept of the Western canon, of great works of art and literature, as opposed to junk with little artistic merit. Most of my students aren't really familiar with the Great Art/Disposable Trash dichotomy; they think more in terms of That's Okay/That Sucks. I'm pretty sure that not only do the references to art history go over their heads, but the whole concept that certain works of art are aesthetically valuable or historically important is foreign to them.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I wish they all loved gazing at portraits by Rembrandt. I just wish they had   some kind of aesthetic sense about something, to the point that they could articulate why they enjoyed a particular piece of art. I wish they would get excited about art and writing. But now I'm getting into Crazy English Teacher Wonderland. What was I even talking about originally?

Understanding Comics. We read the first half of Chapter 6 and discussed it, and I gave them a handout to guide them through it. Tomorrow we finish Chapter 6. Then Chapter 7 . . . man, I don't know about Chapter 7. It's mainly of interest to aspiring artists. I may skip it.

The Expressionism of Rob Liefeld

Since the first day of class students have asked me when they were going to draw comics. Every time I've told them that this is an English class, not an Art class, and that our focus is on reading. But yesterday I gave the students pages with nine panel grids of empty panels (lovingly hand drawn) and assigned them to draw a comic that explains how to do something, using at least one moment-to-moment transition, one subject-to-subject transition, and one action-to-action transition (see Understanding Comics chapter 3 for more details on panel transitions.) The results were pretty entertaining, ranging from "How to Make a Sandwich" to "How to Assassinate Someone."

I hope that drawing their own comics gave the students a little more insight into how many choices a cartoonist has to make, from drawing a character, to composing a panel, to making the panel transitions work, to pacing the narrative, to composing a page, and so on and so on. It's harder than it looks.

My goal now is to get them to pay attention to the art. I've known plenty of comics fans who focus solely on the story and, unless the art is terrible, don't really care what it looks like. To them the art is just a system for delivering important updates about the life of Batman. But comics is a visual medium, and if you ignore the art you're missing the point. 

Today we talked a little bit about Impressionism and Expressionism (only a little, because my knowledge of art history is much weaker than my knowledge of comics trivia) and then read chapter 5 of Understanding Comics. Chapter 5 is about how cartoonists can express emotions through their drawing styles and appeal to different senses.

There's a great page in Chapter 5 that shows samples of different cartoonists' work and explains how their different use of line conveys different emotions. McCloud writes something to the effect that Rob Liefeld's jagged scratchy lines strike a chord with adolescent readers. He wrote that back in the 90's, when Liefeld was at the peak of his popularity (drawing comics like X-Force, pictured below). While reading that page today, one of the boys in my class pointed to the Liefeld panel and said, "I like that one best!" Apparently McCloud was right, and the appeal of Rob Liefeld's art to teenage boys is timeless.

Reading Pictures GO!

Today: No school!

Tomorrow: I begin Unit 2 of Creative Reading. And, in a rare instance of Things Going According to Plan, I'm also beginning Unit 2 of Senior English, but that's outside the scope of this blog.

Unit 2 is supposed to go like this:
Reading Pictures (weeks 4 – 6)
*Understanding Comics chapters 5-9
*The continuing history of American comics (comic books to graphic novels)
*Comparing and contrasting different art styles
*Analyzing & evaluating longer comics

I now know from experience that the plan to read five chapters of Understanding Comics in three weeks is completely unrealistic. The main thing is to read the chapter about different art styles expressing different moods, since one of the goals in Unit 2 is to focus more on the art.

 I also need to decide which "longer comics" we'll be reading. Based on the syllabus, our candidates are:
"Frank and the Truth About Plenitude", by Jim Woodring
“A Dream of a Thousand Cats”, by Neil Gaiman and Kelley Jones
“This Man, This Monster!”, by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
“The Girl in Superman’s Past!”, by Bill Finger and Wayne Boring

In case you're wondering, the girl in Superman's past is his college sweetheart Lori Lemaris. Man, I love that story.

Speaking of Superman, I need to be careful not to bias the class too much toward comic books over comic strips. I'm going to incorporate this Onion AV Club article about the history of the American comic strip and some Peanuts strips to provide balance.

"It's Merkel. Something about a giant bat. Chicken will keep."

Guess what I found waiting for me on the porch when I got home . . . a package from Amazon. I love packages from Amazon! And guess what was inside. No guess? Okay, it was two copies of this:

Now that I have enough copies of Understanding Comics, I have turned my attention to accumulating copies of Batman Year One. The Cincinnati Public Library system can only get me 5 or 6 copies. This weekend I'm going to visit some used bookstores to see if I can turn any up. Now I have a start, though, thanks to this mysterious benefactor (you may not have intended to be mysterious, but your name was not included). Thank you benefactor! Also, let me know who you are.

If you haven't read Year One, check it out. You may have heard that this Frank Miller fellow is crazy and that his writing is nearly incoherent, and that's true, but back in the eighties he was very, very good.

In other news we had our first test today. I haven't graded them, so for now I'm going to assume that it went well.

Status Report!

My syllabus for the class started out like this:

What is Comics? (weeks 1 – 3)
*Comics vocabulary
*Understanding Comics chapters 1-4
*The early history of American comics (newspaper comic strips, early comic books)
*Analyzing short comics

Now we're approaching the end of week 3, and we're mostly on track. The only thing we're behind on is reading Understanding Comics--instead of finishing up chapter 4, we're finishing up chapter 3. I don't think we're going too slow, so much as I misestimated how long it would take to get through each chapter (as I keep mentioning, it's really dense.)

Today I gave them a handout over the second half of chapter 3 and the Stardust analysis assignment. Tomorrow we review chapter 1 - 3 and work on writing their analyses. Friday the Stardust analyses are due and they take their test. And that will end Unit 1.

So far, grades are mostly good, and morale is okay. There have been no disasters. I am not a failure.  No, I am mighty like Samson.

Love Is Like a Brick to the Head

As good as Understanding Comics is, it's a lot of theorizing and explaining, and every now and then you need a change of pace. So I started off today's class with a brief introduction to Krazy Kat.

George Herriman's Krazy Kat, as you may be aware, is considered by many to be the Great American Comic Strip, the Citizen Kane of newspaper comics. It ran from 1916 to 1944, only ending when Herriman died. It's about a cat named Krazy who loves a mouse named Ignatz. Ignatz throws bricks at Krazy, which Krazy interprets as gestures of love.

 
Krazy and Ignatz and their friends live in Coconino County, which I always assumed was a made up place, like Duckburg or Gotham City, but which it turns out is an actual place in Arizona. When we drove through there a few summers ago I really wanted to get a picture of me in front of a "Welcome to Coconino County" sign, but sadly we did not see one.

Anyway, these animals live in the southwest and they go on about their lives and there's really no way to describe the strip that does it justice. You have to read it, and you have to read several of them to get into the rhythm of the comic and enter into Herriman's strange fantasy world. Unfortunately I am limited on time and resources, so I only showed the students one strip.

Fantagraphics has almost wrapped up their complete reprinting of all the Krazy Kat Sunday strips--and really, if you're only going to buy one comic strip reprint series, this is the one--so I've got 23 years worth of weekly comic strips on my shelf. I wasn't willing to comb through them all to find the perfect strip, so I decided to just go  with the first volume:

I flipped through that and chose the fourth ever Krazy Kat strip, from May 14, 1916. It's 22 panels long, which is a ridiculous amount of content for one page.

Krazy is floating down the river in a shoe box, and goes over a waterfall. Ignatz thinks that Krazy is dead and celebrates. Then, after he sits down to think about it, he starts to cry. Krazy, now underwater, runs into a relative, Krazy Kat-Fish. Krazy Kat-Fish leads Krazy Kat to Mannie Mush-Rat's home underground.  Ignatz is sitting and weeping when Krazy pops out of a tree and says, "Why, li'il ainjil, why weeps thou?" Ignatz is surprised, so Krazy adds, "It's only me dahlink." Ignatz throws a rock at Krazy, and in the last panel Krazy reflects, "L'il lolly-pops, how he loves me." 

Krazy stuff!

After that we started on Understanding Comics chapter 2, all about icons, varying levels of abstraction, and the power of cartoons.

Here You Go, Educators of the World

Questions on Understanding Comics Chapter 1:

1. According to Scott McCloud, “the potential of comics is _______________ and _______________ !” (p. 3)

2. What term did Will Eisner use to describe comics? (p.5)

3. Explain the difference between medium and content. Answer in complete sentences. (p.6)

4. What six other media does McCloud give as examples? (p.6)

5. What is McCloud’s definition of comics? (p.9)

6. When was the pre-Columbian picture manuscript discovered by Cortes? (p.10)

7. What story does the Bayeux Tapestry tell? (p.12 – 13)

8. What event looms large over the history of comics? (p.15)

9. Describe some of the events shown in “The Tortures of Saint Erasmus.” (p.16)

10. Describe the work of William Hogarth. (p.16)

11. Describe the artwork of Rodolphe Topffer. (p.17)

12. When did newspaper comics start to appear? (p.18)

13. According to McCloud, why are many “inspired and innovative comics” not usually seen as comics? Answer in complete sentences. (p.18)

14. According to McCloud, why is a single panel not comics? (p.20)

15. What is the difference between cartoons and comics? (p.21)

16. What are some of the genres McCloud lists? (p.22)

17. What are some of the things McCloud says are not mentioned in his definition of comics? (p.22)

18. Describe the way Scott McCloud draws himself. Be specific.

19. What are the main points McCloud is making in this chapter? Summarize the main ideas. Answer in complete sentences.

20. Do you think McCloud does a good job explaining his ideas in this chapter? Why or why not? Be specific.

The Second Day of Class

Day Two! We talked about what the word "comics" means and brainstormed ideas. Then I gave them definitions for comics terms like "panel" and "gutter" and "word balloon." And then I had them look up definitions for the difficult words from Understanding Comics chapter 1, like "aesthetic" and "juxtaposed." Once they were armed with these words, we launched into reading the first chapter. We only made it a few pages in, but tomorrow we'll get to Scott McCloud's definition of comics.

So far the class is going well. One thing I notice is that my students don't have a strong prejudice against the subject. I can easily imagined someone saying, "Comics class? That's a waste of time! I demand to be transferred to a class that deals with significant intellectual content!" But my students are, you know, teenagers. Some of them love comics, some of them dislike comics, some don't care, but at the end of the day it's another class, and writing down definitions for comics terms is about the same as writing down Spanish vocabulary or facts about World War I. It's all just stuff to them. I appreciate that.

Speaking of things I appreciate . . . when I got home today there was a box on my porch. Inside the box were two copies of Understanding Comcis. These books were generously donated by a friend. I'm not 100% sure which friend, because two people emailed recently to ask my address so they could send me some books, but both of them are upstanding gentlemen. When I wrote on here about my difficulties getting books, that was not meant as a subliminal hint that people should mail them to me. I know that the guy who sent me books--whichever one he is--did it because he genuinely wanted to help out, and I am extremely grateful.   

Textbooks!

Bad news: I was under the impression that the school had ordered 20-ish copies of Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud to use as my main textbook. It turns out that the order was never placed, and now it is very unclear whether I'll be getting those books (I don't know if you've heard, but public schools are not currently rolling in the money.) I still plan on using Understanding Comics, even if I can't get the 20-ish copies, but it's an annoying setback.

I currently have one copy:

Good news: I emailed eight major comics publishers (Pop Quiz! Can YOU name eight American comic book publishers?) asking if they ever donated comics for educational purposes. So far I've gotten two replies, one of which said no, but said it very politely, and the other of which said maybe. I'm optimistic about that second one, and there are still six more publishers to hear from.