Impressions of Graphic Novels


I actually have a long history with graphic novels. Like many kids in my generation I was a participant in the great Anime/Manga Boom of the late 90s/early 00s which meant many a copy of the Sailor Moon or Dragon Ball Z manga was checked out from the local library which eventually evolved to American series like Neil Gaiman's The Sandman or Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan in my teens. But things like comic books or manga volumes were expensive and my family spent a good deal of my childhood poor so I had to go looking for cheap alternatives to those. That was when I discovered webcomics, a media form created during the late 90s during the dot-com boom.

Not only was this a great way for someone broke like me to enjoy the graphic novel format but webcomic writers were free from constraints of their print compatriots which allowed them to dig into controversial topics other comics were not allowed to touch. While this originally manifested in webcomics having a good deal more sex and violence than print comics, a visionary few saw an opening that they could fill. Writers from marginalized backgrounds, LGBT writers in particular, began to post their own comics and many of them saw success.

This freedom came at a cost, however, as without editorial oversight anybody could put up a webcomic. A reader has to dig through a lot of garbage to find the gems of the webcomic world.

But overall, my experiences with graphic novels have been nothing but positive. Allowing me to expand my mind and embrace new concepts and different kinds of people. I am overjoyed that the American Educational establishment is now recognizing the educational potential of this artistic branch.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Media Viewing and Analyzing

I have a creeping suspicion that one of the greatest challenges of my teaching career is going to be dealing with the "Death of the Author". On the one hand, once a writer let's go of the work it becomes the reader's to interpret. On the other hand, I've seen some really stupid, close-minded, and (in some cases) harmful interpretations of texts come from people who don't care to learn anything about the author. How many mediocre English teachers have crammed their personal interpretations of various works down their students throats with no actual evidence to back them up (a good example of this phenomena can be seen in Fun Home by Alison Bechdel)? I've seen people scream that other authors are fascist or racist in spite of the fact that there is nothing in either the text or the author's background to support it. I've seen people say the opposite about other writers, again, with ample evidence supporting it. On the other hand, there are times wh...
Read more

Grammar and Writing

Looking over the grammar rules implanted a weird nostalgia in me for my school days. Making me remember the days of flipping through the text book in sunlit classrooms. Listening to the teacher as she wrote out sentence structures on the board. It also made me remember why I once heard a Frenchman describe English as an "ugly lurching fool of a language". Commas in particular need some kind of tribunal to ensure their purpose are clear and concise. Never once have I met an English teacher who could give me a complete answer for what commas were used for. The best I got were definitions from the textbook or personal advice. As an aspiring writer and English teacher this bodes poorly for the ease of my professions. Don't even get me started on semi-colons. This is what happens when a bunch of languages are dumped in a bucket and allowed to spawn. I also started to remember learning how to cite. We weren't taught how to do so until Senior year, and even then only ...
Read more

Culture Distance and Culture Dimensions

Our world is shrinking by the day, and as the many and varied peoples that comprise the human race find themselves crowded more and more into each other, we find that this shrinking causes our world to become more multi-layered and complex. This complexity is not new to me, my father was a first generation immigrant who left Mexico for the sake of opportunity. The cultural differences in even geographically close countries such as the US and Mexico are often stark and noticeable. This will prove a challenge as education is forced to contend with multi-cultural classrooms. One could just say that you should deal with students on a case-by-case basis but as the paper shows this itself can be seen as the spawn of an Anglo-Centric worldview that will hinder more than help. However, this view can also be disputed by another paper. The issue with academia in such rapidly changing times such as these is that while our successors will be able to see the issue more clearly, we will be forced ...
Read more