LITERACY THROUGH Comics

History Ethics Art Science That's quite a wealth of subjects with which comic books can help teachers out. And then there is of course another: literature. By reading comics religiously, many youngsters, as they mature, naturally gravitate towards more serious literary fare.

"l started reading comics [as a child], and then I got into other types of fiction and literature." John Lowe, chair of the Sequential Art Department at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, US, said in an interview. "I stopped reading comics a little later, but i don't think I would have made the leap [to literature] if it weren't for comics." Lowe helps cultivate his colleague students' love of cartoons, graphic novels and Japanese manga to help them master a variety of narrative techniques.

Jim Shooter. A onetime editor-in-chief at Marvel comics, famously instructed all his writers and artists to adhere to several clear rules in creating a coherent narrative along a pleasing arch from conflict to resolution in each and every story

1) introduce the characters properly;
2) Establish their situation;
3) introduce the conflict;
4) Build the suspense;
5) Reach the climax of the story;
6) Achieve a resolution. In effect,

These rules are simply a watered-down variation on Aristotle's Poetics, the worlds first dramatic theory, and reconstitute timeless advice on effective storytelling.

Another Marvel stalwart, Roy Thomas, who took over from Stan Lee as editor in chief, injected superhero adventures with knowing references to classical history and playful winks to pop culture, helping create a veritable smorgasbord of literary allusions for fans and scholars alike to mine muzu.


"Thomas even ended one story [of Avengers] with an extended sequence that paced out the lines or Percy Shelley's 'Ozymandias' across artist John Buschema's panels," writes Momson, himself a prolific and cerebrated book writer, in Super-gods. "For many of us [children], this was our first introduction to romantic poetry, [as a teacher Thomas] was far more effective than any of my own teachers when it came to turning me on to the literature and culture of late-eighteenth-century Europe."

This does not of course mean that comics, however cerebrally conceived and artistically executed, belong on the same shelves as the works of Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Voltaire or Edmund Burke. "We are not saying that the canon of Superman comic books is equivalent to Homer and Dante and you can study them for their own sake," Observes William Irwin, a professor of philosophy at King's College in Pennsylvania who has edited books with titles like Batman and Philosophy. "We're not suggesting that comic books replace Plato and Descartes - not at all. The goal is always To get [young] people interested in philosophy, [in the first place] by speaking first in terms that they are familiar with".