I also have noticed how my increased awareness of media literacy issues discussed in this class has coincided with things I notice in other parts of my life. And like Robin (April 28, Ambience) I made one of those connections on the topic of comics. When we talked about comics, graphic novels and visual literacy in class, I began to re-think my ideas about the value of comics.
In the past, I had tended to dismiss comics as nothing more than easy, pretty much mindless entertainment. Reading the Sunday comics was a little treat to give myself at the end of the week (but only after I had done the “real” work of reading the actual news in the newspaper). When my homeschooled children would spend hours at the kitchen table reading Calvin and Hobbes or Foxtrot or Dilbert, I would grow impatient with them, and nag at them to do some “real” work, like math or a science project or something; or at least to read something that I could characterize as educational—maybe a National Geographic magazine, or Johnny Tremain, or something by Jack London.
My first attempt to broaden my outlook was reading the children's book Into the Volcano by Don Wood and my second was reading Neil Gaiman’s 2000 novella The Dream Hunters (Sandman, Book 11), illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano. Without even getting to the most popular anime and manga novels that seem to be everywhere these days, these two very different, amazing and very wonderful books had already convinced me that there was a lot more to graphic novels and comic-style art than I had realized. Then my son came home for a weekend from his senior year at college and told me about his senior seminar for his English writing major. His final paper was entitled: “Image, Text, Space: Frames and Tempo(rality) in Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes." I nearly fell off of my chair. All of those hours that I thought were being “wasted” in comic books were bearing fruit in a college level senior thesis paper.
I’m pleased to report that not only did he receive an “A” for that paper, but his professor asked for permission to use it as his example for next year’s class.
Who’d have thunk it? Comics in college! One more lesson for me in keeping my mind open.
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:) My brother used a Calvin and Hobbes strip in his (albeit high school) senior thesis paper, also receiving an A, and also being used as an example for future years. (It was illustrating a point, however, and not the topic of the paper..._that_ was the theory of time travel.) He's now a computer programmer and encryption specialist whose skills are in high demand.
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