Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Hill, Crag

Titel

End Points

Ist Teil von

• Teaching Comics Through Multiple Lenses, 2017, p.161-162

Auflage

1

Ort / Verlag

Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2017

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• I would like to highlight some of the points this edited collection puts forth, implicitly and explicitly: Episodic, serial and/or book-length comics are written to appeal to readers young and old, not solely to teenagers as they were when I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. Full-blown stand-alone comics today are written first and foremost for adult-literary-readers: Chris Ware, Craig Thompson, Alison Bechdel, Los Hernandez brothers, David B., Jessica Abel, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, David Mazzuchelli, Chester Brown, Art Spiegelman, Marjane Satrapi, Jacques Tardi, and many others produce comics difficult to imagine during the so-called Golden Age of comics. These are the kinds of stories as complex as any novel about race, mental illness, sexuality, the depiction of adolescence, religion, poverty, and post-colonialism that are drawing in new readers in droves. These are the gateways drugs. Comics are no longer a throwaway medium (if they ever were). These essays show that comics deserve-and reward-close reading. The multiliteracies that comics promote and vigorously exercise (critical, visual, multimodal) are now being tapped into in sites heretofore closed off: literary studies, psychology (see Neil Cohn's work), teacher prep programs, geography, history... The list could go on. Charles Hatfield's call for interdisciplinary comics scholarship is verging on fruition. With a few exceptions (American Splendor, Ghost World, and Persepolis), when someone says the word comics it is likely that two schema are activated: superheroes and punch-line comics. These essays show that the genre of superhero comics continues to provide fodder for diverse scholarship, but also that there are other genres (some playing off the superhero schema) deserving study and readership. Comics have many entry points: image, panel, sequence of images, page, splash page (maybe there are as many entry points as there are comics). This is not something to overwhelm but to celebrate. Let's find ways so that more readers can take part in the rush-or slow motion (comics readers set the pace), if that's what he/she chooses-of image-and-text/text-and-image narratives that engage us-what we demand of any art form-in the world we live and play in, visually and viscerally. Readers of comics, new and experienced, can deepen their experience/s and appreciation of comics by engaging with the burgeoning critical literature on comics. Follow the lead/s of the scholars and teachers in this book immersed in the potential/s of comics, a multi-pronged, multi-form/ed path to knowledge and experience, just now being appreciated for its communicative energy/ies. Follow on the image path, the word path, and the paths that combine and synergize. This book only works if it's a springboard to other books.