Power Pedagogy

With Great Power Comes Great Pedagogy — TEACHING, LEARNING, AND COMICS EDITED BY SUSAN E. KIRTLEY, ANTERO GARCIA, AND PETER E. CARLSON UNIVERSITY PRESS OF MISSISSIPPI / JACKSON The University Press of Mississippi is the scholarly publishing agency of the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning: Alcorn State University, Delta State University, Jackson State University, Mississippi State University, Mississippi University for Women, Mississippi Valley State University, University of Mississippi, and University of Southern Mississippi. www.upress.state.ms.us The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of University Presses. Copyright © 2020 by University Press of Mississippi All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America First printing 2020 ∞ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kirtley, Susan E., 1972– editor. | Garcia, Antero, editor. | Carlson, Peter E., 1977– editor. Title: With great power comes great pedagogy : teaching, learning, and comics / edited by Susan E. Kirtley, Antero Garcia, and Peter E. Carlson. Description: Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019049770 (print) | LCCN 2019049771 (ebook) | ISBN 9781496826046 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781496826053 (paperback) | ISBN 9781496826060 (epub) | ISBN 9781496826077 (epub) | ISBN 9781496826084 (pdf) | ISBN 9781496826039 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Comic books, strips, etc., in education. Classification: LCC LB1044.9.C59 W58 2020 (print) | LCC LB1044.9.C59 (ebook) | DDC 371.33—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019049770 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019049771 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available CONTENTS Preface: New Directions for Comics Pedagogy . vii Acknowledgments . .ix Introduction: A Once and Future Pedagogy . 3 —SUSAN E. KIRTLEY, ANTERO GARCIA, AND PETER E. CARLSON Part I: Foundations of Comics Pedagogy . 21 Text, Object, Transaction: Reconciling Approaches to the Teaching of Comics . 23 —DALE JACOBS Wonder Women and the Web: How Female Comics Creators Leap from Private to Public in a Single Bound . 38 —AIMEE VALENTINE Teaching Typical Comics: Overcoming the Biases of Comics Pedagogy with Online Tools . 53 —BART BEATY Put Some Light into the World: An Interview with Brian Michael Bendis and David Walker . 68 —JOHNNY PARKER II Part II: Comics Pedagogy in Practice . 83 On Copying . 85 —EBONY FLOWERS KALIR Thinking in Comics: All Hands-On in the Classroom . 92 —NICK SOUSANIS Transmedia Superheroes, Multimodal Composition, and Digital Literacy . .117 —BEN BOLLING Truth, Justice, and the Victorian Way: How Comics and Superheroes Might Subvert Student Reading of Classic Literature . 135 —BENJAMIN J. VILLARREAL The Uncanny Power of Comic Books: Achieving Interdisciplinary Learning through Superhero Comic Books . 149 —JAMES KELLEY Teaching the Unthinkable Image: An Interview with Lynda Barry . 168 —LEAH MISEMER vi Contents Part III: Future Directions in Comics Pedagogy . 185 Comic Art Research: Achievements, Shortcomings, and Remedies . 187 —JOHN A. LENT Misunderstanding Comics . 207 —JOHNATHAN FLOWERS In the Cards: Collaboration and Comics-Making in the Traditional English Classroom . 226 — FREDERIK BYRN KØHLERT AND NICK SOUSANIS Educated Bitches: An Interview with Kelly Sue DeConnick . 239 —JENNY BLENK Conclusion: The Great Responsibility of a Comics Pedagogy . 245 Contributors . 249 Index . 253 Introduction: A Once and Future Pedagogy —SUSAN E. KIRTLEY, Portland State University —ANTERO GARCIA, Stanford University —PETER E. CARLSON, Green Dot Public Schools The field of comics studies has exploded in recent years, bringing a wide range of participants into this ever-growing scholarly space. In looking across the kinds of disciplinary scholars engaged in this work, teaching and learning have been centered in the efforts of those who are writing about and studying comics. As such, this edited collection sets out the stakes, defini- tions, and exemplars of contemporary comics pedagogy. From K-12 contexts to higher-ed instruction to ongoing communities of scholars working outside of the academy, comics pedagogy is at the heart of the work in which today’s “aca-fans” engage; most of us are educators, and the role of comics in our teaching is often substantial. Building off the interdisciplinary interests and approaches to teaching comics and teaching with comics, this volume brings together diverse voices to share key theories and scholarship on comics pedagogy. By bringing scholars, creators, and educators across various fields and settings into conversation, this volume significantly expands scholarship on comics pedagogy. Minds in the Gutter: A Brief Introduction to Comics Studies Comics studies is a relatively new field with, according to Gregory Steirer, “a general start-date of the early 2000s” (265), and given its neophyte status, it is still formulating its foundational narratives. In 2011, contributor Bart Beaty argued that “the current state of the scholarly study of comics is strikingly akin to that of film in the 1960s. Despite the fact that comics are significantly older than cinema, consecration as a legitimate art form has not come easily, and the academic study of the form is still marginal” (106–7). Comics studies has indeed struggled for legitimacy within the academy, and as many 3 4 Kirtley, Garcia & Carlson scholars and educators have witnessed first-hand, it is often maligned for the popular nature of its subject matter. Philip Troutman noted that the field “sits somewhat uneasily within the academy, both because of the medium’s image/ text composition, which sets it outside traditional disciplinary purviews, and because of its popular nature, which has engendered both an ivory-tower skepticism on the one hand and an ‘anti-academic’ response by some popular culture scholars on the other” (120). Troutman continues, arguing that comics studies “is always coming but never quite arriving” (120). However, despite resistance from academe and on occasion from comics fans and practitioners, tangible evidence demonstrates that comics studies, may, in fact, be arriving imminently. Scholarly books on comics are regularly published by university presses. Peer-reviewed academic journals devoted to comics studies are flourishing. Courses on comics are now being offered on numerous college campuses, and some universities boast comics studies programs and courses of study. The Modern Language Association established a Forum for Comics and Graphic Narratives, and the Comics Studies Society and International Comic Arts Forum represent two of the growing number of scholarly societ- ies devoted to the study of comics. Despite any challenges, the field is growing, and growing rapidly. One of the hallmarks of comics studies is its interdisciplinary nature, which makes the field extremely exciting, innovative, and difficult to locate within institutions. This interdisciplinary focus has, at times, caused conster- nation amongst scholars. Gregory Steirer posits, “Though scholars from different disciplines make up the field’s participants, the failure of these scholars to establish for their work a collective goal (even if the goal remains essen- tially in question or dispute) beyond that of researching comics means that the field is interdisciplinary only in the shallowest descriptive sense” (278). Charles Hatfield echoed this sentiment in his article on “Indiscipline, or, the Condition of Comics Studies,” suggesting, in other words, comics studies might become the very opposite of a critical back- water; it might take part in the ongoing and essential reexamination of how, by whom, and under what auspices knowledge is produced in academe. In any case, comics studies, to thrive, must find a stable conceptual basis that is in no way inter- changeable with conventional disciplinarity. In order to address seriously the lack of institutional footing for comics studies, and in order to raise standards in the field (which need not mean imposing one rigid set of standards on scholars from multiple disciplines), comics scholars need to develop and make explicit their com- mitment not simply to multi- but to interdisciplinarity. We need to articulate a rig- orous pluralism—self-aware, synthetic, and questioning—if the field is to flourish. Introduction 5 Comics studies must, then, embrace more than a surface or fleeting interest in interdisciplinary scholarship, a crossing of disciplines in name only, and challenge ourselves to truly engage with other fields of knowledge to create compelling and worthy scholarship that does justice to the form. Thus far the conversation around comics generally falls into three dis- course communities or “modes of address,” as outlined by Craig Fischer, who states, “I’d identify at least three different modes of address—fan appreciation, essayistic criticism and academic criticism—and at least two of these modes use jargon to create a sense of connection between writer and audience.” Academic criticism has, as suggested by Fischer, a tendency to be dense and sometimes difficult to parse. Furthermore, this criticism has become codified around a particular canon of texts, leaving much of the landscape of comic art unexamined. Thus, even though comics scholarship is on the rise, it cur- rently stands as a narrowly circumscribed domain, with academic studies of comics focusing, according to scholars such as Bart Beaty and Benjamin Woo, almost completely

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