Comics

I have to be honest by saying that I was not exactly excited about exploring the topic of popular culture and comics. Growing up, I believed comic books were for boys so never really had a desire to explore comics. What I discovered is comics (originally called funnies) and comic books have an interesting history. I visited a website (link provided below) that provided a laundry list of comics dating back to the 1800’s all the way through 1997. Comic books are an outgrowth of funnies added to Sunday newspapers to increase sales. I grew up reading funnies so know a bit about the content and am wondering how its content evolved from a short, clever, funny, and often political read to guts and gore. This shift in content may be fueled by socio-political realities and/or the artists/authors view of what young readers were interested in reading.

As I perused through the titles, I discovered that many appeared to be more appealing to male audiences, probably why I have always associated them with males. Within the history of comic books has been a lot of controversy, content in particular. In the article the The Ten Cent Plague, the author talks about the many attempts to censor comic books and/or ban them altogether. In fact in 1949 in Cleveland, the city council outlawed the sale of comic books containing the following crimes: arson, assault, burglary, kidnapping, mayhem, larceny, manslaughter, murder, rape, prostitution, sodomy, or extortion. As a mother I understand the worry about the way content impacts a young person’s decisions, values, etc. Although, the same debate has existed around other forms of poplar culture such as the lyrics of rap music an indicator of our perception of the capacity of young people.

Of specific interest to me (which is probably of no surprise to you by now) was the inclusion of ethnic groups in comic books and came across a very informative site. I explored a bit about the struggles artists/writers have had as they have integrated ethnic characters into their storylines. The primary struggle or downfall was the lack of appeal of these characters to “mainstream” audiences. There have been and are characters of color in comics while few and far between. A bit of history… Lathar was the first black, male character introduced in the 1930’s in Mandrake the Magician. Cage is the first eponymous character, a fancy name that means he was the first African-American character to have a comic book title reflective of his name. Storm, an African woman, is a character in the comic book X-men. What I find interesting about Storm is while she is a descendant of an African princess; she has white hair and blue eyes! Features that are more common among European-Americans. To increase appeal artists/writers began to de-raciate characters which essentially means to morph them into funny animal characters like Felix the Cat. On June 19, 1940, "Brenda Starr" the first cartoon strip written by a woman was published in Chicago.

I think boys particularly would be very excited about lessons created around comics. One of the things I have realized about many of the young people I work with, is their comfortability with writing. Given these programs are occurring after school many young people do not feel like they should have to write, this would certainly increase appeal and build skills. To decrease anxiety I would likely implement this activity in small groups. As a way to infuse real world issues/challenges youth would be required to focus their storyline on content focused on for example, the Presidential election, homelessness, relationship, etc. Below I have created a lesson for middle school youth to explore the characters and images in comic books as well as foster literacy and writing skills.

Goals:
- To foster literacy, writing, and art skills
- To increase the awareness of ethnic images in comic books and the funnies


Methodology: Experiential Learning Model

Do:
- allow young people the opportunity to explore this history via the web using some of the links provided below
- invite young people to bring in and share their personal comics
- examine characters and story lines

Reflect:
- engage youth in a conversation about what they have discovered as a result of their research
- highlight ethnic/racial diversity in comics and how this has evolved overtime
- discuss the types of comics: Superhero, Manga, humor, alternative/esoteric, science fiction, fantasy, action/adventure, or humor

Apply:
- in small groups, create a comic book and storyline of their choosing (based on the above areas), using the software found at these sites: http://www.prwebdirect.com/releases/2006/9/prweb434078.php, or http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/


http://www.collectortimes.com/~comichistory/

http://inventors.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=inventors&cdn=money&tm=9&f=20&su=p554.2.150.ip_&tt=2&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.comic-art.com/history/history1.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_stereotypes_in_comics#Sociopolitical_and_Literary
_Impact_of_Comics