Adventures in genre!: rethinking genre through comics/graphic novels¹

¹ Adapted from Thomas, P.L. (in press). Challenging genres: comic books and graphic novels. Netherlands: Sense Publishers.

Abstract

Historically, comics and graphic novels have been marginalized as quality texts and significant mediums for study. However, in the past decade comics have found their place in educational establishments. This essay offers a brief literature review of attitudes toward comics/graphic novels as a medium and then explores the use of comics/graphic novels within multigenre units of study that challenge student's assumptions about genre and text. These unit examples include interrelated works by William Blake and Alan Moore and by Tori Amos and Neil Gaiman. The piece ends by examining the range of subgenres within comics/graphic novels, including traditional views of genre literature (mystery, western, etc.) and considerations of text as adaptation (graphic novel adaptations of traditional literature, film adaptations, etc.).

Keywords:

• comic books
• graphic novels
• genre
• multigenre
• text adaptation
• canon

Poet Nate Pritts offers this insight from his childhood:

As a kid, I read comic books. My foundational experiences with language either came directly from or were constantly colored by comic books. Many characters in many comic books use exclamation points to punctuate everything they say, I suppose to communicate the emphatic/heroic nature of their utterance (Hildreth 2010).

Writer, notably of young adult novels, Sherman Alexie (1998) shares a similar experience:

I learned to read with a Superman comic book. Simple enough, I suppose. I cannot recall which particular Superman comic book I read, nor can I remember which villain he fought in that issue. I cannot remember the plot, nor the means by which I obtained the comic book. What I can remember is this: I was three years old, a Spokane Indian boy living with his family on the Spokane Indian Reservation in eastern Washington state.

The value of comic books in the lives and germination of writers is common, including Margaret Atwood (Thomas 2007), and that same value in thousands and thousands of children's and adults’ lives should not be ignored.

While some argue about classifying comic books/graphic novels as genre or medium, the impact of comic books/graphic novels on students’ and all readers’ perceptions of what counts as reading, what counts as text, and what counts as genre (or medium) is a key reason to embrace comic books/graphic novels as powerful texts and as powerful entry points for critical literacy.

• • •

Writing about Ray Bradbury's classic Fahrenheit 451 (1996), Boxer (2009) observes:

Think back to the original novel. Comic books are the only books shallow enough to go unburned, the only ones people are still allowed to read. Beatty, the fire chief, who seems to have loved books once and whom Bradbury has called ‘a darker side of me’, explains it all to the hero, Guy Montag, the reluctant fireman. When photography, movies, radio, and television came into their own, he says, books started to be ‘leveled down to a sort of pastepudding norm’. Burning them isn't so tragic, he suggests, because they are already so degraded.

In his consideration of a graphic adaptation of Bradbury's classic sci-fi novel, Boxer is concerned about the inherent failure of graphic novels to meet the high standards of the original novel:

Fast forward 56 years to a condensed, comic-book version of the very novel in which comic books and condensations are presented as pap. Surely this is black humor, a resigned joke about the imminent eclipse of books on paper by images, both digital and analog. Except that it isn't. The graphic novel of Fahrenheit 451, with pictures by Tim Hamilton and a condensed text authorized by Bradbury himself, seems quite earnest.

The language and assumptions of Boxer's critique of the graphic novel Fahrenheit 451 (Hamilton 2009) reveal that in the first decade of the twenty-first century, comics and graphic novels still have much to overcome. Below I offer a historical consideration of comics/graphic novels as well as examine briefly comics/graphic novels as adaptations of traditional texts; this discussion focuses on the medium from my perspective in the US and from a scholarly stance (Rhoades 2008) that situates comics/graphic novels as a medium uniquely, but not exclusively, tied to American popular culture.

Comic books/graphic novels, a historical consideration

Establishing the comics/graphic novels medium as a legitimate medium contributes to but does not ensure respect for the medium in academic settings, from English courses to history courses to English Language Learner (ELL) settings. Even if and when scholars and educators recognize comics as a mature and complex medium, Yang (2003) notes, ‘The educational potential of comics has yet to be fully realized. While other media such as film, theater, and music have found their place within the American educational establishment, comics has not.’

Within a decade of comics appearing in the 1930s, scholarship and considerations of teaching with comics appeared, in surprisingly abundant numbers. Advocates and detractors started a debate about comics as a medium and about including comics in the classroom that has lasted until today. The 1950s were a powerful and negative period for comics – typified by Dr Fredric Wertham's talks and publications – that stunted both the growth of the medium and comics being studied and implemented in classrooms (Yang 2003, Coville n.d.).

Then interest in comics and teaching with comics was essentially dormant until the 1970s, but ‘[t]he legacy of the 1954 investigation, however, still loomed. Many educators who advocated comics condescended them in the same breath’, adds Yang (2003). The growth of comics that occurred in the 1980s and into the 1990s – the reviving of Batman by Frank Miller (Miller and Mazzucchelli 2007) and the development of graphic novels through Watchmen (Moore and Gibbons 1986, 1987) and Maus (Spiegelman 1986, 1991) following the powerful work of Will Eisner (2004, 2008a, 2008b) – helped spark a renewed appreciation for comics as a medium and as worthy of instruction in the classroom. By the 2000s, Yang declares, ‘Many of today's teachers use comics to encourage the very abilities some educators in the 1940s feared it would squelch: reading and imagination.’

Challenges to using comics in the classroom (or to allowing children to read and enjoy comics) have been based on issues unrelated to the quality of the medium. In fact, Yang (2003) identifies the qualities inherent in comics that he believes make them ideal for the classroom. First, he notes that comics are motivating, citing evidence over many decades of the powerful connection between children and comics. Next, Yang highlights the visual nature of comics as a powerful educational quality associated with multiple intelligences and multiliteracies.

That comics are spatial, and not time-bound, is ideal for teaching and learning:

Time within a comic book progresses only as quickly as the reader moves her eyes across the page. The pace at which information is transmitted is completely determined by the reader. In educational settings, this ‘visual permanence’ firmly places control over the pace of education in the hands (and the eyes) of the student (Yang 2003).

As well, Yang references evidence that comic books serve well to connect students to concepts and disciplines beyond addressing literacy. Finally, Yang values that comics are a significant part of popular culture, thus a conduit to a critical consideration of pop culture.

Carter (2007) represents the assertion made by Yang (2003) that comics have reached some level of acceptance and even high regard as both a medium and as a valuable text in the classroom: ‘With the growing understanding of the importance of critical literacy, visual literacy, and other types of literacy that were once considered “alternate”, more attention has been paid to graphic novels’ (Carter 2007, p. 1). Carter also places the value of comics/graphic novels within calls for art and democracy by Dewey (1934), who believed art and artistic expression were essential elements of education. Further, he references successful implementations of comics, such as the Comic Book Project (Bitz 2004, 2006) and increased use of the medium in ELL settings (Cary 2004, Ranker 2007/2008). Comics also support educators addressing critical literacy and visual literacy, Carter (2007) adds.

The field of comics/graphic novels and the related scholarship on teaching the medium are both incomplete and emerging, but if we take a historical look over the scholarship and claims both for and against comics as a medium and as suitable texts for the classroom, several patterns emerge that help inform a case made for comics/graphic novels. Considering a number of published articles from the 1940s until the 2000s, I outline below the main themes found when considering comics and teaching comics:

•	Use comics, although they are a lesser medium – especially with weak and reluctant students (Alongi 1974, Frank 1944, Gruenberg 1944, Haugaard 1973, Hutchinson 1949, Koenke 1981, Schoof 1978, Wright 1979). Many endorsements of comics for classroom use have carried with them a disturbing caveat – at least disturbing to those of us who appreciate the medium. Wright (1979) explains that comics have all of the literary elements of traditional literature, adding, ‘By no stretch of the imagination can comic book stories be called great literature’ (Wright 1979, p. 159). And, ‘Finally, comic books should never be expected to serve as art or literature’, Schoof (1978, p. 827) explains; ‘[i]n a sense, comic books are still nothing more than entertaining junk’. While many educators and librarians have advocated for allowing and encouraging children to read comics and for teachers to use comics as instructional texts, the vast majority of that support has come with broad rejections of the medium. My case, however, includes both an endorsement of the medium and the use of the medium in classrooms. Comics/graphic novels as a medium has a significant amount of high-quality work that should not be trivialized or marginalized because some (even if many would argue ‘most’) of the medium is of a questionable quality.
•	Creating comics is a powerful activity for students – notably for urban and struggling students (Bitz 2004, 2006, Dyson 1997, Frey and Fisher 2004, Koenke 1981, Morrison et al. 2002, Schoof 1978, Williams 2008; Witty 1941). The work of Bitz (2004, 2006) and Dyson (1997) are compelling messages about composing original texts by choice, especially but not exclusively for children struggling in school (and often in their lives outside of school). Bitz explains: The story of afterschool comic book clubs is in many ways a story about afterschool education itself. …Students who elect to participate in these programs are encouraged to express themselves and to take risks in what they say, draw, and write. They use creative methods to put their knowledge into practice and application. All of these things occur in the comic book clubs, but they occur in many other afterschool clubs as well: film production, hip-hop dance, slam poetry, and on and on (2006, p. 18). Comics represent something that children value, and when we support those children as they create those things that already matter to them, we are tapping into the potential for critical literacy and democratic ideals that we often claim the education system is pursuing. We must not ignore the importance of students composing those genres that we ask them to read, and the work of Bitz, Dyson and many others reveal that comic creation is an ideal avenue to authentic composing by our students. To create text is to create self, as Dyson explains: ‘Their [her students’] literary drama is presented … in the interest of fostering other such dramas, in other classrooms, where superheroes of a human sort are waiting for their cue’ (1997, p. 9).
•	Comics are positive influences on children and reflect social norms (Belk 1987, Frank 1944, Gruenberg 1944). During the assault on comics in the 1940s, several professionals claimed that comics were in fact, on balance, a positive influence on children. That claim was based on the reality that comics often reinforced the norms of American culture (see Rhoades 2008, Wright 2001). Belk, examining the messages in comics related to wealth, concluded, ‘There is some suggestion here that comic books may have a positive socializing influence on children’ (1987, p. 38). Further, Belk acknowledges that the shift he detected in comics during the mid-1980s – ‘more fallible and human superheroes’ – could create another backlash against comics as they turned against the social norms they have historically reflected (1987, p. 38). The dilemma for critical educators is that such endorsements of comics are similar to the mixed messages noted above – teach comics, but they are poor literature. That comics reinforce uncritically social norms is both a strength and a weakness of the medium since those social norms may in fact be flawed (consider the racial stereotypes too often present in comics throughout the first half of the twentieth century or the objectifying of women still common in comics). For critical educators, comics endorsing norms we believe need confronting allow students a window to those norms and to growing as critical readers themselves.
•	Comics are a useful step to other literacy developments by students – notably literacy skills (Alongi 1974, Frank 1944, Guthrie 1978, Haugaard 1973, Koenke 1981, Marsh 1978, Morrison et al. 2002, Norton 2003, Richie 1979, Schoof 1978, G.E. Schwarz 2002, G. Schwarz 2006, Sones 1944, Strang 1943, Versaci 2001, Weiner 2004, Williams 2008, Wright 1979). Since many arguments for incorporating comics into the classroom belittle the quality of comics themselves, comics are often portrayed as useful tools to some other literacy end – much as we often do to other wonderful and engaging texts. Just as we teach The Sun Also Rises (Hemingway 1926/1954) in order to address modernist fiction, point of view, characterization and a whole host of terms and concepts (with little concern for enjoying a wonderful story filled with interesting and flawed characters), comics are often touted as somewhat limited texts that can help teach literacy skills and (we hope) move students to better texts: Well-done graphic novels offer teachers another tool to be used in the classroom and can enrich the students’ experiences as a new way of imparting information, serving as transitions into more print-intensive works, enticing reluctant readers into prose books and, in some cases, offering literary experiences that linger in the mind long after the book is finished (Weiner 2004, p. 115).
•	Comics are psychologically and developmentally appropriate for children (Bender 1944, Frank 1944, 1949, Schoof 1978, Strang 1943, Zorbaugh 1949). One of the more interesting points running through 1940s endorsements of comics was the claim that comics were appropriate for children, that they matched children's interests and needs. From a clinical perspective, many argued that comics, in fact, were appropriate for children, although these assertions tended to acknowledge that any popular medium should not be viewed as a monolithic form. As with other mediums, whether or not a text is suitable for a child depends on a variety of factors related to the text and the child. What we should note is that nothing inherent in the medium of comics makes them inappropriate for children, just as no text is inherently inappropriate for children (except, of course, a text designed solely for consenting adults, such as erotica).
•	Comics are well suited to teach critical literacy, especially critical media literacy (Morrison et al. 2002, Ranker 2007/2008, G.E. Schwarz 2002, G. Schwarz 2006, Versaci 2001, Williams 2008). One sign that comics as a medium has turned a corner toward respectability for the medium and for taking it seriously in academic settings is the growing acknowledgement that comics/graphic novels are well suited to aid in the teaching of critical literacy, especially as related to enhancing our students’ critical lens for media. Versaci (2001), who implements comics in most of his courses, notes, As teachers of literature, we should not strive to get students to accept without question our own judgments of what constitutes literary merit[, but] to encourage students to see themselves as having a voice in the question of what constitutes literary merit by defining reasonable parameters by which to judge a creative work and articulating why and how that work is – or is not – within those parameters. Only by helping students achieve this voice do we help them become active, critical, and engaged readers (pp. 61–62). While seeing comics as powerful means to critical literacy ends presents comics as a tool, that argument at least acknowledges a higher level of sophistication in the medium than many of the published pieces did from the 1940s through to the 1980s.
•	Comics, popular culture, and multiliteracies are all important elements needed in the classroom (Berger 1978, Frey and Fisher 2004, Gruenberg 1944, Lopes 2006, Morrison et al. 2002, Norton 2003, Ranker 2007/2008, G.E. Schwarz 2002, G. Schwarz 2006, Sones 1944, Versaci 2001, Williams 2008). ‘In an increasingly visual culture’, Schwarz explains, ‘literacy educators can profit from the use of graphic novels in the classroom, especially for young adults’ (2002, p. 262). Another suggestion that comics are becoming a respected medium is the acknowledgement that they represent popular culture – which fits within a growing belief that pop culture must be regarded more highly itself in the classroom. The New London Group (1996) established an environment that questioned the nature of literacy, and comics/graphic novels have begun to fit well within that expanding acknowledgement and embracing of multiliteracies: ‘The graphic novel now offers English language arts teachers opportunities to engage all students in a medium that expands beyond the traditional boarders of literacy’ (Schwarz 2006, p. 58).
•	Comics help educators acknowledge out-of-school literacies and interests in the classroom (Berkowitz and Packer 2001, Frank 1944, Frey and Fisher 2004, Hutchinson 1949, Morrison et al. 2002, Norton 2003, Sones 1944, Versaci 2001, Wright 1979, Zorbaugh 1944). Gallego and Hollingsworth (2000) note that schools dictate for students what counts as literacy. Frey and Fisher explain, ‘We had observed students actively engaged with anime and manga materials… , although not in sanctioned school activities’ (2004, p. 19). Children often have vibrant literacy lives that go untapped because teachers fail to acknowledge those literacies, resulting in ‘many adolescents…begin[ning] to see comic books as many adults do: subliterate, disposable, and juvenile’ (Versaci 2001, p. 63). Further, Frey and Fisher call for not only honouring comics and children's out-of-school literacies, but also moving beyond seeing comics as a medium for literacy skills work: ‘[W]e resisted the temptation to focus on remedial skills instruction and instead used popular culture and the media to invite students into school literacies’ (2004, p. 24).
•	Comics are a legitimate (emerging) medium (Berger 1978, Gruenbrg 1944, Lopes 2006, Marsh 1978, Richie 1979, Schoof 1978, Schultz 1949, Versaci 2001, Weiner 2004, Zorbaugh 1944). In his work on stigma – specifically of comics as a part of popular culture – Lopes notes that comics have been marginalized ‘as less than literature and less than visual art’ (2006, p. 404). Despite a historical tide against comics, including the devastating attack in the mid-twentieth century, Lopes sees the medium rising: ‘With the recent success of graphic novels [since 2002] catering to both children and adults, and the success of film adaptations of comic books, perhaps normals have finally discovered that the American comic book is a unique and complex art form’ (2006, p. 411). The view that comics is a substantial medium is still rare, however, but my case here supports acknowledging comics/graphic novels as a powerful and sophisticated medium as valuable as any other.
•	Comics are well suited for a variety of instructional settings including art, ELL and foreign language (Berkowitz and Packer 2001, Marsh 1978, Ranker 2007/2008, Williams 2008). Cary (2004, p. 1) admits, ‘Superman made me a reader’. In his book on incorporating comics in ELL instruction, Cary represents a growing move to identify the value of comics/graphic novels for a variety of educational purposes beyond teaching native language literacy skills. Comics have been used in art courses (Berkowitz and Packer 2001, Williams 2008) and in the teaching of French (Marsh 1978), as well as in ELL classes (Ranker 2007/2008).

While there is a mixed history of scholarship about comics/graphic novels as a medium and as suitable for the classroom, a case for comics is still fighting against a popular and academic perception that comics are for children and comics are a weak cousin to both literature and visual art. One avenue to exploring and better appreciating the strengths of comics/graphic novels is to examine graphic adaptations of traditional texts.

Graphic adaptations of traditional texts

Many people immediately think of Classics Illustrated when anyone suggests using comics seriously in a classroom – the comic book adaptations of classic works of literature that began printing in 1941. That assumption also often includes the belief that adaptations are easier than the traditional texts and intended primarily if not exclusively for weak and unmotivated readers.

‘When we were invited to review manga versions of four Shakespeare plays’, explain Alexander and Lupton, ‘we were, frankly, a bit skeptical’ (2009, p. 85). And I imagine that scepticism is common among teachers and the public. Alexander and Lupton add that they assumed the medium, manga, and graphic adaptations were ‘watered-down version[s] of the Bard's work’ (2009, p. 85). Their consideration of manga Shakespeare reveals the lingering negative attitudes toward sequential art as something less than traditional texts, and their commentary also suggests a similar debasing of adaptations of traditional texts, a lack of appreciation for adaptation that overlaps with films of classic literature.

However, Alexander and Lupton discovered, ‘[U]pon closer inspection the books reveal great craft and care in the handling of their material’ (2009, p. 86). And here is a key to considering the value of comics, graphic novels and graphic adaptations of traditional texts – craft. That we consider both the messages of texts and how those texts are formed – whether text-only, text with art, or film – is ultimately a concern for craft, medium and genre. Alexander and Lupton include in their endorsement of the manga Shakespeare a realization about the possibilities of a variety of texts:

Perhaps one of the most productive dimensions of the manga versions might lie in their ability not only to excite interest in Shakespeare's dramas but also to stimulate consideration of various media and their different affordances. A manga version of Hamlet, as we have suggested, can make interpretive gestures that other media – the original text and even a filmed version – cannot. As such, a consideration of these manga versions in conjunction with other ‘readings’ and renderings of Shakespeare's work may open up lively discussions of media and media literacy – discussions that our students increasingly need to have if we are to become more literate about and fluent with the media venues and technologies that surround us (2009, pp. 88–89).

Briefly here, I will discuss a few traditional texts that include graphic novel adaptations – Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1996), Paul Auster's City of Glass, and Mark Twain's (2001) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. The focus of studying graphic novel adaptations of traditional works should include both the craft of the adaptations and how those adaptations conform with and differ from the original texts.

Above, I discussed Boxer's (2009) dismay about Ray Bradbury endorsing a graphic novel adaptation of his novel (Hamilton 2009), Fahrenheit 451. Boxer's discourse is filled with the typical marginalization and misunderstanding of the comic book medium. Boxer notes that in Bradbury's dystopian novel, the comic book is one of the very few allowed printed text formats. ‘It's hard to know what on earth Bradbury was thinking’, Boxer muses, adding:

Maybe there's another explanation, though. Maybe Bradbury sees the comic book as a kind of life raft, a salvation, for books. At the end of Fahrenheit 451, an underground society of persecuted book lovers picks volumes to memorize before burning them. They recite them to others. It's back to the oral tradition to save the literary world. Today a similar thing (minus the burning) is happening in reality, as graphic novelists pick out classics to retell in their own way. Fahrenheit 451 is but one of many (Boxer 2009).

Boxer, I believe, is missing the essence of graphic novel adaptations of traditional texts, however.

Consider that Shakespeare, often acknowledged as the author of the greatest literature ever produced, wrote his plays based on other texts – in other words, Shakespeare himself adapted text to create his much praised works. A complex and engaging study, then, would be to ask students to examine Bradbury's (1996) original novel, the graphic novel adaptation (Hamilton 2009), and the film adaptation (Fahrenheit 451 1966). As Neary (2009) explains about the graphic novel:

This isn't the first time the book has been adapted for a new medium. In 1966, Francois Truffaut made it into a film starring Julie Christie and Oskar Werner. Though the movie made a few significant departures from the book, Bradbury supported Truffaut's interpretation of his story. And now he has given his full backing to the graphic adaptation. For Bradbury, a comic book collector since age nine, the idea is exciting.

A graphic novel adaptation is yet another medium for telling a story, and the nature of each medium impacts the narrative differently. Distinguishing among those differences enhances our students’ literacy development in ways that approaching traditional text-only cannot.

Different versions of Bradbury's novel ask students to consider the science fiction genre as well. Like the versions of Fahrenheit 451, Paul Auster's City of Glass provides an excellent unit around the novel and the graphic novel adaptation by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli (artist of Batman: Year One (Miller and Mazzucchelli 2007)) (Auster et al. 2004). Auster's work is generally considered genre fiction itself; as part of his New York Trilogy, City of Glass is a critically acclaimed noir mystery. Often in formal school settings, genre fiction, such as science fiction and mystery, are marginalized as lesser than so-called literary fiction – although some elite works of genre fiction often move into the literary canon.

Art Spiegelman (1986, 1991), noted author of graphic novels (Maus), in the introduction to the graphic adaptation of City of Glass, opens by acknowledging the shift from ‘comics’ to ‘graphic novels’ to legitimize the medium. Spiegelman continues to explain that he began a quest to join ‘some serious novelists to provide scenarios for skilled graphic artists’ (Auster et al. 2004, n.p.). Spiegelman's quest was interrupted by writers who agreed and then abandoned any commitment. This process led to adaptations, suggested by Auster, but Spiegelman saw problems with using City of Glass:

For all its playful references to pulp fiction, City of Glass is a surprisingly nonvisual work at its core, a complex web of words and abstract ideas in playfully shifting narrative styles. (Paul warned me that several attempts to turn his book into a film script had failed miserably.) (Auster et al. 2004, n.p.)

This all surely bodes poorly for adapting the novel to a graphic novel.

The key to making the adaptation work was asking Karasik to join Mazzucchelli, instead of asking Mazzucchelli simply to adapt the work himself. The coincidence of the project was that Karasik had years earlier already begun work on adapting the novel, explains Spiegelman. The new project with Karasik and Mazzucchelli produced a fuller and more successful approach to adapting Auster's novel, including rethinking the use of panels by the artist. Ultimately, Spiegelman explains,

By poking at the heart of comics’ structure, Karasik and Mazzucchelli created a strange doppelganger of the original book. It's as if Quinn, confronted with two nearly identical Peter Stillmans at Grand Central Station, chose to follow one drawn with brush and ink rather than one set in type (Auster et al. 2004, n.p.).

As Spiegelman states, the graphic novel is a model of the power of collaboration, a key aspect of both graphic novels and adaptation that students need to consider in our culture that values individual work (or at least the appearance of such) over collaboration.

‘Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court has been adapted to multiple media since its publication in 1889’, explains Keebaugh (2007). The novel by Twain has been adapted in film and comic format many times, she adds in a discussion of how those many versions add to the Yankee, Hank Morgan. Keebaugh offers a detailed analysis of Hank and other characters, reinforcing an argument that Twain's work is underappreciated.

Next, Keebaugh (2007) looks at the film versions of the novel. A Connecticut Yankee (1931) is explicated to show how the adaptation adds to and deviates from Twain's original work, concluding:

One critic calls Rogers's A Connecticut Yankee ‘a very entertaining rendition of the story’ (Sindelar, July 5), but I would contend that this critic does not grasp the deeper relations between the characters, which are largely lost with this rendition. Machinery and modern inventions pervade the screen, but their original significance – peaceful industrial revolution – is sacrificed to forced love stories and a weak characterization of Hank.

Four film versions are identified, including a cartoon version featuring Bugs Bunny. The film versions are also interesting since they are often broad or loose adaptations unlike the 1931 film that attempts to follow the novel closely.

Keebaugh (2007) next turns to comic book adaptations, including five different versions from 1945 to 1997. The discussion of the comics, like the films, shows the nature of adaptation and the mediums involved, leading Keebaugh to conclude: ‘Throughout different adaptations of A Connecticut Yankee, a common trait is painstakingly clear: Hank is not the character that Twain originally wrote him to be’ (Keebaugh 2007). The discussion of different versions of Twain's work offers Keebaugh an opportunity to present a solid argument for evaluating comics as a medium and adaptations:

Comics should not be judged by whether or not they successfully stuff a long novel into a comic format (which is surely impossible for many reasons), but by what lens they offer of the original text. Each adaptation emphasizes a different aspect of the original, and these differing lenses may serve to help us rediscover old texts in new lights, to see, in effect, those aspects of prose narrative difficult to discern because they are present – rather than omitted – or are differently integrated into the system of the work (Keebaugh 2007).

While I remain committed to the value of comics/graphic novels as an original medium form, I also believe that comics/graphic novels as adaptations provide students with a compelling and craft-rich avenue to exploring the essential adaptive nature of all created works (as I mentioned about Shakespeare above) as well as the challenges any text faces when working as an adaptation of another text.

Entry to graphic narratives – poetry and music

Many teachers continue to balk at including nontraditional texts in their classrooms, including a decades-long debate over the canon of works suitable for study. When a teacher, school, or community feels compelled to work within a traditional norm of what matters as quality texts, a possible strategy for opening the door to comics/graphic novels is to use canonical writers and works as an entry to less traditional texts. Here, I examine using the poetry and art of William Blake (1997), a canonical author, as a doorway to comics; then, I offer connections between songs – which can be linked to poetry as a traditional text – and comics through the music of Tori Amos and the comic book work of Neil Gaiman.

Sequential art, by the nature of joining text and graphics, is a natural connection to poetry since poetry as a genre is highly sensory, often driven by imagery. Using imagist poets such as William Carlos Williams or E.E. Cummings to move to comics and graphic novels seems to make sense when asking students to consider the conventions of genre. In an issue of ImageText, the work of British poet and artist William Blake is examined as a likely connection to comic books.

‘Two hundred and fifty years after William Blake's birth, his work continues to have a very strong visual resonance’, explains Whitson (2007a) in the introduction to the Blake issue. Whitson makes a case for connecting Blake and comics, including noting that a Blake descendent, William Blake Everett, created a comic superhero, Namor, the Sub-Mariner. Then, Whitson offers Blake's influence on major comic creators:

In a more general sense, Blake's designs influence two generations of comic artists, from the acid-induced philosophical ramblings of Grant Morrison, to the wide-eyed fleshy perversions gracing the pages of work by R. Crumb, to the wistful fairytales conjured by J.M. DeMatteis and the more independent work of Keith Mayerson. Each of these creators, in his own way, foregrounds the indisputable visual presence of transformation and metamorphosis in Blake's work in their own (Whitson 2007a).

Finally, Whitson (2007a) identifies more direct connections between Blake's work and the journal itself. Referencing the coining of the term ‘imagetext’ by W.J.T. Mitchell, Whitson explains the journal's focus on the relationship between text and images and Mitchell's use of Blake's work to develop his term and the concept behind ‘imagetext’ as one word. Whitson, then, adds:

The imagetext emerges in a bewildering haze of interaction, transformation and mutation – thus signifying much more than just comics and cartoons. Or rather, the academic study of comics and cartoons opens up its own infinite vortex – that of the imagetext itself – and forces a broader study of woodcuts, novels, paintings, new media, film, television, graphic art, advertisements, and indeed comics and animated cartoons (Whitson 2007a).

‘It is something of a novelty’, begins Broglio (2007), ‘to imagine a conversation between the works of William Blake and the contemporary graphic novel’. And Broglio believes that Blake's sense of novelty lends itself to serious considerations of comics as a medium since the medium is itself novel as a form of ‘text’. Through a discussion of Blake's merging of text and graphics, Broglio concludes:

Comics promise the opportunity of exercising the virtual in ways similar to those enacted by William Blake and exemplified in America. There will always be comics that remain within the axis of the possible-real. Yet, the limitations of mimesis and representation call for prophetic works like those of Blake's illuminated prophecies in which forces larger than character move from residual roles to primary agents of change….The ontological shifts that seem impossible in traditional representational narratives become part of the fabric of Blake's visionary poetry. Such work actualizes its virtuality for and in the reader who opens ‘the doors of perception’, and in the larger world to which the reader returns after closing the illuminated poems (Broglio 2007).

Comics share with Blake's work a realization of the possible when we move beyond text-only mediums.

Writing about Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1997), Leslie (2007) observes:

The argument of a line's words turns into a graphic representation of its sentiment. The top edge of a drawing offers itself again as a horizon line for wandering figures. All this detail makes the page's surface a dynamic space of interrelating elements. It fizzes with life. The surface swarms. Blake's ‘infernal’ procedures of printing allowed him to entangle words, illustrations, and lines on the same copperplate.

Like comics/graphic novels, the product Blake creates communicates in ‘a dynamic space of interrelating elements’ that we often marginalize when compared to text-only works. As Leslie explains, Blake's mixing of text and graphics disrupts and impacts how the reader views the text and the messages of the totality, again much as the panels and layout of a comic allows and forces the reader to read and re-read the parts and whole of a comic book.

More directly, Leslie (2007) believes Blake's works ‘are the templates for comic book superheroes: the musculature and the skin-tight costumes that showcase it, the globular eyes ablaze, the strong legs flung apart, the bold gesticulations of the arms’. Leslie solidifies this connection by examining the use of Blake in the work of Alan Moore – ‘Moore's is a bleak Blakeanism.’ Specifically, students can find these references in Moore's From Hell (Moore and Campbell 2000), Leslie shows.

Whitson (2007b) identifies further the connection between Moore and Blake:

As figures embedded in the globalizing mechanisms of postmodern capitalism, Blake and Moore form a fearful symmetry where rebellion and visionary transgression become indiscriminately intertwined with hip online markets offering everything from autobiographies to action figures and computer games. Blake's poem ‘The Tyger’ and Moore's comic book Watchmen show an awareness of a split between self-image and its commodified dissemination.

Whitson's explication of the elements shared between Moore and Blake can serve students well as they examine these two creators’ works, following thematic patterns and motifs running through both canonical works, Blake's poetry (specifically ‘The Tyger’), and challenges to our perceptions of text, Moore's sequential art (specifically Watchmen (Moore and Gibbons 1986, 1987)).

Whitson (2007b) focuses on Chapter 5 of Watchmen, ‘Fearful Symmetry’, which incorporates the motif of symmetry into the panels and pages of the work – with the central pages, 14–15, mirror images of each other, thus symmetrical. The explication of Blake within the work and ideology of Moore's canon leads Whitson (2007b) to conclude:

While William Blake possesses the capitalist subject, the capitalist subject possesses Alan Moore – Alan Moore becomes William Blake – and one cannot tell if the capitalist subject is being perverted or if the capitalist subject is dominating everything: transforming and commodifying mysticism, superheroics and prophecy in a flourish of postmodern monetary exchange. Who made the Tyger? Who made William Blake, or Alan Moore, or the transcendental unity of apperception? All are fearful symmetrical reflections of one another. All contribute to, pound away at, and fracture the sublime network that is contemporary global capital.

Whitson (Talbot and Whitson 2007) offers another connection between Blake and comics with an interview with Bryan Talbot, whose comic book work is also connected with Alan Moore (Swamp Thing (Moore, Bissette, and Totleben 1987)). Talbot discusses a wide range of influences on his life and career, noting:

I went to a School of Art to do a one year foundation course. This is where I learned to hate, like Blake, the contemporary fine art world as I was taught by three obnoxious abstract artists who allowed no figurative work of any kind. They taught by fear, using sarcasm to humiliate before the entire studio students who didn't fit in (Talbot and Whitson 2007).

Throughout the interview, Talbot reveals in his work, paralleling the patterns in Moore, the conscious influence of Blake's ideas and work on Talbot's evolution as a comic book creator.

Once the connection between a canonical writer like Blake and an alternative text such as comics/graphic novels has been established, another multigenre/multi-medium consideration that can be made is between the music of Tori Amos and the comic book work of Neil Gaiman, as Reed (2008) identifies: ‘There are remarkably numerous textual cross-pollinations and direct references that writer Neil Gaiman and musician Tori Amos make to one another's creative efforts and friendship in their own works.’ While the relationship between Blake's creative works and Moore's sequential art is more Blake influencing and informing Moore, the relationship between Amos and Gaiman is one of references and allusion that supports the individual works but also appears to promote the work of the other artist.

Reed (2008) provides a sophisticated explication of the works of Amos and Gaiman to establish the relationship between the two and the significance of the references within each artist's works. The examination of the Amos/Gaiman connection also includes a useful listing of the works reflecting the overlap of references and allusions in Amos’ music and Gaiman's comics and more traditional texts/genres (Gaiman's work is itself an examination of many genres, in fact). Reed's concluding commentary offers a strong argument for the value of exploring the Amos/Gaiman textual relationship for students as an avenue for challenging genre, medium and text:

Between Neil Gaiman's flirtations with the mythic and Tori Amos's impressionistic self-portraiture, their friendship as presented in their public works is an encoded one that inspires curiosity and devotion in audiences, drawing them in with sincere advertisement. Within the social and economic operations of textual mediation through such individuals, the variable that allows the authors’ commentary on one another to have difference and thereby to take meaning is revealed to us in the ways that readers and listeners take on the name, image, and idealized reflection of each author, searching to bridge the imaginary in the give and take of words and song (Reed 2008).

Comics/graphic novels as a medium are much more than superhero comic books, the type of work most people associate with the medium. And, while I remain convinced that sequential art is a valuable medium for its own reasons, many educators and scholars balk at the medium still. Using connections between what has already been established as quality text, such as Blake above, and comics allows both teachers and students the opportunity to examine comics as a medium while not straying too far from recognized works and traditional views of ‘text’. I am hard pressed to imagine a more powerful experience for students than a challenging look at Blake, Moore, Amos and Gaiman as an adventure in genre/text that rivals the adventures we tend to associate with the world of the comic book.

• • •

When children are coming to know the world and those aspects of existence that make humans human, such as language, they discover and form theories that are increasingly tempered by what they have decided before. Human perception is a series of biased perceptions leading to solidifying already held beliefs or transitioning to new beliefs.

Once children enter school, their perceptions are often set aside for the authoritarian views of the school, embodied by teachers and administrators. Soon children come to embrace narrow views of text, reading and genre – jaded by the weight of school. Often, deep down inside, those children know better, but remain silent or silenced.

Reconsidering text, reading and genre through comic books and graphic novels – texts often associated with those children's worlds – is a step toward honouring more nuanced and sophisticated perceptions of text – perceptions that children and adults alike have already embraced beyond the walls of school.

Notes on contributor

P.L. Thomas, Associate Professor of Education (Furman University, Greenville SC), taught high school English before moving to teacher education. He is currently a column editor for English Journal (National Council of Teachers of English) and series editor for Critical Literacy Teaching Series: Challenging Authors and Genres (Sense Publishers), in which he authored the first volume ‘Challenging genres: comics and graphic novels’ (2010). He also has an entry on comics/graphic novels in Boy Culture (Greenwood Press, 2010) and maintains a blog addressing teaching comics/graphic novels at http://comicsasliterature.blogspot.com/. His work can be followed at http://wrestlingwithwriting.blogspot.com/.

Notes

¹ Adapted from Thomas, P.L. (in press). Challenging genres: comic books and graphic novels. Netherlands: Sense Publishers.