This chapter explores the affordances of the comics/graphic novels medium for engaging in critical reading and awareness of relevant cultural issues and a range of experiences. The author situates comics as medium before highlighting the work of Faith Erin Hicks, noting both promise and limitation in the graphic novel series The Nameless City as a way of beginning conversations about relevant topics. The attention then shifts to include the work of Nate Powell, framed as artivism, and the adaptation process of moving the verse novel work of Jason Reynolds to graphic novel form. In this section, the author invites the collaboration of the artist who crafted the adaptation. Finally, attention is given to additional titles that teachers and researchers can consider.
TopIntroduction
The author begins with a note on their positionality in exploring topics of representation and cultural relevance in literature and pedagogy.
The author notes, first, that they speak from the position of many of the marks of the dominant cultural box described by Jewell (2020) in This Book is Antiracist. They are a White, cisgender, heterosexual male from a Protestant background. While the author did not grow up as part of the middle class, they now live and work in this box, as well. The author is also a scholar and teacher who wishes to promote a range of texts and who sees great value and power in the ways that a range of identities and experiences can be represented in the graphic novel/comics medium. It would seem inauthentic at this point in my life to only support texts that reify and transmit aspects of my lived experience. The author is learning and continues to learn about the lived experiences that I can only peer into through conversation and through the lens of a book.
This interest in the work of representation comes from the stance of an educator who wants to be an ally and who has become increasingly aware of their privilege. The author is also a long-term comics fan who continues to learn about the ways in which folx from minoritized/marginalized communities are depicted in graphic novels. The breadth and depth of the comics market can hardly be encompassed by a single chapter, but this author aims to highlight texts that might be of particular interest – with the potential of then exploring a further network of texts that can relate to those featured here. These books are more than popular (Freedman, 2011); they are powerful spaces for exploring identity and aspects of lived experiences in the world (Tinker, 2009; Yezbick et al., 2015).
TopSituating Comics
What does this author mean when using the term comics? Wolk (2021) called comics a serialized form, noting that graphic novels are often longer and sometimes collected works. Comic books are often short and can be folded to fit in a person’s back pocket. While shorter examples exist, as afforded by traditional newspaper comic strips and political cartoons, those works are outside of the purview of this exploration.
Despite their complexity and appeal, comics continue to be pushed back on as curricular materials (Tilley, 2013). While some voices in education embrace comics, others continue to denigrate the medium. This opposition seems to be lessening, but is present nevertheless. Harvey and Ward (2017) pointed to the capacity of such a textual range, including verse novels and graphic novels, to engage readers who are striving; the author further notes that studies of comics have also explored the complex ontology of their form, as demonstrated by scholars like Cohn (2013), as well as the work of other researchers who examine comics (Labio, 2015; Priego & Berube, 2020). This author is currently writing from the context of a university literacy professor who encourages the thoughtful use of all texts for attention to both words, as well as the construction of pages for reading and writing experiences. This is not to say that all texts should be presented in comic/graphic novel format; the author again points to the term range when thinking about the texts that can be included in instruction.
Throughout the next sections, the author includes textual examples and traces the ways in which comics can be used beyond surface entertainment to evoke understandings of lived experiences. Wolk (2021) wrote of comics, and Marvel Comics, in particular, that characters in these books “include some extraordinary ones, in whose fantastic excesses you, as a reader, might potentially see parts of yourself, or see what you might hope to become or fear becoming” (p. 7). This quote is particularly salient of the superhero narrative, and the author here suggests that a reader might also view very present and resonant experiences of cultural diversity, including both joy and oppression, and have a glimpse into a sense of advocacy that might not have been considered before.