To be a true Clevelander, you must be a fan of two things: the Cleveland Browns and American Splendor (as I am). Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor takes the reader on a day-in-the-life journey of Pekar’s life in Cleveland. Pekar was a storyteller, but he was not an artist. Over more than thirty years of issues, Pekar’s comics were drawn by various… Read more →
Thursday’s discussion really intrigued me as to what an accurate definition of comics might be. I think that Scott McCloud’s journey to a definition, as well as the definition that he came up with, demonstrates the difficulty of defining something that we all know what it is, yet we all have a hard time articulating a true and accurate definition… Read more →
My friend, who is a middle school English teacher, sent me a link to an article from The National Council of Teachers of English that discusses the advantages of using comics and graphic novels in the classroom entitled “Using Comics and Graphic Novels in the Classroom” ( I know—it’s a pretty straightforward title). Although the article is geared toward… Read more →
While we were discussing Lynda Barry’s book What It Is, our discussion turned to when we stopped drawing. As I listened to others tell their story, I began thinking of my own; however, I did not share it during class because it I did not think that I could do it justice. Every Saturday morning, I watched the cartoon Fat… Read more →
Many people do not enjoy reading history or literature. The web comic Hark, A Vagrant by Kate Beaton, however, includes hundreds of comic strips, pages, and drawings featuring historical and literary figures. The website that houses the comics allows a visitor to choose comics by category, or the visitor can choose to view comics at random. This is an interesting feature because,… Read more →
During class, we briefly discussed Eisner’s portrayal of women in A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories, and someone noted how all the women tend to be either a Madonna figure or the whore. Even though I think that the female characters throughout Eisner’s book are a bit more complex than the traditional good girl/ bad girl stereotypes, they… Read more →