Photo credit Comixology
Recently I was reading a comic book on my iPhone on the subway ride to Brooklyn, and a few people noticed what I was reading and asked me about it. The first person to ask me was someone who had never seen a comic in that format and wanted to know more, so I told him what I was reading and how I had found it using the Comics app I’d downloaded from Comixology. [I didn't mention that I had just learned about the app from Joe Ugoretz's tweet about it -- thanks, Joe!] Later in the same ride, I met a nice guy named Greg who just wanted to know which app I was using to download comics, to discuss with his friend nearby, both of them being great comic book aficionados. It turned out his friend, Karen Green, curates the graphic novel collection for the library at Columbia University and actually writes a column for Comixology called Comic Adventures in Academia.
We talked about what series the two of them were reading, and the ones I had tried in my new exploration of the genre. Comics are a little small in this format, but the iPhone presents them to you one frame at a time in a cool way. From there we moved on to a more general discussion of graphic novels and what they have to offer, including for instructors. I admitted I was a little self-conscious about my students knowing I read comics in my spare time (although Karen Green said, “Don’t be!”) I often find comics that are so well-written I want to share them. Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series, for example, is so literary, so steeped in Shakespeare and classical mythology, that I had wondered if I should recommend it to students. (Karen said, “Absolutely!”) I found her column online later and saw how she takes a proactive role at Columbia in “influencing faculty to use comics in their coursework in innovative ways,” which made me start thinking about how graphic novels could be used in different courses. I think I just like fantasy and science fiction in whatever format it appears: novel, film, graphic novel, digital comic. That’s why I am enjoying the comics app I just discovered, and may start to think of ways to occasionally use comic books in coursework. I have been teaching an online course called Digital Information in the Contemporary World, and it fits in nicely there. In another kind of course? I’ll have to read more of Karen’s column for inspiration.
David Parsons posted here on cac.ophony recently about students bringing distracting gadgets into the classroom, and included some amazing footage of professors smashing the offending technology in front of the class. [Can they really do that?!?] Szidonia in her comment wondered whether overuse of technology shrinks our brains. I guess my own experience with digital comics and graphic novels more generally is that I feel they have worth to me personally and potentially as teaching tools, even though the enjoyment I take in reading them makes them feel like guilty pleasures.
So which apps were you using? I assume this only applies to an IPhone?
Oooh, what a great post! (I am indulging into this one “guilty pleasure” of browsing older posts while Luke is tapping his fingers on an imaginary, or real, table, waiting for my own blog. I know.)
I have never heard about Comic Adventures in the Academia, and I can just see myself venturing on the site this weekend!
I like comix with political edge. Of course, we, English majors know that everything is political, all genres all the time, but I am specifically thinking about works like Art Spiegelman’s Maus, a classic by now, about the Holocaust. Or, you have Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis (made into a movie as well) about the Iranian Revolution in 1979.
I also like Joe Sacco’s works very much. Sacco is a US journalist, of Maltese origins (Like the Falcon, ain’t that kool?) who traveled to war zones like Bosnia, during the Balkan Wars, 1991-1995, or the Gaza Strip. His books, The Fixer, Safe Area Gorazde, and Palestine (with foreword by Edward Said) are wonderful texts, visual and literal, for use in the classroom, depending upon the specific course.
At some point, I used The Diary of a Part-Time Indian (read Native American), by Sherman Alexie, in a Multicultural American Literature course, and the students enjoyed it. We were talking about graphic novels/comix as a specific literary genre.
Agnieska, I was using an app called Comix, on an iPhone. I don’t think they’re up and running with an iPad version, but there’s a Marvel Comics one you can see here. Based on my brief moment playing around with an iPad (at the Apple store recently), I think comics will look gorgeous on the larger iPad screen.
And thank you, Szidonia, for the info and nice feedback! I never read Maus and feel like I should. I will put it and the others you mentioned on my list. One of the great things about the Comix app I’m using is that it’s not just a place to download and view digital comic books. You can also use it to find what print versions are available now (or when they will be), and search for comic stores near you based on your GPS location.