by Ian Esquivel

Ah, the irony. I wonder if my brother would appreciate it?
For entertainment as a child, I read lots of comics but mostly from a narrow field of “boy” stories, titles such as The Rawhide Kid, Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos, and Superman, and often just in the summer at our cottage. I also read Mad magazine and Archie regularly. By contrast, in the city during the school year, I read magazines, novels and short stories — serious works. (I also watched television, a lot, from what I remember.) As I entered adolescence, my brother Paul, who was five years older and responsible for much of my reading material, was always trying to get me hooked on comics. I would read them to humour him if he nagged me enough, or the cover art was interesting, but certainly not nearly to the extent that he did.
Quite frankly, I was too cool and comics were for geeks, my brother included. My friends and I were into books like Catch 22, bands like Genesis, and television shows like MASH. We considered ourselves pretty smart and sophisticated in our tastes, way too hip for “pulp fiction”. Then Paul started to collect comics during my later adolescence not, apparently, for their intrinsic value but for their potential worth as collectors items. He would make sure his precious books were safely sealed in plastic with the date and price of acquisition carefully labelled, and I would roll my eyes and think of the money he was wasting. I gave up on comics forever.
Well, not forever, as it turned out. By the time I graduated from high school in 1976, comics were coming back into style as part of a growing subculture. At university, many of my peers who had been into The Lord of the Rings now were reading comics like Cerebus the Aardvark and Elfquest. By the time I finished Teachers College in 1988, comics and graphic novels had just about come into their own as a unique literary form, thanks largely to the work of comic book artists like Trina Robbins, Will Eisner, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Frank Miller, and Art Spiegelman, to name a few.
So, I started to read comics again and realized that perhaps I had been a bit hard on my brother; and that maybe underneath his materialism was a genuine love of an exciting and emerging narrative form. And it was only with the slightest sense of irony that I began to consider how to use them in my teaching — or more accurately, in the work that I was doing as a volunteer for a literacy program called Beat The Street. As far as I could tell, the best of them such as Spiegelman’s MAUS had as much or more to offer than many of the texts I had been forced to read in school. Compared to MAUS, The Merchant of Venice was pulp fiction. In the end, I never managed to integrate their use, but I regretted it because my intuition told me that comics could be an excellent resource with reluctant or weak readers, if used properly. If I only had known then …
Perhaps to compensate, I made sure that in my first year of teaching at a school called Brockton in Toronto, I employed some comics in a Grade 12 Media course. However, I didn’t really tap into whether my students were reading them on their own, outside of class. I didn’t think they were, actually, because they said they weren’t into reading anything besides what they had to for school, and I believed them. My first exposure to students’ personal use and choice of comics was in my second year of teaching, when I was at an alternative school and teaching OAC English and Writers Craft. I discovered that several students were into so-called “underground” comics such as Heavy Metal, Watchmen, and The Dark Knight, among others.
Some students were reading even more adult-oriented “comix” like Deadline, where I first encountered Tank Girl, or Naughty Bits, or Twisted Sisters, which all could be quite sexually explicit. There was a context for these kinds of “liberating” texts. After all, this was at a time when Madonna was redefining pop music by strutting her stuff and challenging sexual mores, in her songs, videos, interviews and concerts. The students were also reading mainstream comics like X-Men and Spiderman, which tended to focus on issues of exclusion, alienation, identity formation, and morality, topics that interested them generally. At that time, I didn’t really get too involved in their use of comics, although I did gain significant insights into what the students were reading and why. In fact, one of my students did an independent study on the topic of comics and produced one of her own as her ‘written’ component.
My real introduction to comics and graphic novels came years later when I transferred to Western Technical-Commercial School as the Head of English. By then, I was familiar with most of the mainstream and a few of the alternative comics such as Hate, Zap, Love and Rockets, and Strangers in Paradise. In addition, I was reading Bone, which I still believe is the most endearing comic I have ever read, and Thieves and Kings, a charming tale by Canadian Mark Oakley. At Western, I had several senior students, male and female, who were reading comics and graphic novels regularly. They began to share them with me, introducing me to the latest wave as well as to what they thought were the classics. (These students, especially the females, also introduced me to Anime and Manga, which are Japanese animated films and comics, respectively.) Through their collections, I learned about exemplary works like Sandman, Hellblazer and The Invisibles, all comics that had mature themes and at times troubling content. These comics were intelligent, original, compelling and creatively rendered — I hadn’t seen anything quite like them.
As well, the students were reading comic anthologies like Spiegelman’s Raw, which featured his own MAUS comics that were soon to be collected into a graphic novel format. Raw also contained comics by Robert Crumb, Kim Deitch, Lynda Barry and several other well-known ‘underground’ comic artists whose work I had heard of but not seen. In particular, two of my students Ben and Jacques helped me to get up to speed and enter the modern world of comics. I especially recall that they spent an afternoon with me and walked me through about thirty titles. Many of the graphic novels they showed me I subsequently bought, including one of my all-time my favourites, Martha Washington Goes to War. I videotaped the session and used it in a couple of media classes; Jacques came to one class as a guest speaker.
Since 1998, the demands of the job, especially amid a shifting high school curriculum, has meant that I have not been able to stay on top of what has been happening in comics as much as I would have liked. Between me and comics has been a wall of reading materials, from the various Ministry sanctioned textbooks, to new novels and plays chosen to suit a changing demographic, to resources pertaining to professional development and particularly literacy. I think I’ve done quite well, given the circumstances, to not lose my balance completely. I intersperse my reading of comics and graphic novels with that of regular novels, reading for pleasure whenever I can. Thus, I just recently read the graphic novel The Plot as well as the novel A Student of Weather. I recommend them both; both were recommended to me by people I respect. Sometimes, you need help to know what to read.
Luckily, I have had considerable help over the years to keep abreast of current trends and titles — in particular, from students who have shared with me their own comics and graphic novels and whose judgement I have come to respect. One former student who is now in her third year of university, Alda, introduced me to several local contemporary comic book artists, including Seth and Chester Brown, the Toronto-based graphic novelist who wrote the award-winning Louis Riel. Alda continues to read and recommend comics; her selections always surprise and never disappoint me. She is currently reading Krazy Kat, a comic strip by George Herriman that ran from 1913 until his death in 1944. Herriman is considered by historians to be one of three groundbreaking American cartoonists in the twentieth century. The plot of Krazy Kat pivots on a love triangle that involves a cat, a mouse and a dog. As Roger Sabin puts it in his excellent text, Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels, the story unfolds against “a background of abstract and ever-changing landscapes … [and] was interpreted by some as a meditation on anarchism and democracy; by others as a satire on heaven and hell.” Anyone interested in the history of comics should take a look at Krazy Kat. It’s quite surreal and compelling, and relevant despite its age.
Five years ago in Grade 9 English I had a student, Chris, who even then was reading comics avidly. I taught him again in Grade 11 and finally in Grade 12 before he headed off to university. During those years, I witnessed how his tastes had matured and his love of comic books had grown. He loaned me many of his favourites, and introduced me to a few titles that I had never heard of, such as Vimanarama, a story in which a South Asian protagonist Ali forfeits his own life but is resurrected by a God, Prince Ben Rama, so that Ali can battle the dark forces of evil that he unwittingly has helped to unleash. It sounds  cheesy, but it’s extremely clever and original, and wonderfully drawn. In Interdisciplinary Media 12, I integrated Chris’ vast knowledge and experience into a unit on comics, and relied on him to provide insights into the materials that we examined.
Chris is a longtime patron of The Beguiling, a store in Toronto that specializes in graphic novels and comics but that also carries books on other topics, such as Art. Chris’ enthusiasm for the store made me want to return. He described how knowledgeable and helpful the people working there were. I had visited the store years previous but since then had been making my purchases at various other places, simply for convenience. Then last June, my school’s librarian Pam, who is a strong advocate of graphic novels, mentioned The Beguiling when I asked her where she was buying her books. I knew then that I had to drop into the store and reacquaint myself, which I did during the summer several times. Each visit made it more clear just how remarkable a resource The Beguiling is, from its stock to its staff to its “philosophy”. Pam also had mentioned that the store had designated one of its staff to operate exclusively as a contact person between schools and itself, as a liaison who could interact with teachers and librarians and help them to select texts that were appropriate for their and their students’ needs.
Perfect. For someone like me who knows a bit about comics but doesn’t have the time to sift through them all and who is unable to keep on top of the latest titles and trends, the store’s “Library Services Coordinator” Jason Azzopardi is a valuable asset. And for someone who has limited or no knowledge of comics and graphic novels, Jason is a real treasure. The Beguiling is a perfect fit for the educator who wants to use comics and graphic novels in the classroom. (It is worth noting that Barry Duncan’s past experiences with The Silver Snail, another Toronto comic book store, echo mine at The Beguiling.) If there has been one consistent lesson that I have learned since becoming a teacher, it is that if you want to attain expertise in a subject, you should seek out those in the know.
To that end, I sought out and interviewed Jason in October, 2005. What follows is the transcript of that interview, which speaks for itself about the important work that The Beguiling is doing on behalf of comics and comic book artists in its outreach to teachers and the general public. I also spoke briefly to one of the owners of the store, and was impressed by his attitude — I really got the impression that he cares as much about promoting the artists and their works as he does about the business. A nice balance of Art and Commerce, the cornerstones of contemporary popular culture.?____________________________________________________________

Interview, Part 1: When Cultures Collide
Ian: Who are you and what do you do?
Jason: My name is Jason Azzopardi and I am the Library Services Coordinator for The Beguiling comic book shop.  That basically means that if a teacher-librarian or a public librarian is interested in ordering graphic novels from the store, I guide them through and help them do it safely so they don’t get anything that they are uncomfortable with.
I: Are many librarians contacting you?
J: A lot are contacting us, especially now through word-of-mouth. We also have had direct interaction through our presentations at the Ontario Library Association Conference for the past three years or so. I think people know more about us because of that. When I started the position in September 2004, the store had 27 library clients and now we have 300 or so. We’re feeling pretty good about our work with schools, and we expanded to universities this year. Also, we’re starting to move out of province now too, jut through word-of mouth.
I: What’s your personal interest in comics? How is it linked to your being in this position?
J:  I do have a personal interest in comics. I have been reading them since I was eight years old. I started with superhero comics and horror comics because that’s what I was interested in at that time. And then when I was 13 years old I read a comic book by Allan Moore and it was a slightly more advanced superhero comic. I had never read anything like it. I decided that I was through with regular comics and I started looking for things that were a bit different. As I got a little bit older, I started reading alternative comics like Love & Rockets and Ghost World when it was being serialized in EightBall, and a comic called Hate by Peter Bagge. I started seeking out those types of comics.
The Beguiling comic book shop was the only comic shop in the city that pretty much carried those comics on a regular basis. Sometimes you would find one or two issues elsewhere, but they would almost always sell out at other comic shops. At The Beguiling they were regular stock, and that is what they were known for. So I started shopping there and exploring smaller press publications and art-based comic books, and literary-based comic books. I would come into the shop pretty regularly when I was teaching and they asked me if I would consider leaving my teaching position. They said that since I knew something about how schools operate, would I mind taking over their library services position? And I’ve been doing that for a year-and-a-half now.
I: Are you a reader of other kinds of fiction?
J: Yes, I am. I have been reading for my whole life, thanks to my mother. She started me at a young age and I read, I have to read, every single day. I don’t know, it doesn’t matter what.  Right now I am going through a period in which I don’t like fiction so much as non-fiction. I’m reading a lot of non-fiction.
I: When you make a reference to a literary comic, what do you mean by that?
J: To me a literary comic is a comic that I would rate up there with a piece of contemporary fiction that you would find in a normal bookstore like Chapters or Book City.  Or non-fiction, like the works of Joe Sacco.  He’s basically a war correspondent, but he conveys his stories through a comic book form rather than just words. I would say a literary comic is anything with the intention of telling a complete and meaningful story. And not necessarily a simple story, a stand-alone volume, but also sort of an epic story. A story that’s not necessarily just for entertainment but for a greater purpose. So, there are a lot of those coming out now, thanks to the more mainstream media attention being focused on comic books.
I: Could you tell me a bit more about who is part of the comic book scene? And describe the store a bit, such as the arrangement of the floors?
J: Sure. The Beguiling is a store that has a reputation for carrying the more esoteric, hard-to-find, and alternative comic books that are being published and self-published at the moment. That’s what the reputation is based on. But the store also carries pretty much every mainstream comic available, although we order fewer of those books than a mainstream comic book store would. So we carry just enough for the type of customer who regularly reads those comics, and then we try to stock everything else that is available so our customers will have a library of materials to choose from. There are two floors to The Beguiling. The first floor is basically our alternative comics floor and art book floor. And the second floor is the mainstream, superhero floor, and Japanese manga floor.
I: And is there a demographic that is associated with those two different floors?
J: The demographic for the store is basically college-aged to middle-aged. I guess that more literate fans of comic books would shop on the main floor and would stay away from the second floor. The demographic of the customers on the upper floor ranges from teenagers to middle-aged. A lot of the superhero material is bought by men and the comics reflect a male-dominated industry. Manga is different.
I: And the manga?
J: It’s attracting both younger males and females. It’s pretty much evenly split for Japanese comic books, but for the superhero stuff it’s almost all male.
I: And then you’ve got this other audience with libraries where obviously you’re dealing with a younger demographic completely?
J: That’s right.  It’s mostly secondary school clients that we have.  A lot more elementary school clients are starting to come, but it’s tough, because the selection isn’t there like it is for the secondary students. With the secondary students there’s more selection and you can take a few more chances.
I: Any sense of why schools are suddenly starting to turn on to comics?
J: I think the reason is twofold, that it’s split down the middle. Word of mouth amongst the library community, the school and public librarian community is one reason. One public librarian or school librarian will say, “I’ve had a lot of success with the Japanese comics. I’m getting a lot of kids into the library that I normally haven’t seen in the library.” Kids are reading more widely and adults are noticing.
I think the other reason is that librarians are starting to see more articles written about literary graphic novels, or bound graphic novels. These are starting to get reviewed in publications like the Globe & Mail almost every week, or the New York Times, and so on. Comics and graphic novels are being taken seriously in the literary and the popular culture world. The mainstream media is full of stories about comic books and how they are taking over the publishing industry. School libraries are at a sort of loss about how to deal with this newly popular form of narrative — what to choose and where to get it. So that’s what we’re there for, to try to help people deal with their concerns and needs.
I: It’s interesting to me, in reading through the history of comic books, to see the role of the public librarian in promoting comics, particularly with respect to certain types of materials like MAUS.  You know, how significant a role the public libraries have always played in bringing these books to the general public?  I’m not surprised that school librarians are doing this. This is slightly off topic, but I think that they also are trying to show how valid their jobs are — they are fighting to survive, and with these new materials, they’re filling a niche. Most teachers don’t have exposure to comic books. Schools librarians are providing a service by selecting those texts that can be used with students. I can’t imagine that classroom teachers are buying a lot of comics.
J: No, they’re not. Every now and then you’ll find an open-minded teacher, often a media teacher, who is a fan already and is willing to introduce them into the curriculum. But unless it’s a non-fiction comic book, they will stay away from it. A lot of that reluctance is justified because much of the genre stuff, there’s not a lot of merit to it, other than the fact that it gets kids that normally don’t read, to read.  It’s just generic action stories, superhero stories or romance stories. That being said, sometimes it may be enough to get them to read; it’s a big step.
I: What do you think the appeal of manga is?
J: In terms of Japanese comics, manga, it’s pretty much an even split down the middle.  There are girls’ manga comics and there are boys’ manga. Boys’ manga almost always centers on action or fighting, or there are a lot of swords or gunplay.  Girls’ manga is almost always centered around a melodramatic soap opera situation or romance of some kind; it’s almost always set in a high school and everything is WAY over the top.  Everything is always the end of the world. This boy is hurting my feelings, or I will never fall in love with this boy, or will we or won’t we have sex if we get together. Real life things like that, but dramatic.
I: The research suggests that girls will read what boys are reading, but boys are less inclined to read what girls like.
J: The Japanese comic creators are very shrewd. It’s almost like an industry or a warehouse that they’ve established where, if they are doing a boys’ manga, they will almost always throw in a romance angle for the girls to appreciate. That way, the girls can get involved in the action and the comic will hook female readers. When they design the girls’ comics, they are almost always in soft colours and there are very few action lines unless they are related to emotional stress. You know, sort of sweat coming off of the brow action, or a heart thumping by a character’s head, or something like that. The boys will stay away from that material. Most absolutely will refuse to read girls’ manga, Shojo comics, although a lot of gay teenage boys will read girls’ romance comics. There also is another demographic of older women reading some of them, like Yaoi, which is a category of male-on-male romance comic. These are not graphic, sexual comics but rather about the wooing and seducing aspect, very much like Harlequin romances but with two men. A lot of older, heterosexual women are interested in reading male-on-male stories, as long as they involve romance.
I:  That’s fascinating.
J: It is. We haven’t quite figured it out yet.  I’m sure that there are theories floating around at the store, but I don’t have enough experience with Yaoi to offer an informed opinion. I know that I am filling a lot of personal orders with older women.
I: What do you think the appeal of the graphic novel is to the reader?
J: I personally think that the appeal of a comic book, for myself, is that it is a completely different medium than reading a piece of normal prose fiction or non-fiction. And it’s a different and unique experience for me because I control the pace at which I read the comic, not like a movie.
To me, the best comics are the ones that use the pictures and the words to support one another, and they’ve meshed them so well that you don’t notice the process.  The worst ones are the ones that have redundant language next to a picture that’s already explained everything. But I think that the appeal for teacher-librarians or public librarians is that they are getting students into their libraries that normally would never set foot into the libraries. I think the theory is that students who normally don’t read will sort of fall in love with the process and then hopefully move on later to something a little bit more mature, a little bit more complex, in terms of reading habits. And that may lead to more complex comics, or eventually just regular literature. That’s a definite appeal because those kids wouldn’t read otherwise.
I: Do you think comics are filmic — I’ve read Scott McLoud’s book — and because we’re becoming more of a visual culture, that feeds the appeal, as well?
J: I think so. A lot of the comics that younger people are interested in reading, they seem very close to video games, action movies, television shows, or music videos.  They all seem to be very quickly paced, with a lot of action lines in the drawing. Younger readers are able to process that information a lot more easily than adults are, I think. With the Japanese comics, they train themselves to follow the fast movement; we certainly haven’t trained them, they’ve trained themselves to read the comics. And also the orientation of manga is reversed, it’s right-to-left — it took me about four months to get used to doing that. In general, someone who has been reading regular prose their whole life is probably going to have spend a longer time adjusting because he or she isn’t as comic-literate as I am, because I have been reading comics since I was a boy.
I also can understand why the “language” of comics might seem foreign and maybe a little bit frightening to teacher-librarians, but the kids have no problems with it. Again, I think it’s their ability to process information that much quicker than let’s say maybe they would have twenty years ago — they learn the language of the comic in no time, like a code that they break. ? ?I:  Yeah, I’ve read a couple of comics that I found very challenging. There’s so much closure required for me to go from here to there. Kids have no trouble with that.
J: No, they don’t. And the pace that they can read at is amazing. They get a Japanese comic that’s 200, 250, 300 pages and they can ingest that in an hour-and-a-half, and share it with their friends. That’s another thing that I have noticed, that a lot of kids share the comics. It’s not a market geared toward the obsessive-compulsive collector like the regular superhero market is. It’s almost like manga readers form their own clubs on their own, and if the school has a club, that’s great, but if not, they’ll sit in the cafeteria and there’ll be a group of them, five or six of them, and they’ll share the comics.  And then they’ll want the next one, so there’s three hundred pages gone, and that ends on some sort of crazy climax and the kids have to have the next one. It’s almost surreal. They totally want the next one right away.  It’s very shrewd in a way on the part of the publishers because some of these series go up to twenty volumes, thirty volumes. They know how to hook the kids. Bone, which isn’t manga, is like that. The reissue of the classic by Scholastic is smart because they’ve reduced the price to reach a wider market, through mass production. The graphics novels were originally about twenty–five dollars each. The reissues are less crafted but still good versions of the series. Very nicely done.
I: What are a couple of titles that you are excited about or that other people seem to be excited about?
J: Bone is actually a series that I’ve always been sort of excited about. I think it’s a great fantasy comic. I think it’s a great young-readers comic. I try to keep up with the different age groups, with what they might be interested in. And for me, Bone has that appeal. Yet I think for a lot of Bone readers, it doesn’t matter how old you are, if you read that comic, you appreciate the pacing of the book, the humour, the innocence and fun, and then when it takes a darker turn, like The Hobbit did, like The Lord of the Rings does after the first few hundred pages, you appreciate that level of it, too. You appreciate that it gets a little more serious, a little bit more intense. When I was a young reader I also read horror novels. I was reading Stephen King when I was eleven years old because I wanted a more intense reading experience. You grow out of that but … I’m not saying that Bone gets that dark, but it doesn’t avoid topics like betrayal and corruption. Kids, adolescents, specifically look for that intensity, right? Adults, too.
I: Harry Potter…
J: Harry Potter, exactly, a perfect example.
I: What about for you personally? Are you excited about a particular comic right now?
J:  I love Chris Ware’s work. He did a comic book a few years ago, it took him ten years to serialize; it’s called Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth. It won a bunch of awards for him. He’s just released a new collection of his work called Acme Novelty Library, and it’s just beautifully designed. There’s another book coming out called Black Hole by Charles Burns and I think it’s got a lot of potential. It’s an amazing book. Again, it took about ten years to serialize, but they’re finally collecting it with Pantheon. Black Hole covers a lot of the same ground that David Cronenberg’s films do, such as mutation and the fear of change. The story acts as a metaphor for adolescence. It’s a coming of age story, but very dark, about a virus that is altering teenagers as they get older. You can read into it a lot of things like HIV infection and mutation in general, like how our bodies go through all of these changes in adolescence that we don’t fully understand. It’s not really for the young adolescent market, it’s a little more mature. For an older teen demographic, I think it would be a perfect literary book to introduce to them.
I: Let’s talk about film adaptations. It seems to me there’s been an awful lot of adaptations of comic books lately. There’s some more Marvel ones coming out.  I wonder how you feel about these?
J: Generally, I find them as boring as I find most superhero comics. But that’s only because I also watch a lot of movies and I’m sort of bored of the same old clichés in action movies in general. That being said, The Incredibles, which is basically a comic book movie about The Fantastic Four, was one of my favorite movies of the last few years. And the new Spiderman, not the first one, but the sequel, I thought was an amazing adaptation of a comic book series. It had all of the adventure that I remember from being 13 years old, plus it was well-written and acted at the same time.  It didn’t seem too over the top. But most everything else, I am just sort of bored with and I stay away from.
I guess you could consider the movie Unbreakable a comic book form. I like that film because it reflected more mature comic books like Watchmen and Alan Moore’s works. But it’s not officially a comic book movie, so…
I: But it’s referenced often as having come from that sensibility and those origins.
J: Yeah, definitely. And then there are Japanese films that are interesting. A lot of the customers at the store like Steam Boy by the artist that did Akira.
I: I like Steam Boy.
J: Yeah, It’s definitely beautifully illustrated, beautifully animated. I liked Akira a lot when I saw it, a long time ago. I guess those are comic book forms, as well.
I: I’ve noticed also a reverse process — that there are examples where they’ve taken an  original film and made a comic book series of it.
J:  Yes, it’s called ‘cinemanga’. It’s exactly the same thing as what they do in the original process, right, which is to take a manga and adapt it to a cartoon, it’s just the opposite. And it works.  It’s really popular.  Especially with the Miyazaki stuff, like Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Castle in the Sky.
I: What’s that other series with the big animal things? It’s beautiful. Totoro?
J: My Neighbour Totoro. Yeah, that’s amazing. I would say those are clearly comic book forms. And there’s TV too, new crossover shows from people like Joss Whedon that definitely reflect how comic books tell stories. He started his TV career by writing Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which I think is a very well-done series about a girl turning into a young woman. A lot of the stuff that goes on in Buffy, you can tell he learned from comic books and by reading comic books. Now Buffy has its own comic book series, which isn’t as good as the television show. And then Whedon did Firefly, which started off as a science fiction television series and is being adapted and made into a movie called Serenity. They’re basically big comic books, and now there’s even a prequel to the movie Serenity in comic book form that you’re supposed to read before you see the movie — it all crosses over. I would say that those texts are successful versions of comic books. The same with Lost, I guess, which is very popular. As television, it’s seems a lot like Twin Peaks. But there are a lot of elements in Lost that are derivative of comics.
I: Even The Matrix dips into that — a lot of the back story of The Matrix came from outside of the film, from animated shorts and comics.
J:  Definitely. And those two guys, they wrote comic books before they became super Hollywood players. Personally I don’t like the Matrix movies, but I can see why they have their appeal, you know, especially to teenage boys.
I:  How much of the non-fiction material is being used? Is it mostly historical fiction?
J:  Libraries are ordering a bit of it. You’re not going to see as much traffic with the historical fiction or the non-fiction books, but they’re books that you easily can use in the curriculum. I think that’s a great appeal for teacher-librarians. The students have to be shown the material, though. They won’t find it on their own. If they’re shown MAUS, and they have to do a project on the Holocaust, they’ll read MAUS a lot quicker than they will read a thick tome on the Holocaust. And I would suggest that MAUS is just as important and informative as most historical accounts.
I: I’ve studied the Holocaust a fair bit, and teach it. I think MAUS encapsulates all of the shame, guilt, tensions, contradictions, anger and horror that survivors experience, and how that plays out with their children.
J: Of course! And it does it from almost a post-modern perspective, right? Because the story is being told to the author and then he’s illustrating that story, and it’s his father’s experience. But it’s also about how that story affected him, and how his father’s life affected him, and how he didn’t really understand what went on in the Holocaust until his father explained it and he subsequently processed that information in comic book form. I find it a really interesting tale with layers of complexity.
The same with Joe Sacco’s work. He did a book called Safe Area Gorazde and a book about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict called Palestine. They are very well-done comics.  Both of those artists, Art Spiegelman and Joe Sacco, know how to use the medium to their advantage. Sometimes they just let the pictures take over the narrative, even though it’s someone relating the story of the conflict to someone else through dialogue. There are many moments in Safe Area Gorazde where you really feel for this small little town, and the people living there, the Muslims, and how they are under constant bombardment. I was really, really emotionally involved with a lot of the citizens in that town and felt like these were real people telling their stories, but they are being drawn instead of photographed or filmed. I think it’s a very effective way of conveying this kind of material because kids will read comic books a little more willingly and with more attention to detail than they will read a book.
I: And you made the point that they can go at their own pace for a lot of this.  I think that’s really essential.
J: I think it is, particularly for a story that is as historically important as MAUS or Safe Area Gorazde.
I: You kind of addressed this, but there is this incredible interest in comic books right now — do you have any sense of why that is?  And do you think it’s a positive development, or negative or neutral?
J: I think it’s positive. The mainstream media is paying attention to the bound comic books that are coming out now, like Rabbi’s Cat by Joann Sfar, which is one of the bigger name books to be published recently. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, which is beautifully done, received a lot of attention. These artists spend a lot of time and effort to design these books so creatively. There’s Louis Riel by Chester Brown, and Locus has just been collected out of twenty years of Love & Rockets. When these comics get reviewed in the mainstream media, people take them more seriously than they would if someone was to just hand them the book and say, “This is a really great comic.  You should read it!” People still have a lot of biases against comics, which have been reinforced by the fact that the mainstream media has ghettoized the comic book industry up to this point. As soon as you slap a binding on a comic and get it reviewed in a proper magazine, people start to pay a little more attention to it. As well, people become less embarrassed about reading a book that resembles an actual piece of literature, that isn’t floppy and doesn’t look like a superhero comic book.  I think that’s a significant factor — the design of the comic books that are being released in bound format mingle very well with the design of most contemporary literature.  They get a lot of the same designers to do both comics. For example, Chip Kidd has designed most of Vintage Paperback’s releases over the past ten years. Now he’s designing comic books because he’s such a huge comic book fan.  And you can’t discern a difference between the two types of books. It’s great news for both Chip Kidd and the comic books.
I: This brings up the whole notion of high and low culture. Obviously, there is a perception that some books are high and some are low art.  What is your take?
J: There is definitely a perception of high and low in the comic book world. The comic books that are being released through the major publishing houses like Pantheon or Random House are considered high culture. The superhero stuff is generally considered low culture. A lot of manga is considered low culture. And, again, there is some validity behind that attitude because many comics are there to simply entertain. But similarly, there are a lot of terrible prose books, like bad horror or romance novels, a lot of terrible crime fiction, a lot of stuff that’s just exploitation, you know, and clearly not literary. Yet they’re somehow not as looked down upon as comic books are, even though they appeal to the same audience, or the same type of audience. I guess that the best way to think of the new graphic novel is that it’s its own literary genre, and that with the other stuff, it’s a superhero genre or it’s a fantasy genre, and so on.  And there are probably a thousand different levels to each of those genres. There are comic books for each specific kind of audience that you can think of, within the literary genre, and within the superhero genre, and within the manga genre.
I: So every medium has its own examples of “low” and high” art?
J: Definitely. Consider a graphic novel like Ghost World, which was turned into a pretty good film, although it doesn’t really approach the complexity of the comic book, but I could be biased. The film got the comic book a lot of recognition and a lot of respect because people were checking it out after seeing the film and they were thinking, “Well, here’s this cool little indie film that I saw… Oh, it’s based on a comic book?  Oh, I’ll read that comic book.” I think Ghost World is one of the highlights of the whole medium, so-called high art. I think it’s an amazing, amazing work that rivals literature. When I was doing an independent study unit in an English class, in Grade 12, I used Ghost World as a comparison piece for Catcher in the Rye. I basically see Ghost World as a modern Catcher in the Rye: it’s probably the most realistic coming of age story that I’ve ever read. I mean, I’ve had those thoughts that those girls in the comic book were having, and a lot of people that read it can’t believe that the author is a male because the female characters seem so real.
Granted, there are some content issues.  They swear, and they’re cynical, but when you’re 18 years old and you’re graduating from high school, you swear, and you’re cynical.  And you drink on occasion, you smoke a joint at a party, and to me it’s just a realistic portrayal of teenagers: rather than shying away from that reality, it portrays it.  I think it’s important to portray that reality so that kids can relate to something on that level. Ghost World is not for everybody, but neither is Catcher in the Rye. And it’s definitely a mature comic, for mature students. But for those mature students, it’ll be one of the most important things that they ever read.
I: I was going to ask you about some of the more mature and realistic comics, like Strangers in Paradise, which I used to read a lot. But I’m curious not just about the content but about the fact that the comic is written by a man. He’s tapped into a story and a style that seem to have captured a female audience.
J: True.
I: Is that in the absence of female writers, because there aren’t many stories about women that ring true, and one by a man is better than none at all? Are there a lot of women comic book writers?
J: Well, there haven’t been a lot of female writers but there are some really good ones, and well known. It’s getting larger, the number¬, but it’s still a male-dominated industry. People like Marjane Satrapi, she gets a lot of media attention with Persepolis and her new book, Embroideries. And we’re happy about that because it opens the door to other female artists, and more European artists, which we don’t see a lot of in North America; there’s a lot of really compelling stories that are finally being allowed to be published. But there are people like Debbie Dreschler, Carol Tyler and Julie Doucet — they’ve always been well-respected and they sort of stay away from the genre style. They do more literary comics, more literary–based comics. Anytime that anything’s been released by them, we try to push it a little bit because it’s important to have the female voice. And I agree with you, some of the most realistic portrayals of females I’ve seen in comics are by men.  Like Daniel Clowes who did Ghost World, the Hernandez brothers who do Love & Rockets, which has extremely realistic characters. A lot of my female friends read and love those comics.  And they say, “I can’t believe the writers are men.”
I: Let’s move into this idea of how comics are used. To what extent do you think comic books can be integrated into the school curriculum? For example, how do you feel about the fact that comics are being pitched as if they are somehow for kids who are either reluctant readers or weak readers?
J: I guess there’s two different trains of thought. One is that yes, their being pitched to a reluctant reader is valid, and being used a tool to lure reluctant readers into the library, especially boys that don’t read, is okay. I don’t generally care for that argument because it ghettoizes the whole medium and I think it’s almost foolish to say that comic books are sort of low culture, and that they’ll appeal to that level of reader. There is such an array of comic books available. There’s only a certain segment that might appeal to the reluctant or weak reader. There’s a whole other segment that appeals to the literate reader, and boys are part of that segment.  Maybe they’re not reading Ghost World, although some are; or they’re not reading Jimmy Corrigan or Love & Rockets, but they’re reading Naruto, which is a book about ninjas, and Sandman. These people certainly can read quite complex texts full of literary devices, like metaphors. They read Spiderman, they read X-Men; they read these because they’re entertainment and full of action, but they also contain important themes.
How comics are used as a step in reading development, it’s not black and white. They can be an effective tool … like we talked about the concept that they will lead students into reading more complex work. But I find that a lot of the boys that do read that stuff, they stay with that stuff. They don’t necessarily move on to more complex work.  It’s too early to tell, really. More research is needed.  I hope they keep reading.  I’m just happy that they are reading, but I do hope that they move on to more complex work.
Another train of thought is that you can incorporate comic books into the curriculum in a bunch of different ways. In terms of the literary genre, I think that a teacher would do the students a service to introduce more literary comics into independent study units.  And a comic or type of comic doesn’t necessarily have to get its own unit, like Macbeth does, or Hamlet, or Lord of the Flies. But there are comics that you could use as comparison pieces such as, like I said, Ghost World. Or there’s a book called Hey, Wait  by a Norwegian artist named Jason. It’s basically a much more accessible and much more moving account or version of A Separate Peace by John Knowles. Again, I know very few people who liked studying A Separate Peace, but Hey, Wait, it moved me a great deal when I read it. I kind of hated A Separate Peace but I love Hey Wait. I think that the two make nice companion pieces to each other.
There is also a media unit that you could do on comic books. You mentioned Scott McLoud who has a wonderful book called Understanding Comics. When I was teaching media I would photocopy specific segments from that book because I think all of the theories in there apply to all aspects of media, not just comic books. There are many books about comics, some of which are a little bit more art-based, like Flight, which is an anthology of different comics and different styles of art. I think you also could teach about comics in an art class, and use some of those texts; you could examine Dave McKean’s work in Mr. Punch, for example. It’s about mixed media and shows photographs being mixed with painting, as well as straight pen and ink work. There are really interesting uses of the medium occurring and I think a study of those things would open up a lot of doors for students.
I: There is a nice interdisciplinary possibility through that too, because a comic can link a history class, an art class, an English class, and a media class. Ho Che Anderson’s King, for example.
J: Yeah, or a sociology class if there is one. I definitely think so. And in terms of students expressing themselves through comics, we always suggest that teacher-librarians buy Flight. We think it’s a good example of how in eight pages you can tell a short story. And comic book form inspires the students. If they are taking a writing class, instead of writing a short story or a poem, maybe they want to do a comic.  Even if their drawing skills are rudimentary, you know they can still do a comic. They can still use a comic’s language to tell that story. And in an art class, it’s a valid alternative. They don’t have to necessarily stream into painting, photography or sculpture. They could do a comic book.  Plus, when they do that, they could also investigate the process of self-publishing, which might just basically entail photocopying. Yet with the quality of photocopies that you can get at Kinko’s these days, it’s like you can publish your own comic book. And you can print up 30 copies for your class to look at, you know? Relatively cheaply, too.
I: Quick publishing is very rewarding, also.
J: It is! I think it instills a confidence in the students, too, and in their own abilities when they actually see the finished product photocopied, and they don’t see the erase marks anymore. There are a lot of ways of using comic books in the classroom, and like you said, in different subjects like history or sociology; you could definitely use Joe Sacco’s work about the different conflicts that he discusses in his comics.  Or you could use a book called Age of Bronze, which is basically a re-telling of the Trojan War. There’s a book called Whistle!, which is a Japanese soccer comic — you could have kids in Gym reading it. Oh, and there is a new series of books by Jim Ottaviani who is a scientist. He did a book called Dignifying Science about women scientists, and another called Two-Fisted Science; he’s just interested in telling the stories of scientists. Real, twentieth century scientists that have contributed a great deal to society! He wants to tell their stories and describe their inventions and their breakthroughs in the form of comics. So he hires his alternative comic book friends to help illustrate those stories. And they make the stories extremely accessible and yet still informative and well-researched. He understands what he’s writing about so you get the point of view of experts. He’s just using a different medium instead of a textbook. I think that would interest students a great deal, especially reluctant readers who have to take science because they need the credit. It would interest them where these inventions came from.
When I was teaching English, I understood why some of the students weren’t reading the books I gave them. They were uninteresting and also long — it was a kind of slow torture. Instead, you could use a comic to teach the same things — it has character development, settings, themes, and a plot with rising action, a climax and so on.  They could still deconstruct that comic and analyze it for the teacher in the form of an essay or oral report; it just would be an assignment they were more interested in.
I: There’s a real gap around the reading materials for the college and workplace pathways. I find it especially at the grade 10 level – the novels are all full of morals, or some kind of lesson, or about social issues like drug use or racism. The reader is hit on the head by the messages. Not very literary.
J: And it’s strange because it’s a kind of writing that speaks to them like they don’t understand what’s going on in society, but they definitely know. Sure, there may be some rougher elements to the applied-level kids, depending on their economic background or where they’re living, or their social background or cultural background, but it’s their reality so why not get them to read something that they may be able to relate to on some level? There is a comic book called Rebound, which is about a high school competitive basketball team and it has, you know the same sort of plot line every single issue, but the boys are really into it because it is about basketball. But it also deals with interrelationship issues, and dating. Kind of subtle. A boy will pick up Rebound more readily than he will pick up some of the short stories that they hand out in class.
I: So what is preferable, to use comics with that kind of a reader, somebody who is developing literacy, or with a confident reader who reads novels with ease?
J: I think it’s a little bit of both.  I think that you definitely could use some comics to interest the reluctant reader. But I think it’s a fallacy that they necessarily are easier to read or more accessible, maybe fallacy is the wrong word … There is a book by Seth, a Toronto comic book artist, it’s called Clyde Fans and it’s basically one character talking to the reader the whole time. It’s nothing but one talking head.  That comic will never ever, ever interest a reluctant reader, but it will interest someone that is into literature and interested in the history of Toronto. It focuses on an old salesman, and explores how certain practices become outdated in modern society, and how technology has created a gulf between people so that they can’t communicate with one another anymore. Clyde Fans would be unappealing to a reluctant reader. But someone that regularly reads novels and plays would be more inclined to like it, and able to appreciate the works of Seth and others like him, like Chris Ware and Dan Clowes.
I: You mentioned the role that the format of a comic book plays in its appeal. Can you elaborate with respect to their appeal to different audiences?
J: A lot of its appeal is in the design. The reluctant reader books look energetic; they look kinetic with their many action lines and use of bold colours or contrast. The more literate books are more subtle with their designs and their use of colour, and the use of lines.  A reluctant reader will pick the one up and say, “I’m not interested in that. It looks boring,” but grab an action book and say, “Wow. This looks like a video game”; it’s like playing Grand Theft Auto or something like that. To them, it’s a visceral experience, while for the literate student, it’s less of a visceral experience and more of an emotionally involving experience. There are two different angles to approach it from. I don’t really know if that answers the question…
I: It does! A lot of the research talks about comics as being a kind of light reading, and I think that some of this is just totally not like that at all.
J:  No.  Jimmy Corrigan is probably one of the most complex things I’ve ever read in my life. I think it would confuse the hell out of a lot of teachers and librarians. And not even just because of the presentation of the material, but because a lot of adults have to confront a bias against comic books and the comic book medium. They have to realize that this a serious medium, it’s a relevant medium for telling a story. It’s just like teaching a new language and it takes a while to understand and get used to it, like when music video producers got more into elliptical editing. That’s a very quick editing style, very shocking at first but now you see it on reality television, in shows like CSI, you know. Those shows are geared towards a very mainstream audience. You’ve got the camera flying through test tubes, and you’ve got the camera going back in time, or the storytelling going back in time and then telling the story through flashbacks, and it’s happening in a much quicker fashion than camera work used to, or storytelling used to in film or television. But we have accepted and gotten accustomed to it. So, it’s just a matter of training yourself, I think, to reading this medium. It’s a different set of skills, and there are different sets of skills in reading different sets of comic books. In Jimmy Corrigan you actually have to think about each page as you go, and in terms of reading manga, you can sort of flip through the pages really quickly and digest it really quickly. Wordless comics, they require a whole different set of skills. You have to process the information on a completely different level and sometimes it’s more difficult than reading comics with words attached to them. So, it’s all just a learning process.
*  *  *
If this interview has captured your interest, look for Part 2, “Enter The Beguiling,” as part of the Association for Media Literacy’s ongoing series of articles about Contemporary Culture and Media Education.
Thanks to Diane Dechief who transcribed the interview from audio cassette.

(These lesson ideas can be adapted to both Elementary and Secondary classrooms – ed.)

Some Resources for Teaching Comics
Texts About Comics?

1. PRINT

Beatty, Scott. (2004). Catwoman: The Visual Guide to the Feline Fatale. New York: DK Publishing Inc.
BWI Public Library Specialists. (2005). The Public Librarian’s Guide to Graphic Novels. Lexington: BWI Books.
Chinn, Mike. ((2004). Writing and Illustrating the Graphic Novel. New York: Barron’s Educational Series, Inc.
Colon, Suzan. (2003). Catwoman: The Life and Times of a Feline Fatale. San Francisco: Chronicle Books LLC.
Dougall, Alastair. (2004). The DC Comics Encyclopedia. New York: DK Publishing Inc.
Fingeroth, Danny. (2004). Superman on the Couch. New York: Continuum.
Gravett, Paul. (2004).  Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd.
Gravette, Paul. (2005). Graphic Novels: Stories To Change Your Life. London: Autumn Press.
Kwitney, Alisa. (000). Vertigo Visions: Artwork from the Cutting Edge of Comics. New York: DC Comics, Inc.
Mackie, Brian. (2000). “Frame by Frame: The Narrative Art of Comics” in Elements of English 10 edited by Doug Hilker and Sue Harper. Toronto: Harcourt Canada.
McCloud, Scott. (1993). Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Harper Collins.
McCloud, Scott. (2000). Reinventing Comics. New York: Paradox Press.
Rimmels, Beth Hannan. (1995). “You’ve come a long way, baby?” in Wizard: The Guide to Comics, Number 45. Congers NY: Wizard Press / BPA International.
Robbins, Trina. (1999).  From Girls to Grrrls: A History of Female Comics from Teens to Zines. San Francisco: Chronicle Books.
Sabin, Roger. (2003). Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels: A History Of Comic Art. London: Phaidon.
Sugiyama, Rika. (2004). Comic Artists – Asia: Manga, Manhwa, Manhua. New York: Harper Design International, an imprint of Harper Collins Publishers.
Weiner, Stephen. (2003). Faster Than A Speeding Bullet: The Rise of the Graphic Novel. New York: NBM Publishing Inc.
2. DVD / VIDEO

NFB. (1997). The Devil You Know: Inside the Mind of Todd McFarlane. Montreal: National Film Board of Canada.
Mann, Ron. (1988)  Comic Book Confidential. Toronto: Home Vision entertainment (HVe).

 

Comics / Manga / Graphic Novels

1. PRINT

Anderson, Ho Che. (2004). King: A Comic Book Biography. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books.
Avi, and B. Floca. (1993). City of Light, City of Dark. Toronto: Scholastic Inc.
Claremont, Chris. (2003). Essential X-Men, Volumes I – IV. New York: Marvel Comics
Clowes, Daniel. (1998). Ghost World. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books.
Douglas, Max (aka Salgood Sam). (2004). Revolver Vol. One. Montreal: Spilt Ink.
Eisner, Will. (2005). The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Ellis, Warren, and J. Cassaday. (2000). Planetary: All Over The World And Other Stories. La Jolla, CA: WildStorm Productions, an Imprint of DC Comics.
Gaiman, Neil. (2003). The Sandman: Endless Nights. New York: Vertigo (DC Comics).
Hoashi, Yumi. Editor. (2006). Shojo Beat Magazine: Manga FromThe Heart. San Francisco: Viz Media LLC.
Larsen, Eric. (2005 – 6). Flight: Volumes 1 – 3. Berkeley: Image Comics, Inc.
Miller, Frank. (1986). The Dark Knights Returns. New York: DC Comics.
Miller, Frank and D. Gibbons. (1995). Martha Washington Goes To War. Milwaukie OR: Dark Horse Books.
Mignola, Mike. (2002). Hellboy: Books 1 – 5. Oregon: Dark Horse Books.
Moore, Alan, and Dave Gibbons. (1986). Watchmen. New York: Vertigo (DC Comics).
Moore, Alan, and David Lloyd. (1988). V for Vendetta. New York: Vertigo (DC Comics).
Naifeh, Ted. (2002). Courtney Crumb and the Night Things. Volumes One – Three. Portland, OR: Oni Press.
Oakley, Mark. (1998). Thieves & Kings: Volumes 1 – 5. Toronto: I Box Publishing.
Ohba, Tsugumi. (2003 – 6). Death Note: Volumes 1 – 5. San Francisco: VIZ LLC Media.
O’Malley, Bryan Lee. (2003 – 6). Scott Pilgrim: Volumes 1 – 3. Portland, OR: Oni Press.
Ottaviani, Jim, et al. (2001). Fallout: J. Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, and the Political Science of the Atomic Bomb. Ann Arbor: G.T. Labs.
Sacco, Joe. (2003). The Fixer. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books.
Sacco, Joe. (2001). Palestine. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books.
Sacco, Joe. (2000). Safe Area Gorazde. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books.
Satrapi, Marjane. (2003). Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. New York: Pantheon Books.
Seth. (2004). It’s A Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken. Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly Publications.
Sin-ichi, Hiromoto. (2002). STONe Vol. 1. Tokyo: Kodansha Ltd.
Smith, Jeff. (2004). Bone: The Complete Cartoon Epic in One Volume. Columbus: Cartoon Books.
Spiegelman, Art. (1991).  MAUS: A Survivor’s Tale: My father Bleeds History. New York: Pantheon Books.
Sturm, James. (2003). The Golem’s Mighty Swing. Montreal: Drawn and Quarterly Publications.
Tezuka, Osamu. (2005). Buddha: Volumes 1 – 5. New York: Vertical, Inc.
Tezuka, Osamu. (2004). The Phoenix: Karma. Vol. 4. VIZ LLC Media: San Francisco.
Vaughan, Brian K., P. Guerra and J. Marzan Jr. (2003-5). Y :The Last Man: Volumes 1 – 7. New York: Vertigo.
2. FILM ADAPTATIONS

Clowes, Daniel and T.  Zwigoff. (2001). Ghost World. United Artists Pictures, Inc. and Granada Film in Association with Jersey Shore.
Del Toro, Guillermo. (2004). Hellboy. Culver City: Columbia Pictures and Revolutions Studios, in Association with Dark Horse Entertainment.
Hayter, David. (2000). X-Men. Beverly Hills: Twentieth Century Fox and Marvel Entertainment Group.
Sarafian, Ted. (1995). Tank Girl. Santa Monica: United Artists Pictures, Inc. and Trilogy Entertainment Group.
McElroy, Alan and G. Hardwick, (1997). Todd McFarlane’s Spawn. New York: HBO/Time Warner.
Wachowski Brothers. (2006). V for Vendetta. New York: Warner Brothers.
Comic Book Stores in Toronto
The Beguiling Books and Art. 601 Markham Street, Toronto.  (416) 533-9168.
Silver Snail Comic Shop. 367 Queen Street West, Toronto.  (416) 593-0889.
The Comic Stop. 2949 Dundas Street West, Toronto.  (416) 762-1303.
Excalibur — 3030 Bloor Street West, Etobicoke.  (416) 207-0438.