Graphic Novels in the Classroom

I’ve had a relatively meager degree of interaction with graphic novels (which surprises me a little because my interests and tendencies make me think that I would gravitate toward them more than I have). I have however enjoyed and had quite fulfilling reads of the graphic novels that I’ve managed to pick up.

The first interaction with graphic novels I remember encountering was a reprint series of the original Spider-Man comics, starting with the Amazing Fantasy Spiderman issue. I’m not really sure where the reprint series came from (might have been a thing the local newspaper was doing?), but I do remember it being a fun family thing that we did. We only got one issue a month and so my brothers and I would wait eagerly for the new issue to appear so we could figure out what had happened to Spidey after last month’s cliff hanger. In reflecting on this experience, I think there’s something to be said for this experience of waiting. Historically, a large part of the experience of reading graphic novels has been the drama induced by these cliff hangers, and the ensuing agony experienced by fans as they wait for the next issue to be released. There’s something there that is missed when graphic novels are released as a completed work. I think it can be related to the recent trend of “binge watching” TV shows. It can be fun to sit down and watch 12 hours of a show and get a complete narrative from beginning to end, but I also remember the days before online streaming where writers of TV shows loved to torment their audiences by dropping narrative bombs right at the end of episodes and then making fans wait a whole week to figure out what happens next. It’s a choice that writers make to forgo these waiting periods, but something is sacrificed as the waiting period is omitted.

The next graphic novel that I remember interacting with was Volume 15 of Usagi Yojimbo: Grasscutter 2. I stumbled across this one as I was foraging in my middle school library. It was the only graphic novel I ever found in that library and I think I mostly picked it up because I was so surprised to find a “comic book” in a school library. I almost thought some kid must have left it there by accident. I checked it out and to my surprise wasn’t told by the librarian to go back and check out a “real book” instead. Boy was this one a fun read. It’s a pretty violent graphic novel (ninja forest creatures slicing and dicing and whatnot) but the drama and character development that occurred throughout the book was captivating.

The most recent graphic novel I’ve read was the classic Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. This one was a little more challenging than the others that I have read, but it was also even more rewarding. It was more challenging because some of the images and dialogue required a closer analysis to really grasp what was going on, but the time was well spent as the themes throughout this graphic novel become rich and well developed.

I’m strongly in favor of using graphic novels in the classroom setting. As English teachers, I think we can become entrenched in the idea that literature simply refers to text based representations, but the reality is that encouraging literacy in students requires us to address a far broader range of material. Advertisements are a form of literature that warrant interpretation. Videos are a form of literature that warrant interpretation. Still images are a form of literature that warrant interpretation. And graphic novels are a form of literature that warrant interpretation. Graphic novels can in fact serve as a helpful sort of crossover between text based and image based forms of literature. I think graphic novels definitely serve an important purpose in the English classroom.