Comics?

What are comics?

This is the question I posed to my class on Wednesday afternoon.  It was the second day of my Graphic Novel as Literature class and I wanted the class to try and get a firm grasp on what the heck it was they were looking at and what the controversies are surrounding the medium.

I had them break up into groups of three or four and work on defining the medium.  I asked them to consider the physical object (what physical properties must comics have?), the content (words, no words, images, story, genre stories?), etc.  They all wound up with definitions that were similar, but each with a critical variation. 

Then, I passed out a stack of comic books, a handout with a series of images on them, and asked them to determine which of the objects were comics and which were not.  I got the basis of this idea from Charles Hatfield from his essay, "Defining Comics in the Classroom; Or, The Pros and Cons of Unfixability" from Teaching The Graphic Novel located here. 

The handout consisted of a series of paintings called "A Harlot's Progress" by William Hogarth found here.  The idea that comics are sequential art includes these paintings as comics.  Those whose definition included the necessity of text couldn't define these as comics.  Those who said comics must be printed also had to exclude these.

The next example came from airplane instructions located here.  For many, this was comics.  But, there were some who included "for the purpose to entertain" in their definitions.  This excluded the airplane instructions because their purpose was "to inform."

My next examples were kind of a trick question.  I included a Dick Tracy comic strip and a Family Circus cartoon.  The Dick Tracy strip was a sequence of art, but the Family Circus cartoon was a single image.  This threw them.  Half the class said yes, half the class said no, which resulted in an interesting conversation about the difference between cartoon art and comics art. 

The final image I gave them was a photo of Trajan's column.  It is located here.  The column is 98 feet high and is made of 20 marble drums.  Each drum has a frieze, or a decorative horizontal band, that winds around and up the tower that depicts Roman war scenes.  The frieze measures out at around 625 feet long and tells a story.  I ask them if this is comics.  Many struggled under the weight of this one, except the group who had the provision that it must be printed or that it must include text.  There was something about the column that struck them as being quite similar in intent to comics and they wanted to include it but were unsure how.  If I ever make it to Rome, I know I'm going to have to visit this lovely work.

Overall, this was a great exercise and I heard a couple of the students leaving class say that they felt like they were leaving a philosophy class.  I'll take that as a compliment as I always loved philosophy class. 

It just goes to show that we all have a lot of assumptions about things we think we know well and understand thoroughly.  Overall, a fun day in class and one I think I will repeat.