Popular Culture Review - Volume 26, Number 2 - Summer 2015
Aw Yeah!
Comics and Popular Culture in the Classroom
Patricia M. KirtleyA & William M. KirtleyB
Introduction
Cartoons have historically held an advantage in breaking into world popular
culture.
(McCloud 42)
Comic books form a vibrant, vital, part of popular culture. Legendary
cartoonist, Will Eisner (1917-2005) describes them as “the world’s most
popular art form” (Comics xii). They entertain, inspire, and transport us. They
Eisner explains in Comics and Sequential Art that comic books
combine the words, images, and layout of artists and writers to weave the
fabric of communication (xiv). Comic books involve readers because the
characters speak for them and to them. To paraphrase theorist Scott McCloud
in Understanding Comics, we don’t just observe comic books, we become
them (36). This process constitutes an interactive sociocultural act.
Some consider comic books lowbrow entertainment. Jules Pfeifer, a
cartoonist for the New Yorker, describes them as “junk” (Eisner Contract xvii).
Eisner prefers the term “sequential art.” He thinks it would help “to correct
Comics gained a measure of respectability after Art Spiegelman won a Pulitzer
Prize for his graphic novel Maus in 1992. Today, comic books are the subject
of scholarly study in a variety of disciplines.
The text-image format provides creators with a multitude of story options
or genres. They run the gamut from webcomics, to graphic novels, to manga.
In the past, people looked at comic books as “funnies” meant for children.
Jahsonic, a contributor to the Art and Popular Culture website, observes that
modern day comics “are not necessarily funny or for children” (1).
Ben Saunders, a professor at the University of Oregon, terms comics
A
Independent Scholar
B
Central Texas College
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