In Four Color Teaching, I discuss my experiences with comics and teaching. Today, I will explain the difficulties of selecting a comic book to study in the classroom and also how to raise money for a classroom set.
Since becoming a teacher, I’ve always wanted to be able to include comic books in my classroom in some way. Plenty of teachers have students create their own comics, but studying comics is a whole different thing because there are a number of obstacles to overcome. Ultimately, the problems with comics in the classroom boil down to three areas:
1) Cost – comics are expensive. With single issues costing usually $3.99 and trades running at least $19.99, a classroom set can cost from $100 – $500. Considering a single issue won’t be enough for a unit plan, teachers have to lean towards a trade, but when one compares a $20 trade versus a $10 novel that will take as long or longer to teach, it can be hard to make the case for Spider-Man over The Great Gatsby.
2) Literary value – I love my monthly comics. Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Batman is a constant favorite alongside Jason Aaron’s Thor: God of Thunder, and while there are themes and ideas worth study, I don’t know that I can make the case for them over standard curriculum novels. Also, given the serial nature of Batman and Thor, it’s hard to give students a complete story that doesn’t require reading something before or after.
3) Appropriate content – Perhaps the most difficult part of selecting a comic text for students is finding one without inappropriate content. Yes, I realize that most students are watching movies and television shows that as bad as or worse than any comic that I’d teach in class, but I still have to be careful because there are those parents who are just itching to object to a text. Given that comics are already viewed as being less than literary-worthy already, it makes the task of finding an appropriate text all the more difficult. Also, while I am incredibly liberal in what I read, I can’t do the same with what I present to my students, so I lean towards caution more than anything else.
These three obstacles are difficult because a text must meet all of the requirements for consideration. Grant Morrison’s New X-Men is worthy of study and doesn’t feature any inappropriate content that I can immediately think of, but given how long his tenure was on the title, it’s impossible to make it cost-effective. And the most relatable and literary worthy story (“Riot at Xavier’s”) unfortunately loses its punch taken outside of the run.
Watchmen is of course literary and cost effective at $19.99, but the rape scene between the Comedian and Silk Spectre would be difficult to address in class. Granted, I teach 1984 which features sex scenes and the line from Winston to Julia, “I wanted to rape you and then murder you afterwards” and I’ve never had a parent complain, but there is a difference between reading something graphic and the images presented in a comic book. Furthermore, considering parents have objected to a one-page discussion of masturbation in Sherman Alexie’s perfect novel The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian, almost anything can be objected to in the comic book realm.
Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s Spider-Man: Blue is a great story with a lot of heart, it’s cost-effective, and isn’t inappropriate, but it lacks literary value. Yes, it’s a deeply emotional character study and it explores loss very well, but it’s just missing something to elevate it to a literary level in my mind. Of course, I could very well be wrong in this regard and other educators might find something worth studying, but it just doesn’t quite work for my time and money.
And so, with all of these considerations in mind, I struggled with what I’d like to teach to my students. Two of the requirements could easily be met, but all three? It seemed impossible.
Then, I realized that All-Star Superman was my best bet.
The one volume edition of All-Star Superman runs $29.99 on Amazon which is a bit expensive, but it tells a complete story and has literary merit. Given that it stars the most recognizable superhero in the world certainly helps it as well.
Even so, I worried about teaching All-Star Superman because of issue #2 where Lois is shown in the shower of the Fortress of Solitude. Yes, students have read worse in 1984 and Romeo and Juliet is littered with dick jokes, but this was an image, not writing that could easily be read over. Deciding it was better to ask forgiveness rather than permission, I decided to go with All-Star Superman and hope for the best.
Raising the money
After deciding on the text, my next step was to raise the money. I teach in a high poverty school district, so asking for money from my school to teach a comic book was completely out of the question. Fortunately, Donors Choose is a crowdfunding website dedicated to education, so I presented the following argument to my principal:
“I want teach a comic book. I will raise the money through Donors Choose so it will cost the district nothing, but I need you to back me up in case someone doesn’t like it.”
Her response was, “Just make sure you write up something that shows your comic aligns to Common Core Standards and you’ll be fine.”
The Common Core Standards have been under fire by paranoid politicians and the media and while the math standards may be questionable to some (I have no opinion on them, because I haven’t read them), the English standards boil down to “Can students read and write well?” Therefore, they are vague enough that they can be applied to nearly any text.
In terms of the writing standards, I decided to have students write comic scripts and then proposals to turn their comics into a series which means that they wrote descriptively and persuasively – two of the three specific types of writing required by the Common Core.
After covering my bases, I created my Donors Choose project for a classroom set of All-Star Superman. I had four months to raise almost $600 for my comics. After it launched, I took to Twitter and my project was funded in 24 hours. Realize that my results are probably not typical and it is in large part due to Will Dennis and Greg Lockhard of Vertigo Comics who were amazing by retweeting and spreading the word for my project.
Teaching All-Star Superman was an incredible experience. Students had wonderful discussions, created some incredible writing, and for many, they read a comic book for the very first time. I’ll discuss my lesson plans more in the future, but for now, the take away should be this:
While there are some things to consider when teaching comic books, it is very possible to create effective lesson plans that are of no cost to a school district. People wanted to donate to my project so students could read comics and through careful consideration of the Common Core Standards, students were able to grow as readers and writers while still having fun.
