viz. - Comics

Rhetological Bingo, or, More Attempts at Teaching Fallacies to Bored Freshmen

james.wiedner — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 18:02:56 +0000

The bulk of my last posting was spent singing the praises of Mr. David McCandless; as anyone who has checked out any of his work before or since then can attest to, such accolades are/were more than justified.

Specifically, I loved his “rhetological” fallacies project, where he vizualized a colorful list of about 50 different rhetorical or logical fallacies, and created an unadorned yet arresting image to accompany each of them. Pretty cool stuff.

McCandless and his team from his amazing site, imformationisbeautiful.net, then demonstrated an exercise they called “rhetological bingo,” wherein he and his cohort listened to a politically charged speech, and identified each of the fallacies they spotted on the way by adding one of the colorful images to a layout that they described as a “matrix.” Visitors to the site are encouraged to download a high-res copy of the game to play themselves. Even cooler stuff, right?

As I finished writing the aforementioned blog, I thought to myself, “’rhetological bingo,’ why can’t I be that clever? You know what else would be really cool? If, instead of a matrix, rhetological bingo involved vizualized bingo cards? I could play a political speech/cartoon from You Tube on the big screen in the classroom, while all of my students, at their individual computers (or maybe in pairs) checked off rhetorical and logical fallacies as they spotted them on their respective bingo cards (Flash-powered, maybe?), until the inevitable ‘Bingo?!' At which point, the winning student(s) would run through their answers, explaining to all of us the portion of the speech that they thought constitued a fallacy?! Yes! That’d be awesome, and I totally rock for coming up with this totally new way to use these illustrations! Goddamn am I awesome!”

Then I googled “rhetological bingo” and scanned a few results down…

After a lifetime of coming up with great new ideas only to discover that they aren’t so new after all, you’d think I’d be used to the dejection that accompanies such discoveries, and that I’d cope accordingly. Nonetheless, this one took a little wind out of my sails:

Image credit: Graceavery Rhetological Bingo

Grace Avery has created a fantastic rhetological bingo platform, even better than the one I’d envisioned, utilizing the images and definitions from the McCandless project. Every bingo card comes up with different fallacy names and corresponding images in different orders; hovering over any of the images on any of squares causes a definition and example of the corresponding concept to pop up in an oh-so-engaging way!

My only criticism of this mashup would be that the attribution provided isn’t really as clear as it could be. A link to informationisbeautiful.com at the corner of the bingo card (see above) is the extent of her attribution (note that even that link only takes to you the site's homepage, where it's far from apparent that the rhetological fallacies project resides there). if I’d stumbled across Ms. Kelly’s game without prior knowledge of the original rhetological fallacies project, I would have assumed that the images and definitions were her own. Looking at her site in its totality, it's hard to give her the benefit of the doubt on this one. But what do I know? Nothing, except that I am going to be able to parlay this into part of a kick-ass lesson plan…with all due attributions, of course. ;)

Anti-abortion Rhetoric Then and Now

ladysquires — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 15:24:04 +0000

(Public Domain Image found at Wikimedia Commons)

I came across this Russian anti-abortion poster from 1925, and thought it was pretty striking. The text translates to: "Abortions performed by either trained or self-taught midwives not only maim the woman, they also often lead to death." It shows a woman talking with a midwife, then a woman in a hospital, and then a coffin being lowered into a grave with mourners looking on. What struck me about the image is that the argument is essentially that abortions are bad because they endanger the lives of the women who get them. The pathetic appeal depends on the viewer's sense of identification with the woman.

While you do often hear pro-life advocates talking about the negative consequences of abortions for them women who get them, I don't think it's a huge stretch to say that the "life" at the center of most pro-life arguments is not the life of pregnant women. Rather, anti-abortion advocates today have been phenomenally successful at making the baby/fetus the primary point of identification and erasing the presence of the mother. I'm not going to post pictures of aborted fetuses on this site, but these rather maudlin images from the 1973 Right to Life comic Who Killed Junior get the point across pretty well (potentially disturbing):

(Image Credits: Ethan Persoff)

You can view the entire comic book here. I've been thinking for a while about what a pro-choice visual rhetoric might look like, and given our current public debates about the redifinition of rape, conscience clauses, and this disturbing but hopefully DOA bill in South Dakota, which would essentially make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions, it strikes me that there may be an opportunity to reclaim the language of life in a way that makes pregnant women in distress visible once again.

The Ethos of Hipster Dinosaurs

Cate Blouke — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 03:37:47 +0000

Image Credit: Imgur

H/T to Matt

For me, humor is one of the most powerful tools available for both pedagogy as well as social resistance. It seems appropriate therefore to introduce myself to the viz. blog with something a little offbeat and (potentially) funny.

The term “hipster” has experienced a resurgence in American vernacular in the last few years – at least I’ve heard it used with increasing regularity since I moved to Austin. For quite some time I found myself a bit perplexed about what people meant when they called a person a “hipster.” Since it generally seems to be used as a derogatory sobriquet, I felt it important to have a clear idea of what the term encapsulates.

As I should have known, the populist and notoriously un-academic resource, urbandictionary.com, offers an extensive and thorough discussion of the term. I was surprised by the thoughtfulness of several of the entries, and amused (as usual) by others. Much as I’d like to elaborate on those entries here, this is a visual rhetoric blog and I want to address the ways in which “hipsterism” is shaped by these images.

Image Credit: Imgur

What I find interesting here is the ways in which this series of images constructs hipsterism through visual cues and conversation bubbles. These “Hipster Dinosaurs” illustrate both a fashion sensibility tied to the hipster identity as well as an intellectual and anti-consumer attitude.

From these images, we gather that hipsters are coded as often (but not always) wearing thick-rimmed glasses, having manicured facial hair, smoking all-natural cigarettes and generally expressing intellectual disdain across a wide variety of subjects. However, finding humor in the pictures requires a foreknowledge of the identity.

Image Credit: Imgur

The use of dinosaurs is particularly intriguing. Since the term originated in the 1940s, is the use of dinosaurs meant to argue that contemporary hipsters are seeking to resuscitate an extinct species? Or, conversely, is it meant to indicate that hipsters are headed for extinction? Are they bound to be fossilized through their own intellectual elitism? Is it their own negativity that enables them to be put forth as a subject of ridicule?

Using coloring-book images and crayons to illustrate these drawings, the creator links the hipster persona with juvenility – seemingly the “know-it-all” attitude of youth. One could also argue that the act of creating such images is an equally juvenile and petulant response to a rather harmless subculture. This raises the question of authorial ethos. What assumptions can we make about the person that made these cartoons? Can we make any assumptions?

Humor generally relies on somebody being the butt of the joke, and who it is and is not appropriate to ridicule is an interesting question in the (post?) politically correct landscape. As is the question of who is allowed to do the ridiculing. The element of risk seems fundamentally linked to all forms of humor, but that very danger strikes me as the reason it is used and talked about so infrequently in academic discourse.

After writing this post, and getting ready to upload it, I found myself suddenly wondering if this was even appropriate to use. Would it offend someone? Would it get me in trouble? What if I self-identify as a hipster? Is self-mockery the only safe form of humor left?

Will R. Crumb Fail to Offend?

noelradley — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:52:22 +0000

Image Credit: R. Crumb

H/T USA Today

I got my copy of The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb in the mail and have loved reading it so far. It's richly detailed. It's emotive. It's revelatory. But I’m wondering: Will Crumb’s newest work will be controversial as expected? The word-for-word text of Genesis is accompanied by Crumb's comic art. And as the cover advertises, the images leave nothing out. Adam and Eve begin the work with robust nakedness, as you might think. Perhaps less expected are images of the sexual act laced through a great part of the narrative. Crumb draws Adam and Eve playfully tumbling, Jacob’s multiple wives and concubines, Onan’s coitus interruptus with his brother’s wife (awkward!), and Tamar’s seduction of her father-in-law, Judah, as well as many others. Even if you have read the original text, seeing the sexual act illustrated (naked couple in missionary position) does alter your sense of Genesis. You also get a more vivid picture of disturbing scenes such as Lot offering his daughters to be raped in lieu of his male guests, which is previewed here on the LA Times. I believe Crumb’s illustrations utterly transform the reading; Crumbs brings to light how (deviant, troubling) sexual drives shaped the mythological archetypes and changed the literal history of the Jewish people. Still, I'm wondering how likely it is that Crumb will be deemed a blasphemer. Young evangelical children might not get this picture book in their stocking for Christmas, but I personally don’t anticipate an uprising.

Image Credit: R. Crumb

H/T Texas Performing Arts

At Friday night's talk and other events, Crumb has said he expects controversy, and my assumption is that he would expect this protest from the Christian right, the Jewish community, perhaps even orthodox Catholics. One recalls the Christian outrage at the movie The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation was an illustration of New Testament characters. However, Scorsese was not illustrating the Bible but a work of fiction by Nikos Kazantzakis, where Kazantzakis deviated from the canonical Gospel narratives with a sexually tempted Christ, who considers rejecting his role in salvation. Yet, Crumb has 'faithfully' depicted the text of Gensis. And I think his defense that he has drawn the work literally will hold up.

Another buffer to absorb the controversy, I think, is the literacy of the contemporary Bible reader, especially Protestant evangelical and Jewish readers. Although the sexuality of Genesis is shocking to many, devout Protestants, for example, read the older parts of the Bible more exhaustively and are familiar with the intrigues of the Genesis characters. And although they might de-emphasize the non-monogamous, at times incestuous, sexuality of Genesis, Protestants won’t find the wives of Jacob to be news. On the other hand, as pre-Vatican II Catholic and a self-proclaimed non-religious person, Crumb was perhaps relatively less familiar with the content. Since the sexual history is already accounted for, Crumb's emphasis won't offend the base of potential protesters. In fact, this article from USA today with interviews of Rabbi Simcha Weinstein and Jesuit priest Rev. James Martin indicates that at least some Catholic and Jewish scholars think the book is a positive step, introducing the first book of the Old Testament to a new generation of readers. The reviews by secular readers (see Texas Performing Arts for a listing) have similarly been favorable.

Image Credit: R. Crumb

H/T Austin-American Statesman

My guess is that if there is anything controversial, it won't be the Genesis book in isolation, but the book within the context of Crumb’s lifetime of works. Some protesters of Crumb's promotional tour have drawn attention to his past depictions of sexual deviancy--including portrayals of rape, incest, and pedophilia. These artist pursuits make Crumb an unlikely translator and definitely imbue the biblical images of copulation with an unholy glow. My guess is that if controversy arises, it won’t be about what was drawn, but who was drawing it. Just a note: my favorite parts of the book are the tree of knowledge, a gorgeously cross-hatched, gloriously-branching affair, and Crumb’s characteristic ‘big-foot’ depictions of the female body.

I'll write later on Crumb’s and Spiegelman’s talk Friday night on The University of Texas campus, regarding censorship, whether anything should not be drawn, and the counter-valent satire of underground comic imagery. For now, please respond if you have heard any rumblings on the controversy front...

R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman come to UT

noelradley — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:03:52 +0000

Image Credit: R. Crumb

H/T Texas Performing Arts

Today, I reserved tickets for the Robert (R.) Crumb and Art Spiegelman event November 13 here at the University of Texas. Texas Performing Arts, the host for the event, has beckoned with advertisements of R. Crumb's latest work, The Book of Genesis Illustrated. I have Crumb's graphic novel on order from Amazon.com and plan to review the text here on Viz., as well as post some thoughts on the November talk between the two artists.

For a lay person minimally versed in comic book genres (that's me), the event brings up a series of questions. What is the state of comic book art in academia? Does that question even matter to the majority of graphic novel readers? Spiegelman's illustrated work has already been the focus of academic inquiry and attention with his Pulitzer-prize winning work Maus, a treatment of the Holocaust, being widely used in secondary and college classrooms. The recent review from NPR (below) indicates the cultural currency of Crumb's latest project; the reviewer says that The Book of Genesis Illustrated has 'affecting' humanist impulses and expands Crumb's visual lexicon beyond what his readers might expect from his characteristic work. The Book of Genesis Illustrated was published by W.W. Norton, which perhaps is another indicator of the expected cultural impact of the text.

H/T Texas Performing Arts

Francoise Mouly, The New Yorker art director featured in an earlier post, will moderate the discussion (Mouly is a celebrated illustrator as well and married to Spiegelman). Before the event, there is a pre-performance lecture by Sam Hurt, a two-time UT grad (undergrad and law), whose former comic strip Eyebeam now runs in the Austin Chronicle. Below you can view the recent conversation between Mouly and Crumb at Barnes and Noble in New York, which perhaps gives some indication of Crumb's snarky reactions to Mouly, his irreverent self-fashioning, and the contexts of his art over the decades.

Image Credit BoingBoing.net

H/T John Jones

Cover Art for The New Yorker's 'Money Issue'

noelradley — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:20:52 +0000

Image Credit: The New Yorker

H/T: Texas Performing Arts

This video is an interview with Francoise Mouly, art director of The New Yorker, speaking about the multi-part cover of the Money Issue from this month, October 12, 2009. The 3-part cover begins with Dan Clowes, who created the image of a wealthy woman ordering a hamburger, which inspired Zohar Lazar's illustration of the woman carrying the fast food to her chaffeur-driven car, and then, finally, Mark Ulriksen's idea of depicting a poodle being fed the burger. Ulriksen notes that by his ending image, "You realize that some things never change for certain people."

Image Credit: Dan Clowes for The New Yorker

Via The New Yorker

The three illustrators as Mouly says, "give multiple points of view," the second two illustrations acting as points of departure from the initial image. The interesting thing is that this is the first time that the magazine has done a multi-part cover. The difference in seeing Clowes' image in isolation, as opposed to seeing the developing argument, points out the way magazine covers usually make more-or-less a singular claim, acting as a larger representative symbol for the texts that will follow. But the unusual 3-fold sequence here allows for interventions on the predominant signifier. In the video, Clowes, Lazar, and Ulriksen give their comments, as well as Mouly's narration. Mouly has a previous book on the subject of cover art called Covering the New Yorker: Cutting Edge Covers from a Literary Institution.

Image Credit: Zohar Lazar for The New Yorker

Via Zohar Lazar

I was especially drawn to Mouly (probably because of her lovely accent) but also because of the way she has surfaced her work areas with copious imagery from the previous issues but also of all kinds. Along with the video of her next to the walls of cover art from the last century, I got the sense that The New Yorker is whole visual universe unto itself. Nothing loosey-goosey about the iconography here; these are highly situated, self-conscious aesthetic choices.You can search the archives for the monthly covers of The New Yorker.

Interview with Jan Eliot, Creator of Stone Soup, New in "Views" Section

Nate Kreuter — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:01:10 +0000

A new interview has been posted the the views section. Viz. contributor Sarah Wagner interviews Jan Eliot, the creator of Stone Soup. Read it here .

Interview with Jan Eliot, Creator of Stone Soup

Nate Kreuter — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:56:29 +0000

This past December I interviewed Jan Eliot, creator of the Stone Soup comic strip. As one of my favorite cartoonists, I’d always wanted to ask her more about her work and now I had the chance! I asked Ms. Eliot about two topics I was interested in: one, cartooning and her place within the comic strip world. As a feminist cartoonist, she has a special niche in cartooning that separates her work in some ways (from my perspective) from other strips. Two, I asked her about about the relationship between blogging and cartooning. I was interested to see that several of my favorite cartoonists have their own blog sites which they use in different ways. In addition, two of the major syndication sites (gocomics.com and comics.com) have a "comment" feature for each cartoon, where readers can offer their thoughts automatically on that day's strip. I asked Eliot about this new form of reader-writer relations from her perspective.

-Sarah Wagner, Viz. Contributor

TOPIC ONE: CARTOONING

Sarah Wagner: How long have you been doing your strip Stone Soup?

Jan Eliot: Stone Soup celebrated its 13th anniversary as a daily, syndicated strip on Nov. 20, 2008. I did the strip as a weekly for 5 years prior to that.

SW: Have you ever thought about doing another/a second strip?

JE: Nope. I've been working with these characters for WAY too long to think about creating more, and they are right out of my life. A second strip? I prefer keeping my marriage in tact and having relationships with family members. I know there are people who do more than one strip, but I just don't work that way. I value time off and a relaxed schedule. That said, most multiple-strip / endeavor cartoonists work nights and weekends.

SW: What's your favorite thing about doing the strip?

JE: I get paid to draw and color. And I'm given a tiny little slice of the media to have my say every day. It's wonderful. In terms of a specific part of the job... inking is bliss.

SW: How has your cartooning changed over the years?

JE: It's matured, the characters have become more defined, I've learned to draw the strip better, my humor has become more sophisticated. However, regarding humor, the early early strips are still the freshest, and the boldest.

SW: How do you think cartooning in general has changed?

JE: Most importantly, our space continues to shrink. This affects the quality of the artwork. Cartoonists are less inclined to do backgrounds, there's less full-body illustrations of characters... there just isn't room. Secondly, it's become OK to run re-runs, something I really hate. Peanuts, For Better or For Worse, Herman... with such limited real estate on the funny pages, taking it up with reruns means new artists can't gain ground. And the message is... "this old stuff is better than anything new being created". Because of both these things, you see more comics that are basically illustrated gags. Pearls Before Swine, Dilbert... funny strips, but very minimal artwork. Not something the reader will gaze at, ponder... years ago it was fun to just study the comics, looking for little details and surprises. There's no room to create a cartoon "world" now.

SW: [To continue with the topic of space issues,] in his collection The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book, Bill Watterson talks about the constraints of the panel comic strip. Recently I've seen some attempts to loosen those walls—for example, with your breaking down the "third wall" in your voting strip, as well as in other strips' use of differently shaped panels, etc. Do you ever find the medium constraining?

JE: I knew how tiny my canvas was when I started cartooning, and so did Watterson. Yes, it's a tiny spot and it gets tinier by the year. It is frustrating, mostly because it makes me sad to see the comics pages full of poorly / minimally drawn cartoons. A gag and some talking heads, too bad. The smaller the space, the less interesting the art, the less interested the reader, the less the newspaper cares, the smaller the space...

Sigh. As for the third wall, I don't like to communicate with the audience often. I prefer for the strip to be a window into a little world.

SW: One could argue that you've got a decidedly unique voice in Stone Soup. One of the reasons I started reading it regularly—besides it being smart and funny—is that it said things that people weren't even saying in real life. Things like "girls should be sporty" and "grandmothers have their own, active lives". What inspired you to create a strip like this? What's been the reaction to it?

JE: I wanted, from the beginning, to create a strip that was based on the world as I see it, live it, experience it. Stone Soup land is the world as I prefer it to be. All my guys are "nice guys", who also cook and do their own laundry. This is the model I grew up with, because I had a working mom and a dad who could iron shirts.

I like football and basketball, some girls are tomboys (I was) and lots of grammas don't bake cookies ( I don't). I have a degree in English and Women Studies, I am a "second wave" feminist, I don't like cliche. More than anything, I want people to say "You must know my mom!" or "you must be looking in my closets!"... lots of Stone Soup readers see themselves in my strip. That makes me very happy.

In addition, I was a single working mom. I knew lots of divorced parents when my kids were growing up. I wanted to write about that unique perspective, about modern family life which is extended, blended, mended.

... I write from my life and my heart. I think that's where authenticity lies.

SW: What do you think of the mix of politics and comics? I know from your blog that you consider yourself a feminist. Does that inform your decision to include politics in your strip, both explicitly (as in your recent voting strips) and implicitly?

JE: Politics have always been part of comics. I think it's great. I know that some readers "just want to laugh" but really, life is full of politics. I'm not Doonesbury, but lack of school funding affects families. So I write about it sometimes.

SW: What's your take on the differences, if any, between what you do and what creators of graphic novels such as V for Vendetta do?

JE: AH. Well, Graphic Novels are an interesting hybrid. A cross between literature and comic books. Humor is not usually a focus of the graphic novel, story is. Most comic strips are meant to be humorous. Graphic Novelists seem to think they are not comic book writers, so there's something to explore. My take on that difference is the same as in books... where does the line go from grocery store pulp romances to Jane Austen and Dickens? It's a long, graded line. Graphic Novels are, I think, the Austen Dickens end of the line, comic books are at the grocery store end.

What I do is, well, shorter, more focused on humor, less on story. In a graphic novel there is room for great art, and there should be great art. Alison Bechdel's Fun Home is a wonderful example... each picture is a thousand words. If the art isn't the other half of the story, the writer shouldn't bother with the art and just write.

It's conceivable that I could take the Stone Soup characters and their environs and develop a graphic novel... but that would require a lot better attention span than I have. I think we cartoonists really LIKE the brevity of our comic strips and panels.

TOPIC TWO: BLOGGING

SW: Several cartoonists, including you, have blogs. Some post at least daily and some post just once in a while. Why did you start your blog and what's your general approach to it?

JE: I did the blog to have something different on the website. I have to be careful, I'm a blurter. I post when I'm in the mood... I find that it can be a "time suck" to be online too much. Nothing wrong with it, but I prefer being outdoors, drinking beer on a terrace, traveling to fun places... LIFE!

That said, it's a pleasure to communicate with readers. If they are polite. The blogosphere is a blustery, rude place. Email is too anonymous. People forget to be civil. So I limit my exposure.

SW: What is your relationship with your readers? Has it changed since you started blogging and started being accessed more regularly on the comics websites?

JE: I loved getting snail mail. You can see something of the personality of the person. A child's handwriting and little drawing, a grandmother's careful cursive. Email and blogs are great, but less personal, and I don't trust it as much. But... lots of readers email, especially since many readers actually read Stone Soup online.

Mostly my readers are extremely great. I've had some wonderful email relationships with devoted readers. Some days an email will completely MAKE my day. But one bad one... it's deadly.

SW: Also related to blogging—how do you balance doing that and doing your daily strip? Do they feed off of each other?

JE: I don't find the blog, or email, or being online, nourishing. It's PR, really, fun but draining. Book signings, events where I get to meet with readers, are nourishing. Online activities interfere with deadlines, and sometimes you lose hours doing what "feels" like work, but actually isn't. I enjoy having some presence online, and I want readers to know about my strip, but I have to protect my silent time to be creative. I often don't turn on my computer at all on writing days... and most days I avoid turning it on until the afternoon. I need to protect the mornings for creative thought.

Being online doesn't give me ideas. Daydreaming does. Walking through a store and eavesdropping on conversations does... reading the paper does... sketching does... but mostly, daydreaming is the creative engine.

SW: What blogs and/or other strips do you follow?

JE: I don't read any blogs. If I'm interested in a cartoonist, I call or email them. I do read comic strips online... things that aren't in my paper like Speedbump, Between Friends and Cul de Sac... Rhymes with Orange... the work of Ann Telnaes (she's brilliant, a Pulitzer prize winner, feminist, elegant cartoon style). I like to check in on Madam and Eve, from South Africa, and Michael Leunig with the Melbourne Age. His sister, Mary, is also a cartoonist and even darker than he is, I'd love to meet her. These people I wouldn't know about without the web.

In the mainstream, I'm a big fan of Zits, Baby Blues, and Doonesbury, Close To Home, Pickles. My all time hero is Bill Watterson, and all his books are somewhere near my drawing table. He's the master. Before him, I loved Pogo. For pure beauty, Bringing Up Father by George McManus. And of course, Little Nemo. Peanuts for originality and simplicity, and the "small" joke. He gave us thoughtful, quiet humor, Shulz did, and it's inspiring.

I also love reading political cartoons from around the world. A window into those societies...

Irish comics wiki

John Jones — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:18:47 +0000

Those of you interested in comics and/or graphic novels and Irish literature should find the The Irish Comics Wiki to be a useful resource. From the wiki:

There are lots of Irish comics creators out there, from people starting out to wizened veterans. I’m hoping that people can share information, for the betterment of Irish comics. Also, I‘m sure there are people with some knowledge about the history of Irish comics and underground press. It would be great to bring that to light.

I’m not very familiar with the Irish comics scene, but the site links to some great-looking comics. The panel to the right comes from The Ulster Cycle, a web comic based on Irish mythology by Patrick Brown (who also appears to be the creator of the wiki).

via Caricatures Ireland

Recontextualizing images

John Jones — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 18:05:27 +0000

The blog garfield minus garfield contains some wonderful examples of the ways in which images can be recontextualized to create new meanings. According to the site

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?

Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness and methamphetamine addiction in a quiet American suburb.

Garfield the strip is mostly lame; but, by removing the dull main character, the strip is completely transformed. I particularly enjoy the empty panels, and the effect their silence has on the meaning of each strip.

via The Comics Curmudgeon

Holocaust Awareness Week

timturner — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 01:43:16 +0000

Many of you may have seen the story in the New York Times yesterday about a comic that has been introduced in Germany to teach students about the Holocaust. (A brief portion from an English translation appears below.) This week, 25 Feb. through 2 Mar., is actually Holocaust Awareness Week, so some attention is being paid to issues surrounding the teaching of the Holocaust in this and other countries. More examples, after the jump.

The article notes that

With the Second World War passing from living memory, the Holocaust remains a subject taught as a singular event and obligation [in Germany], and Germans still seem to grapple almost eagerly with their own historic guilt and shame. That said, few German schoolchildren today can go home to ask their grandparents, much less their parents, what they did while Hitler was around. The end of the war is now as distant from them in time as the end of the First World War was from the Reagan presidency. Paradoxically, this seems to have freed young Germans — adolescent ones, anyway — to talk more openly and in new ways about Nazis and the Holocaust. Passing is the shock therapy, with its films of piled corpses, that earlier generations of schoolchildren had to endure.

This discussion sets up an interesting contrast between the "shock therapy" of the past and the comic book, called "The Search," "The visual style of [which] is clear, simple, pastel-colored, in a classic Belgian-Franco comic tradition. 'Less is more,' Mr. Heuvel, the artist, said in a recent telephone conversation..." Mr. Heuvel points to the creator of Tintin as one of his influences.

This less is more philosophy is also at work in this poster, created for Hillel Colorado:

According to one blogger, Angela Natividad at AdRants, "This is one of those well-tempered print ads that forces you to really look before you know what's going on. Most people will probably miss the point while rushing by on the subway, but those that catch it might go, 'Hrm' and bring it up in random bar conversation." The kicker of this stark, spare, but effective image is the Fiction label attached to the book's spine.

Natividad contrasts the effective simplicity of this image with the more forceful, less subtles visual style of the following two spots, created for Think MTV (Until yesterday I had never heard of it, but according to its homepage "Think is your community where you, your friends, and your favorite celebrities can get informed, get heard and take action on the issues that matter to you most."):

In their different ways, each seems like an effective approach, although the contrast between the visual styles of the comic book and the video spots is somewhat stark. (However, the Times article also quotes one source who says that using black and white imagery to depict the Holocaust has become a cliche; each of the spots ends with an actual black and white image of Holocaust victims.)

In the Times article, one of the teachers using the German comic is quoted as saying that the comic "teaches the subject...so it's not just about victims and perpetrators," and that "the result [of teaching the comic] is that interest in the subject is actually increasing. These students don't have the same discomfort we did talking about it" (emphasis added). I want to call attention to two assumptions made here: one is the emphasis on the Holocaust as a "subject," and the other is his point that students don't have as much "discomfort" when they talk about the Holocaust. I don't mean to suggest that modern, teenage Germans especially should feel discomfort about the Holocaust--but, in fact, shouldn't everyone, regardless of nationality, feel some discomfort when talking about this "subject"?

For those of you interested in cartoons...

Jillian Sayre — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 00:22:53 +0000

Wonkette runs a weekly feature in their "Joke and Dagger Department" in which they get the "Comics Curmudgeon" to look at the week's political cartoons. This week focuses on the (wo)man-beasts slouching towards the White House:

Slate serializes ‘Ronald Regan: A Graphic Biography’

John Jones — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 14:02:02 +0000

If you are teaching comics at all this semester, you might be interested in Ronald Reagan: A Graphic Biography by Andrew Helfer, Steve Buccellato, and Joe Staton. Slate is serializing the entire text this week. Slate also serialized The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation (it’s no longer available) this time last year.

Comics Curmudgeon

Nate Kreuter — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 18:10:05 +0000

For a light-hearted example of someone who does some amazing "rhetorical analyses" of visual texts, check out the Comics Curmudgeon blog at http://joshreads.com.

Josh routinely uses visual cues in the crappy comics, the ones you read but aren't sure why and never make you laugh, to transform the comics into much more entertaining texts than their original authors were capable of achieving.