Teaching Cartography with Comics: Some Examples from BeccoGiallo\u2019s Graphic Novel Series

This article suggests the use of comics, particularly of graphic novels, as valuable instructional tools for teaching cartography. Of particular interest is the idea that comics can be used to develop students\u2019 geographical competencies, their ability to think actively about cartographical issues, and their capacity to interact with \u201cmaps as mappings\u201d (Dodge, Kitchin and Perkins, 2009). The theoretical references used to conduct the deep interdisciplinary proposal and analysis include: the growing field of literary cartography, recent post-representational theories in cartography, and the emerging field of \u201ccomic book geography\u201d (Dittmer, 2014). The article reads comics as maps and analyzes their map-like features to demonstrate that both maps and comics ask the reader-user to be actively engaged to decipher, orient, and practice them. Proposing to read \u201cmaps as comics\u201d, \u201cmaps of comics\u201d, \u201cmaps and mappings in comics\u201d, and \u201ccomics as maps and mappings\u201d, the article suggests the possible practical employment of comics in cartography classes. Furthermore, this study uses examples from BeccoGiallo\u2019s comic series to demonstrate that graphic novels may help students become more aware map readers and users, by being involved in an active spatial practice. Finally, this article focuses on the unexplored educational potential of graphic novels by exploring the improvement of students\u2019 understanding of post-representational cartographical approaches through comic use

We don’t need just the DFC, we needs lots of comics, and what’s more, we can make them. Let’s get to it!

Comics have too often been dismissed as unsophisticated, popular culture texts or as a phase of reading which children are encouraged to move out of towards more ‘worthy’ literary fare. Mel Gibson, in exploring the recent comics-book initiative by David Fikling, The DFC, defends the attraction and value of comics culture and the complexity of its multimodal narratives

Children in comics : between education and entertainment, conformity and agency

This chapter begins by examining the tension between education and entertainment in comics from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yellow Kid exemplifies the agentic, carnivalesque comics child who gets away with everything he does, and Buster Brown narrates the antics and slips of a naughty child who is duly punished. This also holds for Katzenjammer Kids and the children in the British magazine Beano. Children in comics are first situated in the broader media context of the nineteenth century. Changing conceptions of children and childhood and the relationship between children and laughter are also elaborated. The chapter then focuses on naughty children in comics and the degree of impunity offered to them in order to map the negotiation between education and entertainment as well as social commentary. It highlights the queer inclinations and affective power of comics children while also tracing the continuation of racist stereotypes

The Drawn-Out Battle Against Stigma: Mental Health in Modern American Comics and Graphic Novels

The discussion of mental health issues in the media significantly shapes public perceptions, most notably in negative portrayals that contribute to the stereotyping of mental health patients. Perhaps surprisingly, comics and graphic novels are forms of media that have potential to mitigate such stigma, despite earlier criticism of mental health stereotypes propagated in some comics. This is reflected in a recent trend of comics treating mental health issues in more sympathetic ways. This paper discusses three American comics from the last decade, examining depictions of post-traumatic stress disorder in Garry Trudeau\u27s comic strip, Doonesbury, around 2005-2006, schizophrenia in Nate Powell\u27s graphic novel, Swallow Me Whole (2008), and depression in a short Captain America comic (2011). An analysis of these examples reveals that comics in the United States have a unique and promising place in mental health education. Comics can reach an at-risk target audience, convey their messages in a visual and non-textual way, use narrative to present important issues in an accessible manner, use humor to enable the discussion of taboo topics, and, in some cases, use popular characters to raise the profile of a certain issue. They also have the potential to serve directly as therapy for mental health patients, a trend currently more visible in the United Kingdom and Canada. The comics and graphic novels discussed show, perhaps a larger trend of the media moving away from stereotyping and towards a greater visibility and understanding of mental health issues

The ‘Belgrade Circle’ : Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol and Tolstoy in Serbian interwar comics

As not everyone knows, the ‘Belgrade Circle’, the collective of comics authors who ushered in the so-called ‘Golden Age of Serbian comics’ (from the 1930s until WW II), had many Russian émigrés among its members. This contribution mainly deals with their practice of adapting the nineteenth-century literary classics of their home country into the comics medium

Looking For Black Religions In 20th Century Comics: 1931-1993

Relationships between religion and comics are generally unexplored in the academic literature. This article provides a brief history of Black religions in comic books, cartoons, animation, and newspaper strips, looking at African American Christianity, Islam, Africana (African diaspora) religions, and folk traditions such as Hoodoo and Conjure in the 20th century. Even though the treatment of Black religions in the comics was informed by stereotypical depictions of race and religion in United States (US) popular culture, African American comics creators contested these by offering alternatives in their treatment of Black religion themes

Storytelling, Folktales and the Comic Book Format

The reading process in comics is an extension of text. In text alone the process of reading involves word-to-image conversion. Comics accelerate that by providing the image. When properly executed, it goes beyond conversion and speed and becomes a seamless whole. In every sense, this misnamed form of reading is entitled to be regarded as literature because the images are employed as a language. There is a recognizable relationship to the iconography and pictographs of oriental writing. When this language is employed as a conveyance of ideas and information, it separates itself from mindless visual entertainment. This makes comics a storytelling medium

Urban comix: Subcultures, infrastructures and “the right to the city” in Delhi

This article argues that comics production in India should be configured as a collaborative artistic endeavour that visualizes Delhi’s segregationist infrastructure, claiming a right to the city through the representation and facilitation of more socially inclusive urban spaces. Through a discussion of the work of three of the Pao Collective’s founding members – Orijit Sen, Sarnath Banerjee and Vishwajyoti Ghosh – it argues that the group, as for other comics collectives in cities across the world, should be understood as a networked urban social movement. Their graphic narratives and comics art counter the proliferating segregation and uneven development of neo-liberal Delhi by depicting and diagnosing urban violence. Meanwhile, their collaborative production processes and socialized consumption practices, and the radical comix traditions on which these movements draw (and which are sometimes occluded by the label “Indian Graphic Novel”) create socially networked and politically active spaces that resist the divisions marking Delhi’s contemporary urban fabric

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