Comic Boom - Comics in Education with academic Kevin Hoffin

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 1:38

Hello Kevin, welcome to Comic Boom. Hello Kevin, welcome to Comic Boom.

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 1:43

Hi Lucy, hi, thanks for having me.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 1:45

You are very welcome, great to have a listener reach out and want to share some of their learnings and experiences, so welcome. As you know, we normally start the podcast by, asking guests to tell us a little bit about their journey as a comics reader. Where did that all start for you?

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 2:05

Well, I think the story is the same for a lot of British kids brought up in the 90s. My first comic was The Beano, and then I moved on to a Fleetways production, uh, Sonic the Comic. And I loved that as a kid. That introduced me to a lot of the writers and artists that I read today in 2000 AD. So, you know, it's like a synchronicity there. But also have to give credit, uh, to Goscinny and Uderzo because I spent a long time as a kid, with Asterix books, hiring them from my local library.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 2:37

And what was it that particularly, do you think, drew you to those? Was it something that your parents introduced you to? Was it something you stumbled across on your own? How did you, how did you find them?

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 2:48

My parents were always, highly keen on me reading. So they would buy me comics quite happily. And we'd all go to the library together and I'd get books out and you'd go back the next week to take them back. And it was, school really never sort of factored into it. And, uh, never. I don't remember any sort of comics or graphic novels that I looked at in a school context.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 3:15

So it was very much in that kind of reading for pleasure. and do you, think there was something about The comics themselves, was it the combination of images, was it the types of stories you're able to access that really kind of drew you

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 3:30

I, I like comic book storytelling. I, I, that's still my ideal way to tell a story. There's so many different artists out there and there's so many different styles of art and representations that as a kid sort of growing up, there is no way that you can possibly sort of get even a slice of what's out there available. So I think that for me, what made me decide that I love comics was the way that stories are told

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 3:59

And is it something that you, have you ever made comics yourself?

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 4:02

I recently did begin to make comics. Yeah, I mean, I, I wrote a comic with a colleague and released it a couple years ago. we hired an artist called Jordan Byko. Very nice guy. and It was meant to teach criminology theory, and it went down really well. You know, a lot of students really appreciated the change from, reams and reams of, long prose text to being able to cover, say, a theory on a page. got some really good feedback. Did quite well internationally as well, actually.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 4:32

That's very cool. We'll perhaps dip back into that a little bit later, but just before we finish talking about your kind of reading experiences as a child, you told us where you started off. But what sorts of things are you reading currently? And, you know, what's your main area of interest? You're reading for pleasure, comics diet at the moment. Give some shout outs to people whose work you're enjoying.

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 4:51

Okay, uh, definitely 2000 AD. I am a big fan of Rob Williams as a writer on Dread. Uh, he's also recently started a new series, called Petrelhead. It's on Image Comics. The artist is Pye Parr. And it's one of the most visually stunning pieces Of sequential art that I've ever come across. There are splash pages that will make your eyes bleed, they're that gorgeous.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 5:18

That sounds very enticing. Okay. You're really selling that to me. Anything else?

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 5:22

I would pick up anything! I've been, I've been subscribed to this, subscription box, called Graphic Novel Station for the past, year and a half. And basically, each month comes to you with a theme around it, and I found myself reading everything. And I'm, I'm, I'm moving further and further away from the sort of superheroes and Marvel and DC, that sort of end, and I'm picking up things that I, I never thought I'd see last month I was reading books about, uh, like, underdogs in sports, you know, like, people that have raced the New York Marathon after not getting up off the couch for ages, you know, it's, it's, it's fascinating, I, I, I, literally now, I will read anything, I, If it's in a graphic novel format, hand it over.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 6:05

I, how do I not know about a subscription box for graphic novels? This is crazy. I need to get that. That sounds really good. I love the sort of surprise element, and that's, that's definitely something I'll be checking out.

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 6:16

My partner got it for my birthday. Never heard of it either. And then when she handed me this, this first box, I was like, what's this? And I was hooked immediately. Honestly, it's definitely worth picking up. They've got an Instagram, I think.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 6:31

I am going to have a little look at that. Thank you very much for that tip. so you spoke a little bit about the criminology aspect when you've done some writing, but I know that you're interested in comics, not only as a sort of reading for pleasure as a fan, but also from an academic perspective. Can you tell us a little bit about your background? And really, that's what motivated you. to, to reach out to come onto the podcast and we'd love to hear a little bit about your work in that area and your thinking around the potential of comics.

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 7:01

Well, my main area of research now is, doing my doctorate around, which is the affordances of graphic novels in higher education pedagogy. I really feel that the same sort of things that drive me to read for pleasure are driving me to try to include it in my pedagogy and trying to get students engaging more with it. I mean, that comic that we wrote a few years ago, that sort of started a journey. And I thought I could turn this into something, you know, Something significant.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 7:34

So you've moved away from specifically thinking about things just within a criminology perspective and thinking about actually what are the applications across subjects within higher education?

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 7:45

yes, it's become very interdisciplinary. I have been reading through a lot of what I've come to know as EduComics. Right, comics that have a sort of educational slant to them, either formally or informally. And, It's just so easy to draw information and retain it. I've been reading a lot of literature, where different teachers, particularly in America, uh, mostly at sort of grade school and sort of middle school and high school levels. use comics, and they find it not only a good way to get reluctant readers into reading, to create a more empathetic response from all readers, because it's easier to transplant oneself into the story. You know, like, how would I react in that situation? What would, what would I do surrounded by this, surrounded by X, Y, and Z? I think it's enlightening in a way that reading a lot of prose isn't. like, if you, like, show someone a history textbook, it's very dry, and it's full of information, it's full of facts. It doesn't allow for that deeper engagement. I think that reading comics gives an element of criticality to a lot of, learning because you, you're almost forced as a comics reader to use those skills that you acquire in, closure. towards connecting, connecting the dots almost,

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 9:06

Yeah, you certainly have to bring something of yourself to the interpretation. And that's definitely what, what as teachers from a literature perspective, you want to develop in your pupils the ability to analyse, to bring their own perspective to something, to any text that they're reading. But it certainly seems kind of easier to tap into that from my own experience when we're talking about starting maybe with the image or the differences between the image, the different things that people can see, it is a good way into that kind of criticality, and real analysis of text. Certainly I've found I'm able to do that in class when I was teaching a little bit easier than with the standard prose.

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 9:47

it's very, very valuable for critical media literacy, which I think is something that a lot of students come to us without,

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 9:57

Mmm, that's

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 9:58

you know, I, have a theory that media engagement has shifted so far away from what we understood in our generation and earlier to this basically built around a sort of the TikTok, Snapchat sort of idea and it doesn't invite critical media literacy in the way that we understood it. So, I've had to, really, and I've used comics for this, I've had to reinterpret how I understand media literacy. You know, it's very difficult to use some of the skills that I learned for, media literacy in sort of like individual images and things that scroll across the screen very quickly. And that's partially why I now focus my energies towards visual research methods.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 10:50

I hadn't really thought about how our media literacy tools need that kind of constant updating as the landscape changes and what that might mean. That's really interesting. Just skipping back a little bit. I've been reading some of your papers, in preparation for our session today, and I found you, you

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 11:12

that's one person that's read them then.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 11:15

Yeah, you can, uh, put that little tally down. I found this, you cited some research or some thoughts from Kirtley, from 2020, where they've broken down the different elements, that Comics Pedagogy can focus on. And I thought this was actually, it was the first time I've seen it broken down that way, and I thought it was really useful. That Comics Pedagogy can be about teaching with comics. It can be teaching about comics. Teaching through producing comics and teaching comics production as a means of processing thinking and learning. I just found it a really great way to think about it those are the kind of areas that this podcast shifts. between when we speak to comics creators, when we speak to academics, when we speak to educators, we're actually kind of dipping into all of those different areas that are split out there. Which for me is what makes the podcast really interesting. And why we get such varied content. I just wondered in terms of your work then, are you particularly interested in any one of those, or do you think one of those areas has the most potential for us to explore? Or, or are you sort of thinking about them on equal terms?

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 12:26

Well, honestly, I find myself zipping between the four, because my original sort of hope was to teach with comics, but then of course I created our comic and then that turned into teaching through producing comics. And that's going to sort of influence me teaching comics production as a way of, processing thinking and learning.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 12:51

mm.

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 12:52

And teaching about comics, that's something that you need to do very early on with the class because a lot of them haven't read comics in that, level of detail before. You know, they've seen memes, they've seen, Newspaper comic strips, but comics has this visual language, which in theory is universal. And you ask a student, and I do this on regular occasions, you ask a student, okay, what does it mean when there's wavy lines following the character? And they know, but they don't know why they know.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 13:24

Yeah, yeah, there's so many assumptions and just things that you don't, consider. To be an understood sign or symbol for something, and then sometimes they're different from between different cultures, right? So you see things in, in manga that perhaps you need, you do need to have explained to you because you don't know. You know, for example, if I think about, um, is it in, sometimes when people are asleep in manga, they have like bubble coming out of their nose and Whereas it would tend to be like, zeds floating if someone was asleep in something that was more of a, kind of, European based comic, and those

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 13:59

it's, there's some very interesting differences. I mean, I'm, I, I am not a, uh, a manga reader. I prefer either sort of like European or Western styles. It does feel like you're picking up a manga. You're picking it up for the first time and you do have to go back to scratch and you're like, okay, well, what, what, what does this mean?

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 14:20

Mm, yeah, and really start breaking it down. And so it is interesting, those kind of assumptions that we have of things that, that because they're not based in language, I'm saying we, but I really mean me, I, presumed were, universal. But actually they are still quite rooted in, in culture and different, in, in different places. It is really interesting. But in that higher educational context, you are going to have students from all over, over the world, same actually in primary and secondary, but you may well have to sort of explicitly teach what those things are, mightn't you?

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 14:56

was a chapter in the Kirtley book that you mentioned earlier. Called Misunderstanding Comics and it was by an author called Jonathan Flowers and it was basically saying, just what we've been talking about, that it talks about Scott McLeod and how he was sort of instrumental in saying that this is a universal language. What Jonathan Flowers said was, well, no, not really, because it's only a universal language. If you've got the same cultural experience as. As McLeod, even within cultures, even within Western culture, there are going to be cultural differences and experiential differences that really sort of alter the way that you engage with visual content. So, mm.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 15:41

Yeah, for sure. I, actually, I think Neil Cone, who's a, Previous guest on the podcast as well. He's just got a new book all about the kind of the differences, not necessarily within the image as, as we've been discussing, but actually just in like the layout and the way that you, the way that the flow works between panels and, things like that between different. regions of production. So I think that it's actually, yeah, really layered. Tip of the iceberg! Tip of the iceberg actually blows my mind. The more, the more I find out about comics, the more terrifyingly aware I am of how much I don't really know very much still. Um

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 16:18

I get that feeling as well. I mean, when, when people refer to me as, oh, he's our comics expert, it makes me cringe.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 16:27

Yeah, yeah, me too. You've talked about visual ethnography in your work as well, and I just, intrigued by the term, by its relation to comics, how perhaps comics can be documents that tell us about Humanity, and I wondered if you could unpick what that term means in relation to comics. I've got a quote here. You say, Educators and researchers who wish to use comics or graphic novels in the classroom can learn a lot from visual ethnographers. Well, what are visual ethnographers and what can we learn from them?

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 17:05

Well, as a comics reader, you're a visual ethnographer,

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 17:10

Hmm.

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 17:11

This is, it's, it's that easy. you, I mean, you're aware of the term closure, yeah?

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 17:16

Yeah, but you can explain that for listeners in case they're not. We have quite a variety of listeners.

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 17:21

closure is the active engagement that the reader has to take, with the comic book page in order to, connect the dots together, you know, like what's going on in the gutters? How did we move from, panel A to panel B. what's the page say versus what each panel says? Is there, is there a particular, uh, pattern to the layout? Is there references that we need to draw from? Et cetera, et cetera. As far as, as far as my work can tell, the act of closure is essentially the act of doing visual ethnography. In visual ethnography, you analyze imagery in terms of three parts, right? The referent, which is what the picture is of. The content, which is actually what's in the picture. And the context, which is, everything else, really. And that's using closure. Because once you've isolated these different elements of, of the image and analysed it to extract meaning, and let's not forget, comics is very much a transactional process in reading, so that you're not only taking from the page, you're actually giving to it, you know, to, create this sort of, like, bubble of meaning in the middle.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 18:37

Mmm.

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 18:38

a very good way to analyze, comics and sequential art. One of the problems I identified is that educators are willing to use comics, but the language of comics is alien to them if they're not readers themselves.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 18:53

Yeah, that's definitely true. So I do some, I run, teacher training on comics. And that's definitely one of the starting points for me is just introducing teachers to, unpinning some of the misconceptions they might have about them, but also introducing them to the vocabulary so that they can have the tools with which to describe what it is that they're observing.

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 19:14

What I think is effective is by using terms that they know and bridging the gap, which is why when, When I say to them, okay, I'd like you to practice your closure skills on this, and they go, uh, what? And I say, oh no, uh, do some visual ethnography on this, and they go, ah. Right, so it's, if you can find sort of an equivalent term that they are aware of, Then it's a lot easier to sort of give them that sort of open door and take away that, exclusivity. You know, I think that's, that's, you know, that's teaching about comics. You know, that, that's, that's very much the door in.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 19:54

That's really interesting. so I'm thinking, what group of people know about visual ethnography? But I guess your thinking about kind of university educators who are maybe using those terms in their field

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 20:06

Yeah, kind of like mostly social scientists

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 20:08

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. But that's a really good point. And just thinking about, some of those transfer points. I think if I was thinking of an equivalent. So I come at things from a primary educators perspective. Sometimes when I'm talking to teachers about the panel size and the pacing of a, of a sequence, I might. I feel like a thousand people will jump, jump up and down saying that's, that's not nonsense if I say this, but I'm just gonna say it anyway. I have, and I stand by. It made, links between that and the equivalent of kind of changing sentence length for impact in the prose writing. You know, when you're looking, thinking about short sentences increase like the drama of the situation. And that's the same thing that's going on with panel structures. So trying to yeah, get those points where people can use their existing knowledge and make the jump over to something new that perhaps they're less confident in.

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 21:02

I really like that. That's, yeah. Yeah, that's great.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 21:07

I'm learning loads already. So I'm gonna, dig back down into your criminology background because I don't really know very much about it at all, I'm just aware it's a thing, and I thought you perhaps might know some more about this. About, the graphic justice movement and the intersection between comics and criminal justice. if you can tell me, about the way that those two things interact, or how comics can be used in that field, I think it'll be really interesting.

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 21:33

Okay, cool. well. Let's draw back from comics a second and think more about storytelling, right, uh, mediated storytelling. Because a lot of what I do with comics, I have twisted and sort of utilized with teaching wider, media, literacy, and criminology. I taught on a module called Crime Media Culture, which was exactly what it says on the tin for about five or six years. And basically, whenever you are sort of watching a, a program or playing a video game or listening to music that talks about crime, what's, what's happening is, if you're not, say, a social scientist yourself, if you're not a victim of crime, if you're not a political offender, if you don't work in law enforcement, that depiction in that media is slowly starting to build your understanding of your reality of crime.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 22:26

mm

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 22:27

Because you've been so separate from it, that media is a way for you to sort of engage from a safe distance. And it It can lead to massive distortions, and people who get all their information from, crime media end up getting very, very different views of what is and what constitutes crime and criminality and what's actually going on out there.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 22:49

mm Is that, when you end up with people's fear of crime being much higher than their kind of actual risk of becoming a victim of crime because they get kind of a warped sense of, of what's happening.

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 23:01

Precisely, yes, that's exactly it, right? So, I used to use that module basically to, uh, unpack a lot of that and sort of teach them what is actually going on out there and how to sort of see past the smoke and mirrors.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 23:17

So in a way, comics could be as well as part of a solution of that. It is also part of a problem of that because often certain genre of comics can be quite violent, can depict a lot of crime and, you know, I'm thinking of certain genres where, where there's prolifically violent comics, so it's quite interesting, sort of, that it sits on both sides of, of that issue.

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 23:40

yeah. But I mean, like, moving back in towards comics, there is a lot going on. It's a useful way to discuss, sort of thought experiments, particularly because the central tenet of all storytelling is conflict. It's been like that since we, we drew on walls in caves and. Throughout the, sort of, early days of comics, you'll be aware that the big sellers were horror and crime. In fact, crime eclipsed horror tenfold. And in that, we would have, sort of, these studies of criminal characters, we would have, views of the police, and If you weren't sort of, like say, constructing your belief system around it, there's still a lot in there that you could use to sort of question what the nature of justice is. I mean, a lot of superhero comics are very, very good at this. You know, I mean Like, you have characters like Batman who won't kill under any circumstance, right? And I ask my students quite often, Okay, so at what point does Batman become responsible for all the people that the Joker kills after he's escaped from prison? Or, you know, on the other hand, you've got the Punisher, whose view of crime is completely black and white. You know, so there's a lot of interesting sort of thought experiments out there, but you have to be able to recognize them as that.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 25:03

Yeah. and is there a role as well, or is there a practice, I kind of imagine there must be an existing practice around. offenders talking, working through their own experiences, through comics as well.

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 25:19

I was hoping after the first issue of the From Villain to Hero that future issues would concentrate on having contributions from offenders and telling their stories and, giving them skills to, you know, come out and say, Oh, I, I, I made this comic. I have used this therapeutically. Unfortunately COVID hit.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 25:41

Yeah.

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 25:42

Which, put barriers on absolutely everything.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 25:47

Yeah, I think I spoke to Hannah Berry at the end of 2023 and she had hopes to do projects in prisons as part of her laureateship, but again, it was scuppered by COVID rather drastically, but I think there's definitely could be some really powerful and fruitful work to do in that area. I think it would be brilliant.

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 26:07

there definitely is, but the momentum still hasn't got back up, right? I still don't think that we're in the same place as we were pre Covid.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 26:18

Some of your research discusses the idea of a best practice toolkit for educators. What kind of recommendations would you be making in that toolkit? Yeah.

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 26:31

Like, you know, where closure and visual ethnography sort of crossover. in terms of pedagogy, comics, although they're growing in momentum, it's still very much outside. It's still very much an outsider thing. We're starting to see more and more teachers writing about using it, but it's, feels quite disparate,

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 26:50

Yeah, I would agree. And when I do teacher training, my first kind of questions are who reads comics, who has comics in their classroom, who teaches with the comics that are in their classroom and it's sort of dwindling hands. I think it's growing, but. It can be quite easy, I think to get in a bit of a bubble once, once it's something that, you know, that you're interested in, that you kind of attract other people that are also interested in it, and you feel like, oh, everyone's using comics, and actually, it's not the case.

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 27:15

and what I think needs to be done and my recommendations are that pedagogists and educators, they love the idea of a toolkit, They, they, they love an accessible toolkit that they can, just tap into and tap out of whenever they, whenever they want to. Right? And with my plan to formalize an HE pedagogy, based around comics, what that's going to do is it's going to present this sort of accessible toolkit where comics readers and non comics readers both feel more confident to be able to navigate, comics in the classroom. A lot of the, Methods that people like, Brozo, Kirtley, Smith, Bacchus have, have all talked about could easily be, altered and played around with and given a sort of increased level of sophistication in order to be used at HE. You know, I mean, like, it's, essentially the same lessons, but just a little bit more upscaled.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 28:13

Yeah, I guess that's what, one of the things I was going to ask you is around, so if we think about pedagogy as being the method of teaching itself, do we need there a distinct pedagogy to work with comics in the classroom, a completely different way of teaching, maybe not, maybe not necessarily emphasis on completely, but just a different way, adapted way of teaching to include comics, or is it, are we able to use the same pedagogical techniques as we would maybe with other uh, Forms of media, whether it be film, whether it be, other forms of literature. But it's the same pedagogy, but with a different sort of subject knowledge, increased subject knowledge on comics.

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 28:56

Well, I, I believe that all media can be analyzed with pretty much the same tools. So if your pedagogy, is going to be around, media literacy and multimedia aspects, then yeah, there's, there's no real reason for a distinct pedagogy. But I do think that there is a market for putting comics in the classroom due to the affordances associated with comics. One of the examples that I use quite frequently is, comics that are based on Shakespeare. If you go and see a Shakespeare play, right, then you've got to a keep up with the actors, which as a deaf person, I can't really do. And B, you've got to sort of, you've got to understand it to a degree. If someone hands you the, script to it, you've got that in front of you. But it's very difficult to match up what's being said with, the stage directions. It's harder to visualize. If you're reading a Shakespeare comic, you Basically, you can see the stage directions and you can read it at your own pace. Like, you can't shout at the actors, Can you do that last bit again, please? While I

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 30:12

exactly. Much as you'd like to sometimes.

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 30:15

Oh, God, yes. I watched, I watched Hamlet and got lost within the first ten minutes. You know, it was at the Globe, it was a fantastic experience, but I didn't get a dime. Damn thing from it. but it's a very individual media in that way. Even if you're watching a video or a film, you're gonna have to rewind to get back to a bit that you want to. In a class of 30 people, if 30 students are all reading comics, one of them's needs to go back to a bit, they can go back a page and it doesn't affect anybody else's enjoyment or anybody else's consumption.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 30:47

Mm.

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 30:48

It allows for both that individualization of education and group, right? But my fear. And this is a fear that was passed on to me by my supervisor, Hi Lou she thinks that comics as a critical pedagogy, i. e., you know, being subversive and being, uh, critical of current tenets, like in the same way as, as Friere, she thinks that by turning it into a distinct pedagogy, you may, remove the teeth from it, Which I'm not, I'm not entirely convinced, but it's always in your peripheral vision, you know,

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 31:24

I, that's interesting, just, thinking from a reading for pleasure perspective, I was at a conference and somebody, actually this wasn't from a reading for pleasure perspective that they were talking about, but I was thinking about it from a reading for pleasure perspective, somebody basically talking about a fear around comics becoming more mainstream and therefore losing this essential characteristic of this kind of, of being an outside critical voice as you were saying, and I was thinking in terms of, The classroom that I think sometimes for some children, one of the things that they enjoy about reading comics is that kind of I'm not supposed to be reading this. My teacher wishes I was reading something else, but I'm going to read this, and it's kind of a little, it's an act of rebellion to read a comic. And so the more accepted and the more your teacher's like oh, I love comics, that it could potentially lose that. I actually don't think that happens in reality. My experience of being a teacher that loved comics was that the children just felt embraced and enjoyed it. I think we were all in it together. That kind of, we're being a little bit rebellious here by making this our, our thing that we have together. and it was a, as a collaborative, rebellion rather than against, me as the teacher in the classroom. but I do think that there is something around that, what draws people to comics is that, that it's outside of the mainstream. But then also you, they, they're for sale in Waterstone, so they're not that outside of the mainstream.

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 32:47

I, think we have to be, we have to think about, canon. Right, in this terminology, you know. What comics, I don't want to say what comics would be safe for the classroom. But, you know, like, obviously there's going to be some that we would use more than others. You know, like, and there's always going to be subver Yeah, there's always going to be, like, subversive, darker comics and outliers that, you know, like But I'm never gonna say, as a teacher, Oh yeah, you shouldn't be reading that, that's really dark. Right? If somebody comes to me and says, Kevin, I'd like to get into comics, I like this, what can you suggest? I'll always go to, you know, like, my go to is always like, deep diverse stuff. Because there's enough coverage of like, Marvel and DC stuff out there, and the big two, and I would rather that my students went to something that's, written and produced by diverse creators because it enhances the story because it's a story that people aren't going to have seen before from a perspective that people haven't necessarily considered, right? So, I'm far more likely to do that. I mean, like, at the minute, I'm going through a major sort of, trip on Boom Studios.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 34:02

Tell me

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 34:03

Some, some of their, some of their recent works have been fantastic. I mean, like, there was one a while ago called The Many Deaths of Layla Star. Oh, it was, it was a beautiful book. It was brilliant. Absolutely loved every second of it. then there was, like, Eat the Rich, which I really, really enjoyed. And, you know I'll, you know, use that to teach Marxism at some point. But, I would rather that I would guide my students to diverse things that not necessarily anybody else would sort of guide them to. Like, if you put in, like, to an algorithm or, like, Amazon or something like, Captain America, and it brings up Deadpool, it brings up Wolverine, and it's like, well, that's not really that different. You may enjoy that, yeah, great, and if so, go for it. but You know, I think there's more fun to be had than, like, just deep diving into things.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 34:53

I think that's where that, that subject knowledge and having that knowledge of the variety of comics that are available is really important because you're able to make those meaningful recommendations and you're able to expand horizons, much more effectively. We are coming to the end of the podcast, Kevin. It's been brilliant to speak to you today. I feel like we could carry on chatting all afternoon. Actually, there's so much to talk about. I wondered if you could. Just think about, some takeaways that we could leave listeners thinking about. Some practical things, perhaps three key points that you'd like to prompt some thinking for anybody listening

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 35:34

okay, well, I talk a lot about the affordances of using comics. You know, and we've talked about Kirtley's four typologies, but the one that we didn't really sort of focus on was using comics as a way to process learning and thinking, which Is it's a world opening experience and it's so easy to do. Any teacher can take an a four piece of paper, fold it and create an eight page mini comic with just a pair of scissors and, use that to get their students to tell a story. We are storytellers and we understand things better if they come at us in the form of stories. So. We should take advantage of that. a lot of, a lot of students, they can't necessarily verbalize, or even write down what it is that they are feeling about a certain thing, but they can draw it. You know, so I think that, the potential of comic books in classroom is, is, is thousandfold. And we should be as educators looking into things like this more because it enables accessibility, right? Carter said in Bacchus that anybody who has eyes is a visual learner, and I'm not entirely sure that I completely buy that, but I do think that we can draw a lot from, comics as as teaching tools that we can't necessarily from prose texts

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 37:05

Yeah, I completely agree. if we were to add one comic or book to our To Be Read piles tomorrow, could also be a book about comics, if that suits too, what would

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 37:20

just saved me with that last

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 37:21

Hehehehe

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 37:23

I recommend that Anybody who has even the slightest interest in comics and how comics work picks up Will Eisner's, book on comics and sequential art.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 37:35

Brilliant. What is it that makes you think that that's such a good one to start us off with?

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 37:42

basically, uh, the spirit is pretty much the blueprint for a lot of modern sort of crime comics. And all the sort of technical details that We consume. They have a basis in, in meaning. They have this term and it's like that disconnect between you know what something means, but you don't know why it means that. And Will Eisner's books really hammer home, the difference between widths of panels, How speech can both add to and take away from an image. I prefer Eisner to McLeod. Simply because, while McLeod says, Oh, comics is a universal language and then doesn't really qualify it. Eisner goes a bit further and says that comics is a universal language for those people with the same cultural knowledge and background and that there's that and that there's a transaction that takes place, in terms of reading, because the skills that we learn in closure you know, he He puts them across very, very well. It also leaves open that question that, okay, so if you don't have that cultural experience, how would you produce something that is more or more universal? The, the only answer that I've seemed to have come up with so far is that we need to really concentrate on teaching about comics, you know, but yeah, what Will Eisner's, uh, three books on instruction, uh, comics and sequential art is the. Most important one, that's first. and the others, graphic storytelling, that's also a good. And the third one is about expressive anatomy. That's probably a bit more actual creators themselves. But if you are interested in the science behind comics, Eisner's books are fantastic.

lucy-sb--she-her-_1_12-18-2023_140337: 39:27

That is absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much for introducing that to us. And thank you for coming onto the show and being a guest today. I've really loved discussing, debating and dipping into new areas that I haven't really thought of before. So thank you for coming on the show and sharing your expertise.

squadcaster-2a66_1_12-18-2023_140336: 39:44

Thank you. I've loved every second.

39:49

They have it. I found that conversation. Absolutely. Fascinating. Thank you so much. To Kevin for coming onto the podcast and sharing your expertise and your thoughts with us. If you'd like to keep in touch with Kevin, you can find his Twitter handle and his Instagram handle in the show. Notes. So check them out there. And you can keep up to date with how his doctoral studies are going. My comic recommendation this week is a graphic novel for adults published by Avery hill. It's by Charlot Kristensen and it's called what we don't talk. About, it's a really beautiful comic examining contemporary issues of race. Have. Bigotry and the challenges that interracial. Couples can face, it covers the story of a weekend. When the young couple. Go back for the first time to stay. With one of the parents, and explores the difficulty. Of navigating some of the prejudices that they come. Across, when spending time with parents. It's really, really beautifully told story. Capturing a moment in time and covering some really important issues. I really enjoyed. Reading it. It's thought provoking stays with you for a while and definitely recommend it. Thanks so much for the welcome back with our first episode. Of series four last week at some lovely. Lovely feedback, particularly, some really nice feedback on Twitter. By regular listener, October. Jones. I'm going to read that out. To you. October is just an amazing installation, in her public. Library of really putting picture books and graphic novels at the heart of their collection. They're really inspiring projects to do. Check that out. And she says that the podcast has been absolutely instrumental in shaping her Project is bought many authors illustrators cartoonists, and artists to the forefront of her stock list And the passion and knowledge that i share with each episode is pure magic isn't that nice I can't tell you how nice that was to read so thank you so much october for that good luck with the launch of your reading space i'm sure that it's going to be hugely hugely popular and just thank you for being such an inspirational force out there putting into practice all the things that we discussed on the podcast It's amazing to see If you would like to support the podcast you can do so by giving a donation by either buying one of my comics or buying me a comic you can do that by logging into kofi.com forward slash lucy sp that's k o Hyphen F i.com forward slash lucy sb that helps me to pay for the outgoings to keep the podcast on the airwaves and is much much appreciated And you can also support the podcast by leaving a review on whichever platform you listen on by sharing with your colleagues and network Bye Leaving lovely messages on twitter and on instagram as october is done again that that is very much appreciated Always willing to have feedback if you've got suggestions of people that you would like to have covered of topics that you'd like to have covered Please do let me know i'd love to have some feedback from listeners to help curate The guest list You can follow me on twitter or ex on at lucy underscore Braidley or you can follow the podcast on instagram at comic underscore boom underscore podcast Next week we have got an absolute classic episode Jam packed with recommendations as i am joined again by Paul Register to talk about this year's Excelsior award shortlists we'll be covering the white list for key stage two and also the blue list for key stage three pupils so we'll be talking in depth about all the titles on that short list come along have a listen and be prepared to add to your reading list is a great episode that's all from me today you've been listening to comic boom which is hosted and produced by me Lucy Starbuck, Braidley thanks for listening