Professor Kenton W. Worcester
Marymount Manhattan College
January 2010
We must seek out such artists as have the talent to pursue the beautiful and the graceful in their work, in order that our young men shall be benefited from all sides like those who live in a healthy place, whence something from these beautiful works will strike their eyes and ears like a breeze that brings health from salubrious places, and lead them unawares from childhood to love of, resemblance to, and harmony with, the beauty of reason.
Plato, The Republic
Perhaps it might have seemed to him that I was dissociating myself from the view that you destroyed an entire world when you destroyed yourself. As if I would threaten to destroy a world – I who lived to see the phenomena, who believe that the heart of things is shown in the surface of those things. I always said – in answering Ravelstein’s question ‘What do you imagine death will be like?’ – ‘The pictures will stop’. Meaning, again, that in the surface of things you saw the heart of things.
Saul Bellow, Ravelstein
* * *
THIS COURSE PLACES the cartoon arts – comic books, comic strips, editorial cartoons, magazine cartoons, manga, and graphic novels – in an explicitly critical and scholarly framework. More specifically, the course explores the history and practice of intellectually ambitious comics analysis and criticism.
Course requirements: students are expected to attend all classes and complete the assigned readings. Grades will be calculated on the following basis: attendance and participation (10%); in-class presentation (30%); ten-page paper (30%); final examination (30%).
The in-class presentation assignment requires that pairs of students introduce a selection from the Best American Comics volume. Presentations should last 10-15 minutes, followed by a general discussion. The presentations should focus on a broad range of themes, from plot, dialogue, and character development to formal analysis, symbolism, and artistic style. If the presenters feel it would be helpful, they can include additional background information, such as the artist’s career trajectory, major influences, the political and social context that shaped the work, and so on. Presenters should attend to both literary and visual forms of analysis, including composition, color palette, line style, panel and page flow, and so on. The presenters will then guide the class discussion.
The paper assignment requires that each student prepare a short but substantive essay that critically evaluates a comic or graphic novel published in the past decade or so. The paper should draw on the specialized language of comics analysis. For suggestions about suitable titles, please consult the instructor. The paper is due on January 26th. The final exam will be held on the last day of class (1/28).
There are four required texts for this course: Jeet Heer and Kent Worcester, eds., A Comics Studies Reader (2009); Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (1994); Anne Elizabeth Moore, ed., The Best American Comics 2006; Douglas Wolk, Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean (2007). These texts are available at Shakespeare & Company (69 Street and Lexington). There will also be handouts.
Course Outline
January 4 – Introductory lecture; handout: Charles Schulz
January 5 – Understanding Comics, chapters 1-3; handout: Richard McGuire
January 7 – Understanding Comics, chapters 4-6; handout: Chester Brown
January 11 – Understanding Comics, chapters 7-9; handout: Ruben Bolling
January 12 – A Comics Studies Reader, section four; handout: Matt Madden
January 14 – A Comics Studies Reader, section one; handout: Kim Deitch
January 19 – A Comics Studies Reader, sections two and three; handout: Jim Holdaway
January 21 – Reading Comics, section one; handout: Donald Rooum
January 25 – Student presentations
January 26 – Student presentations; paper due
January 28 – Final examination
Style Guide
It’s = it is
Know/now/no; piece/peace/ weather/whether; their/there/they’re
Consistent tenses, please
Commas inside quotation marks, semi-colons outside
Do not start sentences with “So,” or numbers (“3 of them survived”)
Got/gave/get rarely work
Use i.e. and e.g. appropriately
Italics for book/film titles; quotation marks for chapter/article titles
Insert possessives where appropriate
Avoid incomplete sentences and over-quick transitions
Avoid awkward formulations and transitions
Avoid contractions (did not rather than didn’t)
Avoid passive voice (the journey they took was a long one)
Avoid wordiness (“may be forever hidden in the shadow of the politics of history…”)
Avoid unnecessary capitalization and punctuation (…”The United, States of America…”)
Avoid clichés (“when all is said and done”; “and in the end”; “for years now”)
Avoid offering judgments about objectivity and bias
Avoid overstatement (“the documentary makers hate all Europeans”)
Avoid overusing key phrases, terms, and formulations
Steer clear of terms like merely, only, basically, essentially
Beware adverbs
Wait until the conclusion to editorialize
Don’t share the journey; don’t share your feelings
Less is more
From The Elements of Style (1918) by William Strunk, Jr.
1. Form the possessive singular of nouns with ‘s (Charles’s friend). Exceptions are the possessives of ancient proper names (the laws of Moses). The pronominal possessives hers, its, theirs, yours, and oneself have no apostrophe.
2. Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas (“The best way to see a country, unless you are pressed for time, is to travel on foot.”)
3. Please a comma before and or but introducing an independent clause (“The situation is perilous, but there is still one chance of escape.”)
4. Do not join independent clauses by a comma. If two or more clauses, grammatically complete and not joined by a conjunction, are to form a single compound sentence, the proper mark of punctuation is a semicolon (“It is nearly half past five; we will not reach town before dark.”)
5. Do not use periods for commas. (“I met them on a Cunard liner several years ago. Coming home from Liverpool to New York.” WRONG)
6. Make the paragraph the unit of composition: one paragraph to each topic.
7. Put statements in positive form. (“He usually came late” rather than “he was not very often on time.”)
8. Omit needless words. “Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”
The Comic Journal’s Top 100 English-Language Comics of the Century
Krazy Kat by George Herriman
Peanuts by Charles Schulz
Pogo by Walt Kelly
Maus by Art Spiegelman
Little Nemo in Slumberland by Winsor McCay
Feiffer by Jules Feiffer
Donald Duck by Carl Barks
Mad by Harvey Kurtzman & various
Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary J Green
The Weirdo stories of R. Crumb
Thimble Theatre by E.C. Segar
EC’s “New Trend” war comics by Harvey Kurtzman & various
Wigwam Bam by Jaime Hernandez
Blood of Palomar by Gilbert Hernandez
The Spirit by Will Eisner
RAW, edited by A Spiegelman & F Mouly
The ACME Novelty Library by Chris Ware
Polly & Her Pals by Cliff Sterret
The sketchbooks of R. Crumb
Uncle Scrooge by Carl Barks
The New Yorker cartoons of Peter Arno
The Death of Speedy Ortíz by Jaime Hernandez
Terry and the Pirates by Milton Caniff
Flies on the Ceiling by Jaime Hernandez
Wash Tubbs by Roy Crane
The Jungle Book by Harvey Kurtzman
Palestine by Joe Sacco
The Mishkin saga by Kim Deitch
Gasoline Alley by Frank King
Fantastic Four by Jack Kirby & Stan Lee
Poison River by Gilbert Hernandez
Plastic Man by Jack Cole
Dick Tracy by Chester Gould
The theatrical caricatures of Al Hirschfeld
The Amazing Spider-Man by S Ditko & Stan Lee
Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau
Yummy Fur by Chester Brown
The editorial cartoons of Pat Oliphant
The Kinder-Kids by Lyonel Feininger
From Hell by Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell
Ghost World by Daniel Clowes
Amphigorey by Edward Gorey
Idiots Abroad by Gilbert Shelton & Paul Mavrides
Paul Auster’s City of Glass by Paul Karasik & David Mazzacchelli
Cages by Dave McKean
The Buddy Bradley saga by Peter Bagge
The cartoons of James Thurber
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
Tantrum by Jules Feiffer
The Alec stories of Eddie Campbell
It’s a Good Life if You Don’t Weaken by Seth
The editorial cartoons of Herblock
EC’s “New Trend” horror comics
The Frank stories by Jim Woodring
Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer by B Katchor
A Contract with God by Will Eisner
The New Yorker cartoons of Charles Addams
Little Lulu by John Stanley
Alley Oop by V.T. Hamlin
American Splendor #1-10 by Harvey Pekar
Little Orphan Annie by Harold Gray
Hey Look! by Harvey Kurtzman
Goodman Beaver by Harvey Kurtzman & Bill Elder
Bringing Up Father by George McManus
Zippy the Pinhead by Bill Griffith
The Passport by Saul Steinberg
Barnaby by Crockett Johnson
God’s Man by Lynd Ward
Jimbo by Gary Panter
The Book of Jim by Jim Woodring
Rubber Blanket by David Mazzucchelli
The Cartoon History of the Universe by L Gonick
Ernie Pook’s Comeek by Lynda Barry
Black Hole by Charles Burns
“Master Race” by Bernie Krigstein & Al Feldstein
Li’l Abner by Al Capp
Sugar and Spike by Sheldon Mayer
Captain Marvel by C.C. Beck
Zap by Crumb & various
The Lily stories by Debbie Drechsler
Caricature by Daniel Clowes
V for Vendetta by Alan Moore & David Lloyd
Why I Hate Saturn by Kyle Baker
The “Willie and Joe” cartoons of Bill Mauldin
Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse
The New Yorker cartoons of George Price
Jack Kirby’s Fourth World comics
The autobiographical comics of Spain Rodriguez
Mr. Punch by Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean
Watchmen by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
“Pictopia” by Alan Moore & Don Simpson
Dennis the Menace by Hank Ketcham
Space Hawk by Basil Wolverton
Los Tejanos by Jack Jackson
Dirty Plotte by Julie Doucet
The Hannah Story by Carol Tyler
Barney Google by Billy De Beck
The Bungle Family by George Tuthill
Prince Valiant by Hal Foster