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Hunter Joyce
English 102 – H
“Put that down young man, that right there is nothing but nonsense and a sheer waste of
time! Make use of yourself and read some actual literature,” scoffed my middle school teacher as
I glared at her from under the closest thing to a comic book I had managed to scour up.
“Who are you to decide what constitutes actual literature. What is it that makes A
Farewell to Arms so much more worthy of my time? This is just as good, if not better, a reading
as anything,” I contemplated silently to myself. I dared not hurl my inquiries at my teacher, for
I’ve always been the meek type, but she did strike a nerve that continues to resonate to this day.
This fluctuation of emotions found it’s way upon a more definite form in the shape of a question.
What effects do comic books have on us? This of course spurns a horde of similar tangent
questions. Are comic books really literature? What is literature? Who decides what literature is?
Can something be literature to one, but not to another? Of course, these are questions for another
time, for my main discourse is with the first, the effects that comic books have on our reading.
Certainly comic books effect us in a multitude of ways, just look at what all they do for
society. They not only bring us an entertaining form of writing, which most kids don’t object to
reading, but they also bring with them morals and lessons to be learned that carry on past the
dazzlingly decorated pages. I defy you to take a look at your surroundings for just a brief
moment and question just how much of your life has been shaped by comic books or by the
heroes that are derived from them. You may be surprised by what all you find. I embarked on an
odyssey not too long ago combing through my local college campus, Texas A&M University –
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Commerce, and I stumbled upon a cornucopia of students, as well as teachers, who must pay
homage to these masked mercenaries derived from the depths of our imaginations.
With “rush week jitters” fully intact, I stepped into Henderson hall on the hunt for my
ever elusive Calculus classroom. Flight of stairs here, short walk down the wrong hall there,
comic strip on the teacher’s door – wait – what? Yes, I didn’t have to have X-ray vision to see
the small collection of comics dangling from the bulletin board outside of
seemed, I took a few moments out of my previously rushed and frantic life to
skim over the short section before my eyes. Turns out it was a short piece
exposing the humor that can be found in students stressing over their various
exams, but of course hardly any of that goes on at TAMU-C. The purpose of this seemingly
In addition to giving much desired comic relief, comics have always been aimed towards
conveying life lessons and portraying ways to be a better person through a light-hearted and
magical medium. Superman always does what is just and noble, Spider-Man struggles in almost
every conceivable fashion to uphold the values of right and wrong, and the crew from Watchmen
urges everyone to hold true to their values despite what society says. Enter the perfect real-life
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example - John Huizar. John grew up in Emory, Texas and is currently enrolled in TAMU-C
get between you and the truth (Huizar),” his favorite comic
asked Erin O’Brady if there was any class in particular that affected the way she read comics she
parried with, “Eng 202 with Derek Royal, Multi-Ethnic American Literature; he chose to do
class that semester entirely in comic books and really opened my eyes to how they are literature
as well. (O’Brady)” Not only was there a teacher brave enough to consider these “mutants of
literature”, forgive the X-Men pun I couldn’t resist, a viable resource for education, but he also
In Resnick’s article she explains three types of literacy: useful, informational, and pleasurable
(Resnick, 119). A quick background, for those of you unfamiliar with this specific work of
Resnick’s, enlightens one to the facts that useful literacy is written texts to mediate action in the
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world (Resnick, 120). Informational literacy is reading to learn about the world when there is no
immediate practical utility for the information acquired (Resnick, 123), and pleasurable literacy
is any form of literacy practice in which reading is its own end (Resnick, 126). It’s easy to see
how someone can read literature that is informational, like a history book or science magazine,
for fun, or even how someone can read something that is useful, such as notes from coworkers or
recipes, just for grins; but what is sheerly baffling to me is the fact that O’Brady’s teacher took a
form of writing designed primarily to entertain and reincarnated it as a viable teaching tool. All
of a sudden we see how comics have the ability to go beyond their initial form of pleasurable
So now we’ve seen how comics can affect one’s mood, what one learns, and even how
one goes about learning, which begs the question; is there anything powerful enough to influence
comics? I had to find the comic books’ kryptonite, the one thing that was strong enough to shape
and mold their very existence. Little did I know that all I really had to do to find the answer was
to look into my own past. In a time not so long ago, in a town not so far away the key to comic
of subconscious metamorphosis, for you see his birth was the product of me melding my modern
idea of heroes with a childhood book Mom once read to me. The book was simply
called The Pickle Book. Let your imagination run wild there for a second and I’m
sure you can guess that in this book various people and objects were all portrayed
brain and it manifested itself when, subconsciously, the need arose for the creation
of a protagonist for my new hobby of comic book writing. The imagination is what
drives other comic book writers and myself to write, and quite simply we’re going to write about
what we know. I find it such a weird phenomenon that the two (comic books and outside
literature) actually play quite well off of each other. One writer may work what they’ve read into
their comic, while another writer then reads said comic and incorporates what he has read into
his comic, and so continues the process until the writing stops.
Comics have touched everything from the surfaces of our office desks to the very core of
our hearts and souls. They are literally everywhere and for a good reason. Comics proffer a light-
hearted and miraculous world to which we can make our exodus from the trials and tribulations
of our everyday lives. These prudently printed pages also offer a wonderful tool “to help students
create the texts of their lives as we connect to and carry forward the larger history of composing
(Yancey, 8).” The efficacy of comics is indispensable to every aspect of human life, for it is
through this medium that we have learned to express some of the deepest levels of our
imagination. Fortunately, thanks to the unique nature in which they both effect and are affected
by their authors, comics have inaugurated their own personal safe-guards which ensure their
continuity in our society. It is with firm conviction that I beseech you to see that comics have
played more than their fair share in the formation of our literary society today, and it is with
rampant anticipation that I await the next panel of this great comic we hail as literature.