Before grad school, I taught high school English. Believe me when I say that classic texts are hard for most students to read and comprehend. Things like archaic language and odd writing styles make them feel unapproachable to students, and however much we insist that their themes are universal, the fact remains that without reading comprehension or motivation, those universal themes are inaccessible. Bring in a Title I school where the average reading level is low, or a school full of English language learners, and those problems compound.
Enter graphic novels, comics, and manga—stories told as visuals on a page. I’ll use “comics” as an umbrella term here. A lot of kids love comics, even the ones who don’t think of themselves as readers. I’ve seen students absolutely inhale beat-up library copies of Bone, Smile, or Dragonball Z in their free time while they simultaneously struggled to even comprehend the texts I assigned in class, let alone be interested in or enjoy them. Stories told in visuals, with minimal written language, pull in readers who otherwise have a hard time reading.
Research shows that comics are effective tools for teaching the same skills as a traditional novel: literacy, writing, critical thinking, and more. The use of comics in education goes at least as far back as the 1940s with Great Illustrated Classics, but the trend continues with adaptations of classic text in a more modern style, and these adaptations have become more diverse and plentiful in the current market. When I was a teacher, I found them particularly helpful as a bridge to the original text. Shakespeare’s plays are popular for these adaptations, and the visual medium of the comic even plays into the truth that Shakespeare’s plays were designed to be watched, not read. With knowledge of plot, characters, and snippets of the original text from the comic, students can then dive into Shakespeare’s language with context that helps them build the comprehension that allows them to access the originals.
With all that said, let’s talk about the actual publishing situation of these adaptations. I’ll refrain from pointing out specific texts, authors, or publishers, but there are issues across the board. The quality of these adaptations vary wildly, and low-quality ones are noticeable to comics-savvy students, taking away that “coolness” factor that might otherwise have led them into the text when nothing else could. Examples of these lower-quality comics feature art that’s so unskilled it’s distracting, “same-face” syndrome that makes characters hard to differentiate, wordy speech bubbles taking up so much space that the visuals characteristic of comics become the background, and layouts with wide margins while the art is squished in so small that it’s hard to see. In cases where difficult original text is “translated,” the accuracy of those translations can be lacking. This isn’t all of them—there are some really wonderful adaptations out there, but not enough. And, to bring me to my next point, they’re expensive.
Public schools don’t have much money. We all know this. The schools where these tools are most needed are usually the ones with the least amount of money. A new classroom set of a book is a rarity and sometimes only comes at all when an enterprising teacher sets up a GoFundMe and lobbies for donations that often come from their own friends and family. Even in bulk, a classroom set of thirty regular paperback books can cost hundreds of dollars, and most schools need more than one classroom set. Comics are even more expensive, even if they aren’t in full color with glossy pages. As an example, BookPal, a popular wholesale book retailer, prices one hundred copies of Hamlet around $350, while a popular, fairly well done graphic novel adaptation comes in around $730. When I used a comic in my teaching, I will freely admit that I would buy a copy myself and then scan it in to give to students. This is a copyright violation, by the way, but what else was I supposed to do?
This post is a call for awareness and action. As an educator, I know that students deserve educational tools that are not merely effective, but also quality. As a person in publishing, I’ll send out a call that publishers need to do better with both producing these texts with a standard of quality, but also making them affordable to those who need them—not only for the principle of it, but also with the consideration that customers who can afford and are satisfied with a product will continue to buy it.
Sources:
Hoover, Stephen. “The Case for Graphic Novels” Communications in Information Literacy. Volume 5, Issue 2, 2012. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/comminfolit/vol5/iss2/9/