Comsic Books

This semester I've been studying. No, I believe partaking is a better word for what I've been doing with this class. I have an American Superheroes class.

Yes, bask in the glory.

In this magnificently masterwork course we have studied literature such as Old Man and the Sea, Superman:Birthright, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Ultimate X-Men volume 1; and we have studied books like Last of the Mohicans. Note the difference in describers.

Most people can't believe that we'd have actual classes where we take comic books and read them as if they were literature. The Audacity of it all.

Yes there was a capital "A" there. It's that Audacious.

But, there are a few things I've learned as I've studied literature before and during college (an I suppose I will continue learning this fact long after I have graduated and moved into the military). One is that age does not make a book literature. Taking the ragingly racist novel The Last of The Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. That book was published something like a hundred and fifty years ago, and it is one of the worst pieces of literature I have ever read. I loathed handling that book for I felt as though my hands would corrode from the cheap and weak prose. Cooper covers his readers in an avalanche of poorly selected words that, more often than not, serve to confuse a reader's imagination instead of clarify and direct it.

Deep breath Gericke. Deep Breath. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Man I really hate that book. I'm contemplating burning it, but I may also give it away as a present to someone I dislike. So, if you get The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper for your birthday, Hanukkah, or Christmas then be aware that I dislike you enough that I would give you brain poison.

I like that term, brain poison.

Anyways, to get to the real purpose of this post. The unreasonable hatred of comic books and what they are capable of conveying. I've written two papers this semester and I might post them up here so you can bask in my magnificence (I'm really not this arrogant, it's just the power of the blog taking over my mind. It's like the one ring in Middle-Earth).

A comic book can create a world unlike any that a novel could create. The art creates a different feel. You can't ignore the art and read the words alone. You can't pick it up with a bias. You simply cannot come into the reading of a comic book thinking it is anything other than literature to be discovered. The key to learning from a comic book, to seeing it as a piece of literature is that you, the reader, must read it as a student of literature.

Remember the saying, "all truth can be circumscribed into one great whole?" We cannot assume that truth, and indeed knowledge, will fall into our laps without any sort of effort. If you want to find out whether a comic book, or a novel, or a movie, or anything is worth any value you absolutely must dig into its core and discover the truth behind it.

Basically, if you can't find something good in a piece of literature, it's because you're choosing not to.



Here's the two papers I wrote- You may want to brush up on your Campbellian theory (Hero of a Thousand Faces) before you read them. Then again, you may not.
Jean Grey as the Cosmic Mother
This one isn't as good as the first, a little scatter-brained Superman:Birthright vs Last of the Mohicans