Sequential Smarts

Review: Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn

2009-08-20T18:59:32Z

Comic Title: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Comic Author: Adapted from the novels by Mark Twain. Tom Sawyer adapted by Matt Josdal and illustrated by Brian Shearer; Huck Finn adapted by Roland Mann and illustrated by Naresh Kumar.

Format: Graphic Novel

Reviewed by: Jessica

Both Mark Twain’s classic paean to American boyhood and his most celebrated portrait of the antebellum South get the graphic novel treatment.

I think most of us know the stories, but here you go: Tom Sawyer is a happy-go-lucky kid who is always thinking of ways to con people, get out of work, and go on adventures. Some of those adventures turn dangerous, though, especially when he and his friend Huck Finn witness a murder, or when he and the object of his boyish affections, Becky Thatcher, find themselves trapped in a cave. Tom has the wits and the luck to always come out on top, though, and never a smidge wiser for it.

Following his adventures with Tom, Huck flees his abusive father and finds himself drifting downriver on a raft with runaway slave Jim. They share various misadventures, including falling into the middle of a deadly feud, and into the hands of a pair of nasty conmen, but events reach their peak when Tom Sawyer rears his puckish head again.

Impressions and Opinions:

It’s been years since I read either of these in the original prose, but I do remember enjoying both of them, for very different reasons. From what I recall, the graphic novelizations are very faithful to the original plots. The problem with that is that the strength of a Mark Twain novel is never in the plot, but in the wit of the prose. With so much of that pared down, the best part of the books is gone, and even the jokes that remain fall flat. The famous fence white-washing scene is still there, but you don’t get a real sense of Tom’s cleverness because it’s so awkwardly conveyed. Huck’s personality barely comes through at all (more on that later). The writing really suffered from the transition to graphic novel for both of these books.

And the art…oh, the art. No punches pulled: the art in Tom Sawyer is terrible. Everyone is a face-melting horror, there’s no anatomy to speak of, and Becky Thatcher appears to be wearing a Buddhist monk’s robe over harem pants. The art in Huck Finn isn’t very good either, but after Tom Sawyer it’s a relief, even if all of the characters look alike.

All told, if I were reading these without having read either of the original novels, I would be very confused as to why they were considered such classics.

Have you used this comic in your classroom, or in any sort of educational capacity?

I haven’t used them in the classroom, but the Campfire line is certainly designed for young, modern readers, so theoretically they could be used in place of the original novels for remedial reading students. Tom Sawyer is not very good, but aside from quality there’s no reason it couldn’t be used this way. Huck Finn is notable because it doesn’t use the thick dialect and phonetic spelling that the original novel does. On the one hand, this makes reading it a lot easier, as the dialect is a struggle for almost any reader. On the other hand, it removes a lot of Huck’s personality, as mentioned above; the reader no longer gets a sense of him as a character. Whether that is a fair tradeoff depends on the teacher and the student.

Both books have a couple of pages in the back with additional information. Huck Finn’s are about the history of slavery and give a decent context for the book, while Tom Sawyer’s are inexplicably about famous islands. Both books could probably use stronger historical and societal context, actually.

Is there anything else you feel that teachers should know about this comic?

There’s slight violence and a couple of dead bodies, but no worse than the novels.

Link: Factoring with Mr. Yang and Mosley the Alien

2009-06-22T05:41:35Z

Throughout middle school – and, yes, high school (yep, I was on the “lower” math track) – factoring was pretty much the bane of my existence. Well, mathematics in general were the bane of my existence, but within the vast and noxious swampy field of mathematics, I always found factoring to be particularly troublesome. I really wish that I’d had something like this around back then to help me:

Factoring with Mr. Yang and Mosley the Alien, a series of five comic lessons by Gene Yang.

Some of you might recognize Gene Yang as one of the culprits behind Eternal Smile and the culprit behind American Born Chinese, which was the first graphic novel to ever be considered as a finalist for the National Book Awards. So yes, the man knows how to make comics. He also knows how to teach math, apparently, as I had no problem following along with his online comic lessons, and I actually ended up learning a lot in the process.

I highly recommend this link to anybody who’s struggling with factoring – or who knows anybody else who’s struggling with factoring. Yang’s comics are easy to understand, fun to read, and a great resource for teachers and students.

Review: Mushishi, volume 1

2009-06-11T10:28:54Z

Comic Title: Mushishi (vol. 1 of 10)

Author: Text and artwork by Yuki Urushibara

Format: Manga paperback

Reviewed by: Elena

Winner of the prestigious Kodansha Manga Award, Mushishi is the story of Ginko, a wandering “mushi” expert (called a mushi-shi in Japanese). Mushi are ephemeral creatures that are far older – but, in some sense, far simpler – than what we conceive of as biological life. Although simple in nature, mushi are capable of causing all sorts of interference in the human world. Sometimes mushi are benign, sometimes neutral, and sometimes they can be downright malicious. As Ginko wanders throughout Japan’s mountain villages and forests, he encounters many people afflicted with all sorts of imaginative mushi infections. Using his clever wit and his own unique, borderline-paranormal abilities, Ginko tries to help as many of these people as he can. But sometimes even Ginko can be rendered helpless in the face of a truly horrifying mushi.

Impressions and Opinions:

An artist discovers that whatever he draws with his left hand can take on a life of its own. A broken sake bowl binds a lonely spirit to a half-life in limbo. A boy begins to hear the whispers of the spirits around him – and not even covering his ears can block out the noise. A man begins to fear that his prophetic dreams may not be predicting the future, as his family believes, but rather creating the disasters that his subconscious mind dreams up. A little girl’s eyes are eaten by darkness. A young woman falls in love with a most unusual paramour. These are the stories of the mushi told in the first volume of Yuki Urushibara’s wonderful manga Mushishi.

The five stand-alone stories in this volume run the emotional gamut from the sweetly touching (a ghostly grandmother watching over her grandson) to the utterly horrifying (such as a mold that takes seconds to eat a person alive, among other examples). In the center of all of these stories is the laid-back and mysterious Ginko, a wandering mushi expert. Although Ginko seems unusually at ease around mushi, even dangerous mushi, the truth is – as some stories in this volume demonstrate – he doesn’t always succeed in saving innocent humans from the ravages of the mushi. And sometimes, he even comes to doubt his own seemingly “happy” solutions for the humans involved. In short, Ginko makes mistakes – sometimes big ones. This means that Mushishi is an unusually (and delightfully) unpredictable manga, sometimes managing to pull off actual narrative suspense, since we readers don’t ever know for certain whether Ginko will be able to save the day or not. It’s never a given.

This is not to say that Mushishi isn’t formulaic at times. Every story really does follow the same basic formula: A mushi-inflicted human requests Ginko’s help, Ginko shows up, Ginko investigates the mushi, Ginko solves the mystery of how to deal with the mushi, Ginko does something clever and unexpected to win the day. Except for the times when the formula breaks, Ginko fails, and people die. Sometimes the formula breaks in another way as well: There is one particular story in this volume that I assumed, based on the first few pages, was heading toward an inevitably tragic conclusion. But Urushibara surprised me by giving that story an almost unbelievably beautiful, uplifting finale. So yes, just knowing that Ginko won’t always win – but also having the most seemingly tragic stories sometimes turn out happily – does a lot to alleviate the formulaic nature of Mushishi‘s narrative. The mushi themselves help a lot in that regard, too. No two mushi are alike, and all of them are extremely imaginative, not just in terms of what they are and how they work, but also in terms of what Ginko must do to solve the problems that they cause.

One thing that I really enjoyed about the first volume is this manga is how I could actually feel the rhythm of the different seasons passing as the story progressed. Urushibara is a master at evoking a powerfully realistic sense of time and place, whether with his depiction of an eerily silent, snow-covered village, or a terrifying summer flood. There’s a lot of realism in the way that Urushibara depicts both rural Japanese life and the surrounding nature itself. And yet, this hyper-realism does nothing to detract from the haunting, eerie atmosphere evoked by the stories of the supernatural mushi. If anything, the contrast between Urushibara’s realistic settings and his otherworldly subject matter only serves to heighten the eerie, mysterious feeling of the series.

As this is the first volume of a series, the artwork is, not surprisingly, rather rough. It takes Urushibara several volumes to refine his style, not just in terms of character design and line work, but also in terms of his sense of panel layout and pacing. I think it’s worth mentioning that Mushishi won the Kodansha Manga Award in 2006, when the series was already seven years old, and the artwork had improved by leaps and bounds. Compared to the final volumes of the story, this first volume looks and feels much rougher. But things do improve as the series progresses. I promise.

Have you used this comic in your classroom, or in any sort of educational capacity?

No, but I don’t imagine that it would be difficult to do so. This series is perfect for teen readers, especially teen readers who love a good horror story. Mushishi is saturated with Japanese cultural details, whether depicting the everyday lives of the villagers that Ginko visits, or delving into the deep folklore roots that inspire all of Urushibara’s mushi creations. Any of a dozen things in this first volume alone would provide a great opportunity to teach about Japan’s history and culture.

Mushishi is also the type of manga that can be used to challenge students’ (or anybody’s, really) preconceptions about what “manga” really is. It’s not all big eyes, spikey hair, fighting, or sexy romance. I mean, I love all of those things. But there’s so much more to manga than just the Shounen Jump and Shoujo Beat stuff, and this series is a great way to demonstrate that fact. In terms of both artwork and writing, Mushishi is nothing like the common stereotypes of what manga looks, feels, and reads like. If your students seem to have a dim view of what “comics” are capable of artistically, or what “manga” is in general, then this is the book for them.

At the very least, Mushishi would make an excellent addition to any school library.

Is there anything else you feel that teachers should know about this comic?

Mushishi recently concluded its Japanese run in 2008. Seven of ten total volumes are already available in English from Del Rey Manga. The remaining three volumes are coming soon, and they are definitely worth looking forward to!

The Del Rey edition of Mushishi comes with helpful translation notes in both the front and back of the book. Yes, admittedly, this series is about as uber-Japanese as a manga can get, steeped in culture and folklore that some readers may not be familiar with at all. However, the brief explanatory materials, crammed into just a few pages in the front and back of the book, go a long way toward making Mushishi accessible to any reader, even those completely unfamiliar with Japanese culture, folklore, and history.

I’ve read the first volume of Mushishi in both Japanese and English, and I feel totally confident in stating that William Flanagan’s English translation is absolutely superb. But then again, that’s been true for pretty much every manga I’ve ever read that Flanagan has worked on.

Yes, I am a translation nerd and yes, I will comment on these things.

Anyway, Mushishi gets my highest recommendation, both as a teacher and as a manga lover. It’s a simply amazing series to read, and you will definitely learn a lot about Japan while enjoying it, too.

Review: The Manga Guide to Statistics

2009-09-26T15:00:16Z

Comic Title: The Manga Guide to Statistics

Author: Text and artwork by Shin Takahashi

Format: Trade paperback

Reviewed by: Elena

Math is hard – especially for dumb girls! Thankfully, lovable but socially awkward nerd Mamoru is hired to teach cute-but-moronic young Rui all about statistics… So that Rui can, in turn, impress her father’s extremely handsome (and much, much older) co-worker, who does marketing research for a living. Ouch. If you can get past the migraine-inducing gender stereotypes saturating this educational manga, you will actually learn a lot of very useful math lessons, and relatively painlessly at that. But. That’s a pretty big “if”.

Impressions and Opinions:

All right, so. I started banging my head against my desk with frustration, after only reading the first two pages of this book. No, not because the math was hard. (We haven’t even gotten to the math yet.) But because of the “story.” Rui’s father brings home his handsome co-worker, Mr. Igarashi, for a quick visit. Rui, immediately smitten by this hottie old enough to be her father, falls all over herself offering Mr. Igarashi a cushion to sit on and a cup of coffee. She asks Mr. Igarashi what he does at work. “I do marketing,” Mr. Igarashi answers. Rui’s like, “Derrrrrrr, marketing, what’s that?! (*cute smile*).”

Yes, this is only the second page of the book.

I mean, wow. What kind of teenage girl has never heard of marketing before?! Has Rui been living under a rock?!

Apparently yes. On the third page, Rui explains, “Sorry, I have never heard of it before!”

Mr. Igarashi explains what marketing is, then asks, “Do you know what statistics is?” Nope, Rui has never heard of that before, either!

I need a drink.

Mr. Igarashi tries to explain what statistics is, but it’s too difficult for Rui, who ends up being punched in the head by Mr. Igarashi’s word bubble*, starts crying, and then collapses, banging her face into a coffee table.

Like me, the way that I’m banging my face against my desk right now!

* Okay, I’ll admit, I do give the book points for the rather hilarious image of Mr. Igarashi’s long-winded word bubble punching Rui in the head.

Anyway, yep, that’s the end of the third page.

I’m going to stop doing this play-by-play now, because three pages basically tells you everything that you need to know about this book: RUI IS UNBELIEVABLY DUMB. And the key word here is unbelievably. I understand that an educational comic needs a somewhat clueless lead character who is going to be the one to, you know, actually learn things as the story progresses. But THIS level of cluelessness? It’s unbelievable. When mixed with Rui’s supposedly “cute” antics and “funny” statements of sheer jaw-dropping stupidity, it just comes off as squicky. That, and the fact that Rui’s entire motivation for wanting to learn more about statistics is that she has a drooling crush on Mr. Igarashi. (Yes, drooling. Yes, she literally drools when she thinks of him.)

Dumb and shallow. Nope, no sexist stereotypes here!

So now we have our premise: Rui is unbelievably dumb. But she is determined to get into the pants of her father’s hottie co-worker. Rui comes up with an INGENIOUS PLAN to get closer to Mr. Igarashi! To wit, she asks her father to find her a statistics tutor. She assumes, of course, that her father is going to ask Mr. Igarashi to tutor her. Because apparently her father knows no other single human being on the planet who could possibly know anything whatsoever about statistics.

See, I told you that Rui was dumb.

Unfortunately, Rui’s plan backfires. Rather than hiring hottie Mr. Igarashi, Rui’s father instead taps his nerdy employee Mamoru to be Rui’s tutor. Rui’s initial reaction is ewwwwww, nerd cooties! But she convinces herself that if she learns about statistics, she’ll at least be able to impress Mr. Igarashi with her newfound math knowledge. With this as her motivation, Rui begins her lessons with Mamoru.

Because heaven forbid that a girl should ever want to learn math for any reason other than impressing a hot guy. A hot guy old enough to be her father. Er.

So how goes the rest of the book? Migraine-inducing sexism aside, it’s pretty good, actually. The math is clearly explained. The examples that Mamoru uses to teach basic mathematical concepts are often creative, and therefore quite memorable. (My favorite is toward the end, where the mystery of a stolen pudding is used to explain the concepts of the null hypothesis, alternative hypothesis, and Cramer’s coefficient.) There are a couple of pages of straight-up math exercises following each chapter of the manga, with detailed, step-by-step answers included. The artwork is really appealing. The banter between Rui and Mamoru would be charming and funny, if their relationship wasn’t just another tired re-tread of the “cute hawt teen girl falls for geeky nerd guy” fantasy. Which, I admit, is a perfectly fine fantasy – unless you’re a girl like me, and you can’t identify with either of the protagonists, and you’re sick and tired of the sexism informing this type of romance.

Did I mention that the cuteness of Rui’s school uniform is a repeated plot thread in this book?

Did I mention that whenever Rui finally demonstrates that she understands something, Mamoru pets her on the head like a puppy?!

By the way, have I mentioned how awkwardly some of the dialogue in the book is written? The characters almost never use contractions when they speak. Most the dialogue reads as though it’s been poorly translated from Japanese. (“Weight? That is something you should never ask a lady!” and “You flatter me! But I do not deny it!”) Which is strange, because this book was apparently written in English to begin with. There’s no translator credited anywhere in the book, and it’s published by a San Francisco publishing house, so… what’s with the weirdness of the dialogue? Edited later: Oops, my mistake. As was pointed out in the comments, this book was indeed written in Japanese and translated into English, although the lack of credit given to any translator still makes me raise my eyebrows.

Here, let me give away the ending for you (because I assume that most people won’t be picking up this book for the plot anyway): When Rui discovers that Mr. Igarashi is married, she wails in frustration, “I have been studying statistics all this time in vain?!” (Right, because once again, there’s no reason for a cute girl to ever learn math, other than to impress a hot guy…) In a tearful rage, Rui starts flailing around, and somehow manages to crash into Mamoru and knock him to the ground. Mamoru’s nerd-glasses fall off his face, revealing his handsome, hitherto -unseen bishounen visage underneath.

Sproing! Hearts pop into Rui’s eyes, and she starts drooling instantly. “I didn’t know you were so handsome!”

The book ends with Rui tackling suddenly-a-hottie Mamoru and begging him to teach her more of “this and that.” I think we’re supposed to read that as a double-entendre. Hrm.

Unbelievably dumb and unbelievably shallow to the bitter end. That’s our Rui! Honestly, I think that Rui isn’t a cipher character that we readers are supposed to identify with, which is usually the case for the Clueless Lead Characters in educational books and manga. Rather, Rui is a cute, dumb object of lust who’s there to capture and maintain male readers’ interest. But where does that leave any potential girl readers of this book? With nothing, really. Except a whole lot of squick.

Have you used this comic in your classroom, or in any sort of educational capacity?

No. I must confess, I actually bought this book for myself. It’s been a good six years since I took a stats course in college, and I knew that I needed a refresher, for my own personal reasons. Because hey, statistics are inescapable. You don’t have to be a mathematician, computer programmer, or marketing researcher in order to encounter statistics in your daily life. We consume media that loves to inundate us with statistics, especially when it comes to political polls, mainstream reporting on actual scientific studies, opinion surveys, and statistical claims made in advertising. So I think that this book is full of valuable information that most of us adults can use every day. And it’s presented in an easy-to-understand, logical, and (most importantly) memorable manner to boot.

But would this book be useful in a classroom, particularly a senior high classroom? I have my doubts. Personally I found the gender stereotyping to be extremely off-putting at best, and downright rage-inducing at worst. I wouldn’t want to hand this book to any teen girls to read, honestly. It just sends too many discouraging, negative messages. Frankly I’m not too keen on the idea of teen boys diving into this book either, as it reinforces all sorts of sexist stereotypes about girls.

Yes, I find the “shallow girl falls for nerdy guy” romance tiring. Other readers may not. But it is undeniably a very, very male romantic fantasy, especially the way that it’s presented in this book. But why is that very, very male romantic fantasy mixed in with this supposedly all-about-math comic textbook? It just makes the book off-putting to female readers. Which is a shame, because a comic book – especially a manga – should, theoretically, provide an accessible and appealing way for teen girls to learn more about math, especially teen girls who may be discouraged or put down by sexist treatment in their regular classrooms. If such a manga exists, however, The Manga Guide to Statistics is not it. This is a book written for boys and men, not girls and women. And again, it’s a shame that the target demographic of this book is so blindingly, squeamishly obvious. “Squeamishly” for the unfortunate girl readers, that is.

Maybe this book would make a nice addition to any school’s library. But again, I would personally hesitate to use this book in the classroom, especially if said use involved inflicting the book upon girls.

Is there anything else you feel that teachers should know about this comic?

No Starch Press has a whole line of educational manga guides, including guides to databases, calculus, physics (dynamics), molecular biology, and electricity. You can find out more about these titles at http://www.nostarch.com/manga/ . I have no idea if any of the other manga guides in this line replicate the off-putting sexism, or awkward approach to faux-translated dialogue, that The Manga Guide to Statistics unfortunately has. But again, if you can get past those things (and this is going to be a different threshold-of-squick for every reader), there IS a lot of genuinely educational value in these books.

Review: All-Star Superman

2009-03-29T11:01:24Z

Comic Title: All-Star Superman

Author: Written by Grant Morrison, artwork by Frank Quietly and Jamie Grant.

Format: Comic book mini-series (twelve issues). Also available in paperback or hardcover collected editions.

Reviewed by: Elena

Brief Summary (2 to 5 sentences):

Clark Kent/Superman, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Lex Luthor, and zany scientist Leo Quintum do pretty much the exact same things that they’ve always done – but fabulously. A modern Superman story that somehow manages to perfectly capture the limitless wonder – and complete insanity – of the Golden Age Superman stories, All-Star Superman is both a quintessential distillation and a fresh repackaging of everything that makes Superman awesome.

Impressions and Opinions:

Well, it’s a Superman story. There’s wacky science, adventures in outer spaaaaaace, romance with headstrong Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen bumbling his way through a series of outrageous mishaps, and even a talking sun. Plus a two-issue jaunt to Bizzaro World. So basically, everything that’s essential and iconic about the Superman mythos, crammed into twelve glorious issues.

Each issue in this series reads well as a stand-alone, although all twelve together tell one single unified story. Morrison is a masterful writer, and he manages to make each issue of the series satisfying and self-contained, while still never losing track of the overall plot. It’s also to Morrison’s credit that, despite all of the crazy science fiction nonsense being flung around in every issue, the characters themselves – particularly Clark and Lois – remain very grounded, and very human. The series starts with a bang when Clark suddenly makes a very emotional decision to reveal his identity to Lois. The rest of the series does a great job evolving the relationship between Lois and her hero, while at the same time showing Superman dealing, in a very raw and real way, with his (plot-dictated) impending death.

Even for someone who never reads DC comics, All-Star Superman is easy to understand, and extremely accessible. Of course, I’m basing that statement on the assumption that the reader has absorbed at least some basic knowledge of the Superman mythos from some pop culture source, at some point. If you already know that Lois Lane is a reporter in love with Superman, if you already know that Jimmy Olsen is Superman’s befreckled best friend, and if you already know that Lex Luthor is his megalomaniacal archnemesis… Then you’re all set, in terms of what canon information you need to know in order to understand this series.

Of course, as reading The Tall Tales of Vishnu Sharma has taught me, I should never make assumptions about shared cultural knowledge.

My only complaint about this series is the way that Lois Lane is drawn. Frank Quietly seems to have incorporated Kate Bosworth’s delicate, petite appearance into his depictions of Lois. Personally, I prefer a Lois who looks as tough as she acts, but that’s just me.

Have you used this comic in your classroom, or in any sort of educational capacity?

Yes! While teaching English to middle school students in Japan, I did a unit about American comics. We learned about a lot more than just superheroes, but the kids (not surprisingly) liked reading Spiderman and Superman comics the best. I donated my 12-issue run of the series to the school library. While a lot of students have flipped through the comics, admittedly very few of them have attempted to read any of the word bubbles. There were two girls, however, in middle third grade (the equivalent of 9th grade in the USA) who actually sat down with me, and let me help them read through issue #3. That would happen to be the most romantic issue in the series, by the way. And I had one more student who was completely fascinated by the two issues set in Bizzaro World, and whom I helped work through all of the English dialogue.

In the end, probably only those three students actually learned any English from this series. But as for the rest of the students, well… They were able to enjoy some pretty cool-looking comic books, and they learned at least a little something about American storytelling and comics culture at the same time.

Quite a few of my students told me that Frank Quietly’s artwork looked “gross.” That actually provided a springboard for a couple of lunchtime conversations about different culture standards for how (masculine) heroes are drawn in comics. Personally I think that pretty much any character (including the women!) from the hugely popular manga Fist of the North Star looks about three times more impossibly muscular than Frank Quietly’s Superman, but my students disagreed.

Is there anything else you feel that teachers should know about this comic?

Not really. There is some violence, but nothing too bloody.

Review: The Tall Tales of Vishnu Sharma

2009-02-19T12:00:04Z

Title: The Tall Tales of Vishnu Sharma

Author: Written by Samit Basu, artwork by Ashish Padlekar.

Format: Comic book mini-series (five issues).

Reviewed by: Elena

Vishnu Sharma is a somewhat apathetic teenager living a normal life. Until one day a trio of magical talking animals follow him home, and inform him that it is his destiny to Save the World. And then Harry Potter shows up and tries to kill him. No, seriously.

Brief Summary:

Vishnu Sharma is a typical teenage nerd who loves video games. He has little interest in the tattered old copy of the Panchatantra that his grandfather hands down to him. One day, however, a group of three animals from the Panchatantra stories approach Vishnu and beg for his help. It turns out that Someone – or Something – is hunting down all of the old stories in the world, and killing them. Vishnu is extremely reluctant to help these strange creatures, until their mysterious enemy attacks him. Now Vishnu is forced to flee, with his animal allies, into the world within the pages of the Panchatantra book.

Impressions and Opinions:

Action-packed, imaginative, and occasionally quite funny, Tall Tales is the story of what happens when modern pop culture icons declare war on the folktale heroes of old. If this sounds a little bit like the plot of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, well, it is. But any similarity between American Gods and Tall Tales starts and ends with that one-sentence description.

The plot of Tall Tales is, on the surface, all about Vishnu’s journey through the worlds of the Panchatantra stories. And Vishnu’s journey is not so much a literal one – frankly, he doesn’t physically travel very far – as it is a personal one. Whereas Tall Tales could easily have gotten caught up in its own high concept, romping through fairytale worlds and having ancient heroes do battle against modern book and cartoon characters, the narrative instead grounds itself by focusing on Vishnu’s character. Vishnu is an everykid, but he’s not just a cipher. He’s a complicated person who has realistic reactions to the insanity that he’s suddenly confronted with. He’s not always brave. He’s not always heroic. In fact, he makes at least one really bad, selfish decision in the third issue of the series. Vishnu doesn’t follow a straight path from everykid to epic hero. Instead, he fails miserably, and the final two issues of the series center around Vishnu’s attempts to correct his mistake and redeem himself.

Although dense with mythology and folklore references, Tall Tales is actually quite accessible to teen readers. This is probably helped by the fact that it is (sometimes incredibly) violent, with plenty of fantastic action sequences that help balance out the more ponderous, philosophical talky scenes. And, to be perfectly honest, the violence gets really violent. The series opens with a graphic murder, after all. There is blood, some gore, and a rather disturbing scene in which a villainous child gets shot in the head. Whether this makes the series more or less appealing to teen readers, well… I guess that depends on the reader. One thing that is definitely appealing about the series, however, is the humor. Samit Basu has a tendency to make some (but thankfully, not all) of his characters devastatingly witty. Basu’s writing will appeal to readers who expect their action heroes to be able to crack jokes at the same time that they’re decapitating evil robots. Padlekar’s colorful, visually inventive artwork also helps make the series a lot of fun to read.

Tall Tales is so much fun to read, in fact, that it’s easy to forget how densely-packed the story is, both in terms of its literary references, and in terms of its complicated narrative and frequent moral twists and turns. For example, here is the way that the Jackal from the Panchatantra introduces himself to Vishnu:

“Jack of all trades, of fine taste and immaculate pedigree, son of old Anubis himself. You’ve met some of my relatives, no doubt – the dog in Two Gents of Verona? The real hero in dear Mr. Forsyth’s slightly overdone thriller? The wily coyote? Or his great-grandfather, the Aztec’s Ueuecoyotl? No? Mr. Kipling’s Tabaqui? Something more contemporary? Very well, the Anti-Christ’s mother in The Omen – my niece.”

For some readers, encountering an uber-referential passage like that is going to throw them right out of the story. For other readers, however – especially teen readers who love to read, are just discovering the joys of metafiction, or who are hungry to know more about history and literature from cultures other than their own – that is exactly the type of passage that is going to suck them right into Vishnu’s tale.

Have you used this comic in your classroom, or in any sort of educational capacity?

No, but I can’t stop thinking of ways that this comic could be used in the classroom. When I read the comic, one of my first thoughts was literally Wow, I would have LOVED to have read this in one of my high school English classes! I can even recall a particular World Literature class I took that Tall Tales would have been a perfect fit for.

However, there are a couple of barriers that prevent Tall Tales from being easily used in the classroom. The first and most unfortunate is the format of the series. Tall Tales is currently only available as a series of five floppy comic books – which, by the way, are now out of print, although still available on ebay and the like. Its publishing company, Virgin Comics, went out of business before Tall Tales was collected into a graphic novel format. All Virgin Comics properties are now owned by Liquid Comics, if I understand things correctly. Unfortunately, Liquid Comics has announced no plans to re-release or collect any of Virgin’s old series, including Tall Tales. Which is a crying shame, because this series deserves to be made more widely available in graphic novel format, and it needs to be on the shelves in bookstores and libraries. This is a great series for teen readers, and it really should be more widely available, in a more accessible format, than it currently is (or may ever be).

The second barrier is that Tall Tales makes ample references to Panchatantra stories that non-Indian students are likely to be unfamiliar with. Some of these references are vital to the plot of the comic, but are never explained for the benefit of unfamiliar readers. There is no hand-holding in Tall Tales. Readers unfamiliar with the Panchatantra will have to do some additional research in order to fully understand the story. Fortunately, the Panchatantra is fairly easy to research. Plenty of versions are available online for free. Furthermore, this apparently frustrating aspect of the comic – that it assumes cultural knowledge that not all readers will have – can actually be turned into a golden teaching opportunity.

The third barrier is that, of course, there’s violence and gore in the series. I could say that Tall Tales isn’t any more violent than most Shakespearean dramas, anything attributed to Homer, or most of your standard high school English class fare. But that would be an unfair comparison. Because there’s a world of difference between reading a text passage describing a violent murder, versus having it presented to the reader as a bloody, gory picture right there on the page. This is definitely a series that may be too violent for more sensitive readers, and teachers should keep that in mind when using this comic in any way.

This would definitely be a challenging comic for a lot of teenagers to read. But challenging in a good way. For non-Indian students, this would be an amazing chance to experience what it’s like to read literature that’s based on an assumed cultural knowledge that they don’t have. Of course that’s difficult and frustrating, but also a powerful lesson to learn. This would be great for any class interested in concepts like cultural bias and demonstrating how that really works, especially since non-Indian students reading The Tall Tales of Vishnu Sharma would have the opposite experience of what usually happens in most English-speaking classrooms, where mostly Dead White Guy literature is taught to students who may not share the culture and experiences that said literature assumes they share.

On a simpler level, Tall Tales can be used to break up the monopoly that Eurocentric fables and myths have in most English classrooms. It can be used to challenge students to expand their cultural horizons, especially if they have to actually do research to understand the Panchatantra references in the comic. In fact, Tall Tales would be an excellent comic to build a “Panchatantra stories” or even a “world myth” research project around. Also, rather than focusing on how “different” or “exotic” the Panchatantra stories in Tall Tales are, students can be asked to look for similarities between Panchatantra stories and European myths, examining the common themes, tropes, and structures that permeate folklore all over the world. Some of the Tall Tales characters, like the Jackal, are meant to be uber-archetypes anyway. It could be fun for students to look for examples of those same character archetypes (i.e. the trickster dog) in other stories from around the world.

Is there anything else you feel that teachers should know about this comic?

Well, there’s still the glaring problem that Tall Tales is only available as a five-issue mini-series, not as a collected graphic novel. Oh, and it’s out of print already, too. I hope and pray that the powers that be at Liquid Comics will someday see fit to release this series in a proper graphic novel format. Tall Tales is bursting with educational potential. And it’s just plain fun to read, too. Seriously, though: in what other comic will you find Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, and the Cheshire Cat in a single panel together?

An online preview of the first issue of the series is available here. Like I said, it can get pretty violent at times. The online preview gives a good idea of the level of gore that appears in the rest of the series. Although, to be fair, the first issue is probably the worst in terms of the level of violence. It’s mostly all uphill from there.

Link: Learning from Comics!

2009-02-13T12:45:35Z

Jeff Parker, guestblogging over at Robot 6, has just posted a wonderful column about the educational value of comics, appropriately titled “I ♥ Learning from Comics“:

“I remember as a kid an old ’50s reprint where Superboy generated a massive amount of static electricity by fashioning a gargantuan glass rod and rubbing a similarly huge silk cloth against it. Many of those stories read as if the writers kept a stack of Popular Science close at hand, and it’s noteworthy that I can’t remember the plot but still remember how Superboy made the electricity he needed. Any young Superman reader would also have a vague understanding of the process that turns carbon into diamond- any time Clark Kent was running low on cash he’d scope around for some charcoal briquets at a cookout and squeeze/heat vision himself up some stones to impress the ladies. The science would usually be fast and loose, but a key connection was still made, and I would have some bit of insight into the physical world.”

Parker also discusses Terry and the Pirates, Prince Valiant, and Xenozoic Tales, as well as overtly “educational” comics like those that teach how DNA works, or what exactly the Federal Reserve does. GT Labs also gets a well-deserved shout-out.

In the comments, readers are already discussing what they’ve learned from reading comics. I have to personally admit that, like a couple of others, I was actually inspired to do my own research into Norse mythology after having read about Thor in ye olde Marvel comics.

Anyway: Thank you, Jeff, for reminding us all how comics can potentially educate us, even when we least expect it.

Review: The Good Neighbors #1: Kin

2009-01-17T21:52:02Z

Comic Title: The Good Neighbors #1: Kin

Comic Author: Holly Black (writing), Ted Neifeh (art)

Format: Graphic Novel

Reviewed by: Jessica

When Rue’s mother disappears, her father is arrested as her suspected murderer. But Rue’s not sure her mother’s dead, and when she starts seeing faeries everywhere – fairies who talk to her like she’s one of them – she’s even less sure.

Brief Summary: Rue’s mother’s been missing for a few weeks now, and when the police show up to arrest her father, a college professor, for the mysterious death of one of his students, they also charge him with murdering Rue’s mother. But Rue’s been seeing faeries lately, and soon enough she learns that her mother is one of them – making Rue a faerie, too. That would be enough for any teenage girl to deal with, but her mother’s father is very interested in waging war against the humans – humans who don’t even know they’re about to be attacked.

Impressions and Opinions:
This is a pretty standard faerie story – girl’s mother disappears, girl discovers her mother is a faerie, girl must stop the war between faeries and mankind. That said, it’s a faerie story told well. Rue is smart and resourceful, but not overly-so – she feels like a legitimate teenage girl. The twists and turns are not unexpected, but still nicely creepy. If you like faeries, you should like this book.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the art, however. Partially that’s a matter of personal preference, but I also found the dark, moody, gothic art hard to read. Characters were difficult to distinguish, and sometimes the facial expressions didn’t match up with the text.

Have you used this comic in your classroom, or in any sort of educational capacity?
I haven’t, but I would definitely recommend it to high school students looking for a somewhat dark story. I’d love to hear what younger readers thought of it!

Is there anything else you feel that teachers should know about this comic?
There’s some language and mild sexual imagery – nothing a 16-year-old won’t have seen every day on TV. It might be a little scary for younger readers.

Project: Word-Bubble Blanks

2008-12-21T10:07:11Z

This is a fun and super-easy project that I’ve done with EFL learners. My students were Japanese kids between the ages of twelve and fifteen, although I’m sure that this basic idea could be modified to work for any age group studying any language.

You’ve probably heard of this one before, too. It’s easy: Just pick a comic strip, blank out the word bubbles, hand the “blanked” strip to your students, and let them fill in the word bubbles with their own funny, creative dialogue.

Also, this wasn’t my idea. I can’t even remember where I first came across this idea, as it’s been posted to many forums and “teacher resources” websites before. But I do remember that somehow, somewhen, I actually picked up on the idea of using Penny Arcade strips from Karen Healey. And Penny Arcade strips really do work beautifully, since they tend to feature lush, highly expressive cartoony artwork, which in turn inspires some pretty creative results from students.

Here are two strips that worked well for me.

Original Strip

I’ve admittedly never tried this exercise with other strips before, but I imagine that Peanuts strips, or certain strips from Calvin and Hobbes, would work equally as well.

Now this would be the part where I post some of the best results from what my students have done with their strips. Unfortunately, I can’t get any of my Japanese students to give me permission to post their strips on this here blog, because they’re shy. I’m working on it, though. They were the ones who taught me how to perfect the art of puppy-dog eyes in the first place.

Suggest a Comic for Review!

2008-12-10T07:56:48Z

Are you a teacher, student, or tutor who would like to see a certain comic reviewed here, but don’t have the time to write a thorough review yourself? That’s okay! Just leave a comment on this post to suggest more comics for us to review. Please include the comic title, the names of the authors/artists, and any other information that you think would be helpful to us.

Suggest away!