And All That Jazz (Clearing the Queue)

Following is a collection from a wide range of comics/cartoon related items.

… Funny thing is, that isn’t even my worst flying experience in recent memory. And the indignities of air travel are no longer relegated to when you’re on the plane. Oh, no. Try getting into a philosophical debate with Burbank airport security about whether strawberry-and-rose-geranium jam is a liquid or a solid…

A while back New Yorker cartoon editor Emma Allen gathered a gallery of airplane related cartoons.

Which reminded me that it had been some time since I checked the Saturday Evening Post’s weekly collection of that magazine’s Cartoon Collection sorted by topic.

**********

I have oodles of things I have to do today so to make you feel you didn’t waste your time clicking your way to my blog, here are the ten openings — and I think there’s a closing or two in here as well — to cartoon shows I enjoyed watching when I was a kid. We’re not talking about enjoying the show itself, although I usually did. But here are my ten fave openings, starting with Number Ten: Mighty Mouse Playhouse (1955)…

Mark Evanier lists and presents his ten favorite animated cartoon show openings. He later lists another ten and then another five. While there are some gems in the latter listings the first list of ten is the best.

**********

Utah has ordered Craig Thompson’s Blankets removed from schools statewide.

The State Board of Education released a list of 13 book titles that have been banned in all Utah public schools.  This is per a state law that requires all districts to remove books that have been banned in at least three districts for being “objective sensitive material,” which means it is considered “pornographic or indecent.”  The school must “dispose” of the works and cannot sell or distribute them…

Johanna Draper Carlson at ICv2 reports Utah issuing a state-wide school ban of Craig Thompson’s Blankets, a coming of age graphic novel whose protagonist struggles with a crisis of faith among other things.

**********

In running an after-school club for students learning English on the island of Mauritius, I always strive to bring interactive, engaging, hands-on activities to the learners under my care. And as a National Geographic Certified Educator, I use nature and environmental literacy to teach the language. Each lesson includes creative art as part of the learning process. When I first started teaching, I had no idea that what began as a fun activity for my students would become an assessment tool using comic strips.

My students and I started a project last year to learn about the effects of plastic pollution on the environment and human health along with how to take concrete action to reduce, reuse, and recycle, or 3R, plastics. One of the activities was to create a mini-story about being a 3Rs ocean superhero, using a six-box comic strip.

Danielle Zélin at Edutopia tells of bringing out students’ creativity with six panel comic strips.

Comic strips can be used to assess many areas of learning. As a TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) and eco-educator, I have used them as a way to assess my students’ understanding. The process of using creative arts as an assessment tool not only is an interesting and engaging way for the students to be assessed without test pressure, but also gives them the space and agency to express and transfer their creativity on a canvas.

**********

I was a devoted funny-page reader when I was younger…

But as I greedily read pages of comics that, in retrospect, could be described as “funny, technically,” there were still a few that never clicked. At first, I’d give them my best furrowed stare, made even more infuriating by my parents laughing over my shoulder at something that seemed, to me, to be complete nonsense. I understand that not all comic strips were aimed at 15-and-unders, but put them in their own little “grown-up” square, or tuck them in next to the crossword or something.

Eli Yudin at Cracked disrespectfully lists 5 Funny-Page Comics Intended for Mature Audiences Only.

#5 “Look, I understand it’s very important and award-winning and so on and so forth. But to a child, it’s in the comics, so it’s supposed to be for you.” … “I mean, come on! You can’t even get past the first panel without knowing what a “master class” is, the word “rigorously” and the concept of Socratic dialogue.”

#4 “It also frequently had every kid’s favorite thing: footnotes.”

#3 “Unfortunately, … a desire to see a battle play out in less than a three-month timespan, instead of being drip-fed … over the course of an entire school year, made me hate it.

#2 “Basically, it’s the exact opposite of erotica.”

#1 “When I was a kid, I assumed that Zippy the Pinhead would make sense to me when I was older. It does not.”

Top