Conclusion: The Great Responsibility of a Comics Pedagogy

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Educated Bitches: An Interview with Kelly Sue DeConnick

In this chapter comic creator, Kelly Sue DeConnick, discusses how the possibilities of learning and pushing against patriarchal assumptions that ground comics embraces an ethos of “noncompliance” as referenced within her series Bitch Planet.DeConnick highlights how comics serve as pedagogical mediums as well as tools for scrutiny.

Misunderstanding Comics

In this chapter, Jonathan Flowers offers an important critique of some of the foundational tenets of comics studies and questions the epistemological grounding on which our pedagogies stand. By exploring how Scott McCloud’s work has shaped our field, Flowers deftly illustrates that this field is constantly moving and evokes a call for new voices and pedagogies. He does this through interlinking power and visibility with politics and race within the field of comics studies.

The Uncanny Power of Comic Books: Achieving Interdisciplinary Learning through Superhero Comic Books

This chapter sets out to examine how superhero comic books can be used to teach students science literacies and concepts such as genetics, along with ELA content such as creative fiction writing in an after-school comic book club. In reviewing existing literature on the subject of interdisciplinary teaching and Vygotsky’s Theory of Mediated Action, this chapter utilizes a qualitative approach to studying STEM-focused comics production. By exploring how students made, analyzed, and integrated science literacies, this chapter offers key insights for teachers.

In the Cards: Collaboration and Comics-Making in the Traditional English Classroom

Linking theory and practice, Frederik Byrn Køhlert and Nick Sousanis offer myriad examples of what their co-teaching approach with and through comics looks like. Sharing prompts, students’ work, and their pedagogical decisions, Køhlert and Sousanis give readers a peek under the hood of what their comics pedagogy looks like within traditional English settings.

Comic Art Research: Achievements, Shortcomings, and Remedies

In his review of the burgeoning Comics Studies field, John Lent reminds us that there are tremendous areas of scholarship still waiting to be excavated. His is a vision of further growth through interdisciplinary scholarship. In particular, we emphasize the need to understand political economy and intellectual property as tied to comics production and labor. These are big areas of comics studies that fundamentally shape what is taught, under what conditions, and for what purposes.