Comic from reading education: confluences, questions and challenges for the research

Comic from reading education: confluences, questions and challenges for the research

Introduction

Research on comics has experienced a notable boom in recent decades, as can be seen in the large number of academic contributions under the form of theses, book chapters, monographs, articles in journals, communications and papers at conferences and symposia that are produced annually. As an example, Gracia-Lana (2020) states that thirty doctoral theses on comics were defended in Spain between 1996 and 2006, and notes a dramatic increase in the following decade with 87 theses, which represents a 290% increase in research. However, these figures cannot be interpreted out of context: as Gracia-Lana points out, the entry into force of Royal Decree 99/2011 and the consequent removal and adaptation of the old doctoral programmes explains the general increase in the number of defences in the period. Nevertheless, given that the defence of the doctoral thesis is the culmination of a research career that has been going on for years, the increase in the number of theses can be seen as a representative example of the academic community’s recent interest in comics as an object of study.

This progressive attention is also found in Spanish universities under the form of a series of initiatives aimed at including comics in higher education, whether through congresses and conferences, seminars, courses and postgraduate studies, such as the Master’s Degree in Comics and Reading Education (Universitat de València), the Master’s Degree in Graphic Medicine (Universidad Internacional de Andalucía) or the creation of university chairs such as the pioneering Chair in Comic Studies (Fundación SM-Universitat de València, 2019).

However, although the socio-cultural and academic vision of comics has changed considerably and the assumption of their educational possibilities in different disciplines is almost commonplace, research into comics still faces many problems. The above figures show there is still a long way to go in terms of academic research, as different voices have claimed the still limited impact of the ninth art in the university environment and have called for its inclusion in the comprehensive training of students from different spheres (Larrañaga & Yubero, 2017).

In the field of language teaching, several researchers have claimed its relevance in the teaching of second languages (Paré & Soto-Pallarés, 2017) and especially Spanish as a foreign language (Catalá, 2007; Del Rey, 2013). On the other hand, from the perspective of the didactics of literature, a series of specialists have pointed out its outstanding role in the generation and consolidation of reading habits and the development of different competences, above all, reading and literary, but also cultural and artistic, social and civic and intercultural competences (Ibarra & Ballester, 2015, 2020; Rovira-Collado & Ortiz, 2015; Segovia, 2012).

However, despite the undoubted attractiveness of comics for students as a reading possibility and their potential for teaching and learning curricular content at all educational levels, their presence in libraries, particularly university libraries, and in classrooms is almost anecdotal compared to other possibilities (Gallo, 2017; Ibarra & Ballester, 2020).

For this reason, our work aims at offering a critical overview of research on comics and the training of readers by analysing the academic speech generated around this object of study. In this vein, we review the concomitances and convergences between comics and the teaching of literature and literature for children and young people, and reflect on the consequences, debates and prejudices that their interrelation has generated in relation to their academic and social status. Therefore, this paper critically analyses the main problems that cut across research into comics, derived, among others, from the complexity of its definition, its epistemological location and its ascription to mass culture and the children's audience within the framework of reading and literary education.

Wealth of terminology, identity and origin of the object of study

Comic, comic strip or the more recent syntagma of graphic novel, together with the expressions used in other languages such as tebeo, bandé dessiné, quadrinhos or fumetti, frequently appear as terms whose meaning is essential to delimit in any contribution on the subject. The emergence of labels and the absence of clear equivalences between the forms used according to geographical origin is the starting point for a large number of works, which have been approached as an approximation to the advantages of comics from a specific field of knowledge. Next, after the legitimisation of the selected nomenclature, the alleged necessary delimitation of the object of study is undertaken, which is usually articulated on the basis of the iteration of the same sources of authority and identical fragments of their defining proposals, presented in a decontextualised manner and in some cases with errors relating to the primary bibliographical references that will later endure through successive approximations. An example of this is the frequent repetition of the label “sequential art” used by Scott McCloud (1993) in a large number of academic works without any questioning of the methodological and theoretical limitations pointed out by Vilches (2019a).

In this research, out aim does not lie in unravelling the terminological oscillations or in offering a definition that aspires to universality and allows its transfer to all the fields from which the study of comics is approached, as this would not only be doomed to failure (Groensteen, 2006), given the singularity of the object of study, but would also oblige us to dwell on the issue of its origin (Kunzle, 1973). For our part, we are interested in highlighting how the alleged precision requirement leads once again to the disquisition about what the comic is and what it is not and - by extension - of linking its characteristic features to the dating of its birth. The continuing debate on its conceptualisation, origin and nomenclature has an impact on its perception in the academic sphere and on a certain ambiguity regarding its socio-cultural consideration (Meskin, 2007). This way, they remain constant in comic research through the repetition of arguments, definitions and polemics from different areas of knowledge with few concrete results for the configuration of a solid and rigorous academic discourse, as well as an academic community that can tackle its study from collaborative perspectives.

From this point of view, the study of comics seems to relive the same phases through which research into children's and young people's literature has passed, since, as García Padrino (1998, p. 102) has already pointed out, based on the quotation from Baumgärtner (1974, p. 11): “Anyone who intends to write or talk about literature for young people will find themselves in the funny situation of having to explain beforehand what the object to be dealt with is”. Indeed, practically all works - even doctoral theses on children’s and young adult literature - seemed to consider a first defining heading as an inexorable imperative until recently.

This concomitance of conceptual disquisition and the eagerness to date the origin reveals a new convergence between comics and children’s and young adult literature: the constant controversy regarding their own identity, based on the difficulties of their location and status. Thus, Altarriba (2011) points out how many authors refer to comics as a genre or sub-genre and try to frame them as just another section of literature, just as Cerrillo (2001) claims children’s and young adult literature (LIJ, as per its Spanish acronym) is categorised as a sub-genre of literature. For this reason, López-Valero et al. (2017) in his study on children’s literature questions the legitimacy of a space of its own and a specific denomination, and Altarriba (2011) claims the independence of comics as “a specific form of expression, a perfectly differentiated medium of communication, like cinema, painting or literature” (p. 9).

In the case of LIJ, research comes from the field of literary didactics, but if we delve deeper into comics, we find approaches from different spheres such as philology, translation, journalism, communication studies, semiotics or the different specific didactics. This alleged richness and perspectivism in the approach to the object of study actually leads to a fragmentation and dispersion of knowledge in the different means of transferring research, resulting in many difficulties in accessing sources and generating epistemological convergences.

Among the conditioning factors that undermine the construction of a unitary academic speech on comics, Matly (2017) highlights the absence of research networks or institutional links in higher education, the lack of specific university training and a research career designed for this purpose, the isolation of researchers in their own institution and the lack of indexed journals specialising in comics in Spanish. Undoubtedly, this last factor also impacts the criteria for evaluating the research output of academics based on the predominance of the impact factor according to the Journal Citation Reports.

It’s a child's thing: on the model receiver and the perversion of childhood

In Más visto que el tebeo, Pons (2003a) ironically addressed the high presence of expressions with a pejorative connotation for tebeo and resorted to the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española to explain their origin, as follows:

Cartoon:

1. Fable, tale or brief account of an adventure or event of little importance.

2. A series of drawings constituting a comic, fantasy, adventure, etc. story, with or without text, which may be a simple strip in the press, one or several pages or a book.

Comic:

1. A series or sequence of vignettes that tells a story.

2. Book or magazine containing comics.

Tebeo:

From TBO, the name of a Spanish magazine founded in 1917.

1. Children’s or young adult publication whose subject matter is developed in a series of drawings.

2. A series of adventures told under the form of graphic comics.

In tebeo, the “childish or juvenile” characteristic is highlighted as a distinguishing feature. According to Pons (2003), this is the seed of the comparison and the beginning of a problem that persists to the present day. An approach to its evolution in Spain allows us to see how the comic book generically adopts the term tebeo due to its identification with the magazine and maintains its orientation, not exclusively, as throughout the first third of the century it will maintain its role in the adult press, but mainly towards the children’s public until the 1970s (Altarriba, 2001; Martín, 2000, 2003; Pons, 2007). According to Guiral (2019), this period - from the 1940s to the 1960s - is characterised by a conception of the comic strip as “a form of distraction, above all for boys and girls of the middle or lower classes, it was not an art form, and could hardly be considered a means of communication (that would come later)”. We should also remember the role of the Franco dictatorship and censorship for the imposition of a marked ideology that generated, among other consequences, a significant delay in the reception of originals from beyond its borders and conditioned the production of comics in accordance with the regime’s own principles.

From the identification of comics with children and young readers comes the concern about exposure during these stages to complex themes or those belonging to the adult world, such as violence or sex, which comics seem to favour. The flagship of this staunch diatribe on the direct link between reading comics the recipient’s perversion towards the paths of violence and delinquency is to be found in the American context of the 1950s, with Wertham’s Seduction of the innocent (1954). However, despite the relevance given to this work, works such as Hajdu’s (2018) contextualise that in the approval of the Comics code and the consequent disappearance of entire genres converge factors such as the rise of conservative and traditional American thought, linked to the social transformations of the inter-war period and World War II, which paradoxically confronts the first initiatives of academic study and analysis of comics in the school environment. Thus, Hajdu gathers different processes to explain the implementation of Comics code censorship, such as the actions undertaken by conservative sectors of the educational community, burning comics, letters to the editor or concerned voices such as the magazine Ladiesi Home Journal in 1909.

Are we parents criminally neglecting our children, or have we not stopped to think about the question of continuing to allow them to suffer the detriments of the vacuous and vulgar “comic” supplement of the Sunday paper? [...] we are allowing colossal extraordinary stupidity and an influence of a repulsive and often depraved vulgarity to continue to exist right in front of our eyes and in our own homes that is rapidly taking on the dimensions of what cannot but be considered a crime against our children (Hajdu, 2018, p. 19).

The above quotation is an emblematic example of the restrictive conception that, despite the contextual differences and the numerous socio-cultural changes that took place after the turn of the decade, persists to this day of childhood and adolescence as periods in need of protection from the pernicious effects of uncritical exposure to a comic book, but also of the reader as a passive subject in which ideology infiltrates unconsciously through reading practices.

Although the brief historical overview outlined provides keys to understanding the attribution, the exclusive assimilation of comics to children as a model receiver also implies an immobile, homogenous and reductionist conception of childhood and youth. According to this, children assume a static category without historical differences in which all individuals grouped under this term share a series of characteristics, apparently inherent to the date of birth and requiring products of low quality, given their deficits with respect to the normative model of the adult. Likewise, the acceptance of alleged dangers linked to the representation of certain issues implies the immersion in the dictatorship of moral criteria or values as the only strategy for accessing a work and the supposed pedagogical value that any product aimed at a children’s audience must contain to the detriment of its quality, as Cerrillo (2001), among others, claimed in the case of LIJ, which persists to the present day.

In this sense, comics share with children’s literature a history of marginalisation articulated on the basis of identification with the model receiver and the products aimed at consumption, which in the case of the latter has even led to the denial of its existence. According to Cerrillo (2001), until well into the twentieth century, different voices have defended the poor literary quality of children’s books or, in the best of cases, the lowering of standards compared to adult literature that it implies, and therefore, its consideration as a minor genre or even the deprivation of its literary status, given its supposed pedagogical purpose.

The break from the identification of comics as a product aimed exclusively at children or, by extension, at people with little reading skills, began with the works published in the 1950s and 1960s. The incorporation of the adult perspective was quickly taken up by the first theorists of the comic strip in France and enshrined in the seminal work of Boltanski (1975), who established a field of the comic strip from a Bourdieusian approach. Change is slow and evolutionary, starting with the transformation of the initial direction for children and young adults into a conception for all ages from which its adult evolution is projected (Morgan, 2003) and which has had a differentiated evolution in the case of Spanish comics, which until the disappearance of the Franco dictatorship had serious problems in incorporating adult reading due to the limitations of censorship (Sanchis, 2012), despite the fact that it gradually assumed more adult postulates in children’s publications.

The exhibition Bande dessinnée et figuration narrative at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1967, followed by the exhibition v in New York in 1968 and the subsequent exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London were key to change comic’s consideration. Also essential in this evolution is the role played by the construction of the speech around the so-called graphic novel and its openness to themes and possibilities aimed at all types of readers, especially adult readers, as well as the legitimisation of its advantages in the construction of a fruitive literary experience for its reader, the basis for the development of critical thought, as we shall see below.

From marginalisation to status

Altarriba (2011) describes the comic strip as “a singular object of study, to some extent a unique case due to the scant interest it has aroused until recent times” (p. 9) and attributes its exclusion and undervaluation from different fields to different reasons. According to this researcher, the satirical tone and caricatural tendency of the nineteenth century, the link with the children’s public, the moralising notes of the twentieth century, its popularisation between 1939 and 1960, the lack of knowledge of its key elements and the unsuccessful attempts to classify it using parameters from other disciplines would explain the “intellectual orphanage” to which it has been doomed.

From a sociological perspective, Fernández-Paz stresses that the comic suffers from “a certain deficit in terms of legitimacy” (2003, p. 72), expressed through the profile of its supposed model reader, to borrow the words of J. Antón:

the conventional narrative reader’s opinion of - amateur or occasional - science fiction readers (or comics, I might add) is curious: he sees them as freaks and even wonders, secretly, what other intimate deviations might not accompany this strange external trait of their character. Being a science fiction reader [or comics, I keep adding] is still suspect in this country. On the one hand, it seems to indicate a certain dumbing down of sensibility - there is so much really important to read! - on the other, a dangerous trend towards escapism (Fernández-Paz, 2003, p. 72).

The quotation reiterates two key prejudices about comics; firstly, it draws two typologies of readers differentiated by their preferences, narrative versus comics, and depicts the latter as “weirdo”, a social representation repeated through other mass cultural products. In this sense, comics are the focus for the segregation of recipients and the construction of readers characterised by a role differentiated from traditional narratives.

The second notion is inferred from the ironic exclamation “there is so much really important to read”, a regret that confronts all that immense wealth of relevant reading to the pages of a comic book. Both notes suggest the existence of a hierarchy of works, in which the comic would be on the bottom rungs, an arrangement that refers to Even-Zohar’s theory of polysystems and his conception of literature as a stratified system, articulated around the opposition between centre and periphery.

On the other hand, the ascription of comics to the category of mere entertainment refers to another problem of urgent resolution in the 21^st century, that is, the understanding of reading as a useless activity insofar as it is linked to the non-productive practices of human beings. According to this perspective, reading comics, like literary reading, is understood as an activity linked to leisure time, just a hobby with an exclusively recreational or escapist purpose for the individual and, therefore, the argument that legitimises its exclusion in the educational system is the distraction it implies in comparison with other supposedly relevant reading, as we have analysed through the theory of polysystems.

Underlying this restrictive limitation is a neoliberal perspective of education, articulated on the basis of capitalist criteria and mercantilist values in which reading, and especially literary reading, is relegated from the offer of university degrees, given that it does not generate direct benefits or tangible products. This way Nussbaum explains the trend towards the withdrawal of humanities and arts in primary, secondary, technical and university education in a large number of nations of the world due to their reduction to “useless ornaments at a time when nations must cut all useless things in order to maintain their competitiveness in the global market” (2016, p. 14).

In contrast to the Horatian motto docere et delectare, comic detractors as an emblem of time wasting exhibit the bases of a neoliberal perspective of education, understood in terms of economic profitability and the prominence given to didacticism and moralising pedagogy as the only justification for the time spent reading them. This way, reading’s transformative power on the individual and, therefore, its impact on the different spheres of public life is forgotten, in addition to its undeniable role in the integral development of the human being, which comics play to perfection.

In this sense, in Spain we can trace the presence of comics in the formation of the reader, particularly in the juvenile stage, but associated, even by the subject himself, as a non-canonical or marginal reading, carried out outside the school institution (Ballester & Ibarra, 2019).

However, for some time now, there has been a remarkable change in its consideration, as evidenced by the growing attention in the general media, under the form of articles, reviews or reading recommendations, as well as in specialised research. The relevance comics are gaining in Spain is also reflected in other elements, such as the emergence of prizes awarded by different institutions and the increase in the number of fairs, meetings and exhibitions. In this sense, the creation of the National Comic Prize in 2007, awarded in its first edition to Hechos, dichos, ocurrcias y andanzas de Bardín el Superralista by Francesc Capdevila, Max. The institution of the award places the comic among the National Prizes awarded by the Ministry of Culture, thus contributing to visibility and overcoming prejudices that exclude comic readers from the cultural circuit.

Similarly, libraries and bookshops, as well as shopping centres and e-commerce shops, are becoming more prominent. In Spain, there has been a slow evolution since the end of the dictatorship: after the emergence of a serialised publication model in magazine format, clearly aimed at an adult audience, there has been an abrupt change towards the franchised publication of material of Japanese and American origin, preferably, which will lead to the birth of an alternative industry, based on the publication of authors in graphic novel format (Pons, 2007). The introduction of books in the field of comics in the mid-1990s thanks to pioneering publishers such as Edicions de Ponent, Inrevés and Sins Entido laid the foundations for a timid commitment to a new form of conception of comics, adult and with a clear avant-garde and minority vocation (Pons, 2003b), which would evolve towards a wider scope with the beginning of the 21^st century and the generalisation of the graphic novel as the main publication format and with the adult public as the main target.

Vilches (2019b) highlighted 2007 as a milestone in the growth of this market aimed at all kinds of adult audiences for two reasons: the creation of the National Prize and the publication in Astiberri of María y yo by Miguel Gallardo and Arrugas by Paco Roca. Both works were public and critical successes that favoured popular acceptance of the shift in Spanish comics towards new social and political themes. Whilst Paracuellos, by Carlos Giménez, was a pioneer in the introduction of historical memory in the 1970s, the works by Gallardo and Roca bring the reader closer to what would later be known as graphic medicine and open up the range of possibilities towards a conception of non-fiction comics, among which graphic journalism stands out.

However, the use of the term graphic novel in the previously defined sense has generated a certain amount of controversy, as can be seen in the growing bibliography (Barrero, 2008; Gálvez, 2008; García, 2010, 2011; Ibáñez, 2007 or Trabado, 2013). In summary, Gómez-Salamanca and Rom-Rodríguez (2012) classify the ways of approaching graphic novels into two main perspectives: culturalist and integrative. In these researchers’ opinion, the culturalist perspective plays an essential role in works of a theoretical and informative nature and in the general media, and it understands the graphic novel as an artistic movement, of which Campbell, Gálvez and García would form part. The authors and works that participate in this conception share the aim of legitimising comics as a valid vehicle of artistic expression and a cultural manifestation in its own right. For this reason, they opt for the aforementioned terms as a reflection of the new conception and, at the same time, as a sign of the break with other more popular forms of comics such as children's magazines and superhero comics. For its part, the integrating perspective brings researchers such as Pons and Barrero together and in based on the conception of the comic as a valid cultural vehicle in its own right and would consider the appeal to the nomenclature “graphic novel” as a strategy to vindicate its cultural legitimacy to be unnecessary.

Prejudices about comics in the training of readers

Among the dangers linked to reading comics is the concern about its drift towards the illiteracy of its readers, already denounced in American studies from the 1940s, such as the aforementioned text by Wertham (1954), for example, but whose arguments are still used and perpetuated as valid. The argument is based on several elements: firstly, on the supposed simplicity of comics based on the prominence of the image to the detriment of the text, and secondly, on the assimilation of comics as a low-quality product, given its target audience of children and their abilities. According to this perspective, the preference for comics would indicate the absence of reading skills typical of a competent reader and would be an option for those who cannot understand or enjoy the great canonical works, and therefore, by not being able to access the upper levels, would be doomed to reading comics as the only possibility of access to contemporary reading practices.

However, these prejudices linked to the predominance of the image to the detriment of the prominence of print as a mark of high culture forget the role that reading comics has played in shaping the imagination of several generations of children and adolescents, some of whom are currently responsible for the reading and literary education of schoolchildren (Ballester & Ibarra, 2019). For example, we refer to the line of research on reading autobiography as a way of exploring the role of certain readings in the configuration of identity developed by Petit (2016), among others.

They also omit its function as an element of communication and socialisation of today’s citizens, users of mass culture and consumers of its referents and, consequently, in the development of the intertext and literary competence of the recipients. We refer, for example, to their relationships with other products derived from the cultural film industry, such as films, cartoons or series, through which consumers establish relationships with different characters, sagas and themes, as can be seen in the success of superheroes.

They are also based on a false opposition between comic-book reading and literary reading, which is not resolved in a dichotomous way, as readers choose different possibilities according to their interests, preferences and needs of the moment, and in no way are they mutually exclusive or immutable. Let us recall Pennac’s famous rights of the reader formulated in Comme un roman (1992) among which is the right to read anything, based on the power of the receiver to select his readings without the need for constant justification or social legitimation. Indeed, Rodari’s warning about the ways of making children hate literature, among which he already pointed out as an extraordinary way of generating aversion to reading the proposition of an exclusionary choice between a comic book and a book.

We are therefore faced with a speech constructed on the basis of commonplaces that are already outdated in literary didactic research, as for some time now there have been complaints of the underlying elitism in the configuration of a classroom canon structured solely on the basis of works known as classics, to the detriment of other possibilities of contemporary culture closer to the reading interests of model recipients, and the opening up of the canon to other voices, genres, texts, titles, themes and readings has been called for as a key strategy for the development of reading and literary skills and the discovery of pleasure in reading (Ibarra & Ballester, 2020).

Nor is it acceptable from the point of view of literary didactics research that reading an image implies a lower reading competence. In fact, the comic appeals a model reader who must necessarily become actively involved in the construction of meaning and poses a reading challenge different from the merely textual. This way, it promotes interpretative visual reading practices that require the reader to know the mechanisms and means and the strategies of composition of a work, while at the same time influencing metaliterary and literary reflection and extending the boundaries of its intertext. It thus promotes multimodal reading and therefore has an impact on the new and multiple literacies that citizens require, because through combinations, games, intertextuality, metaliterary reflection and experimentation with regard to text, illustration and paratexts, it develops the necessary competences for reading in the receiver.

Furthermore, comics awaken students’ interest as a reading practice that allows them to overcome traditional assumptions in the configuration of the classroom canon, but also allows them to strengthen their role as active receivers in the construction of meaning and to have an impact on their overall development through openness to different voices, genres and themes. They can also impact the productive side of literature and overcome identifications between reading and passive activity through the production of texts by students. However, the summary enumeration of these benefits and possibilities in no way implies advocating the mere inclusion of a comic book in the classroom as a panacea to solve the multiple problems in the interpretation and production of complex texts, the development of communicative, reading or literary competence or the formation of stable reading habits, but it does imply that a selection of quality comics and within the framework of a studied didactic planning can contribute decisively to the achievement of this purpose.

For this reason, researchers such as Rovira-Collado and Ortiz (2015) claim the need for an artistic canon of comics that allows teachers to bring quality titles to the classroom. In this process, the mediator’s training is undoubtedly a key element.

Conclusions

Research into comics and reading and literary education offers an extraordinary opportunity for the education of competent readers, from the expansion of their intertext and the connection with products of the mass culture in which they are immersed as strategies for the development of their reading competence and the discovery of the reading experience as a free and pleasing act. They also allow progress to be made in blurring the boundaries between everyday and academic literate practices and generate meaningful learning for the learner. However, their prominence in the classroom requires research to deconstruct stereotypical views uncritically transmitted about the supposed problems of their inclusion and, of course, teacher involvement and training for their implementation in the classroom dynamics.

As for the necessary renewal of the school canon, comics offer a range of possibilities for the development of reading and literary skills, as they are very attractive to pupils and allow progress to be made in deconstructing perceptions of reading as a compulsory activity, linked to titles based on the predominance of text.

However, despite the assumption of the pedagogical advantages of comics, especially for reading and literary education and their inclusion in the educational curriculum, their reading is still far from being a widespread practice in many classrooms. It should be noted that the creation of a canon requires knowledge of the works to be selected, otherwise it can lead to various problems such as pedagogical utilitarianism or the inappropriateness of the works to the context. As for comics, the lack of knowledge of quality titles or prejudices such as those listed in this work can mean their exclusion from academic and classroom speech and, therefore, the loss of an aesthetic, playful and pleasurable, meaningful and transformative reading experience for students.

References

Author notes

* Corresponding author: noelia.ibarra@uv.es