Dog carcass in alley this morning
tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face.
So begins Watchmen, the 1986 graphic novel by writer Alan Moore and artist David Gibbons that was a landmark publication for the comic book industry.
Along with Maus, a graphic novel by Art Spiegelman that also came out in '86, Watchmen was the first comic to launch comic books into the mainstream literary dialogue, said Kevin Haworth, visiting professor of English at Ohio University who teaches a course about graphic novels.
(Maus and Watchmen are) not really aesthetically connected Haworth said, but I think we would not be where we are now without both of them simultaneously.
Tomorrow, a film version of Watchmen, directed by Zack Snyder (300), opens nationwide, and the film's premiere coincides with increased academic uses of the graphic novel at OU.
Graphic novels combine the fundamentals of a comic - images, bubble dialogue, gridlock space - with the ambitious length and sprawl of a novel. Watchmen is an example of this dichotomy, Haworth said.
The reason Watchmen was so interesting when it came out was because it was a graphic novel that was also a comic he said. It used the characters and trappings of a comic: the superheroes
the flat
bright colors
all the sorts of things you associate with the kind of semi-disposable comic. But it used all these things to create a work of scale and ambition that asked people to think about what comics were really about.
Some industry experts credit A Contract with God by Will Eisner as the first graphic novel, because he was one of the first who imagined selling comics like books, meaning in bookstores on shelves as opposed to comic book shops in cardboard boxes. Eisner, who also wrote The Spirit, has been credited for coining the term graphic novel
Haworth said.
Graphic novels in academia
Haley Duschinski and Loren Lybarger, professors of anthropology and religion at OU, respectively, both use graphic novels in their courses.
Duschinski uses Maus, which focuses on the Holocaust, and Palestine, a 1996 graphic novel by journalist Joe Sacco about his experiences in the West Bank, for her Anthropology of Violence and Peace course. She said the graphic novel format helps her students better understand the cultures they study.
They give the reader a different kind of entry point into the cultural context
Duschinski said. It gives you a different kind of way of identifying with people who are living in situations of violence or people who are victims of violence.
Stefan Barber, a senior studying political science, is a student in Duschinski's class. Barber said the use of Palestine offered a new perspective on the region with its use of images.
You actually get to witness (Sacco's) experience
Barber said, rather than through a text-based piece where you just get to hear about it
where the story is told to you.
Lybarger uses Persepolis, a graphic novel about the Iranian revolution, in his Intro to Islam course. Lybarger said it helps him humanize Muslims and the Islamic faith.
Those of us who ... teach Islam in the post-9/11 context
our fundamental objective is to humanize Muslims
