Educational comics...know of any?

[Black Kitty]

On Friday I have to do a presentation on possible teaching ideas for my English class and I've chosen comics. I basically know what points I want to hit at but I figure it would be really helpful if a list of comics could be provided to my classmates.

I already have a list in my head but I know there are more comics out there then the ones I read. I also probably missed a few good ones. So basically, if you know of a good comic that I can use in an educational setting I would love to hear from you. If you can, tell me what it's about so I can get a general feel of it.

For those of you who aren't sure, I consider classroom appropriate to be comics that do not have nudity, excessive violence/sexuality, profanity, and promotes hate (we have hate laws in Canada.)

Here are the ones I'm thinking of mentioning in no particular order:

- Owly
- Maus
- A Contract with God
- When the Wind Blows
- Yotsuba&!
- Short Program
- Azumanga Daioh
- Calvin and Hobbes
- TinTin
- The Voices of a Distant Star (I'm iffy about this.)
- Copper
- The Chelation Kid

Comics I haven't read but either own or have heard of that I think may be appropriate to use in a classroom:

- Baron The Cat Returns
- Metropolis

And yes, I'll even take webcomic suggestions but I perfer print suggestions since they're more portable then the Internet. I've been posting this message at other forums and if I get enough responses, I'm hoping to compile a list of comics that people online have recommended.

It's just that most likely the people in my class don't really read comics so having a list would help them get started if they're interested in using comics in the classroom.

[Cortland]

This one comes to mind.

[MixedMyth]

Leave us not forget School Spirit!

[Skylark King]

Maus is an excellent, excellent choice. The real difficulty of doing comics as lit is that so many of the high quality stuff is also not appropriate for a classroom. I had a similar conversation with a friend of mine who teaches English at a community college and came up with a nice list.

V for Vendetta
Astro City
Our Cancer Year
The Tragical Comedy Or Comical Tragedy Of Mr. Punch
Goldfish
Pedro and Me
Maus
A Contract with God, and Other Tenement Stories
Kingdom Come

We also thought about Y: The Last Man, Fables, The Invisibles, Transmetropolitan, Strangers in Paradise and Preacher...

Just about all of those are "not fit" for the pre-college classroom (and thusly appropriate, by my philosophy.) There are some good finds in there, though. And some of the stuff is bad, but no worse than a story about kids killing each other and worshiping a pig's head-on-a-stick.

[MixedMyth]

Oh jeez...can't believe I didn't think of Maus. Yeah, that's a big one.

V for Vendetta...I don't know if it would violate some of your hate laws, as I don't know what they entail. But It does use some strong racial language in parts. Same with The Watchmen. both are veeery educational, though. V for Vendetta is an indirect commentary on the Thatcher era, and Watchmen on the Cold War.

[Joel Fagin]

Groo the Wanderer did a lot of social satire rolled up in a funnybook format. They did a rather good one on profiteering from war in which the country in question was randomly invading neighbooring countries on trumped up excuses to keep the economy going strong and to distract the citizenry.

And this was before Iraq, too.

They also did gun control, drugs, property... Oh, all sorts. And a lot of normal hack and slash funny too.

- Joel Fagin

[McDuffies]

Educational in which sence exactly? I figure, any history comic that is historically accurate can be used as a sort of educative tool. "Towers of Boa-Mori" from Herman comes to mind, I'm led to believe it's quite accurate depiction of crusades, and nudity is, well, rare and really tasteful. "Corto Maltese" is historically accurate, spans all over the first half of the century and covers most of big historic events of the time. It's pretty much nudity-free, though there are some depictions of murder. Certain episodes of the comic also talk about Celtic mythology. "Desert scorpions", the same goes, if I remember well, the only nudity was native African tribes women.
"Asterix" can, perhaps, be educative, being that despite it caricatures the national characters and mixes modern elements in past, it still sticks to basic geographical facts of the time. I learned a few latin phrases I know from there, also what countries and tribes existed back then.
"Persepollis" the first book that talks about life in Iran... I dunno if that's appropriate, it's a very tough book about opressive culture over there, it's kind of emotionally brutal, though I think that any material conventionally considered adult, happens in later books. I think, if "Maus" is good, "Persepollis" is too.

[EmergencyExit]

This reminds me when Rock and I made ten EE Comics covering aspects of Economics for our Economic presentation. There weren't very educational, but it passed us. That was not helpful at all, sorry lol.

[MixedMyth]

Heh heh. Related, though probably not useful for your purposes. I did this a few years ago....

[Black Kitty]

I didn't really have a set requirement for educational beyond "not recreational." I just didn't want people suggesting comics to me that I can't use in the classroom. (So comics such as Battle Royale, Angelic Layer, Pokémon, Peach Girl, Archie comics, and X/1999 are comics that, in my opinion, are more recreational then educational.) I'm looking for comics that could in any way be used as teaching materials. So for example, I could use Maus as a starter material to a unit on the Holocaust. Or I could use Tintin or Calvin and Hobbes for ESL students. Owly could be used as a way to introduce comics as a type of media.

I'm cool with historical comics. Some of my classmates are also history teachers so historical comics could be really useful to them. It's a really informal presentation so if I go over the boundaries of English I won't get into any trouble for that.

Thanks a lot for the suggestions you guys. I really really appreciate it. And nice comic MixedMyth!

[Linkara]

Hail Pathobot.

[Mr.Bob]

I'd normally sugest Les Tuniques Bleues. It's quite accurate, and can teach you about the American Civil war. It's French but I thought you're in Canada, so it was worth a mention.

[Jackhass]

My comic provides a crash course in being awesome.

[Dutch!]

I can freely comment here now that my strip's already been suggested. Cheers, MM!

I use School Spirit in the classroom for all sorts of things, not just to teach the kids about my homeland (because, let's face it, most of them were born here too, eh?). It's there for reading, it's there to show how you can tell a story without words, it aids comprehension when I ask why a certain character may have a certain expression, etc... I've also removed the words from the speech bubbles and left the kids to write their own to make their own stories from the pictures. They've come up with some absolute rippers.

This sort of stuff also applies, of course, to many comics out there.

I'm lucky in that I can use the characters in the room, not just in the strip, as I can draw them on the board and whatnot and put them into our other themes and topics. Mainly though, they work because they the characters are the same age (or a little older) than the kids themselves. The age of the kids you're working with will of course affect how you would use the strips and which ones you would select.

So yeah, if you use mine in your little presentation, all well and good, if you don't, no worries, but maybe the stuff up above will give you other ideas on how you could use comics to help teach kids.

Cheers.

[Rkolter]

Since Cortland mentioned mine,

Reasoned Cognition is a webcomic that answers questions taken from it's audience of readers, from a variety of science fields. It's geared for anyone around 10 or up. I've already had a couple classrooms use RC, which tickled me to no end.

[Keffria]

I actually had to draw a historical comic for a history assignment a couple of years~ish ago. I wouldn't say that it's especially good or anything, but I think that making a comic can, itself, be a good teaching idea for older students. I know that drawing it forced me to brush up on historical details and present them in an interesting manner... It was far more enjoyable than just reading a textbook.

[Ataraxia]

I originally created Lucy and Bing for my ESL students.

Dutch!- I've done the empty word balloon exercise with my classes too. Another thing I did in my advanced class was to give the students a subject, and have them write a one page comic strip on their own about it. Later on we animated the comic scripts together.

Other educational comics:
Korea Unmasked
Understanding Comics

[[AOD]]

My comic sure is educational!! But probably not school fare. Mwah.

I'd reccommend comic books by Jay Hosler:

Clan Apis

and

Sandwalk Adventures

Both of them are great, very readable comics about science -- Clan Apis being about the lifecycle of honeybees, and Sandwalk about Darwin and evolution. Plus, Hosler is an actual biologist, so get it from the pros...

@~AOD

[Grabmygoblin]

Maus, Watchmen, Persepolis and Black Hole were all being sold at the campus bookstore as texts for courses. I haven't read the last two yet, but added them to my list of books to read in the future.

I also have "The Plot" by Will Eisner on my shelf, which is about the spread and continued usage of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion by anti-semites.

hrm, also "Up Front", a collection of Willy and Joe cartoons from WWII with commentary post-war by the author and vol 1. of the Cartoon History of the Universe. I mean to buy the rest of the cartoon history of the universe as well as of the United States when I get some extra cash. they provide a nice survey of historical information, and I believe they are just as accurate as the textbooks I have on my shelf.

and, um, well there's the X-Men and the parallels to the civil rights movement (esp the split between the non-violent and militant groups)... but that falls into another category of using media to teach... my mom used movies like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom to teach church school students by drawing parallels to Indy's corruption and sin...

[Cat42]

It's quite a bit dated, but might beuseful history wise...

I'm currently reading Japan Inc., though I dunno if you're gonna get into Japanese economics in the classroom...

There is a more recent one, from '96 Japan Inc. Volume 2