History of Comics

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Historically comic books have been used as entertainment for children and teens. In 1933 two Eastern Color Printing Company unintentionally created a comic book by compiling an album of comic strips and published it as a full size magazine (Wright, 2001). This accidental discovery was a platform for a multi -million dollar a year industry as young America took notice. As early as the 1940’s educators and educational facilities took notice and began research on the value of comics in education. Although the investigations led to an eventual split in the determinations, many, such as the Child Study Association of America Director Sidonie Gruenberg, believed educational comic books could be of great benefit, “There is hardly a subject that does not lend itself to presentation through this medium”. Those who stood on this side of the fence believed that the utilization of comic books could ideally encourage reading by embracing this new medium of literature. It was also at that time that the first in classroom study was done as teachers began creating a curriculum that supported comic book study. (Sones, 1944) Puck- the Comic Weekly was introduced to students in hundreds of classrooms. The Journal of Educational Sociology was so intrigued with the results of this experiment the 4th issue of Volume 18 in 1944 was assigned to this study.

Of course there was opposition to this belief that comic books could be beneficial in the classrooms. Many thought even the idea of this to be preposterous, and the introduction of this concept would be detrimental to the learning processes of students everywhere. This, however, was not only an opposition to educational comics but comics as a whole. This platform was spearheaded by a...

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...l of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 45, 758-767.

Sones, W. (1944). The comics and instructional method. Journal of Educational Sociology, 18, 232-240.

Sturm, James. (2002, April 5). Comics in the classroom. The Chronicle of Higher Education, pp. B14-5.

Versaci, R. (2001). How comic books can change the way our students see literature: One teacher's perspective. English Journal, 91 (2), 61-67.

Wax, E. (2002, May 17). Back to the drawing board; Once-banned comic books now a teaching tool. The Washington Post, pp. B.01.

Williams, N. (1995). The comic book as course book: why and how. Long Beach, CA: Annual Meeting of the Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 390277)

Wright, B. (2001). Comic book nation: The transformation of iouth Culture in America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

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