Teenagers doing what they do best…getting into trouble.
Going back in time to the 1800 a group of teens are trying to get themselves out of a Jam that the inevitably got themselves into. These teens with super powers have realized, while back in time that they are not the only ones with this “special” abilities. Of course each member has to take care not to disrupt the current situations of the past; otherwise they may disrupt the latter situations of the future, which is there present. Trying to find a way out as quickly as possible each member of breaks off on their own, they run into individual problems of their own.
“Runaways” is a book about teens with special abilities that find out that their parents are super villains. Joss Whedon continues this story with the second installment of the series. This book will take its readers on a seemingly complicated journey of several subplots that parallel well together and until tie the plots up well in the end. Because this book is a sci-fi graphic novel, it is not for everyone. But if your imagination is tolerable of an adventurous tale that takes you into the past then this book is for you. The artwork in this book is vivid and on the realistic side more than the cartoonish side. Even though many teens may not have super villains as parents but many teens feel that way. This book can present to its readers the importance of a team that all are on one accord to attain a common goal, readers will enjoy the quick read feel and the nice eye candy of this book. This book in the series stands well alone but will do better if the previous installment was experienced as well.
Going back in time to the 1800 a group of teens are trying to get themselves out of a Jam that the inevitably got themselves into. These teens with super powers have realized, while back in time that they are not the only ones with this “special” abilities. Of course each member has to take care not to disrupt the current situations of the past; otherwise they may disrupt the latter situations of the future, which is there present. Trying to find a way out as quickly as possible each member of breaks off on their own, they run into individual problems of their own.
“Runaways” is a book about teens with special abilities that find out that their parents are super villains. Joss Whedon continues this story with the second installment of the series. This book will take its readers on a seemingly complicated journey of several subplots that parallel well together and until tie the plots up well in the end. Because this book is a sci-fi graphic novel, it is not for everyone. But if your imagination is tolerable of an adventurous tale that takes you into the past then this book is for you. The artwork in this book is vivid and on the realistic side more than the cartoonish side. Even though many teens may not have super villains as parents but many teens feel that way. This book can present to its readers the importance of a team that all are on one accord to attain a common goal, readers will enjoy the quick read feel and the nice eye candy of this book. This book in the series stands well alone but will do better if the previous installment was experienced as well.
Teaching a graphic novel may be difficult to fit in to a school curriculum but I have found that it can fit in the National Teaching standards. In fact I talk to an English professor at the Illinois Math and Science Academy and he gave me a proposal that he is working on so that teaching graphic novels can be implemented into schools curriculum. Here is a portion of it:
A. Preliminary Learning Experience Design
What are you proposing, and why is it compelling in light of the needs of our students?
Since the 1980s, the so-called graphic novel, or long-form comic, has become a popular and accomplished literary and artistic form. Transcending its origins in pulp fantasy and adolescent entertainment, this evolving and hybrid medium represents, in the words of author and artist Eddie Campbell, "an emerging new literature of our times in which word, picture, and typography interact meaningfully and which is in tune with the complexity of modern life . . . ." This course offers a survey of some of the best graphic novels of the last thirty years, and it provides the skills for reading comics critically in terms of what they say and how they say it.
IMSA students have had limited classroom exposure to what some observers speculate may become the major literary form of the new century. Most, if not all, sophomores read Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale; many juniors read Gareth Hinds's comic adaptation of Beowulf after studying Seamus Heaney's translation from Old English; seniors in "Portraits of Creativity" discuss Lynd Ward's 1929 "novel-in-woodcuts," Gods' Man, an early forerunner of today's graphic novels. More sustained study of such works would allow students to understand the conventions of comics as a medium, to survey the recent development of the graphic novel as a form, and to use graphic novels as a springboard for grappling with pressing social and political issues of our times. A semester-long elective in the graphic novel would help students to develop new skills in reading visual narratives, which would nicely complement our offering in film studies, while considering the relation between image and text within a fascinating segment of contemporary world literature. A dedicated course on graphic literature would also provide broad exposure to various genres while giving students the opportunity to experiment with a range of sequential visual-verbal narratives themselves. NCTE's recent publication of James Bucky Carter's Building Literacy Connections with Graphic Novels (2006) and the forthcoming release of the MLA's Approaches to Teaching the Graphic Novel reflect the increasing use of such works in language arts classrooms and provide pedagogical strategies for incorporating these texts into the curriculum. Moreover, recent scholarship shows that graphic novels can be used to help a range of students, from reluctant readers to gifted ones.
The course also seeks to address some concerns raised in the February-March 2005 English external review, including the perceived lack of "a significant range of diversity of authors and content across gender, ethnicity, and epochs" in our course syllabi. Our reviewers recommended that we "consider what IMSA students will likely read in university English courses and select reading materials that will complement and even go beyond university readings rather than repeat or parallel them." Graphic novels offer the kinds of readings suggested by our reviewers, namely "diverse works that . . . expand the faculty's as well as the students' literary experiences, especially those dealing with contemporary writers and issues." We'll study male and female writers and artists from across the world (North America, Brazil, England, France, Iran, and Japan) working within various genres (history, biography, journalism, memoir, etc.) in book-length comics today. Readings range from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's apocalyptic and postmodern Watchmen (1986-7), named one of Time magazine's 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present, to Marjane Satrapi and Alison Bechdel's award-winning graphic memoirs Persepolis (2000-2003) and Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006). These varied works also present opportunities for collaboration with colleagues in other disciplines, or what our reviewers called "cross-disciplinary interdisciplinary teaching," which they did not see in our classrooms. Specifically, we could work with World Languages on Osamu Tezuka's pre-1980 Japanese manga or French cartoonist and L'Association co-founder David B.'s memoir Epileptic (2005), and with History on Joe Sacco's journalistic account in Palestine (1996) of the Palestinian experience under Israeli occupation during the first Intifada or Chester Brown's 2003 "comic-strip biography" of nineteenth-century Manitoba founder and Métis rebel leader Louis Riel.
What are you proposing, and why is it compelling in light of the needs of our students?
Since the 1980s, the so-called graphic novel, or long-form comic, has become a popular and accomplished literary and artistic form. Transcending its origins in pulp fantasy and adolescent entertainment, this evolving and hybrid medium represents, in the words of author and artist Eddie Campbell, "an emerging new literature of our times in which word, picture, and typography interact meaningfully and which is in tune with the complexity of modern life . . . ." This course offers a survey of some of the best graphic novels of the last thirty years, and it provides the skills for reading comics critically in terms of what they say and how they say it.
IMSA students have had limited classroom exposure to what some observers speculate may become the major literary form of the new century. Most, if not all, sophomores read Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale; many juniors read Gareth Hinds's comic adaptation of Beowulf after studying Seamus Heaney's translation from Old English; seniors in "Portraits of Creativity" discuss Lynd Ward's 1929 "novel-in-woodcuts," Gods' Man, an early forerunner of today's graphic novels. More sustained study of such works would allow students to understand the conventions of comics as a medium, to survey the recent development of the graphic novel as a form, and to use graphic novels as a springboard for grappling with pressing social and political issues of our times. A semester-long elective in the graphic novel would help students to develop new skills in reading visual narratives, which would nicely complement our offering in film studies, while considering the relation between image and text within a fascinating segment of contemporary world literature. A dedicated course on graphic literature would also provide broad exposure to various genres while giving students the opportunity to experiment with a range of sequential visual-verbal narratives themselves. NCTE's recent publication of James Bucky Carter's Building Literacy Connections with Graphic Novels (2006) and the forthcoming release of the MLA's Approaches to Teaching the Graphic Novel reflect the increasing use of such works in language arts classrooms and provide pedagogical strategies for incorporating these texts into the curriculum. Moreover, recent scholarship shows that graphic novels can be used to help a range of students, from reluctant readers to gifted ones.
The course also seeks to address some concerns raised in the February-March 2005 English external review, including the perceived lack of "a significant range of diversity of authors and content across gender, ethnicity, and epochs" in our course syllabi. Our reviewers recommended that we "consider what IMSA students will likely read in university English courses and select reading materials that will complement and even go beyond university readings rather than repeat or parallel them." Graphic novels offer the kinds of readings suggested by our reviewers, namely "diverse works that . . . expand the faculty's as well as the students' literary experiences, especially those dealing with contemporary writers and issues." We'll study male and female writers and artists from across the world (North America, Brazil, England, France, Iran, and Japan) working within various genres (history, biography, journalism, memoir, etc.) in book-length comics today. Readings range from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's apocalyptic and postmodern Watchmen (1986-7), named one of Time magazine's 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present, to Marjane Satrapi and Alison Bechdel's award-winning graphic memoirs Persepolis (2000-2003) and Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006). These varied works also present opportunities for collaboration with colleagues in other disciplines, or what our reviewers called "cross-disciplinary interdisciplinary teaching," which they did not see in our classrooms. Specifically, we could work with World Languages on Osamu Tezuka's pre-1980 Japanese manga or French cartoonist and L'Association co-founder David B.'s memoir Epileptic (2005), and with History on Joe Sacco's journalistic account in Palestine (1996) of the Palestinian experience under Israeli occupation during the first Intifada or Chester Brown's 2003 "comic-strip biography" of nineteenth-century Manitoba founder and Métis rebel leader Louis Riel.
1 comment:
Ayodeji-
I felt like I should comment on your review because no one else had. I think the main reason for that is the choice you made to make the review so long. Don't get me wrong- it's full of information, however maybe just a little too much? I won't lie to you; I kept skipping over this post because I was a little overwhelmed with its massive content. One suggestion is maybe cut down the interview portion. A few excerpts that highlight his proposal would probably suffice. Also, you could just make a link to the interview/proposal in its entirety (if available) or create links to other graphic novels that are being taught in schools. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I would rather read what you have to say about the novel.
I'm not trying to be negative at all. I'm sorry if it sounds that way. I really liked your summary of the book- i want to know what these powers are because I can only imagine the kind of trouble I would get into if I had any sort of super powers. Aside from a few grammatical errors (sorry! i'm not an expert so don't think i'm trying to be a know-it- all) I think you created a great overview that also provided a hook. Unfortunately, my graphic novel reading experience turned me off to graphic novels as a whole (at least for a few months, anyway) so I doubt I will be reading this. I would read it if they turn it into a regular novel though.
I'm sorry I chose to go on a rant about your post. Feel free to retaliate. :-)
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