“I Love Comics Like a First Born”: Teaching History through Contemporary Graphic Narratives

Since the invention of Superman in 1936, superhero comics have engaged key topics in U.S. and global history.  In the 1980s, the “graphic novel” gained literary and critical credibility in part by even more explicitly engaging history and problems of historical representation. And in the two decades following, more and more authors haven taken advantage of the combination of word, image, and sequence at the heart of the medium to further challenge the boundaries between private and public history, between factual and speculative or fictional histories, and even between the past and the present.  With their ability to simultaneously depict the past and the present and to render ideas, objects, and persons in both iconic and realistic modes, the creators of long-form comics have transformed “the funnies” into a powerful tool for exploring the past and how we imagine it. 

I wish to focus on my experiences teaching an interdisciplinary course called “Comics and the American Experience” that fulfills a general-education history requirement at our university.  While many students are reluctant readers and even more reluctant students of history, the popularity—the inherent fun—attributed to comics leads many students to suspend their disbelief long enough for the power of the medium to draw them into the histories we encounter.  And though the depth of the themes and questions we study often surprises them, each class has had several avid fans who help energize our discussions with their passion for comics. As one student put it recently, “I love comics like a first born.” I hope to invite discussion and assess the challenges and opportunities I have experienced in my attempts to turn fans of comics into students of the medium, of history, and of the serious game of representing the past in the contemporary descendants of the Sunday Funnies.