Jamestown News Article

May 9, 2012

by

Carol Reed

Cartoons and Graphic Novels

Did you know that the first newspaper cartoon was published in the USA in 1754? Now that may not sound like a fact you need to know, but it is important. With the election heating up, we will see some humdinger editorial cartoons, making fun of, or supporting political candidates. Plato and a Platypus Walk in to a Bar was written by Cathcart & Klein to help us understand politics and philosophy through jokes and cartoons. The line drawings are used to emphasize points, to make the ideas easier to understand, and to add humor to a serious subject.Cartoons are everywhere.

When I was a child, Mom read the Sunday funnies to us after church. We couldn’t wait. It was a good snuggle time, with Gail and me on either side and Patty on her lap. A favorite was Peanuts with Snoopy and Charlie Brown. Our library has some cartoon books by Charles Schulz: Peanuts Treasury, Snoopy and the Red Baron, and A Boy Named Charlie Brown. Other people are even writing stories and using the Peanuts characters. Katschke wrote Take a Hike, Snoopy! and Boczkowski wrote Friends Forever, Snoopy, just to name a few. Our language has adopted the “Charlie Brown Christmas tree” to mean any small, sad-looking tree. That came from a television special.

The Off-Broadway play, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, ran for years about these characters.

Authors and publishers have decided that classic literature is too difficult for our young people, so graphic novels have replaced originals, as comic books did decades ago. I’m hoping that reading the graphic novel will entice people to delve a bit deeper into literature. We have Homer’s The Odyssey, adapted by Tim Mucci into a comic book style novel. Fifth graders and I loved Circe the witch who turned Odysseus’s men into pigs, and the Cyclops a one-eyed giant who ate Odysseus’s men for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The grosser, the better for fifth graders!Beowulf, the graphic version by Gareth Hinds, tells and shows us a Danish hero who fights monsters and dragons, and becomes king of the realm. We had to read the Old English epic poem in high school. It was an exciting story, but it was hard to understand the language. Thank goodness for interpreting English teachers! Even the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books have graphic versions. Our library has a few of each.

If you, as a middle school student, enjoyed their mysteries, perhaps your own young people will like the comic book novels. Give them a try at the library on the corner and up the hill.