Like a lot of people making comics, I find myself bridging
distinct and in some ways mutually exclusive demographics. One the one hand, the Crogan Adventures has its direct market
audience, the folks who pick it up at comic shops or conventions. These are the people with whom I most
regularly interact, and with whom I have a great deal in common, because I’m as
much a fan of the medium as they are, so I try to make sure that the work I do
and the manner in which I go about doing it will satisfy them as much as the
work of other comics creators satisfies me.
On the other hand, I have schools.
In trying to craft a series that meets my own expectations
of historical accuracy, I’ve been lucky to find that there are a number of
teachers and institutions that have made use of the book for classroom
purposes.
Comics in schools are in much the same state that comics in
libraries were twenty-odd years ago.
Thanks to the tireless work of cartoonists like Jeff Smith and ColleenDoran to expose their and others’ work to the library community, and to a
handful of enthusiastic and courageous librarians, the reluctance of that
audience to accept comics as a valid and exciting and unique form of literature
has eroded away in all but the most recalcitrant arenas.
Schoolteachers and administrators attempting to implement
the use of comics now face similar opposition from their more structurally
conservative factors, but they have made tremendous progress in demonstrating
the incredible literacy benefits that comics offer. Papers and articles and studies continue to be presented,
and most recently the common core guidelines strongly recommended the use of
comics in the classroom. Within
the next decade I would be surprised if comics aren’t a standard part of most
school curriculums. But there’s
another obstacle that comics face regarding their use in a classroom setting:
lettering.
I first encountered the lettering issue shortly after my
first book, Crogan’s Vengeance, came
out. I was doing a workshop for a
large group of teachers, and afterwards a number of them were buying copies of
the book for classroom use. I felt
I’d made a good case for the benefits that comics provide, but some of the
teachers, looking at the books, noted that the lettering was all in upper-case.
Upper-case lettering in comics has been the industry
standard since its inception (an inception that is under perpetual debate,
though I fall into the conservative historical view that comics as we consider
them began with Richard Outcault and Rudolph Dirks rather than earlier “like”
comics work or the masterful experimentations of Toppfer). The reason for this is simple enough –
when lettering was all done by hand, it was MUCH easier to draw the two guidelines
necessary for upper-case lettering than it was to draw the four required for
upper and lower-case.
 |
| Two guidelines for upper-case; four for upper/lower |
Growing up, all of the comics that I read were lettered in upper-case
(I did not stumble across Tintin
until college). Even after the
majority of comics began to be lettered digitally the use of all upper-case
lettering continued.
So the teachers mentioned it, which surprised me. It never really crossed my mind as
being unusual. I was told that, in
literacy studies, upper and lower-case letters have consistently proven much
easier to read than all upper-case.
This has come up again and again. Any time I speak with school groups (not children, but
educators), the issue of upper-case lettering finds its way into the
conversation. And it seems to be
the one factor that even books ostensibly designed for the school market
regularly ignore, or choose to actively fight against. I’ve always been a proponent of the
latter.
In addition to the historical precedent, there is an
aesthetic quality to upper-case lettering that I prefer. It creates a solid block of text, which
fills the white space inside a word balloon uniformly, giving it the appearance
of a graphic element akin to a pattern more than a block of text, which is what
it is. One can have his or her
cake and eat it to, so far as the marriage of art and writing goes.
And it is for this reason that, despite the inherent
hypocrisy of regularly touting the qualities which comics have that encourage
literacy development and comprehension while ignoring a factor that prevents
such positive effects from reaching their full potential, I have refused to
deviate from the traditional upper-case mold.
Near the end of last year I created a Crogan Adventures story for TheGraphic Textbook (this story was also included in Oni Press’s Free Comic
Book Day 2013 offering). When the
story was finished, there were a handful of minor editorial alterations
requested that I immediately implemented (I find that editorial acquiescence
makes future work with a given editor much more likely), save for one – they
wanted me to reletter the story in upper and lower-case.
I wrote back a list of reasons for why upper-lower was not
necessary. Surely the other
literacy benefits provided by the medium would more than equalize any
deficiency that all uppers would create in the reading comprehension. It’s nicer aesthetically! A hundred plus years of comics
tradition must be maintained!
Nope.
The Graphic Textbook
editors would have none of it.
“This is intended specifically for classroom use,” they said (I’m
paraphrasing, of course).
“Therefore it must meet the requirements of a classroom.”
And you know what?
They’re right.
The teachers whom I so eagerly applaud for how actively they
champion my and others’ comics for classroom use find themselves hampered by my
unwillingness to bend on this point.
So it comes to an either-or question of priority. Either I can continue using upper-case
for its aesthetic and precedential reasons and please myself (for I doubt
anyone else would care), or I can accept that upper and lower-case lettering
will make it easier for teachers to justify the use of the books in a classroom
setting to both themselves and anyone who might be reluctant to consider a
medium only beginning to find widespread acceptance in educational circles.
The whole reason that I approach the books with the intent
of making them suitable for all ages (though they are, in fact, written with
adult readers in mind) is so that they might have the chance of being a gateway
for some kid to discover the comics medium (plus all the history and genre
stuff that I love). I work hard to
ensure that the story reads plausibly and is exciting to an adult reader, but I
work twice as hard to make sure that it does so in a way that would not be objectionable
to a parent who finds his or her youngster book-in-hand. If my goal here is to allow for the
chance of a wider audience, of more readers – and what’s the point of making
the books if they’re not going to be read? – then it’s in my best interest, and
the interest of those educators who are kind enough to consider the book a
worthwhile addition to their curriculum – to use upper and lower-case.
So that’s what I’m doing. It means teaching myself to letter again – upper and lower
requires a different set of decisions and skills (does a line with no ascenders
below a line with no descenders require a decrease in leading size to account
for the block of white space that would otherwise accrue?), and they are skills
that will likely take some time to develop. And, in all truth, I’m pretty grouchy about the whole
thing. I don’t like it.
Yet.
Hopefully I’ll warm to it, the same way I did to recycling
or not eating Hot Pockets. I’m
reluctant, but I believe that it’s the right thing to do.
Given that some folks pay meticulous attention to changes in
comics that they like (I’m one of them!), I thought it worth taking the time to
explain the motivations. I hope I’ve
done so!
