While I have had cause to use graphic novels and comic books as teaching tools in the past, I've struck on a gold mine in the form of
The Graphic Canon edited by Russ Kick. Let me just highlight the Greco-Roman authors...
(deep breath) HomerSapphoEuripidesAristophanesPlatoLucretiusaaand Virgil. Not enough? Ok fine, on the Medievals! Hildegard of Bingen, Dante, Francois Villon, Chaucer, Malory,
Beowulf, Abelard and Heloise, Teresa of Avila and Shakespeare. ;)
My only gripe with Kick is that, while some of the pieces in the collection were produced to be read in isolation (i.e. one poem by Sappho), a lot of what he has put in is taken from a larger work. I get the importance to including Gareth Hinds' rendering of
Beowulf and the
Odyssey and to only include a part of those larger works... But still, I feel a bit... Well, cheated I guess. I get that some of these works are small, like Plato's
Symposium, but Dante reduced to four or five pages?
Still, Kick has gathered a host of work from such a variety of artists and authors that I cannot help but see this book
(and the plethora of notes I've already taken) playing a part in my teaching next year.
And then there's Jonathan Hickman;
Red Mass for Mars and
Pax Romana both make me wonder if this guy was sitting down to write his dissertation on Roman history and culture... Then said, "HECK WITH IT" and went off to write comic books. Impressive, if NSFW, writing and format.
Red is mostly of interest because it plays with the idea of a Superman-like figure landing earlier on in history, i.e. the early Middle Ages, when the ethos of 'might makes right' prevailed
(at least, more so than we tell ourselves it does today...) and, as such, he takes on the mantle of Mars. It's a superhero genre piece through and through however.
Pax, on the other hand, is predicated on the idea that if time travel were ever feasible, what would the repercussions be... If, say, a zealous cardinal in the Catholic Church hornswaggles a well-meaning pope into sending back an "Eternal Legion" to Constantine in order to ensure a true
Pax Romanae... Best laid plans and all that. ;)
What's really got stuck in my craw right now, though, is the question I pose to you now:
when is it appropriate to communicate with an author, artist, etc about a work? I mean, can't ask Cicero or Catullus... So is it reasoble to, say, email Jonathan Hickman or any of the folk in the
Canon and barrage them with queries?
