An Autoethnographic Approach to Adaptations and Limitations in Comics

Comics For Underrepresented Students

Adaptation of ideas constitutes central work for reading comics across languages and locations (Davies, 2016; Tseng & Bateman, 2018; Zanettin, 2014) as popular characters are visually rendered from script form to a fully-fledged multimodal page. These characters are then taken up and shared across media in television and filmic spaces. The presence of a character that resonates with a student in a form of media-based storytelling can be a powerful vehicle for analysis and expression, and building critical awareness of the titles that are available for centering a range of identities is essential work. Comics have been noted to be a potential source for exploring personhood and development to some degree in relationship with some experiences in prior research (Wright, 2016; Yalçınkaya, 2022), and this particular approach takes on the lens of literacy work. In Wright (2016) and Yalçınkaya (2022), in particular, comics have been used to explore the experience of entering academia from minoritized perspectives; yet, there is more work to be done in representing readers more widely through the medium.

In this work of adaptation and representation, some characters tend to stay the same, with little change to their dynamics, while other characters from an improvisational nature. Such popular characters constantly changing to adapt to the needs of the moment. For example, the character of Marvel’s Moon Knight begins as an assassin and ends as a hero, with turns both light and dark throughout his narrative journey. Meanwhile, characters like Miles Morales are introduced, but questions continue of authorship and authenticity among authors and artists who contribute to the work. Literacy, in this case, is defined as a multimodal means of considering the world and communicating about one’s self, based on the work of Kress (2009) and Gee (2013).

Characters who are non-white and who authentically reflect underrepresented groups have only been piecemeal and even problematic in their inclusion in mainstream comics over the past decade and beyond (Howard & Jackson, 2013). Notable in this regard is the presence of the character who is Black, but who takes the role of villain, as well as the character who is a hero only because they are a reformed villain (Guynes et al., 2020). More recently, autobiographical comics have served as a more fruitful space for sharing from underrepresented perspectives (Køhlert, 2019). While some work is being done to dismantle stereotypes in comics, there is a history of troubling work that might be harmful to a reader whose background and experiences align more closely with problematic character types.

My stance as a teacher as one who includes a wide range of literature stems from what I have seen work at both a practical and theoretical level, and serves as a way of disrupting traditional expectations or definitions of what counts as a complex text. I have experienced moments where students at the post-secondary level examine a text and state, “I can see myself in this.” I have also seen the energy in the high school and college classroom when I hand out comics for students to take home. It is an interest and engagement that I do not experience when asking students to open a PDF of the next reading in our curriculum. At the same time, locating characters with agency is an important function for me as a reader, and as a means of working in the classroom. I am always searching for opportunities to share about characters who display empowerment and whose identities are celebrated, rather than shamed. Some examples of this work include canonical texts like Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, as well as more recent titles like New Kid by Jerry Craft and Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American by Laura Gao.