Adults need comics education more than kids

I think adults in gatekeeping positions (educators, librarians, editors, etc) need comics education MORE than the youth they are attempting to connect to.

So I decided to share one of my hot comics takes on social media yesterday. This isn't an unfamiliar take; I wrote a blog post last year talking about how comics should be part of an overall arts education and that teachers should treat the medium like all the other mediums they enjoy. I was just prompted to micropost the same thought again after stumbling upon on yet-another-misunderstanding of comics by editors/librarians/publishers, that is, thinking that B&W comics are incomplete, without intention or not itself an artistic choice.

Recently I attended a library's book club for My Aunt is a Monster where the host asked why I sometimes drew Safia's glasses incompletely. As below.

They assumed that I was making a point about emphasising Safia's blindness. But in reality, it was simply an utilitarian and technical artistic choice: I drew the glasses like that because to draw them completely - stem and all - would impede my ability to draw expressions and the reader's ability to see the character's eyes and read the expressions. This is how I draw all glasses-wearing characters - even myself!! That choice is simply what cartooning is: simplification and elegance in service of character and story.

No shade to the librarian, who asked very good questions about the book and my other work (better than a lot of people); I just think that particular comment was interesting in regards to arts education as a whole, and how we teach non-artists literacy of the arts.

I take for granted that any piece of art is an embodiment of a series of choices. That I can attune what those choices are, imagine what their alternatives could be, and critically articulate how the choice impacts the meaning of the work (or not be, it could just be simply utilitarian; the ability to know the difference) is a massive amount of skill and knowledge that not everyone has. I didn't go to art school either, or have a strong arts education through the entirety of my youth. The only reason why I was able to build up this skill was because I read and watched very widely, and in my teens I actively learned from other artists their processes and craft (all on Deviantart or their blogs). I also made art, so I could experience for myself decision-making in practice: the strokes and brushes and colours and compositional choices and all the choices that would eventually become an illustration.

But not every adult is able to access this literacy, or at least, they don't always think the art they encounter daily is something to pursue deeply beyond looking and feeling gut responses. Nothing wrong with that. It's a bit of a curse sometimes to watch TV or read books and not unsee the artistic process behind it; so I envy that sweet innocence.

Many of these adults would enter positions where they gatekeep art, such as editors, publishers, educators, librarians and curators. They may have literacy in another art form, which is fine, but for whatever reason, when they have to consider engaging or including art from another medium, they don't apply the same amount of respect or understanding to that other medium. It's like they can't grasp that the belief that '[X art form] is an artistic process ' is also true to [Z art form].

Comics have been an underrated medium for awhile now, and it is currently experiencing a renaissance, especially among younger people. Understandably, libraries and schools and publishers want to respond by including more comics into their programming. Fantastic!

Unfortunately, I feel there's too much emphasis on providing comics programming for youth, but not on providing education for adults. I think... adults in gatekeeping positions need comics education MORE than the youth they are attempting to connect to.

(Obviously I don't think there's ever too much comics programming; but it needs to be balanced across age groups. The imbalance is what I am speaking about)

"Comics-making workshops for teens", "comics book clubs for kids" - okay, all these programs are well and good, but what about the adults? Where are the "How to read comics" workshops for GROWNUPS???? "How to edit visual narrative" "How to expand your comics reading diet"... where are they, honestly!

The reason why I think this way is because I noticed adults who are not familiar with comics tend to have more hangups & mental resistence towards the art form that they need to unpack. They are aware of comics are part of the culture for kids and fully accept this reality, but they don't do the basic step of learning to meaningfully engage with comics itself, on their level. They don't read comics in the genres or topics they are interested in. They don't learn how to actually read comics and know of its devices, which can be detrimental if they happen to be an editor for a graphic novel and therefore, are unable to actually provide useful feedback to their authors. (Imagine an editor who is genre-illiterate editing an author who works in that genre; this is not acceptable and though someone has to start somewhere, it's amazing how people allow sustained medium ignorance to happen during a fundamental production stage in comics).

Kids and teens already know how to read and find and make comics they like and want to see. Look at webcomics. Webtoons. Manga. I'm not worried about the ability of young people to engage in comics; I'm more keen to work with adults directly who still carry the baggage of being afraid to draw or engage in visual art lest they accidentally perpetuate that baggage to their charges

I think we get too caught up in justifying why this particular medium deserves legitimacy, when in fact, legitimacy is not the point of why art is essential for everyone. In my experience, both of children around me and myself as a former child, children already intuitively appreciate the value and aesthetic of comics, just as they appreciate the same of cinema and television, of picture books, literature, theatre, dance, music and other forms of art they may have encountered in their lives. When you show them art, already made or in the making, they really, earnestly become enthusiastic participants – you see it in the way they tear through a comic or sing Let It Go over and over or dance to the Wriggles. The problem arises when the adults in their life fail to nurture that interest, or worst, actively or passively discourage it, because the adults simply refuse to engage — out of ignorance or wilful disregard for certain art forms because they are not mainstream enough, good enough, highbrow enough, legitimate enough, grown-up enough, etc. In short, adults grow up internalising these joy-killing messages and then shut out art from their lives, which eventually produces conflict where they struggle to undo those closed doors for themselves and their children.

For us comics creators, our interaction with gatekeepers impacts our ability to navigate institutional structures. A gatekeeper who does not at least hold some literacy in comics (in the sense that they know enough that they can accept it on the same level as other literary or visual art forms) is essentially a closed door. Or an unoiled door that refuses to budge despite an open crack - which is sometimes not worth wasting time on, time that could be used to make art.

I know for myself and a lot of my peers, we are very keen to share our craft to our generational peers and any other adult who's older or younger than us. I just wish there were more opportunities to facilitate appropriate programs for adults. Or looking at a systematic level, that art education in general is more appreciated and adequately funded.

Even though a lot of adults carry baggage about art within them, there is still that dormant desire for creative expression and art in community. Comics is a very accessible medium and quite everyday, scalable from the personal to the epic, and I really feel sorry when people turn away from a wider world of art/story because of misconceptions from 60 years ago.