Resize Text: 
Teaching the Graphic Novel. Edited by Stephen E. Tabachnick. New York, New York: The Modern Language Association of America. 2010. 352 pages, $35.48 hardback; $25.00 paperback.
Next semester, I will begin teaching two courses in comics as an adjunct faculty member at the California College of Art. I am a cartoonist, not an academic, and outside of various workshops and guest lectures, this will be my first real teaching experience. So I am in a very good position to review a new anthology of essays edited by Stephen E. Tabachnick for the MLA series Options for Teaching—Teaching the Graphic Novel—that purports to help me prepare for that task.
Comic books and graphic novels are one of the newest fully fledged art forms, a vibrant, hybrid medium birthed in America and brimming with all the wildly experimental vigor of youth. Traditionally associated with children's narratives and the object of condescension and ridicule, they have only recently captured academic attention.
What is happening with teaching and scholarship in the realm of comics is a very good case study of the blurring and shifting of disciplinary boundaries that is happening throughout academia, as well as the introduction of new material into the canon as it gains respect. My grandfather was a photographer of the generation that saw his art form migrate from the pages of glossy magazines to the walls of museums and galleries and into books of art history. That is what is occurring right now with my chosen art form. When works like Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid On Earth begin to take their place beside Steppenwolf and the comics art of Gary Panter beside the silkscreens of Andy Warhol, comics are no longer solely the concern of scholars of pop culture and are moving into the purview of scholars in literature and art history departments as well.
Justin Hall (www.allthumbspress.com) is a cartoonist currently teaching at the California College of Art. His work won him a 2001 Xeric Award and 2007 Queer Press Grant and has been featured in shows at the San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum and in various galleries. He has written about comic books for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Strip!, and Pride Magazine and is on the boards of Prism Comics (supporting LGBT comics) and Siewphewyeung (supporting Cambodian comics). Hall is the creator of several comics series, including True Travel Tales, the third of which was included in the 2006 Best American Comics (Houghton Miflin). His new book—Glamazonia: The Uncanny Super Tranny—was recently released.
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