would be the librarian for comics 
here at the University, Carter’s 
username suits him quite nicely — 
little did he know he would be saving 
the world of comics for students.
As comics make an appearance 
in the library and foreign language 
courses, they’re also beginning 
to make their way into teaching 
styles and other areas of academia. 
Gina Brandolino, lecturer in the 
Sweetland Center for Writing and 
the Department of English, and 
Ali Shapiro, lecturer in Sweetland, 
the School of Art & Design and 
the English Department Writing 
Program, are setting the stage for 
the future of comics in academia.
To truly understand their love 
and admiration for comics, Shapiro 
sent me a self-designed graphic, 
which resembles both her and 
Brandolino at their individual desks, 
reading comics and continuously 
passing 
on 
information 
and 
commentary about them. While 
both are avid comic book readers, 
the two have the opportunity to 
discuss and teach comics (yes, just 
comics) in a classroom setting this 
summer.
“When 
we 
learned 
about 
the opportunity to teach a class 
together, it seemed obvious that 
would be a great class and, for me, 
a good opportunity to think more 
about pedagogy and comics with 
somebody really useful to do that 
with,” Brandolino wrote in an email 
interview with The Daily.
In the past, Brandolino has 
taught all-comic courses through 
the English Department, with 
themes relating to fame and infamy, 
and topics revolving around place.
“Teaching comics is pretty far 
outside my wheelhouse. I was 
trained as a medievalist, so I relied 
on the help of a good number of 
people to make the class work,” 
Brandolino said.
Luckily, alongside Brandolino is 
Shapiro, someone who draws her 
own comics and teaches in LSA and 
the School of Art & Design.
“I started drawing comic strips 
for my high school paper and 
eventually became the comics 
editor. My college application essay 
was a three-page comic essay,” 
Shapiro wrote. Between them and 
their dabbles in comics, the two are 
sure to bring an array of knowledge 
and enthusiasm to the course.
Comics can be action-packed, 
entertaining 
and 
effulgent 
— 
adjectives that a comics neophyte 
like myself would relate to something 
along the lines of superheroes — but 

Brandolino and Shapiro brought 
my attention to comics that were 
down-to-earth and realistic. Many 
of these pieces, though in the genres 
of magical realism, mystery, fiction, 
fantasy and even horror, allude to 
everyday challenges that people 
face in reality.
Brandolino’s favorite comic, “My 
Favorite Thing Is Monsters” by 
Emil Ferris, tells the story of Karen, 
a little girl growing up in 1960s 
Chicago.
“She has a hard time fitting in at 
school and, as a way to cope with 
that and some other hard things 
going on in her life, pretends she is a 
werewolf,” she wrote.
Shapiro added that she has 
“also really been enjoying Michael 
DeForge, particularly his book 
‘Big Kids,’ which is just so weird 
and imaginative (spoiler alert: 
people turn into trees).” Despite the 
imaginary and fantastical elements 
in the stories, they propose real 
characters who encounter situations 
with 
coming-of-age, 
murder, 
Holocaust survivors and complex 
relationships. We’re not just talking 
about cute Snoopy comics anymore.
With this in mind, Brandolino 
and 
Shapiro 
described 
their 
intentions for their summer comic 

course and their hopes for students 
to read comics in a new light. A 
portion of their class description 
proposes the analysis of reading 
comics through a social justice lens:
“Comics 
also 
raise 
great 
questions about justice, pushing 
us to redefine ‘good guys’ and 
‘bad guys,’ explore marginalized 
perspectives and interrogate our 
expectations of what people, places 
and things ‘should’ look like. Indeed, 
comics are just as worthy of careful 
attention and analysis as are the 
literary ‘classics’ we typically think 
of as appropriate reading for school.” 
While we can read comics as 
a form of entertainment or solely 
as fictional stories, they exist 
to serve a greater purpose. As 
Dave Carter mentioned to me, 
Joe Sacco’s “Palestine” and John 
Lewis’s “March: Book 1,” are both 
nonfiction accounts of activism 
and calls to social justice. And yes, 
they’re graphic novels.
We have comics that are fun, we 
have comics that are serious; we 
have comics that are magical and 
comics that are realistic. We have 
comics about kids getting bit by 
radioactive spiders (“The Amazing 
Spider-Man”) and comics reflecting 
on coming-of-age and sexuality 
(“Fun Home”). My only question is: 
Where does it all, this art form and 
this educational platform, go from 
here?
“For sure, comics are starting 
to assert themselves as a serious 
art form in general, and that, I 
suspect, will continue to happen. I 
see comics playing an increasingly 
greater role in college classrooms 
in the future,” Brandolino wrote. 
“Comics are for me, in most senses, 
just like any other kind of text — 
they tell stories that demand close 
and careful attention, that you get 
more out of the more time you spend 
looking deeply into them. I don’t 
treat a comic less seriously than a 
short story, for instance. I think it 
deserves the same level of serious 
consideration as any story.”
Though we see how comics are 
breaking boundaries and are now 
being considered pieces of literature, 
we can’t forget how comics can 
benefit us as readers, students and 
educators.
Carter, Brandolino and Shapiro 
all touched on the idea that reading 
a comic or a graphic novel is still 
different than reading most texts. 
They’re not all necessarily linear, 
where we can read line by line 
and left to right like we would 
with any typical piece of English 
literature. You’re hit all at once 
with scenes, images, descriptions 
and dialogue — details that need to 
be noticed in order to comprehend 
and appreciate that of a comic or 
graphic novel. In some way, graphic 
novels put us all on a similar scale 
of reading pace, where we take our 
time, live in the present of each 
panel and use our brains to read 
literature in a way with which we 
aren’t familiar.
“They’ve (comics) still got a 
rich history of telling stories that 
might otherwise be marginalized, 
or telling stories in weird ways,” 
Shapiro explained. “I think it 
matters now, more than ever, that 
those stories are heard, read, seen, 
drawn.”
I think about my bookshelf at 
home, where “Welcome to the 
Jungle” is probably sitting among 
the dust of all my other pre-college 
texts. It sits between famous works 
like 
“Slaughterhouse-Five” 
and 
“The Shining.” I only ever thought 
of Harry Dresden, the fantastic 
wizard detective character, as 
another figure that young, comic-
reading boys would aspire to be. 
Man, was I wrong.
Nonetheless, 
I 
realize 
now 
that stories like “Welcome to the 
Jungle” are no different than if 
my dad gave me a book from the 
“Harry Potter” or the “Percy 
Jackson” series. Their characters, 
their downfalls and their lessons 
all derive from a similar place: They 
all know how to tell a good story. 
I never thought that something 
like Butcher’s graphic novel could 
actually help me learn more about 
literature, 
colloquial 
language, 
design and formatting, storytelling 
and so much more.
As the future of art in academia 
evolves, similar to how we are now 
analyzing rap songs and children’s 
television shows, I see the place that 
comics and graphic novels have 
in educational settings. I can only 
hope that my kids grow up reading 
graphic novels in school and learn 
to value their importance, which is 
something I unfortunately missed 
out on growing up.
To fill my regret and to pursue 
my new interest in graphic novels, 
I went to the University’s library 
search engine, Mirlyn, and typed 
in “Welcome to the Jungle.” I think 
it’s time to give it another read. 

2B —Thursday, January 18, 2018
b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Courtesy of Shapiro
Thinking outside the panel: A look 
at comics in the classroom & beyond

B-SIDE LEAD

When I was younger, my dad gave 
me the graphic novel “Welcome 
to the Jungle,” the prequel to Jim 
Butcher’s novel series “The Dresden 
Files.”
“It’s about a detective who’s also 
a wizard,” my dad told me. “I think 
you’ll like it.” Sure, I liked science 
fiction and mystery, I read the work 
of authors like Kurt Vonnegut, 
Alice Sebold and Stephen King. But 
those books consisted of thousands 
of words and dragged along for 
hundreds of pages. No images or 
drawings or graphics. “Welcome 
to the Jungle” would be my first 
graphic novel, so I wasn’t quite sure 
what to think.
Flash forward to this past Friday 
when Dave Carter — video games 
archivist, comics librarian and 
reference services coordinator at the 
University of Michigan’s Duderstadt 
Center on North Campus — asked 
me: “So are you much of a comics 
person?” I was nervous to say no. 
I enjoyed the idea of comics as an 
artistic platform and as a method 
of storytelling, but I never read 
any except for the one my dad gave 
me. But there I was, interviewing a 
comics aficionado and the man who 
runs the comics collection, and I 
was giving him a blank stare.
“My dad’s really into them,” I 
told him. “What’s the one about 
the detective but he’s a wizard?” 
He politely told me he hasn’t heard 
of it, so I was back to square one: 
naïveté about comics and little to 
no connection with them. I soon 
realized 
those 
notions 
would 
quickly change.
About 13 years ago, the University 
opened a collection devoted to 
comics and graphic novels, mainly 
for Art & Design students and 
anyone else who was interested. 
Now with around 10,000 graphic 

novels and 700 to 800 mini-comics 
(self-published, 
“grassroots”-type 
comics), the collection has made 
a hefty dent in the University’s 
libraries and provides a service for a 
variety of students.
Carter 
is 
responsible 
for 
selecting the comics that go into the 
collection, mainly ordering from 
Vault of Midnight, a comic shop 
right here in Ann Arbor. Regardless 
of the new comics Carter orders, 
he’s also in charge of selecting 
comics from donations.
I walked into Carter’s office 
when suddenly, I was hit with 
piles – loaded piles – of donated 
comics and graphic novels. But it’s 
not that people get sick of them 
or that they’re outdated – like any 
good story, you pass it on, and 
that’s what the donations do for the 
future students who will access the 
collection.
“I’m building a collection for the 
person who’s going to be researching 
comics 20, 50, 100 years from now,” 
Carter said. “Today’s trash culture is 
tomorrow’s high culture.”
Gathering comics in today’s age, 
even the less popular ones, will be 
relevant for someone in the near 
future. Comics are on the rise, and 
therefore the next generation of 
comic book readers need a collection 
worthy of their time.
Carter went on to explain his 
process in choosing which comics 
go into the collection. His goal is to 
“identify key comics from around 
the world,” where he finds a wide 
variety in the world of comics. He 
tackles projects where he chooses 
to focus on comics and comic series 
from certain regions of the world, 
ranging from Eastern Europe, Latin 
America, Africa and soon South 
Asia. And before Friday, I only knew 
of “Superman,” “Peanuts” and 
anime, let alone comics originating 
from all around the world.
In the mindset of diversifying 
the collection, Carter also looks at 

marginalized authors and stories. 
Instead of solely stories about 
white, male superheroes, comics 
about magical realism or realistic 
fiction are chosen. He will choose 
comics that reach out to different 
audiences, like children, college 
students and adults. Additionally, 
female authors, authors of color 
and queer-identifying authors are 
factors in the collection selection.
Another essential part of Carter’s 

job is going around to different 
classes and telling students and 
professors 
about 
the 
comics 
section. Communication Studies 
and English are two courses Carter 
speaks to because they discuss 
how comics are both a form of 
storytelling and entertainment. But 
the classes finding it most useful 
are foreign language courses like 
German, French and Italian.
Instead of reading novels with 
texts, students are reading graphic 
novels in these classes. Carter 
described how graphic novels give 
the reader “visual clues” that allow 
one to better understand phrases or 

words because of their coinciding 
images. These graphic novels have 
a “big use of colloquial language,” 
he added, which helps students 
further their comprehension of the 
language.
During the interview, Carter 
showed me pieces that were not 
displayed in the public collection but 
instead were stored privately due to 
older, more fragile binding or ones 
that are oversized.
He pulled out a book that had 
to be 3x3 feet, opening it gently to 
show me the fluorescent drawings 
of the famous comic “Little Nemo” 
by Winsor McCay. Dating all the 
way back as early as 1905, the 
story of Little Nemo dreams these 
extraordinary dreams, only to 
awaken by the end of the strip. 
Carter explained to me how comics 
used to be full-page spreads in these 
old-fashioned newspapers, not the 
tiny, two to three block comics we 
get in print now.
There was something about 
it: its vibrancy, its imagery, its 
eye-catching size, its age. I was 
absorbed into the strokes of “Little 
Nemo.” Though anyone could pick 
up a paper and be entertained by 
McCay’s character, it hit me how 
much comics have evolved from 
newspapers to web-forms and now 
to full-length pieces of literature. 
Comics have made and continue to 
make a distinct impact on society, 
both educationally and socially.
Carter’s phone sat on the table 
during the interview. His phone 
case has the image of the Superman 
“S,” big and bold in red and blue. 
In that moment, the connection 
occurred to me: His email is 
superman@umich.edu.
“I chose that (username) back 
in 1989 when I was a freshman 
in Engineering,” he said. They 
told him to “pick something you’ll 
remember.”
“So I picked ‘Superman’ as my 
ID,” Carter said. Not knowing he 

ERIKA SHEVCHEK
Daily Arts Writer

While we can 

read comics 

as a form of 

entertainment or 

solely as fictional 

stories, they exist 

to serve a greater 

purpose

Haley McLaughlin/DAILY

Though we 

see how comics 

are breaking 

boundaries and 

are now being 

considered pieces 

of literature, we 

can’t forget how 

comics can benefit 

us as readers, 

students and 

educators

