Memo 4

Here are various ideas for writing and creation assignments involving comic books.

Traditional Paper Examples

Students could write a paper on Captain America & The Falcon: Battle of The Captain Americas.  Students could explore how the two different Captain America’s reflect two different political positions on how America should be.

With Man-Thing: Plague of The Demon Cult students could write a paper exploring how what it would be like to forced to relate to the would purely by empathy and instinct, lacking any intellect, like the Man-Thing.

With Jonah Hex: Welcome to Paradise students can write a paper exploring Jonah Hex’s psychological tendency to lash out at world that lashes out at him.

With X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga students could write a paper exploring how absolute power can corrupt absolutely, as it does with The Phoenix.

With X-Men: The Days of Future Past students could write a paper on bigotry, as mutants are used as a metaphorical stand-in for all forms of bigotry.  It could also be explored with this story on how bigotry can become mutual, and how mutual hate can burn the fire of hatred to a boiling point.

With Batman: The Court of Owls students could write a paper exploring how the art work reflects Batman’s psychological turmoil.

With Meridian: Flying Solo students could write on how Meridian’s gaining of the Sigil is metaphorical for her becoming an adult.

With Astro City: Life in The Big City students could write a paper exploring how day to day life could be impacted by the existence of superheroes.

With Harbinger: The Beginning students could write a paper exploring the psychological traits of the various characters, and how all the characters, heroes and villains, have both good and bad traits.

With Watchmen students could write a paper exploring the moral greyness in Watchmen.

We live in a remake world.  Students could write a paper exploring remakes.  Students could compare and contrast an original version and a remake of a superhero comic.  Students could also explore the various reasons behind the changes.  One example would be comparing The Amazing Spider-Man: The Origin with Ultimate Spider-Man: Power & Responsibility.

With The Amazing Spider-Man: Spider-Man No More students could write a paper exploring the hardships and stress that comes with great responsibility.

With Green Lantern/Green Arrow vols 1 & 2 students could write a paper exploring the various social issues explored in the volumes.  What could also be explored is how vastly different world views could work together to come to the truth.

With Magnus Robot Fighter: Steel Nation students could write a paper exploring the humanity of the robots and how humanity is defined.

With Solar: Second Death students could write a paper exploring the metaphor behind Solar splitting in two to fight himself.

Malice is a novel by Chris Wooding that is part traditional novel and part graphic novel.  Students could write a paper comparing this two story telling mediums.


Less traditional assignment ideas

This is an assignment idea similar to the one I am doing for God’s Man.  Students fill in their own dialogue and thoughts on scanned pages from a standard length comic book that has had the words whited-out.

Students create their own superhero.  This superhero must reflect what the student believes to be traits that contemporary American Culture finds positive.  Then they create a super villain that reflects what they believe to be traits viewed negativity by contemporary American Culture.  This assignment could be elaborated upon with further steps.  They could possibly write a story featuring their superhero and super villain.  They can also create superheroes and villains for other cultures and compare them to our own.

Students could create a short comic book using the Marvel Method.  This method of creating a comic book would be a good way to practice team creation.  Here is a description of the Marvel Method from Wikipedia:

“In a plot script the artist works from a story synopsis from the writer, rather than a full script. The artist creates page-by-page plot details on his or her own, after which the work is returned to the writer for the insertion of dialogue. Due to its widespread use at Marvel Comics beginning in the 1960s, primarily under writer-editor Stan Lee and artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, this approach became commonly known as the "Marvel method" or "Marvel House style".”

Select a page or two of story that leaves the protagonist in danger. Then ask the students to problem solve and write a way out of the predicament. This can be done as a story, a script, or as an illustrated comic book page.  This idea from Education Space: http://www.educationspace360.com/index.php/lesson-plans-using-comic-books-and-superheroes-1740/

This assignment was inspired by one of my peer's Gods' Man assignments.  Students are handed cut out panels of a scanned comic book page.  They then try to rearrange them to see how many ways they can be arranged meaningfully.  This can also be done with Warriors of Plasm or Dark Dominion trading cards, which each card is a comic book panel which come together to create a comic book.