1

Seamus O’Malley
The Graphic Novel
92007 ENGL 2750-E
Spring 2018
M/W 3:10-4:25pm / 3:35-4:350pm
Seamus.OMalley@yu.edu
Office Hours: T/Th 2PM-4PM
Office: 215 Lex 706

Superheroes Memoirs The Avant-Garde

In the early part of the twentieth century, American newspapers began publishing strips of
sequential art that became known as “comics,” because of their often humorous nature. Decades
later, publishers started to collect these strips into small pamphlets, and eventually publishers
began putting out pamphlets with original, as opposed to reproduced material. The term
“comics” stuck, hence the “comic book.”

As Marshall McLuhan theorized, new media often works in the language and modes of older
media: novels were first called “histories,” early films were conceived as “photoplays” . Comics
were no different, first trying to imitate preexisting genres like war narratives and crime dramas.
Eventually, however, comics contributed a new, unique genre that for decades could only be
found in comic book form: the superhero.

Most superhero books followed a similar format. A young man, often in some way marginalized
from society, gets in some way transformed—often via radiation, that obsession of mid-century
Nuclear Age America—and becomes super-human, possessing remarkable powers. Part of the
drama always came from the split personality most superheroes must undergo, as the awesome
powers of the alter ego are often no match for the mortal problems faced by the secret identity.
 2

Such a paradigm proved ripe for young, mostly male memoirists of the 1980s and 1990s. But
first many writers and artists were looking back at veteran comics-writer Will Eisner, who in
1978 wrote A Contract with God, a series of vignettes depicting the Jewish Lower East Side.
This work is now seen as the first “graphic novel,” since it is not a collection of separate comic
books (often referred to as a “trade paperback”) but instead a complete work of original material
designed to be published and read in one unit. (While this will be our working definition of a
graphic novel, several of the works we will consider should more technically be called trade
paperbacks.)

After pioneering superhero writers like Frank Miller and Alan Moore proved that comics could
tackle adult themes, and be as aesthetically complex and rewarding as other forms of art, the
comics memoir, utilizing the graphic novel format, took off: writer/artists like Chester Brown,
Seth, and Chris Ware took many of the superhero tropes and techniques and adapted them for
narrating their very un-super lives. Female artists followed suit, especially in the last decade that
has seen work by Vanessa Davis, Marjane Satrapi and Alison Bechdel.

While we will touch on this diachronic development of the graphic novel, we will be mostly
concerned with synchrony: we will ask how comics work, what is their shared vocabulary, what
happens to the reader/viewer as we “read” a comic. We will try to determine the complex
relationship between graphic novels the traditional novel, also how they relate to other forms of
visual art (especially painting, but also cinema). Appreciating graphic novels means borrowing
from both literary and art criticism, but will also need a critical look at what makes the form so
unique. We will turn to several secondary sources, especially Scott McCloud’s Understanding
Comics, to provide some models for critical appreciation.

Required Texts (in order)

Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics (William Morrow, 1994) 978-0060976255
Frank Miller, The Dark Knight Returns (DC Comics, 1997) 978-1563893421
Dan Clowes, The Death Ray (Drawn & Quarterly, 2011) 978-1770460515
Chester Brown, I Never Liked You (Drawn & Quarterly, 2002) 978-1896597140
Lynda Barry, One Hundred Demons (Sasquatch, 2005) 978-1570614590
Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis (Pantheon, 2004) 037571457X
Alison Bechdel, Fun Home (Houghton Mifflin/Mariner, 2006) 978-0618871711
Art Spiegelman, Maus I & II (Pantheon, 1991 & 1993) 978-0394747231, 978-0679729778
Gabrielle Bell, Everything is Flammable (Uncivilized Books, 2017) 978-1941250181
Chris Ware, Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth (Pantheon, 2000) 978-0375714542
David Mazzucchelli, Asterios Polyp (Pantheon, 2009) 978-0307377326

General Education Goals:

 Practice skills in close reading and interpretation of graphic novels

 Express ideas in writing; practice revising your work
 Understand the language and vocabulary of comic techniques
3
 4

Goals of the Course:

The course is divided into five units: Superheroes, Boy Memoirs, Girl Memoirs, History, and a
section on experimental comics I’m calling Pushing the Limits. After each unit we will have a
twenty-minute quiz, and students will also be required to write one one-page response per week.
At the end of the course a 5-page paper on one graphic novel will be due, and there will be a
final examination. The goals will thus be to:

 Practice the skills of close reading of graphic novels

 Produce written responses to graphic novels
 Write one thesis-driven essay using claims and evidence structure
 Practice a variety of critical perspectives interpreting graphic novels

Work required: Reading before class, thinking during class, bringing all relevant texts and
handouts to class; completing the exercises on time, contributing to discussions, writing and
demonstrating your knowledge and your analytical skills in weekly responses, unit quizzes, final
paper and the final examination.

Grade Distribution:

Participation: 20% (including exercises, attendance, and in-class discussion)

Responses: 25%
Quizzes: 25%
Final paper: 20%
Final exam: 10%

Attendance. Unexcused absences are not acceptable and will affect your final grade. More
importantly, because this seminar crams a lot of work into a fairly short amount of time, missing
classes will seriously reduce your benefit from the course. Grounds for excused absence are
documented cases of illness or family emergency, and other pressing personal circumstances. (I
don’t consider getting married, or the preparations for a marriage, a circumstance that excuses
absence from the class.) NOTE: Except in documented cases of emergency, absences will ONLY
be excused if I am notified in advance. More than two unexcused absences will begin to lower
your grade, and put you at risk of failing the course.

Leaving during class. Walking in and out of class is disruptive; please take care of your routine
personal needs before class starts. I recognize that we all have very occasional emergency
situations where we might need to leave a class.

Students who Require Special Accommodations: Students with disabilities who are enrolled
in this course and who will be requesting documented disability-related accommodations should
make an appointment with the Office of Disability Services, rkohn1@yu.edu, 646-592-4132
during the first week of class. Once you have been approved for accommodations, contact me to
ensure the successful implementation of those accommodations.
 5

Plagiarism and Cheating: Cheating on exams is a violation of academic integrity. (From

“Academic Integrity Policy" for YU.) “If it is determined that a student has cheated on a written
exam, he/she will receive an "F" in the course and will be dismissed from Yeshiva University."
Plagiarism means presenting someone else’s work as your own. Plagiarism can be an act of
deliberate fraud, such as turning in as your own work a paper wholly or partially cut-and-pasted
from the Internet, or it may be an inadvertent error, such as forgetting to cite a source whose
ideas you paraphrased or meant to quote. “Possible penalties include, but are not limited to,
dismissal from the University, suspension, failure in the course, failure of the assignment,
lowering of the grade in the assignment, or a notation in the student's personal file.”

Graphic disclaimer: As the name of the form implies, what we will read and see will sometimes
be graphic. None of the chosen works are gratuitous in their depiction of sex or violence, but, as
in a course in Art History, we are dealing with a visual medium and students should be advised
that they will encounter some explicit images. I will provide a list of pages students can skip if
they so choose, but there can be no substitution of the chosen works.
 6

Course Schedule

Jan 22
Introductions

Jan 24
Batman #286, 313 (readcomiconline.to/Comic/Batman-1940/)
Scott McCloud, Chap 1
Frank Miller, The Dark Knight Returns

Jan 29 Miller cont’d

McCloud Chap 2

Jan 31 Miller cont’d

McCloud Chap 3

Feb 5 Dan Clowes, The Death Ray

Feb 7 Clowes cont’d

McCloud Chap 4

Feb12 Chester Brown, I Never Liked You

Quiz 1

Feb 14 Lynda Barry, One Hundred Demons

Feb 19 Barry cont’d

McCloud Chap 5

Feb 21 Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis

Feb 26 Satrapi cont’d

No class Feb 28

March 5 Satrapi cont’d

March 7 Alison Bechdel, Fun Home

Quiz 2

March 12 Bechdel cont’d

March 14 Bechdel cont’d

McCloud Chap 6

Marc 19 Art Spiegelman, Maus I & II

 7

Quiz 3

March 21 Spiegelman cont’d

No class March 26

March 28 Spiegelman cont’d

McCloud Chap 7

Passover break

April 9 Gabrielle Bell, Everything is Flammable

April 11 Bell cont’d

Quiz 4

April 16 Chris Ware, Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth

April 18 Ware cont’d

McCloud Chap 8

April 23 Ware cont’d

April 25 David Mazzucchelli, Asterios Polyp

Essay due

April 30 Mazzucchelli cont’d

McCloud Chap 9

May 2 Mazzucchelli cont’d

Reading Week May 4-9

Final Exam Monday May 14