Graphic Encounters

With the recent explosion of activity and discussion surrounding comics it seems timely to examine how we might think about the multiple ways in which comics are read and consumed.<br/><br/>Graphic Encounters moves beyond seeing the reading of comics as a debased or simplified word-based literacy. Dale Jacobs argues compellingly that we should consider comics as multimodal texts in which meaning is created through linguistic visual audio gestural and spatial realms in order to achieve effects and meanings that would not be possible in either a strictly print or strictly visual text. Jacobs advances two key ideas: one that reading comics involves a complex multimodal literacy and two that by studying how comics are used to sponsor multimodal literacy we can engage more deeply with the ways students encounter and use these and other multimodal texts. Looking at the history of how comics have been used (by churches schools and libraries among others) will help us as literacy teachers best use that knowledge within our curricula even as we act as sponsors ourselves.