McLuhan and Ong Would Be Proud

Marshall McLuhan and Walter Ong recognized the legitimacy of comics. Today, they're back on the rise.

The push for comics has produced an interesting set of bedfellows. A collaboration of artists, teachers and scholars, the National Association of Comics Art Educators, is distributing study guides and lesson plans that include "An Aesthetic History of Comics."

And a Columbia University professor is leading a 10-city, after-school project that gives 30,000 students, from elementary school through high school, a chance to have their own comic books professionally published.

In previous editions, students have tackled AIDS and the plight of Tibet, among other issues.

"Kids are writing about very real topics," says Michael Bitz, a senior research associate at Columbia's Teachers College and the founding director of the Comic Book Project. It began in 2001 at an after-school program in Queens, N.Y., and has produced three published student collections.

"It's become sort of a national movement," he says. "It's really been fantastic."

Link.

Click here for earlier post about McLuhan and Ong and comics.