Comic Books: Conduits to Culture.

Abstract

NO, I AM NOT one of the new (or fairly pass? by now) pop art fans who is trying to convince the world that common culture is quality culture and that the most inner expression of our sociological id or something of the sort can be found on a tomato can label. My point is far more pedestrian and it has to do with the teaching of reading. As the mother of three boys who, one after the other, were notoriously unmotivated to learn to read and had to be urged, coaxed, cajoled, threatened and drilled in order even to stay in the super slow group in reading, I wish to thank comic books for being a conduit, if not a contribution, to culture. The first thing which my oldest boy read because he wanted to was a comic book. I had been hearing a lot of bad publicity about comic books, so I picked his up and read it. It was poorly written and I could tell the writer's age from his outdated slang (Who's that creep? He's really in the groove!). My boy did not under stand their special meaning and I had to translate from my own personal knowledge of my teenage years. It was poorly written, so poorly that it was really hilarious in the same way that a high school produc tion of Hamlet can be hilarious?but I saw nothing harmful in it. It had crime but crime as a generality that was not graphically and enticingly portrayed. So, as long as these things appealed to him where all other printed matter had failed, I let him read all he wanted. The words he learned to read here could be used in other reading material too and perhaps his skill would lure him be yond this level.

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