Comic Boom - Episode 3 dip into comics history with Dr Hattie Earle

Dr Harriet Earle (Hattie) is a senior lecturer in English at Sheffield Hallam University and research fellow at the Centre for War, Atrocity, and Genocide at the University of Nipissing. She is the author of Comics, Trauma, and the New Art of War (2017) and Comics: An Introduction (2020) – and she writes mostly on war and violence.

In this episode we explore some of the historical reasons that comics sit on the outskirts of the educational mainstream and discuss their otential, their universality and the possibilites of comics for promoting social justice.

Hattie's book, Comics: An Introduction is available here - and by pdf if you email her!!

Links to everything  discussed, including Hattie's reading recommendations can be found on the podcast padlet.

Follow Hattie on Twitter at  @Harriyot
Host: @Lucy_Braidley
Contact: comicboompodcast@gmail.com

Music by John_Sib from Pixabay

Transcript

Lucy: 1:00

Hi Hatty,

Hattie: 1:01

Hi.

Lucy: 1:01

I guess my first question, and it it, I'm prepared for a, to have a long answer to this question. But what drew you to studying comics? What was the pull for you to start looking at that from an academic perspective?

Hattie: 1:14

I think, it's uh, gosh, it's, that's, that is a massive question. So I did I did an English degree and comics were always there hovering in the background, but we never, were really allowed to study them. And then I sort of went off the, off the rails slightly and studied theology, but we don't talk about that. That's a separate issue. And when I came back to do my PhD I had this idea that I really wanted to think about. but it had all been done. Everything that I wanted to say had already been said. And then my supervisor said, well, have you ever read a comic? I was like, yes. Oh my goodness me. Yes. And it just all fell into place there. So, it was partly because I needed something original and partly because I've been reading comics since I was. Able to read and it, it just made sense to go back to my, my first love when it came to something that I was gonna have to be really dedicated to.

Lucy: 2:08

So Can you tell me a little bit about your very first experiences of reading a comic as a child? How did you come into contact with them? Was it through school? Was it through a family member? What were your first loves in the comic?

Hattie: 2:19

So my, my mum and dad and my grandparents, they had no qualms about giving me any book that I wanted, which was actually quite a dangerous thing in some cases. But comics were always around and I think they saw the value quite early on of using them to get me to read independently, but also to learn other languages. So we had we had the Tinton series in English and then lots of different other languages for separate individual albums. And we would, we'd read them side by side. That's how I sort of learned to, to speak and read other languages. And they were never of the opinion that comics were anything other than something that they were perfectly happy for me to be plowing through at a great speed. So it wasn't the sort of household where, I know a lot of people say, oh, I didn't, I didn't really get into comics until I was older because they weren't really allowed. And they weren't really allowed at school, but I read them anyway. It was a very, they've just always been there, I suppose. And my father really likes reading comics. My mum, not so much, but it was a, a. Almost an educational, but without realizing it was educational experience. Because they just used them for language learning and reading. And from a very, very young age. So it was never really a question of, oh, I'd like to read this comic, but my parents might not let me. I just, yep, it was fine. It was not a problem.

Lucy: 3:44

So did you find that there was a, a tension there when then at school, perhaps they weren't as accepted? A part of the sort of reading diet was, did you find that surprising or was that also something that you accepted from an early age?

Hattie: 3:56

No, I found it really surprising because they would say things like, oh, well this isn't really a proper book. So, okay, but what's a proper book? And, and I've got colleagues with lit PhDs who still don't really have a definition of a proper book. Like, what is that? A lot of the, the discussion seem to be, oh, well this isn't really gonna help your reading because you're just looking at the pictures. And now I look back on that and think, okay, but image literacy is a, is a very important thing. And there is a lot of reading in comics, even though it isn't text literacy, reading the words, it's understanding relationships between word and image and image and image. So there's a lot going. and to say that they're not proper books or they're going to devalue a child's reading is it's wrong. Really, I think is the, the firm way of saying it. It's just not right. So I would read them at home and then I'd read the proper books at school, but

Lucy: 4:57

It's funny to say that because that was one of the, the names that I was thinking about for this podcast was not a proper book, but I went with Comic Boom instead. But yeah, I've certainly had come up against that same, same feeling in my own life as well. You talked about the definition of what is a proper book, but I did want to kind of as a starting point ask you how you would define a comic. Just, it's useful I think for us to, to know that we're talking about the same thing, although. Defining things can be very difficult, so I just wondered what your view on that.

Hattie: 5:28

I think the more people you are, you're gonna get a different definition from everyone you ask. And a couple of years ago when I wrote a book, it's called Comics an Introduction, and I had to define the thing and I thought, oh my goodness. What, what is it? So, Scott McCloud, who is a a comic artist himself, a great book called Understanding Comics, he gives the definition of it being images in sequence. To tell a story. So a, a narrative in sequence. And will Eisner as well, who's a very famous now deceased artist uses sequential art as his definition. And I think that's it. It's the idea of putting images and sometimes words, but not essential in sequence to create a narrative that the reader is in some way engaged with. So you have to do some work as a reader to, to make the story. But it's, it's really about that, that relationship between the image to each other. So I, I would say that would be my fluffy definition.

Lucy: 6:29

And we, we see them, everywhere really. I mean, they're, they're widespread throughout global culture. In your book, you use the word ubiquitous. Um, why do you think that is? Are they an essential part of human communication in that way? Why are they springing up all over the place?

Hattie: 6:45

They've, they've always been there. So what did we have before? We had written language where we had pictograms and petro lifts, and we had cave paintings, which are a sort of a proto comic, if you will. And it's a, it's a way that we learn to tell a story before we. Written or formalized language children will, you know, sort of drawing a picture and it, it's got a narrative going through it and you ask them what it is and they'll tell you the story in the picture. So it's something that I think as humans, we do in order to tell those stories that make up who we are. And it, it is international. There are comics in every every country, every culture. Some accepted more than others. But it just, it's the most, the most easy, the most obvious the most universally understood way of telling a story. And I, I think that's part of the joy of the form, that we, we know what this is. Even if we think we don't, we, we know what this is because it's something that we've been engaging with from a very, very young age. And people who say, well, I have never read a comic, but you have, if you've built an IKEA flat, Bookcase, you've read a comic if you've been on a plane. And you know, on the back of the seat there's the, the details for if the plane goes down, that's a comic. And I think actually understanding that when we say comics and when we think about these sort of visual storytelling, it's not the formalized thing in a book. It's the, it's the form and the way that the form is used more than just. Men with their underpants over their tights.

Lucy: 8:26

In your uh, book comics and introduction, which I absolutely love. and I found, I found it so, so fascinating and it really opened up some of the importance of the history of comics and how that feeds into our, I guess, misconceptions or preconceptions about comics which we're gonna talk about in a moment. But one of the things which I. Underlined vigorously whilst reading was comics speak to the truth about the world around us and the world within us. I thought, oh yes, put that on a t-shirt. I love it. Can you tell me about that in terms of your own reading? Cause I think that sort of speaks to what you were just talking about there, sort of universal appeal that, that and the immediacy of the story. Just what kinds of comic. Speak to you directly and what are you reading at the moment and and how does that feel from you sort of Hattie as a reader? Really?

Hattie: 9:20

Oh, that is, that's a a lovely question. What am I reading at the moment? Well, I, I have, I have two piles and the first is the research pile. Which is all going into my next book. And it, it's a slog. Great stuff, but it really is a slog. And then the, the sort of the, the lovely settle down with the book and a cup of tea pile. So at the moment I'm reading a series called Chew, c h e w, which is about a world in which a lot of people have food-based superpowers. And chicken has been banned. So it's this very bizarre world the most powerful. Law enforcement office is the Food and Drug Administration, and it's, it's, it's bonkers. It's completely bonkers, but it's very, very funny. And there's something about the, the way that that particular comic does, it's absurdist, it's, it's funny, it's oddly serious in places. But it's, it's telling a story that we can relate to on some level. And I think that's, that's the thing about comic speaking to the world around us and within us, that we, it's a form that has become, or has always been, I should say, democratized in a way. Anyone can pick up a pen or a pencil or a lump of coal and draw a comic on whatever they have. We've now got web comics and that you easily, freely disseminate your stuff. They're being used to tell stories from places where actually language, written language would not be the best way to do it because of literacy rates or because of language barriers. So there's something wonderfully sort of democratizing about the whole thing and the fact that we have the ability to engage. International ideas through a form that is comfortable to all of us, while not necessarily belonging to any of us, I think is, is brilliant and it's the thing that I particularly love about, about the form. But yeah, sorry, that's my sort of soap box is how wonderful. I love comics

Lucy: 11:24

And do you think, I'm just wondering, I just moving on a little bit I'm again, You talk about cultural baggage is part of. Idea that actually anyone can create a comic. Perhaps part of the reason why they do sit outside of the, kind of accepted the academy, the, the, the canon. Why they aren't routinely used as texts from an academic perspective in schools. Maybe because they are seen as something that anyone can produce, and so therefore, less of value.

Hattie: 12:00

What an absolute shame. I think there are other, other things that come that are sort of more of sort of the bigger reasons that they're being excluded from certain conversations. Why, why would you want to remove something that everyone can do? It's that I just think that would be such a terrible shame. And I think you're probably right, actually. I think the fact that anyone, anyone could do this It's taken web comics, for example, a, a while to kind of get a foothold, a alongside print comics because as you say, everyone can do it. They're, they're much more sort of fan produced or, or amateur produced. But I, I just think that's such a terrible shame. Shouldn't we be celebrating the fact that there's this thing that we can all do if we want to, and it doesn't take. We can't all go out and make a film because we've not got the training to use a camera or the money to do it, but we can make something. And I would've thought that should be something we celebrate. But I do definitely see your point there. Yeah.

Lucy: 12:58

Yeah, I think definitely the joy that I have seen when I've kind of been in the classroom. Children that I'm teaching know that I love comics and then they grow in the confidence of that make their own. Get little, little post-it note comics left on my desk at school was, those were the highlights of my teaching career. Really. To see children be able to take ownership of their own storytelling powers that they have within them when maybe before they didn't really feel that. Had a story that they could tell or that anyone would want to see, or a way of a way of telling that story. So yeah, I, I think it's a real shame too. But there are other things historically that have led to the kind of exclusion of comics. I wonder if you could give us a little bit of an introduction into some of those key moments, I guess, in, in the history of comics that have led to them perhaps sitting outside of the mainstream.

Hattie: 13:49

So I'm primarily an Americanist. So most of my research is based in North American comics and. A, a lot of the conversations about comics are being accepted. It is a, a largely Western anglophone issue. So for UK and, and North America because in, in a lot of continental Europe, France, Belgium, Germany comics are widely accepted and available. And it's, it's not a, a controversial form particularly But in the US yeah, it has taken a, a pretty long time for that barrier to break down. And I think the key moment certainly in, in the US in the mainstream. So, Marvel in DC superhero stuff is, came in the fifties. So, uh, 1956 there was a senate hearing about juvenile delinquency. And using a book written by a psychiatrist, they decided to have this hearing because the worry was that comics were, was causing juvenile delinquency. Some of the industry voices that they had at the, the, the hearing were not very helpful and sort of said, what are you talking about? They'd be ridiculous. Which was not very nuanced. And it led to the creation of what's called the Comics Code Authority. So in older comics you can see this sort of black and white logo in the top corner that the comic is acceptable and it cut. Everything good? Just everything good. The biggest sellers at the time were horror comics. They banned, they weren't considered acceptable, and there's a whole list of regulations that the comics creators had to follow. My favorite one is that women had to be drawn accurately, which I think is hilarious. If you've ever seen a super heroine.

Lucy: 15:33

Yes,

Hattie: 15:34

no But because of, because of this, it drove a lot of creators underground, and that's where Underground Comics came from. And it's really from that movement throughout sort of sixties and seventies these small press very raunchy, quite a lot of erotica, lots of swearing, lots of drug use. That's the, the movement that then grew into what we think of as the modern comic because that sort of coming back up into mainstream production people really loving that kind of stuff. And it becoming sort of really the, the foundation of the modern, maybe the modern graphic novel, we might think of it as so, so that decision in the fifties to try and squash all of this was so woefully ineffective. but not immediately. And I think that development and, and the fact that people were like, wait, you can't, you can't squash my creative spirit. I'm gonna go underground. Brilliant. And so when we talk about comics as being sort of less, less, a lesser form or something that we, we wouldn't want in the academy, I think it's sort of coming from that moment where there was this sort of bizarre hysteria about, oh no, kids are reading comics and they're not understanding physics anymore. Children apparently don't realize that we can't fly. So I th I think that is a, It's, a great

Lucy: 16:50

thing, you know, it's that moral panic that we've seen. I mean, I know I was at secondary school in the in the nineties. It was video violence. Then we were learning about video violence and the dangers of video violence. That was what it was called. I think they were really talking about computer games. There's. These moments, I think they sort of repeat throughout history where a particular tends to be. I mean, I don't know, this is sort of my observation, but things that are, if they're, if, if something is aimed at young people then that is where people start to get suspicious. It starts to be categorized as as potentially dangerous. And I dunno what your thoughts.

Hattie: 17:27

it's, it's that thing about the, the generation not understanding the kids. I think um, what's the Bob Dylan line? Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command. So anything that is aimed at younger people, especially, I've noticed young girls, if it's aimed at young girls, it tends to be just mocked. But yeah, that, that fear that, oh no, what are we doing to our children? So, video games or is it rap music is another point. It's like, it's gonna corrupt, corrupt our

Lucy: 17:57

social media maybe

Hattie: 17:59

Oh, social media. Yeah.

Lucy: 18:01

TikTok. Suspicions around TikTok. And I have to say I am, as a mother of a 12 year old, I'm like, no, you're absolutely, I mean, she isn't allowed cause she's not old enough to be on TikTok. But yeah, I do have to perhaps reflect on that decision when she's a bit older and think, is this just because I am excluded from this mode of communication that I'm suspicious of it? What can we do about that now then to try and promote the use of comics in schools to try and get over this baggage that they come with.

Hattie: 18:29

I think there has been a big movement towards using certain characters or certain genres in a way that can work in a classroom setting. And, and the one that comes to mind the most is the origin story of Magnito so he's sort of, The villain of the X-Men. There's a brilliant comic that was put out about his, his backstory where he is involved in the showa. He's in, he's in Auschwitz. And when you, when you buy the comic, the comics sort of four, four issues it bound in a book there's a teacher's guide in the back. And it just, it explicitly tells you how you could use this in a class for like eight to 10 year olds and 10 to 12 year olds. So they, they've really done the work for you on that one, saying, this is a thing that you've gotta teach. Why not use this comic and here's how we suggest you do it. But quite a lot of, of. Some comics, nerds, I should say like myself, have started sort of building those guides and saying, okay, if you want to talk about this issue, here's this comic and here's how you might do it. So I think that's definitely become more of a thing. And I, and I've noticed quite a few actually, comics that do have a, like a teachers guide that you can download online or that comes in the book. So I think

Lucy: 19:47

That's

Hattie: 19:47

the creators are

Lucy: 19:48

it is about that sort of subject knowledge and about having the confidence to try something different. And when you are, you know, a busy teacher, you've got not, you're very time poor with planning and things like that. It's really helpful to have a, a sort of start of a 10 out there, ready to go for you to have a look at and with some ideas and also just a pointer as to. What texts would be appropriate because it, they are not all comics and graphic novels are, you know, obviously suitable for children. So it is about having that little bit of knowledge about how to navigate that as well. I think

Hattie: 20:20

Hmm.

Lucy: 20:22

I wondered what you thought about some of the issues that there can be around female representation in comics you mentioned the uh, physical appearance of some of the female superheroes and whether or not they were accurate. I just, there is a lot of um, embedded. Particular, body images prevalent in comics. And just wonder what your thoughts are on, on, whether that's changing or

Hattie: 20:47

Mm.

Lucy: 20:47

that.

Hattie: 20:48

So I definitely think it's changing in terms of the mainstream stuff, is that the Marvel and DC superhero stuff, I think they're getting a lot, a lot better. And there have been some, some characters introduced that to really good things with body image. They have accurately drawn and accurately presented. Women and girls. I'm thinking of Ms. Marvel especially, who is Kamala Khan. She's a a, is she a Pakistani American teen who is Muslim and, and there's really been praised for the, the way that they've been represented. So that would be a positive example I think in, in sort of the non-mainstream stuff. So graphic novels and. The more alt stuff, especially online. There's been a massive takeoff and, and I think really any, any kind of representation or protagonist that you might want to read, you will find there's been a, a big uptake in LGBT plus representation as well. I've just finished reading Heart Stopper, which is just, it's adorable. It's, it's just so lovely. Isn't it lovely?

Lucy: 21:49

Yeah,

Hattie: 21:49

And so heartwarming It is, but the like, good representation and which has been missing. So I think it's getting better it, but if you are looking for it in the, the old places, Superman for that, that you're not gonna find it there. There's a, there's a new space being carved out for this kind of representation. And I've noticed a lot. A lot of comic shops and a lot of even places like Waterstones will have a section that sort of says, this is the latest by feminist comic author, or an LGBT plus author or whatever. So they're definitely foregrounding it in places like that. But yeah, moving away from where we might have traditionally thought of comics, so the superheroes or the, the longer running stuff like Tintin, which is of course not being updated because Herge is dead. Female representation. Not so good. Still good stories, but not the place for

Lucy: 22:44

Yeah. And. And, and the, and sort of the diversity of representation and cultural representation in Tintin is

Hattie: 22:53

Oh,

Lucy: 22:54

also grew up, it grew up on a diet of Tintin and loved it so much and then revisiting with what I now know with my. Knowledge now of what's right and, and how things should be represented. It's yeah, it's not a good, but I have used that as a teaching tool in the classroom before to, to look at and explore the representation in Tintin and, and, and really dig into that and, and open up a discussion on that basis. And so there is a place for them if you are doing it with sort of open eyes. I think for those comics from the past. I wanted to shift the conversation a little bit now towards making comics and the kind of the benefits. So you were talking there. A little bit about own voice comics really, of people being able to share their own experiences and that that has diversified the types of comics that are on offer. And, that's now becoming more into the mainstream of things like like Heart Stopper who, which is so popular nowadays. And, and also things like Ms. Marvel, which, both of which are TV series as well, which always helps to promote things. I'm just interested in the use of comics to disrupt or create the creation of comics as a kind of social justice tool, as a way to create change. Not just create change within the comics world, but create change in the wider world as well. What have you observed happening around there? What's the possibilities?

Hattie: 24:19

I think, I think this goes back to the, the universality of comics. So, there's, there's something you can do when you're not expecting everyone to be able to read. And I, I'm not sort of saying people who are sort of fully illiterate, so functionally, functionally illiterate, but also language barriers. So creating a comic that may have very few words. Images that are compelling and and, and speak to the moment can be an incredibly powerful thing. The one that comes to mind first is Persepolis by Marjan Satrapi, where she's talking about the Iranian revolution of the Islamic Revolution. And the, the artwork is incredibly simple. There are very few words, but it shows that difference between. The, the veiled woman and the unveiled woman, and this has become, of course really relevant again with the protests in Iran. But that, that, that visual representation is so much more powerful. The, the picture is a thousand words and all that, but it's just so much more powerful if you can show rather than tell. So that, that one comes to mind as a, as a really great example of. You can show an image and it's just doing something sort of pulling at the, the emotions rather than the intellectual reading through a chunk of text, which can be so dull. I think the other thing to think about with all this is that the precursor in the UK to a lot of of comics storytelling was political cartooning and the idea that an image. With a political meaning. Spoke to the masses who, who couldn't be, couldn't, couldn't afford to buy a newspaper or didn't want to buy a newspaper, couldn't read a newspaper, but could look at the image and get the political point. And it was a way for people to engage with political discussion that didn't re rely on them being. Literate or moneyed or a part of a class who, who would buy the paper. So it was, it was a way to get those stories out and we still, I think we still have that, you know, great tradition of, of political cartooning in the uk and, and abroad. So I think those forms are important to think about in relation to the whole social justice issue. But also, again, it's that democratization. So I, I met a, a young woman at a conference who's been using comics to talk about sexual violence in India. And because it's, it's a form that is usually for children's comics. There are, they're moving into Indian graphic novels, of course, but it sort of, she's taking that form and breaking it apart by saying, this is my story and I'm gonna tell it in this form that you almost can't, look away from. So she's mobilizing it for her own ends and really, really effectively. I think this is something that's happening all over the world with people saying, I've, I've got this story to, to tell. I need it to get out quickly, effectively, and to the biggest number of people. And there's something about comics that just transmits so much better than a personal essay, for example. There's also. Been a sort of an, an uptick in people retelling stories through comics that remain relevant. Now, the one that comes to mind for that is the Rickard Sisters, they've just released their latest book, which is a retelling of No Surrender a feminist novel about the suffragettes. Which is an ongoing debate suffrage and who votes and should you vote, and all of those things. So they're using the form to take this little heard of novel. And, and, and show that this is a debate that is still ongoing. Previously they'd done it with the ragged trouser philanthropist as well. So, so many of the arguments in that are horribly fitting in 2022. So it, it's sort of, there's loads of different ways that comics is engaging with these social issues and doing so very effectively. Very effectively because it's able to break down language barriers literacy barriers, communication barriers in a way that pros text is, is just not able to do.

Lucy: 28:29

Yeah, I think that's really interesting and I think also that that leads to potentially. Being able to unlock the voice. Of younger children as well who are, whose voice is very much excluded from debate. And they don't have the kind of platforms often to, to sort of engage in debates despite the fact that much of what's going on, you know, in the world politically, socially, is affecting them. I mean, you. Now, you know, with cost of living very much children are, are being impacted and their everyday lives are being impacted by poverty across the uk. And yeah, I'm really interested in the potential of, of comics for giving them a platform from which they can share their experiences.

Hattie: 29:16

I know of it's not children. It's a, it's a group of, of immigrant women from, I think, Saudi Arabia, I might be wrong on that. And it's sort of giving them the tools of comics to tell their stories of how the, sort of, the move from their home country to the UK and, and their understanding of the immigrant experience, their, their experience of it. So I think being able to have those sorts of sessions and then they, they sort of filter out the ripples. Of people who've attended, they might go home and say, oh, I did this and I found it very useful, and maybe they'll pass it onto their children or their friends so that, because it's, it's this sort of low tech, grab a pen and grab a piece of paper and off you go. it does have that, that ability to, to travel really, really well. And I think asking someone to draw out their experience is considerably easier than saying, okay, sit and write your experience, because there's so much bound up in, in writing and I teach creative writing, so I've, I find it easier to get them to draw the story before they write it because it's, it's just freer and it speaks to something in our. In our younger, younger days, how we would tell stories. So actually getting over that writer's block for these, these difficult issues like feeling disenfranchised or not know, having the words to talk about an experience of poverty or of of violence or, or displacement. It can be an incredibly effective way of doing that.

Lucy: 30:49

Do you yourself? Make comics for for any

Hattie: 30:52

Not that I would ever show anybody because I am not not particularly good at drawing them, but yeah, I do. I, I've, I've always been a diarist and quite often there'll be a, a little comics doodle in there just to get something out that I'm not quite sure how to word it. And I, I, I make them with my students. I give them a writing prompt or they have to go draw it because, So, so often, one of the blocks that I find, I mean these are university undergraduates, but they, there's a sort of block in thinking about how something, how a story is, is visual when it's written. So actually having them draw it, I don't care if it's stickman, whatever, can help to improve their writing because they're thinking in a slightly different, And it opens up that creativity to give them some kind of new tools to, to get the words out. But yeah, no, mine are not for public consumption. They're just, they're just bad.

Lucy: 31:47

I think that, you know, that what you're saying about the that you do what you do with students there is just, is so applicable across age ranges. There's so much about teaching and learning and self-expression, which is fundamentally about being a human rather than whatever, whatever age you are. So I think that that's definitely applicable sort of across age ranges to. So we're gonna start to bring things to a close now. I wondered if you, have three takeaways the things that you'd like to leave people, educators who might be listening to this podcast with, just to think about. So I wondered if you'd had a thought about what those three points could.

Hattie: 32:23

I think the first one, and. And the, the, the big one, and I'm saying this is someone who whenever I mention, oh, I'm a comic scholar, people go, oh, like I've just kicked their dog or something. Comics are not scary. They're not they're not deviant. They're not difficult. They're not something to be avoided. They are a form that anyone can engage with and they shouldn't be viewed with suspicion. Sort of the, oh my goodness, what is this horrible thing that's, that that doesn't it doesn't fit. That's not what comics are. I think removing all the sort of stigma of it being a, a form for sort of the basement dwelling teenage boy who doesn't wash, no, that's not what they are at all. And I think once we get over that, That's the biggest hurdle to overcome with any kind of engagement with comics, especially in, in education and in academia. The, the other thing just do it, just put the comic in the classroom i, I, I find. People who, who have an opinion about them may change their opinion. And I think for children, the sort of the, the immediate thrill of, ah, comic's amazing. It's like when you do, you wheel in the, the TV with the video player at school and everyone goes bananas cuz it's great. I think once they've got over that immediate sort of, oh my goodness, it's a comic. This is incredible. There's so much that can be done with that comic. in the classroom, whether it's, okay, now let's think about how you would, you would write one or you would tell a story or is it breaking down a kind of a barrier to a difficult topic or a difficult subject? Is it giving a different perspective? So I think just put it in the classroom and, and see what happens. Most comic shops will happily advise on reading ages of, of material. Uh, There are some great resources for teachers that are being put together. And I mean, speaking for myself, and I'm, I don't wanna speak for all of my colleagues, but gosh, if you're a teacher and you see a, a university has a comics expert, drop us an email. I would be absolutely delighted if somebody said, Hey, I'm thinking of teaching this topic. Have you got any comic suggestions? I'm there Yes I do. And here they are. So I think, put it, put it in the room and see what happens. And the final of the three things is libraries. Use your libraries. Encourage your local libraries to have comics in them. Encourage your library to, to, to make a thing of, of the comics and get people in because a lot of them are expensive. They can be cost prohibitive when it's sort of 25 pounds for a book. If you, you can't afford it. You can't afford it. And it's, especially in the cost of living crisis, that is a lot to pay for a single book. So I think encourage libraries, school libraries as well local libraries to invest in comics. But, and not to put them in the kids section, but to put them in their own section and to say, look, we've got these. And it's a bit like that baseball film, you know, build it and they will come, put the comics in and they will come, the readers will come, I promise. so I think, you know, get, get them in

Lucy: 35:45

point. Yeah. So libraries are such a rich resource and I know that lots of public libraries around the country also have. Have digital access to comics available for free as well. So yeah, definitely get in touch with your local library and see what they have available. That's a really good tip. Thank you so much, Hatti. Those are a brilliant three takeaways. My final question then is if we were to add one comic or book to our to be read pile tomorrow, what should it.

Hattie: 36:16

Oh, yikes. I would say my boyfriend is a bear by Cat Ferris and Pamela, it's Ribbon or Reen, and I apologize for mispronouncing her name. It's soft, it's sweet. It's about exactly what it says on the cover. A woman whose boyfriend is a bear, and it's one of those books that I've read over and over because it's just warming. And I think at the moment there is a lot of, there is a lot of place for a book that is just lovely And that's my, that's my recommendation.

Lucy: 36:55

Sounds fantastic. Thank you. I will definitely be looking into that one. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today for sharing your extensive knowledge. And I know it's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of all the things that you know and could speak about. But it's given us a really good introduction. And I would recommend. Anyone who's been interested in what we've been speaking about today to get hold of um, hat's book. So it's comics and introduction by Harriet Earle available from Routledge. And it's a definitely a really good read and a really solid introduction to comics, to comics history and where comics are now. So, yeah, definitely a good one to get.

Hattie: 37:34

Can I just jump in Lucy and say if anyone would like to read it, I can always email you the PDF because you know, like I said, books are expensive and I, I'm just delighted to think of people reading it. So, yeah, if anyone would like a copy, I can email you the PDF version,

Lucy: 37:48

that is an amazing offer. Thank you so much that I'm sure people will take you up on that. It's definitely a good read.