ENG 325 sits in a curious space as a course: it is required for students in MSU’s Comic Arts minor, an elective for students within the English major, and open to interdisciplinary students from all standings. In other words, only a handful of students had created comics before, so Making Comics by Lynda Barry served as a crash course in rewiring our brands — and our hands — to draw intuitively. Making Comics is a comics text that is as much about how Barry teaches her comics courses as it is concerned with rekindling the innate ability to draw and community visually. We began most every class with a daily notecard drawing (an approach I discuss more in the Resources section), but many students also created 1pg book reviews of Barry’s comic, shown here.
A personal note: Making Comics gave many of my students the confidence to start creating comics, to simply put pencil and pen to paper to see what happens. If you are thinking about including comics-making within your classroom: read up on Making Comics, or better yet, drop me a line (wigardju@msu.edu) to talk it through! I cannot recommend it enough. — Justin
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