The Four Color Media Monitor

Education Week gave 4 ways they believe comics can be used for involving students in school studies, drawing from the work of a teacher. It begins, interestingly enough, with the following:

Most classroom walls display rules about arriving on time or raising hands to speak. Tim Smyth’s has a sign reminding students: “You’re Not Allowed to Ask Which is Better, Marvel or DC.”

Even as he sidesteps fervent debates about which comic book publisher is superior, Smyth leans into comics and graphic novels in his 10th and 11th grade social studies classes at Wissahickon High School in Ambler, Pa. He believes they can offer students an engaging entry point into history and world cultures.

Sure, they can, if they're written honestly, but if today's comics and cartoons in schools end up produced for leftist indoctrination, then there's no point in their use. That said, how fascinating we're being told about this trivial argument about whether Marvel or DC is better, because, not only was it ill-advised to argue solely upon that years before, both companies have become unendurable since the turn of the century due to their shift into ultra-leftist propaganda. But decades before, the bizarre mistake made in these "fervent debates" was that they didn't seem to be based on story merit at all. They were just over whether specific characters and their titles were cooler, or had better superpowers. It didn't add up to merit in the slightest, and that's what brought down superhero comics since.

And despite what's told here, few mainstream comics today are dealing with serious history or foreign culture, unless it's selective.

“And people say ‘that’s real history. That’s capital H history,’” Smyth said. His response? “Yeah. So is Captain America Number One.”

Published in 1941, just months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the comic depicts a shield-wielding hero punching German dictator Adolph Hitler. Once the United States entered the war, Captain America became a symbol of America’s strength, values, and resilience, Smyth tells his students.

It doesn’t hurt that comic books are clearly having a pop-culture moment, giving Smyth a way to bond with his students as they geek out over their favorite characters.

Their "moment" has had its day in the sun, now that comics movies are on the decline, and even prior to that, mainstream comics themselves were long on the decline in quality. But seriously, while Cap once was revered as an important pop culture symbol for the USA, as was Superman, that ceased being the case over 20 years ago, when Joe Quesada and Bill Jemas set Steve Rogers along a path of political destruction, exploiting Kirby-Simon's creation for the sake of far-left propaganda that did more harm than good. By this point, the examples of leftist exploitation of Cap could surely fill a whole ocean liner, and it's unlikely to stop. Now, here's an example of what was in discussion in this teacher's classes:

1. Analyze political cartoons

This is a social studies staple. One of Smyth’s favorites: A cartoon printed during the women’s suffrage movement, showing a mother heading out to vote while her husband is at home caring for their children.

The picture isn’t exactly flattering to suffragettes. “We have this whole conversation about strong women” and how they might have been perceived when the cartoon was first published.

As an involved father in 2023, Smyth tells his students he finds the cartoon is also “anti-male” because it assumes that caring for children is burdensome and menial.

“When my wife goes out to vote [or work], we’re OK. I’m not baby-sitting my kids. I’m with my children,” he said.

Funny they should talk about anti-male in an era where even anti-female's become acceptable among the far-left crowd via transsexual propaganda, men are being emasculated, and parental rights are under assault, so to make any complaints about past propaganda like the above doesn't do much good if the present isn't taken into consideration. Indeed, courtesy of all the far-left destruction going on in the USA now, it can easily be argued the concept of "strong women" is being seriously harmed to boot.

3. Use historical comic books

Smyth also uses graphic novels to teach history. One staple: Madaya Mom, a free, digital comic, tells the story of a real, but anonymous mother’s experiences in Syria’s ongoing civil war. The comic was produced by Marvel and ABC News.

“It’s a vehicle to take these complicated, huge historical events, and boil it down to one mom,” Smyth said. “That’s why Anne Frank is so powerful, right?” he added, referring to a 16-year-old Jewish girl who died in a concentration camp during the Holocaust, and whose diary written while in hiding from the Nazis is among the most well known first-person accounts from the period.

He’s also a fan of March, a series of graphic novels chronicling the Civil Rights Movement through the eyes of one of its leaders, the late Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga.

And he shares the Spiderman comic that tells the story of September 11, 2001. It’s set, like the rest of the series, in New York City.

“It actually is a really powerful comic,” Smyth said. “It gets into politics and worldwide reactions and all these different things. And Spiderman is right there, at ground zero.”

Recalling Marvel's been doing pro-Islamic propaganda as far back as the time Grant Morrison put a character called Dust into the pages of X-Men, one can only wonder what Marvel's venture with ABC News was like. For now, it's most seriously dismaying this guy's sugarcoating the Spidey #36 issue from late 2001, where J. Michael Straczynski and Quesada shoehorned the tale into the now moot and irrelevant run, which contained stealth victim-blaming propaganda against the USA. The ultra-leftist angle is exactly why their getting into politics is such a botch, and again, it's insulting how so many heroes like Thor appeared in the story who could've prevented the losses, and even a number of villains like Dr. Doom turn up, who don't belong at the scene with all their own acts of evil on their resumes.

And calling the violence in Syria a "civil war" is downplaying the seriousness of the issue considerably. Even if it's a case of one jihadist movement against the other.

Smyth’s students also make their own comic book creations, including an international spin on Captain America. Students choose a country and then create its superhero, figuring out what they would look like, what their origin story would be, what their powers would be, and what they’d do with them.

What are the chances anybody who dared dream of creating a hero who'd fight against Islamofascism would be censured by the school? Sadly, plenty.

Teachers who want to use these tools need to overcome the attitude that comics are just “bam, boom, Superman in tights,” Smyth said, when they can actually be insightful and educational: “If [people] haven’t ever really read a comic, a lot of times they don’t understand them.”

Modern leftists definitely don't, unless they consider them perfect vehicles for aforementioned propaganda. That's why left-wing teachers need to overcome the attitude that comics, whether famous classic creations or otherwise, are solely vehicles for political indoctrination, and if this article is any suggestion, they haven't. As a result, even those who have read comics don't understand all that. And that's why the whole notion comics can make a great educational tool won't work in the long run.

Labels: dc comics, history, islam and jihad, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, science, Spider-Man, terrorism