Comics and graphic novels are on the rise, expanding beyond the realms of Superman and Wonder Woman, beyond Archie. Graphic novels about war and racism and crime are common. And one genre of comics, "memoirs," offers more personal stories about such topics as alienation, cancer, sexual orientation, depression, epilepsy, and alcoholism; such stories are increasingly being created, read, and studied.

Furthermore, the creation of easy-to-use computer technology that can alter photographs with a wild variety of effects have generated a new aesthetic that makes it possible for students to create "fumetti" or "photo-comics," to tell their own stories using words and images. 

Comics are now used in a variety of educational settings. They are used to help younger students develop an interest in reading and support a wide range of educational purposes. And colleges and universities across the country offer courses on comics and graphic novels.

Comics and graphics have become objects of research; academic journals devoted to the study of comics and graphic novels now publish that research. Scholarly study of gender and sexuality, wars, crime, occupation, and disease are common. But rarely have academics examined comics that take a critical look at the academic life from the perspective of undergraduate students. It is not difficult to see why. Such comics might be critical of education, of the university, of the teacher, and the work assigned by the teacher.

A few years ago, I was approached to teach a class on graphic novels after an administrator learned I was working on my own graphic novel. While teaching that course, I asked the students to create their own comics. I discovered how much students enjoyed making them and how easy it was for students to make comics using computers. A few years after that, I found out about "Comic Life" and easy-to-use computer software used to create comics.

My first efforts using comics in the classroom were concerned with using comics to have students reflect on the course's "term paper" (see the assignment). I thought that having students write about the process of writing a "literature review" might give them more of an appreciation for the work they were doing. As scholars have noted, we learn not only by experiencing things but by reflecting on those experiences.

Only later did I realize that students' ability to use technology to tell a story in words and images would serve them very well after college. The skills of organizing a story, the manipulation of space and time, the attention to detail, proofreading, all of these things—and more—are skills useful in the world.

This book uses images from 27 student comics from roughly 125 comics created in my course, "Introduction to Communication Inquiry," over a three-year period. Most of them were created in a couple of weeks, which was the time remaining in a semester after the students had completed a traditional academic paper called a "literature review." I wanted students to reflect on the process of writing a literature review by telling a story about it. I wanted them to tell the story in the form of a comic. I thought I would get a deeper and better reflection if the process was more creative, something that used images as well as words, and that required a bit of planning and organizing.

This book you are reading is guided by several theories, each of which concerns the human tendency to tell narratives and stories, from which "myths" arise. Much of what I read in students' comics seemed to resemble the form of a heroic myth based on Joseph Campbell's influential work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. In the hero's mythic journey, the hero leaves home, experiences much, and returns with something that is given to the hero's tribe, culture, or world.

Into Campbell's three-part framework, I integrate Helena Bassil-Morozow's work on the "trickster" and the "shadow," which are images that appear in myths (cf. Bassil-Morozow, 2015; Hynes & Doty, 1993). Both the trickster and the shadow are expressed in students' comics. The shadow recalls students' fear and shame about the process of writing a literature review; the comics show students' narratives about acknowledging and transforming that shame, and fighting against the established order of classroom assignments, even while acknowledging that such assignments may have some value.

Finally, I am guided by Kenneth Burke's writings on myth (1966, pp. 380-409; see also Coupe, 2005). This viewpoint finds the literature review to be an enemy of "divine origin," a nemesis. Thus, a battle of equals is set. Burke's ideas blend with students' struggles and shame over their shortcomings, providing the reasons for students' wanting to get rid of guilt, by purifying and achieving redemption.