Comics Taught Me English, Dammit!
January 4th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
“We encourage you to bring reading materials to school but not comics”, said my daughter’s teacher during assembly today. While I think it’s great there is a lot more freedom to bring non-textbooks to school nowadays, I’d like to disagree about the comics ban. Actually I would like to poke the eyes out of the people who say that but apparently that’s illegal.
At least schools today allow the kids to bring buku cerita to school. Back in my time, we couldn’t bring anything not associated with school not even novels (but my friends and I brought them to school anyway, ’cause we were rebels like that). There was a kind of a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy where you weren’t bothered with a spot check of your bags as long as you don’t get caught reading a story book in class. Heaven forbid. And comics? Fergedaboutit.
But why? What’s with this anathema towards picture books? Comics taught me English. Others helped as well, like Agatha Christie, but comics, usually Asterix or Tintin but more often than not a superhero comic, helped me understand this perfidious language. Well, okay I’ll concede that today’s mainstream superhero comics aren’t suitable for a nine-year old but it’s not like they are all bad. I wouldn’t give my daughter this:
Yes, that’s a woman vomiting blood. She’s a member of the Red Lantern Corps, you see, and to join the group you vomit out all your blood and replace it with hate. Yeah, even I find it ridiculous.
But I would totally give my daughter this:
Unfortunately, since it’s a comic book it is officially banned from school. So the kids bring Wimpy Kid or Geronimo Stilton or Horrible Histories which are technically not comics even though they have pictures in them, sometimes sequentially. Those are all right but Tiny Titan Robin isn’t? Darn you Malaysian schools! What do you say to that Doctor Doom?
Art by John Byrne
Wait, what?
