Dona Pursall’s research while affiliated with Ghent University and other places

This chapter wishes to embrace one of the thorny elements of using comics in classrooms; that some of them are comic. The flippancy which pervades them, and which has served to be part of the charm and irreverence of the form, is problematic precisely because it is comedy. Funny moments draw attention to distinctions between us. Embracing this risky aspect of comics though can offer rich and fruitful spaces to open and to explore difficult issues. Drawing together humour research, comics studies and education, this chapter will argue that actively noticing, teaching and talking about humour in comics is a way of encouraging, even young readers, to think about themselves and their own boundaries, and about those of others.KeywordsHumourBritish comicsSocial-emotional learningBunny vs. MonkeyBeano

Weird tales are rooted in gothic, science and speculative fictions but they also engage real science. Rob Guillory's comics series Farmhand (2018-ongoing) depicts a discordant relationship between science, perception and ideology through themes related to contemporary farming and bioengineering. This article explores how Guillory's comic utilises weird qualities through realism, creation of atmosphere, and the use of layout and seriality. Further, this analysis considers the ways in which the comics form enables open-ended and multi-perspective storytelling. Weird devices invite a questioning, reflective but unresolved engagement with contemporary issues, which enables Guillory's comics to imaginatively reconsider normative social structures, ideologies, and the frames which reinforce them.

Friendship was a central motif of ‘Lord Snooty and His Pals’, a comic strip created by Dudley Dexter Watkins for the launch of DC Thomson’s new children’s weekly, Beano , in July 1938. The Lord and his working-class friends were motivated by their relationship to overcome boundaries in order to play and learn together. This close analysis of strips from the first year of the comic explores the ways in which friendship is depicted, illuminating the extent to which social learning is pivotal to the child reader’s pleasure. This examination is framed within educational thinking from the time. It specifically draws from Scottish philosopher John Macmurray’s notion of ‘valuational knowledge’, which contends that interrelational social compassion, developed through friendships, promotes our capacity for wisdom and rationalization. As one of the many humanist progressives of education at the time, he argued that it is through our companionships that we learn what we need to know in order to live socially. Through appreciation of the ways in which learning and compassion are portrayed in these comics, this article wishes to align these strips with both educational concerns from the 1930s, such as Macmurray’s, and further to draw attention to the relevance of this discussion in the light of renewed interest raised, for example, by Richard Gerver’s Education: A Manifesto for Change (2019) and as enacted by policies such as Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence (2010). Through a study of comics for children, this article compares pedagogic ideas from the 1930s with contemporary discourse related to childhood, learning and compassion.

Friendship was a central motif of ‘Lord Snooty and His Pals’, a comic strip created by Dudley Dexter Watkins for the launch of DC Thomson’s new children’s weekly, Beano , in July 1938. The Lord and his working-class friends were motivated by their relationship to overcome boundaries in order to play and learn together. This close analysis of strips from the first year of the comic explores the ways in which friendship is depicted, illuminating the extent to which social learning is pivotal to the child reader’s pleasure. This examination is framed within educational thinking from the time. It specifically draws from Scottish philosopher John Macmurray’s notion of ‘valuational knowledge’, which contends that interrelational social compassion, developed through friendships, promotes our capacity for wisdom and rationalization. As one of the many humanist progressives of education at the time, he argued that it is through our companionships that we learn what we need to know in order to live socially. Through appreciation of the ways in which learning and compassion are portrayed in these comics, this article wishes to align these strips with both educational concerns from the 1930s, such as Macmurray’s, and further to draw attention to the relevance of this discussion in the light of renewed interest raised, for example, by Richard Gerver’s Education: A Manifesto for Change (2019) and as enacted by policies such as Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence (2010). Through a study of comics for children, this article compares pedagogic ideas from the 1930s with contemporary discourse related to childhood, learning and compassion.