A Dynamic Storytelling Form: Professor Latinx Brings Comics to the Masses at UT Austin

Comics studies is making a splash (page) at the University of Texas at Austin!

Aldama opens class with the question that frames the whole course: of the hundreds of images we scroll past before 9 a.m., did any of them make new how we perceive, think, and feel about ourselves in the world? Photo by Rose Padilla.

In Frederick Luis Aldama’s (aka Professor Latinx) Introduction to Comics class, students get into the innermost workings of comics: their narrative richness, their loaded and often contentious history, and the way they reengage our imaginations and make new our relationships with the storytelling media that surround us. Reading comics, as Aldama and his students practice it, is a dynamic and co-creative process. No passive consumption of media here: filling in gaps and making sense of fragments is the cognitive challenge comics creators present to their audiences. In Intro to Comics, that challenge gets met with precision.

Comics 101

: A 100-plus student lecture hall run like a seminar. On screen, the day’s concept: spatializing time on the comics page. Photo by Rose Padilla.

I stopped by Intro to Comics not too long ago. Barely two weeks into the semester, and students are already demonstrating a readiness to apply comics terminology and grapple with the narrative strategies embedded in the form. Panels are closely read as individual units of meaning. Gutters get filled in with meaning. Braided elements are sewn together to make cohesive sense out of entire comic book storylines. Questions are posed, interrogated, and answered thoroughly. Aldama’s call-and-response synesthetic approach shrinks his 100-plus student course down to the style and feel of an intimate seminar rather than a lecture; he already knows most by first name. The benefits: constant engagement among professor, students, and text, all without the use of phones and computers in the classroom.

“Panels are closely read as individual units of meaning. Gutters get filled in with meaning. Braided elements are sewn together to make cohesive sense out of entire comic book storylines.”

Geometrizing Narratives

Script beside page: students work through pages from Aldama and Miguel Ángel Hernández’s The Mirror City Chronicles, geometrizing the story panel by panel. Photo by Rose Padilla.

The creator’s “will to style” features heavily in Intro to Comics. It’s a comics studies concept that, as theorized by Aldama himself, considers creators’ skillful use of narrative-shaping devices to make new our ways of thinking and feeling in the world. Aldama’s latest comics series, The Mirror City Chronicles, a five-issue limited run with artist Miguel Ángel Hernández, provides a rich template for students to test out close reading and argumentation in class. In particular, “geometrizing” the story, another key Aldama concept, turns a potentially surface-level or overwhelming encounter with the comics page into critical praxis.

Introduction to Comics is not just about reading the comics page skillfully and effectively; it’s about recognizing how the building blocks of reality are constituted in two-dimensional shapes, then rendered into a three-dimensional, lived experience in our heads.

“It’s about recognizing how the building blocks of reality are constituted in two-dimensional shapes, then rendered into a three-dimensional, lived experience in our heads.”

If the robust class discussions of the latest, most pervasive pop culture phenomena are anything to go by (these students are looking at you analytically, Nolan’s Odyssey and the MCU’s latest superhero installments), then the critical thinking muscles that find purchase on the comics page readily cross over into the media prevalent in student experience. College students don’t need predictability. Willfully styled, meaningfully created stories resonate because they make new our everyday encounters with the world.

“College students don’t need predictability. Willfully styled, meaningfully created stories resonate because they make new our everyday encounters with the world.”

A Dynamic Learning Space

Over the course of the week, I accrued ample takeaways from the Intro to Comics space. Pedagogically and critically, a successful visit. It feels much more fitting, though, to conclude with thoughts from the resident students themselves. Below is my conversation with Maryn Sylvester, a junior English major, and Bird Barber, a freshman in Radio-Television-Film and a potential Biology double major.

MS: “I absolutely love the style. It’s Socratic seminar–oriented. [Professor Aldama] allows everyone to speak, share their opinions, and he does a great job validating everyone’s thoughts.”

BB: “I think the perspective of looking at comics as an equal literary form on the same level as books… talking visual literacy is so important as a skill. I love that the class is really looking at that, and the seminar aspect is really nice, being able to add on to each other’s opinions.”

MS: “Retweet.”

“Talking visual literacy is so important as a skill. I love that the class is really looking at that.”

Keep Up

Miguel Ángel Hernández: @miguelangelhdzart on Instagram.

Professor Latinx: @professorlatinx on Instagram. More on the Latinx Pop Lab at UT Austin.

The Bard Reborn in the Borderlands. Aldama brings Shakespeare Reimagined to Baylor University’s Moody Library on September 15.

For upcoming talks, check out Shakespeare Reimagined with Professor Latinx at Baylor University for Hispanic Heritage Month. And keep your eyes peeled for The Mirror City Chronicles and Steampunkera Chronicles, both forthcoming.