Kid at Heart
By Brian Clopper.

I teach 5th grade at a suburban school in Frederick County, Maryland. This is my seventh year of teaching. The writing workshop program I do with my students has been gaining a good deal of attention lately, and I have been asked to present what I do to get kids motivated to write in various workshops throughout the county. I do presentations for children on brainstorming and drawing monsters at public libraries, area bookstores and toy stores. In addition, I am a published writer and cartoonist who is gaining more and more attention for my whimsical writings that attract fans young and old. I am very devoted to introducing the joys of cartooning to the younger generation with my after school cartooning club. In this column, I’ll be addressing the idea of kids and how they interact with comics. As an elementary school teacher, I see firsthand the changing perception kids have towards comics and hope to offer some insights as to how we can make comics attractive to children again. I’ll share problems that prevent kids from developing a comic appreciation and offer possible solutions.

I’d like to begin with a very amusing anecdote. Kids just aren’t up on their superhero lore anymore. A good example of this was when I defined the meaning of the idiom "Achilles’ heel" to my class of 5th graders. After sharing the meaning of the idiom, I asked the class to tell me Superman’s Achilles’ heel. I received blank looks. No one knew. One girl hazarded a guess. She asked, in all seriousness mind you, if Superman was lactose intolerant. This made me laugh so very much. Only afterward did I see it as an indicator of how unaware the children of today are in comic book lore and comics as valid and rewarding literature.

This month’s column will deal with the biggest stumbling block to firing up a child’s passion for comics: lack of accessibility.

As a child of the 70’s, comics were easy to find. Wherever candy was sold, you could almost bet you’d find a spinner rack of comics. This facilitated my hobby of reading comics. Let’s face it. A kid is at the whim of his parents when it comes to shopping. Whenever my mom would go to the grocery store or convenience mart, I knew I could get my hot little hands on comics. They were readily available and soon became part of my and my parents’ shopping habits.

Kids today can’t find comics as easily. Many of the grocery stores and convenience stores of today have phased out comics to allow more room for more magazines. While some may argue that a comic shop would be a kid’s dream shop, it is not a parent’s idea of a quality store or a place they are likely to make special visits to. Add to this the fact that most shops don’t stock or take the time to nurture a selection of comics for kids and you can see where accessibility is a big issue. All is not gloom and doom with comics and kids. There are still small notes of success in reaching kids though. MAD and CRACKED magazine have managed to still maintain a toehold on the newsstands, having not grown inaccessible to their readership. DISNEY ADVENTURES flourishes due to the huge corporate image of good faith with young readers that the beast known as Disney has force-fed the public oh these many years. Marvel is making a positive step by putting their "Ultimate Marvel" series of comics into magazine format and getting them onto newsstands, as well as with their new "Backpack Marvels" program, and I applaud their desire to target a new generation.

For most children out of sight means out of mind. If they can’t find a comic on the shelves as their parents are picking up ice cream or milk, chances are they aren’t going to go out of their way to find that comic. I know, I know, a true comic reader makes an effort, but I’m talking about when a child first begins reading comics. They don’t have the passion and persistence to track down the elusive comic that older fans. In this day and age where the Internet makes for immediate info gratification, you will find future generations less and less likely to hunt and scavenge for their comic reading. With the proliferation of cartoons on TV growing and superhero style adventure available in video games and movies, kids are getting their escapist fix in other mediums. Both are readily available and vastly deemed more acceptable by parents compared to comics.

A possible solution is being explored right now and that’s making an effort to go where the kids are. Today’s kid can be found spending a large portion of their time in school and on the internet (and often at the same time!). Comic Retailers and creators need to look at striking up business partnerships with area schools. This is an area in which I have begun making inroads, and find it both challenging and very rewarding. It is also a topic broad enough to warrant an entire column, so look for me to share my experiences in working to bring comics into schools at a future date.

Let me tell you, the stigma of comics being silly reading material doesn’t seem to be a factor to today’s media specialist (school librarian). Cartoonists who offer to teach an after school cartooning program or visit schools to present lessons will be fostering an appreciation for comics. Contacting children’s clubs, area libraries and community colleges to host cartooning classes is an excellent avenue of attack. Some major publisher should really look at developing a partnership with Scholastic Books so that they can offer a monthly catalog to kids in schools that spotlights comics. Scholastic Books is the Mafia of the school system. Their monthly catalogs of books targeted to each grade level and serve as a place where kids can purchase books geared for them. Each child receives their own color catalog (varying in size from 4-8 pages) and can order a variety of books. Marvel or DC should look at working with Scholastic to land a page in their monthly catalogs.

Creators and retailers need to maintain kid-friendly websites. E-commerce is still a growing area and I feel that comics are set to really benefit from this highly accessible venue. Kids of today are immensely entranced by this new form of communication and information sharing. A child is more likely to come across your site and sample your work than they are likely to find your work in a poorly stocked comic shop (or even a well-stocked one).

So c'mon, let’s take some action! Let’s not have another generation grow up thinking Superman can be defeated by a half gallon of Vitamin D. Comics are a vital medium. The public just doesn’t know it. Yet.

Next: Pricing Ourselves Out of Reach