{"id":3397,"date":"2011-08-06T13:04:23","date_gmt":"2011-08-06T17:04:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=3397"},"modified":"2011-08-09T14:43:31","modified_gmt":"2011-08-09T18:43:31","slug":"build-a-beach-head-james-sturm-art-baxters-1998-response-to-understanding-comics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=3397","title":{"rendered":"Build a Beach Head – James Sturm & Art Baxter’s 1998 Response to Understanding Comics"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Edit 8\/8<\/strong>: There’s also a bit of discussion about this strip going on in my Google+ stream<\/a>. If I have you in one of my circles, you can join in there.)<\/p>\n

I’m currently teaching an Introduction to Sequential Art class for The Savannah College of Art and Design and the primary text for the class is Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics<\/em>. There’s no denying the importance of this text and I gain new insights on comics every time I read it.\u00a0 I think, though, that it’s important to question and think critically about works like Understanding Comics<\/em> and not simply accept them as gospel because they’re presented to you as being The Text<\/strong>. To encourage such thinking among my students, whenever I teach a class that has McCloud’s book on the reading list, I always have my students also read Art Baxter and James Sturm’s 1998 response to the book: a short seven-page comic called A Response to Chapter Nine : Build a Beach Head<\/em>, which ran in The Comics Journal<\/em> #211 (April, 1999).<\/p>\n

I mentioned the Strum\/Baxter piece on Twitter at the beginning of the semester and I was surprised to learn how few people were aware of the piece and when I went to find a link to forward so folks could read it I came up with nothing. I had a couple of people contact me directly wondering if I would scan and email them a copy, but I thought I’d do one better: I emailed James and Art and asked them if it’d be OK for me to post the comic online. Not only did they generously agree to let me do that, they both provided some really interesting background commentary on the history and thinking behind it.<\/p>\n

So, here it is: Jame Sturm and Art Baxter’s (www.artbaxter.com<\/a>) A Response to Chapter Nine : Build a Beach Head<\/em>–as both JPGs and a single PDF download–followed by comments from James and Art.<\/p>\n

The Comic<\/span><\/h3>\n

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