A Lost Art at Stuy: Comics

When art teacher William Wrigley won a spelling bee in high school, he didn’t spend the prize money on a pair of headphones or nice new sneakers. Instead, he bought an Amtrak ticket to Marvel headquarters, where he spent the summer working for free under one condition: he could work at every department Marvel had, watching comic books form as they progressed from initial brainstorming to inking and finally to printing. Wrigley didn’t end up creating comic books for a living because he became a teacher, but his passion for the art of comic-making never faltered. When he began teaching at Stuyvesant at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, he started an art elective devoted entirely to the practice of making comics, hoping to share his appreciation and extensive knowledge of comics with the student body at Stuyvesant.

Wrigley’s comic class was an amazing opportunity for students to create comics, even if they had no prior experience. Beyond just artistic skills used for drawing comics, he taught comic theory, emphasizing the rhythm and pace of the story. “When I teach this class, I start the class with history and theory and then some technique, and they make their first page,” Wrigley described. He gave an example of what rhythm looks like in comics. “If you’ve got a surprise, the surprise has to happen when you flip the page,” Wrigley explained. If the surprise is on the right page, the reader will see the surprise out of their peripheral vision, which will spoil the story for them as they are reading. There are many other components to this theory, such as how the characters are arranged in a panel and how each panel is read left to right in English, but the panels are flipped in languages read right to left, such as Hebrew or Arabic. 

Understanding how to create the right rhythm in a comic could be the hardest part of the class. “I feel that comics in particular challenged me to think about time and reader interaction. When creating a painting or illustration, everything is condensed into one impactful moment, but with comics, each panel has to flow into the next. A sense of pacing is established by prolonging different scenes, and I think variety is necessary to allow the eye to rest,” explained Chloe Huang (‘23), who took the comics class in her senior year, in an email interview. This class taught her how to pace the comic in the best way for readers, which was part of why this class was such a great opportunity for interested students to gain insight into comics. 

A common misconception about comics that Wrigley wanted to dispel is that they are their own genre. In actuality, comics are a medium to tell stories, which can range from the classic superhero trope to deeply introspective memoirs, just as traditional novels can. “A lot of people will say that they don’t like comic books because they think superheroes are silly. And it’s like, but what about detective comic books? What about memoirs? What about science fiction? What about nonfiction? [...] It’s like saying you don’t like movies because you don’t like horror movies,” Wrigley explained. 

Comics are quite accessible and created by diverse people around the world. “If you gave me a combination of identities and asked me to find a [...] comic [memoir] from Kyrgyzstan made by a queer artist, it might take me a week to find one, but I could,” Wrigley described. The picture-based nature of comics makes them understandable to people across backgrounds, cultures, and languages, so one can find them across the world.

Through comics, people are able to share stories, anecdotes, and opinions in an eye-catching way. “Comic class has a trusting space in its name for any student enjoying comics or wanting to learn about comics. This comic class can offer better visual analysis that regular art and writing classes cannot,” freshman Wenni Lu added in an email interview. Though Lu, as a freshman, has not yet had the opportunity to take the class, she, like many others, heard of the class and was interested in it. The art of storytelling is special on its own, and the ability to convey the same topics through drawing is another wonderful skill to have. 

Though comics may not be considered as “formal” as other art mediums, that doesn’t mean that they only include entertainment and humor, despite those often being components of a comic. Many comic illustrators make pieces that can be deep, personal, and moving. “This girl from my old school [...] worked through the fact that she was dealing with PTSD from war and [...] art was helping her through it,” Wrigley described. Before teaching at Stuyvesant, Wrigley had already taught an earlier year-long iteration of this class, where he witnessed students expressing themselves in amazing ways through comics. 

One of the reasons why Wrigley was so interested in teaching this class was because he wanted students to create work that they were invested in. “For me, what I want to get out of teaching and what I want people to get out of my [class] is the recognition that the students’ work matters to them,” Wrigley said. Though most students care about the work they do in all mediums of art, comics are a medium that many students are very interested in, so they are often very passionate about the work they do in this comic class. Even for students who are not very interested in art, this art medium can be compelling for other reasons—many students create comics based on their lives, personal stories that would be hard to express in a singular frame (such as a painting), so making comics provides a form of catharsis. “It’s an opportunity to see kids dealing with things on a critical level and a personal level at the same time as they’re making something that’s really cool to them,” Wrigley said. 

Huang agreed that the personal element of comics is what makes them so fun to make and read. “You’re able to put your interests at the forefront of the assignment, and for some people, it was establishing a fantastical narrative, and for others, it was a humorous one-liner. The student’s personality really emerges from their work, and this personal connection is what I think gives their comic a timeless quality,” Huang explained, describing the final project of the comic class, for which students could create fundamentally anything within the medium of comics. “I think that the class helped develop my sense of voice and self, both in writing and art. Because you have so much control over your work, the end result is ideally something you can see aspects of yourself reflected in,” Huang continued. She created a story showing the culture of Stuyvesant in a way that was interesting, relatable, and incredibly moving. If she hadn’t taken the comics class, she never would have been able to make such a piece.

To students who are interested in the art of comic making, or even those who are slightly interested, Wrigley’s comic class was an incredible opportunity to explore their interests. Though the required Art Appreciation class exposes students to art, it is much broader, and comics are generally not the primary focus. “Art Appreciation covers many art styles and history, which may not interest every student. Comic class [is perfect] for any student enjoying comics or want[ing] to learn about comics,” Lu explained. 

The reason the class was not offered this year was because of the Stuyvesant Art Department’s small size: Wrigley, Jeanie Chu, Jane Karp, and Karen Leo, who also teach drafting, are the only art teachers, but they all have to teach many sections of Art Appreciation. Because of this, each teacher can usually only teach one elective, and Wrigley already teaches AP Studio Art, making it difficult for him to make time to teach this comic class. He emphasized that he didn’t want to be the only art teacher who would get to teach two electives, as this would be unfair to the others. Whether or not he is able to make room for this comic class depends on how many Art Appreciation sections there are, which in turn depends on the number of freshmen enrolled that year. Lu emphasized that she did not want Art Appreciation to be discontinued, even if it would make more room for electives. “I believe Art Appreciation should be required for all students. If Art Appreciation is an elective, people will usually not take it and will leave out on the fun and creativity!” Lu said. Instead, she believed that Stuyvesant should expand its art department so that each teacher could teach fewer sections of Art Appreciation, leaving more time for them to teach courses that they are passionate about. 

It’s a shame that Wrigley’s class was unable to be offered this year because it was truly an impactful experience for the students who got to take it. Huang explained that she initially faced challenges in planning her comic. “I had all these thoughts with no idea how to make it into a cohesive narrative. But by speaking to Mr. Wrigley who could guide me in a narrative and technical sense, the pieces slowly came together,” she said. And by the end of the class, Huang proudly pronounced, “I ended up with an end result I’m genuinely happy with.” 

The comic elective allows experimentation with an art medium, unlike many others, as there is so much more to it than simply drawing as perfectly as possible. Comic-making incorporates storytelling, humor, and an extensive thought process. A simple-seeming one-page comic strip is the culmination of a very rigorous procedure. Even for students who don’t consider themselves artists or storytellers, the comic elective offers an engaging way to explore either discipline. Most importantly, the comic class has served as a form of expression for many of the students within it, providing a channel for their stream of consciousness and challenging them creatively. If we, as a school, want to create a generation of more creative and thoughtful individuals, it is imperative that we offer classes like these in order to aid students in the development of their artistry.