Comics

Comics are defined as images and words organized in a certain order. They can be used to share information, teach, and entertain. Comics can be made as physical books or digital media and were once seen mainly as a form of entertainment. They are now being used more often to share technical information.

Comics can be made as fiction or non-fiction. Fiction comics are used to turn information into stories. Non-fiction comics are used to share short technical information such as safety warnings.

In addition to sharing information, comics have been known to help readers change their understanding of topics and ideas. It has also been noted that using images can help people learn who have lower reading skills. They can also help people who learn better by seeing.

Any style of comic may be used to share many different kinds of information. Because comics do not need readers to own digital devices, they have been used to reach people in areas experiencing a technology gap. A country with a technology gap is one that does not have the same science tools as others.



Comics are both an art and a tool that technical communicators can use. Using comics in this way is why comics are called a medium. Comics can be thought of as a "container" to be filled with art and information. Because comics are arranged as images and words in a certain order, readers must use their imaginations to fill in the gaps between panels and images.

Common styles of comics used for technical communications:


 * comic strip


 * comic book


 * graphic novel


 * manga, or Japanese cartoons



History
Comics have a history that goes back to ancient Egyptian tomb paintings, around 1300 B.C. In modern times, they have been popular in many parts of Asia, Europe, and the Americas. In the United States, comics can be found dating back to the colonial era. These were mainly anti-British cartoons. By the 1860s, funny magazines became popular. Then newspaper comic strips. Comic books came after that. The most popular were superhero comic books that were about crime fighting and being patriotic. Finally, the years between 1965 and 1990 comics began to include different types of topics, some more serious. These changes led to larger types of comic books, called graphic novels.

Technical communication overlaps with drawings and art often. Over the centuries simple drawings meant to share information turned into more official drawings about technical topics.

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Health messages
Many of the older ways that health messages were shared were accused of being "disconnected" from the real lives of people. The creators of these health messages live different lives than most of the people the messages are made for. This disconnect has been known to keep people from taking public health messages seriously. Comics are used to address this issue by connecting real life situations with the health information needing to be shared. Comics and art used for health messages is called Graphic Medicine.

Graphic medicine uses images and text to show the stories of people (fictional or non-fictional) living with illness. Seeing the lives of people through stories is a way to teach health information. Stories can show people acting in ways that are normal for their culture. It has been shown that readers better understand information when they feel culturally connected to it. Comics have also been used to teach adults who have a difficult time understanding information about health. Using comics to share health information has been known to help the reader make better choices about their own care which leads to better health.

It has been noted that comics help readers :


 * remember what they learned about medical conditions


 * follow medical instructions


 * help people understand their treatments


 * support relationships between patients and doctors


 * support relationships between patients and their neighborhoods


 * improve a neighborhood's interest in medical issues



Art Therapy
By the end of the 20th century, comics were also being made to talk about topics like racism, war, friendship, and people's lifestyles. Artists and writers began to make comics about events that happened in their lives. The topics they wrote about were ones that caused them joy, pain, fear, and envy. The process of making these comics made them feel like they can let go of feelings that caused them stress. Comics then began to be seen as a way to help people improve their mental health.

When patients create comics, they can express feelings about their bodies, share what they are thinking, show how they feel, and how they want to physically act. The stories they create can help release bad feelings in a creative way. In the panels of a comic, patients can feel safe creating stories of characters while not having to experience the character's situation in real life. Seeing characters deal with their success and failure can help patients get better. Patients can use comics about moments in their lives that were important to them. This process has been known to help patients place themselves back in those moments and act as they did or as they wish they did.



Science Communication
Science has been known to use images and drawings to share information. This can make it easier for comics to be used for science communication.

Even though it is a part of everyone's lives, it has been noted that not many people are interested in science and technology information. The internet has become the main place people go to learn about science. Because of this, many websites are now available that are only about this type of information. These websites use comics, video cartoons and other storytelling to keep readers interested. However what is currently known about comics in science communication is that readers may not learn more information but they are more interested and want to learn more when the information is in the form of a comic. The use of comics for science communication is not as well understood as other uses.



Instructions
Since they are organized in a specific order, comics are used for documents that need to show step-by-step instructions. They have also been used to make documents that need to show how a process works. It has been shown that many people find comics to be a friendly and easy to use form of communication for instructions. In one study, people preferred to read a comic about how to do something step-by-step instead of the same information presented by computer slide show. They felt the comic was easier to use, better looking, more useful, and easier to refer back to than the computer slide show.



Education
Comics use characters and situations as a way to teach, which helps the reader feel emotions for the characters, and imagine themselves in these situations. This has been known to help the reader learn because they can create new memories more easily. Research has shown that motivating students is important for them to understand what they are reading. This helps students better understand difficult information.

A study done by Nagata (1999), noted that when manga was used to teach biochemistry, students remembered more of what they learned. It also made more students become interested in biochemistry.

Comics have been used in education to:


 * involve students who may feel bored about certain topics


 * help students become interested in learning more about a topic


 * help students solve problems

Comics have been shown to help students with different learning abilities and special needs. They have been known to help people learn who are living with dyslexia. Dyslexia is a reading disability in people who can learn normally otherwise. The pictures help the reader keep track of the story. According to these students, having less words on a page makes reading the story less stressful. Many dyslexic people say they prefer to think using images.



How to make comics that are useful

Yu (2020) describes ways to create comics that have been shown to be both useful and interesting to readers:


 * Use many different voices to make the information feel like it's interesting to the reader


 * Break up and emphasize ideas to help readers better understand the information


 * Use characters who look directly at readers and speak to them as "you" to make them feel involved


 * Pick characters readers can relate to and tell meaningful stories


 * Use many different ways to share your information



Controversy
In the United States, comics have been referred to as, "kids stuff" and accused of making information sound less serious than it is. Some readers report comic writers as being "unprofessional" or "condescending" by using comics as the way to share their information. In addition to being seen as immature, comics have been accused of being used to share technical information that causes harm. Information such as how to make bombs, outsmart police, and use drugs. When this kind of information is all put together it can be called an, "Anarchist Cookbook." These comic books have been linked to crimes like bank robberies, hijackings, terrorist attacks, and mass shootings. However it is not known if these books can be blamed for violent actions such as making bombs, as bomb-making takes more information than what the books show. It has also been noted that many "recipes" in these cookbooks do not work.

Also, comics may not be useable for all types of readers. People who are visually impaired have a difficult time seeing well. They use a device called a screen reader. Screen readers have the ability to turn simple images and words into braille, a way that people who are visually impaired can read by touching. Because comics use many images to share information, this makes comics mostly unusable for this group of people.

Limitations

 * Communicating legal information: Comics are made to show many different characters talking with each other. This includes the author when captions are used. A caption is a short way to explain an image. It is usually found under the image. Topics like law, policy, and contracts have been known to be more difficult to make into comics. This is because these types of documents are written from a single author's voice who cares most about their own business, not always the reader. This makes it difficult to create meaningful conversations between characters.


 * Time it takes to read: Because comics use many ways to communicate to help with learning, they have been known to take more space to share the same information. Readers will have to spend more time to process the information. It has been shown that when readers have some understanding of the topic, comics may not be as useful. Also when reading the information quickly is more important than learning slowly, comics are known to be less useful for sharing information.


 * Not as easy to scan for information: Some technical communication documents are made so the reader can quickly scan to find the information they are looking for. Since comics are made to be read from beginning to end, they are known to be more difficult to scan for information.


 * Communicating unclear ideas: Comics make physical actions easy to understand. Because of this, comics are known to be more difficult to share unclear ideas, such as the reasons behind asking for an award of money, or grant.