Part of JED's reading diet consists of my entire collection of Calvin and Hobbes as well as science comics. I'm not averse to letting them read comics though I have had people 'tsk!' me and tell me that they ought to be reading 'proper' books.
They love comics. They love Calvin. They want to get up to the same sort of shenanigans that Calvin gets up to like bathing in the toilet bowl (No.) . I remember all those years in college chuckling at Calvin and Hobbes and love that they derive such joy from it, though I suspect they don't get everything at this point.
Anyway, they all try to draw comics. It can't be that hard to write a story in a few panels, they think. They succeed to varying degrees but only Jordan will let me photograph them.
Then I find this link that provides blank comic templates. They have panels with speech/ thought bubbles and they have some with more panels and some with less. I print a stack and bring them home.
There is silence for 30 minutes with a lot of sniggering and Jordan produces this. Evan produces a self-deprecating one with his last panel ending off with a stick boy thinking "Scrap!" and cannot stop chuckling. But he crushes it up and throws it away, promising me a more coherent one soon. They beg for more comic paper.
I teach them to sign their names at the bottom of the strip like Watterson did. And I tell them how much I enjoy reading their comics, because I genuinely do.
And the best part is that they are each other's biggest fans. They wait anxiously for each other to finish and grab it from under the pen to read it. They chuckle, they laugh, they discuss how to make it funnier and that makes them laugh some more (it is often toilet humour, but I pretend not to hear it.)
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