Walking Corpses & Conscious Plants: Possibilist Ecologies in ...

Bingham 18
representations or omitted details, the design of this form can empower viewers to
contemplate complexly veiled social issues.
Seeing information expressed through an alternate point of view, for example
through the perspective of a fictional character, provides the reader with an opportunity to
question the validity and the verisimilitude of his or her own perceptions. Ideally, this
would be an empathetic exercise that would be beneficial for people to recognize their
relationship with others who also inhabit the same world but whom they will never
personally meet. It is community building through imagination—an exercise by which a
person comes to have a better sense of him or herself by recognizing dependence upon
others. Developing this sense of identity as constructed by one's relationship to
community is crucial for the progressive functions of learning and solving problems.
Despite this potential, the form has struggled to shake off the negative
connotations of its association with a juvenile audience. To understand how artists and
writers have coped with, and at times even capitalized on this assumption, it's helpful to
explore how graphic narratives have developed and changed over time. Comics have had
a link to education since their beginnings. It's widely accepted that a Swiss schoolmaster,
Rodolphe Töpffer, invented the form commonly known as modern comics in the mid
nineteenth century (Chute 455, Tabachnick 8, Picone 301). One example of Töpffer's
early works is Histoire de M. Vieux Bois. First published in 1837, it was translated and
distributed in the United States by 1842. Töpffer's cartoons were divided into sequenced
panels, contained by borders, and paired with descriptive captions (Picone 301-302).
According to McCloud, Töpffer's work “featured the first interdependent combination of
words and pictures seen in Europe” (Understanding 17). It seems logical that Töpffer's