Lessons from a Pulp Professor

Comic Books as Teachers

Reading Diary of a Mosquito Abatement Man by John Porcellino is like sneaking into your friend’s room, fishing a journal out from under his mattress, and leering at his childish drawings and vulnerable insights.  After a few chuckles at his expense, you might find something painful, something truthful, something that can only be found in such raw form.

Apparently this book is nearly impossible to find these days, which makes sense in a medium so driven by flashy capes and electric colors. This is the story of a man who kills mosquito larvae for a living.  He walks through forest and field, breathes the fresh air, and gets some nature in his veins as he sprays toxic chemicals into still waters, racking up bodies of disease-ridden bloodsuckers.  Like any person alone with their thoughts, he starts to wax philosophical; wondering about the effects his poisons have on his surroundings, his actions come to a screeching hault.

It’s tempting to draw parallels between this comic and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, a book that traces the things we eat, every step, from inception stomach.  Instead of devouring whatever is put in front of us or robotically executing the tasks we’re assigned, both of these works encourage the reader to consider the reason and the result.

Despite the seeming amateur packaging, the protagonist’s epiphany is so smooth, you go right along with it. This may be where Porcellino’s dumbed-down style comes into play. His scribbled characters and chicken-scratch handwriting allow you, like Scott McCloud says, to project yourself onto the stick-figure characters.  And hopefully, like Porcellino, stop, look at what your hands are doing and wonder why.

Recommended to: people unhappy at their jobs and the oblivious

-CMH

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 26th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under All Comics, Rez Sick. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.