Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates | Tagged: Comics, course, dundee, labour, Mark Millar, mp, snp, university

Scottish Politicians Fight Over Comic Book Course

Tom Harris, Labour member of Parliament, we thought we knew you. Popular geeky online politician, blogger, tweeter, before it was fashionable for a politician to do such a thing, and you've never sent a yfrog of your penis to anyone. Your Twitter background is that of a TARDIS for goodness sake and you are a self confessed comic book reader. So why did you have to go and tweet this?

Dundee University is launching a degree in comic books. That'll show those who say degrees are being dumbed down!

Dundee, being a Scottish town steeped in comic book history, the home of DC Thomson, publishers of The Beano, Dandy, Oor Wullie, The Broons, Commando, Bunty, so many great British comic book names. What better place for a university to run a comic book course?

He responded to Twitter outrage with a series of tweets, bigging up his own comic book cred;

Wait for the cries of outrage when people realise that a MA in the Dandy is considered less valuable than PPE from Oxford

Looking forward to Sheffield University doing a degree in forks.

Investment and encouragement are great – but I question the value of an *academic* qualification in the Beano.

Coming soon to a university near you: a BSc in Battlestar Galactica – comparisons of the original v the reboot. Nine grand a year.

I questioned the value of a degree in comics, but I certainly didn't disparage comics.

Fine, but as an employer, I would look more favourably on a candidate with history degree than a comics one.

Want to buy some Dave Cockrum/Chris Claremont X-Men? Decent condition. But you're not getting my Giant Sized X-Men #1.

More of a Mark Millar fan, tbh.

Not only have I read it – I read it when it was first published in Warrior. And I still have the issues.

When I was 12, I asked my teacher if I could do a project on Doctor Who. "Only in your spare time," she said. Good teacher.

You do realise I was talking about comics, not advocating child slavery?

Best one I went to was Albacon in 1980. Worldcon 1995 was good, mind you, but they weren't allowed to show Babylon 5.

You do get that it's possible to love comics (as I do) & also not to consider them a suitable subject for a degree?

Scottish Nationalist MP for Dundee East, Stewart Hosie, has hit back;

Tom Harris is entitled to his opinion but I believe that he is talking down Dundee University and this excellent and timely new post-graduate course.

He also appears to have basic facts wrong – this is a postgraduate course for people who already have a degree. It is not offering "an MA in The Beano".

We live in a fast-moving world where cultural influences extend into major industries. And in Dundee, we know all about the jobs value of comic books as the city is home to DC Thomson & Co, one of the most successful companies in the field.

Comics tie-in with films and TV, with the computer gaming industry, with art and design, music and popular culture on many levels. This is an enormous global industry employing hundreds of thousands of people and with an estimate value of more than £5bn.

The success of Mark Millar from Glasgow who is now one of the most-celebrated comics writers in the world, and whose work inspired hit movies Wanted and Kick-Ass, as well as the purchase of Marvel Comics by Disney for $4bn in 2009 show the global economic value of the industry.

Dundee is already heavily-involved in the computer games industry which employs nearly 3,000 here and anything which can help to develop that into new areas of employment is very much to be welcomed.

And the comic book course director, Dr Chris Murray, has also responded.

Worldwide, comics and graphic novels have never been so popular and are widely read by both children and adults.

Far from being the preserve of children, comics represent a multi-million pound global industry and it is our intention that our graduates are at the forefront of this.

Students will be required to think critically about complex ideas, examine comics from around the world and develop and understanding of them in the context of theory, politics and history, as they would in any other field of literary study.

This could run and run. Or just stop here. One of the two.

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