Collegiate Times

This restricting challenge presented by film is similar to another medium: The graphic novel. John Boyer, who teaches both World Regions and Geography of Wine, has recently released a comic book featuring the hero The Plaid Avenger, a familiar looking college professor by day who is a bumbling, half party boy, half powerless superhero by night. In the comic book, the Avenger slips into current global situations on a mission and subsequently explains to the reader the event. The catch: He can never actually affect current events because it would make the story false.

"It's the first of its kind. It's an educational comic book," said Boyer. "So I have to craft a lesson. With graphic art, it's all about succinctness, with the education and the writing; it's going to be tight. That's a lot harder than just spewing everything out that you wanted to say."

The Plaid Avenger is also the host of Boyer's World Regions textbook, which he wrote and student editors subsequently edited. Boyer's approach to writing the book was slightly different from most textbooks.

"This is a very unconventional book," Boyer said. "I mean, it's horrible. I'm the first to admit it, but it's from the heart. I just said, 'Well let's just do this. What can I do to make sure that it's not like any other textbook?' Will people learn from me, something about the way that I speak, talk, whatever, yell, scream, that's what people remembered. People have been telling me this for a long time. So I decided, 'I'm going to write the whole fucking book in the first person.' I'm just going to talk the book, so I did."

Boyer believes that the stream of consciousness writing approach for the textbook gives students a breath of fresh air when it comes to learning.

"I've just never bought into the academic principle that everything has to be hard in order for you to learn it," Boyer said.

"It is written in the vernacular," he said. "There is swearing in it and references to alcohol and stuff like that, but its part of the character. There are those detractors, but the vast majority of people, I think -- I've never done a survey -- but the vast majority of people seem to really like it. I get way more fan mail than hate mail."

When comparing Boyer to The Plaid Avenger, it is not hard to see where the inspiration for the design of that particular character came from. As far as how much of himself he sees in the Plaid Avenger?

"Say 50-50. All of his bad traits, I possess," Boyer said.

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