Rorotoko

In a nutshell

The study of mind through cognitive science and the findings of neurobiology have shed very interesting light on the way comic books are produced and read. I find this fascinating and have used it in my study of the visual and verbal elements at work in comic books by and about Latino and Chicano artists and authors. The result is Your Brain on Latino Comics, the first study of Latino comic books.

Your Brain on Latino Comics is a critical study of Latino comics. But an important feature of it is the inclusion of twenty-one interviews with the actual author/artists of Latino comics. The book joins the theoretical apparatus with the actual practice and experience of the author/artists themselves.

I organized the book in this way to allow a deep engagement for those who are interested in this storytelling form a critical perspective as well as for those interested in an actual practice perspective. Moreover, what we know of Latino comics, and what we know about how our brains process visual and verbal information from panel to panel, both enrich our pleasure in the actual experience of comics – Latino comics and comics generally.

The wide angle

Part of developing our taste for certain comic books—and the same applies for novels, music, art, films, and the like—is our refining of our aesthetic sensibility. This typically happens at an early age. In the case of comic books, this is partly so because, for those like myself, and in terms of pocket money, it is much more possible to buy a comic than to buy a novel or to pay to see a film. The implications are, however, foundational. It is our developing of aesthetic faculty, our “growing,” that leads us to discriminate between likes and dislikes in all aspects of everyday life and in all age groups.

In Your Brain on Latino Comics I’m particularly interested in questions such as why author/artists do know that a bold faced word is louder than a non bold-faced word. Why do we imagine movement in the spaces (gutters) between the comics as well as within the panels proper? Why do we each have our own tastes in terms of certain styles of writing and drawing?

The book turns to advances in the brain sciences to give more formal expression to development of a taste faculty, as expressed in the likes and dislikes of Latino comic books, and also to a deeper understanding of what we do, and how we imagine, when consuming them.

I’m particularly interested in questions such as why author/artists do know that a bold faced word is louder than a non bold-faced word