Professor and Former Student Team Up for Unique Comic Book Publication 'From Gotham to Gatsby'

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A comic panel featured in "From Gotham to Gatsby: Transmedia Storytelling and Creative Play."

An associate professor in the College of Education and Health Professions recently collaborated with a former student to produce a uniquely visual publication.

For his book chapter "From Gotham to Gatsby: Transmedia Storytelling and Creative Play," Sean Connors, an associate professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, enlisted the help of former art education student Dylan Hale to translate his ideas visually for a chapter on transmedia storytelling that took the form of a comic.

"I knew what Dylan was capable of as an artist, and I'm a huge fan of his drawing style," Connors said of Hale. "Given his passion for drawing and my own love of writing, I think we both recognized the potential for a productive creative partnership; we just had to find an outlet for our work."

Hale teaches art and design to high schoolers in the Bentonville Public School District. The pair first met two years ago in Connors' course on young adult graphic memoir and visual storytelling. When Connors approached Hale with the idea, the latter jumped at the opportunity to explore this style of comic-making.

The two quickly bonded over their love for visual storytelling. Each grew up surrounded by picture books and drawing original stories in their free time.

"Outside of teaching art and illustrating books, I see creativity everywhere," Hale said. "I see art and creative expression as a way of experimenting with what we have at hand to produce potentially unusual but useful solutions to specific problems."

Transmedia storytelling is the technique of telling a single story across multiple platforms and formats. One section of Hale and Connors' work breaks down various re-tellings of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, like stories told from the perspective of the novel's female characters or a prequel documenting the narrator's life before the events of the original story.

"There are so many popular culture franchises that young people today are excited about," Connors said. "If readers, especially those who teach, take nothing else from our chapter, I hope it's a sense of appreciation for the power that popular culture has to inspire students to try their hand at telling stories about characters and story worlds they're invested in and care about."

Hale plans to use this experience to teach his students about the value of mentality and perspective, both of which he said were challenged when working on the project with Connors.

"I take it as another personal experience I can share with students that illustrates the old adage: 'You miss 100 percent of the shots you don't take,'" he said.

Those interested can read the full publication on Connors' Academia page.