Friday Night Comics in Dark Times - Radical Teacher 50 - No. 132 (Summer 2025)

Aug 28, 2026

Essay on Friday Night Comics (FNC), a free weekly workshop series in which comics artists guide Zoom participants through real-time prompts to create their own comics. The author frames FNC as a learning alternative that supports experimentation, creativity, community, and reflective self-understanding. Research and editing unfold alongside intensifying attacks on academic freedom and public education, including threats to DEIJ, tenure, and campus free speech. The piece calls educators to strengthen alliances and adopt comics-based approaches to rebuild safe learning spaces.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages9

Reading Time23 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Friday Night Comics (FNC) and its format

Context and critique of education policy

Academic freedom, DEIJ, and campus speech

Pedagogical case for comics workshops

Learning as community, experimentation, and reflection

Implications for teachers

Classroom incorporation and advantages

ISSN: 1941-0832 Friday Night Comics in Dark Times by Jake Mattox ANIMAL HABITAT IN NEW YORK. 1986. BY WILL ELDER. GIFT OF DR. AND MRS. LEWIS H. KAMINESTER. ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO. RADICAL TEACHER 50 [http://radicalteacher.library.pitt.edu](http://radicalteacher.library.pitt.edu) No. 132 (Summer 2025) DOI 10.5195/rt.2025.1347 I began writing this essay in the fall of 2023 as areview of Friday Night Comics (FNC), a free workshop series in which a different comics artist each week describes their work and leads Zoom attendees through real-time prompts to create their own . I had some modest goals of explaining the value of having university or K-12 students attend FNC, how it might help them with the freedom to experiment and create, and, hopefully, reflect on themselves as students in a learning environment outside of our formal educational institutions . However, during the period of researching and writing, plus working with the journal editors, a dark context has gotten darker. The disastrous 2023 elections promised and brought newly emboldened attacks on education: more-extreme rhetoric and policies pertaining to academic freedom, student access, and the very role of public education . Locally, the regional campus of the major public university system where I teach, like so many, has embraced a dangerous narrative: There’s a crisis in higher education, caused by a looming enrollment cliff. Parents and students no longer want to pay for a broad-based liberal arts education. They seek narrow job training. Students want to be online. Our institution can no longer afford “the public good.” Administrators on many campuses, including mine, have used versions of these narratives to justify radical restructuring¾cutting programs, altering the campus mission, and downsizing faculty while continuing with new levels of administrative bloat. Our state legislature, under the guise of ensuring“intellectual diversity” on public campuses, passed a law attacking DEIJ, threatening tenure, and creating a new system of ideological surveillance, arguing that We want to make sure all students feel welcome and safe on campus. We’re only giving universities the tools to strengthen open discussion and debate. More: one night in April 2024, top leaders within our state system quietly formed an ad-hoc committee to change longstanding university policy regarding demonstrations on the flagship campus. The committee had no faculty or student representation . The very next day, state police in riot gear (including a rooftop sniper) arrived to suppress the free speech of peaceful student and faculty demonstrators, who, when arrested, faced immediate one-to-five-year bans from even stepping foot on campus. They told us: We had knowledge of potential threats to campus safety. We firmly believe in the right of free speech but need to balance those interests . There are outside agitators. The attacks have accelerated. Most recently, several last-minute additions were snuck into the state’s budget bill with no time for public discussion . These included giving the governor control over the seats on the IU Board of Trustees that had long been reserved for (and chosen by) alumni, setting new minimums threatening the existence of hundreds of smaller majors and programs, and functionally ending tenure protections via mandatory post-tenure reviews . Developments such as these demand that we organize politically and strengthen alliances between faculty, students, staff, and community members . We need, that is, to fight for our institutional spaces of learning, to define who has the right to be there and under what conditions . Further, if we believe in the potential of radical pedagogy, we need to prioritize, protect, and re-invent those and other spaces, ones where students feel safe to try out ideas without risk of failure, where community is central to what is meant by “learning,”where the relation between student and teacher moves awa

FAQs

What is Friday Night Comics (FNC) described in the essay?

FNC is a free workshop series where a different comics artist each week leads Zoom attendees through real-time prompts to create their own comics.

Why does the author connect FNC to broader education and political developments?

The author argues that during research and writing, attacks on academic freedom and public education intensified, making it more urgent to defend learning spaces through organizing and alliances.

How does the essay characterize the learning benefits of comics workshops?

It emphasizes experimentation, creativity, spontaneity, supportive community, and opportunities for students to reflect on how learning and achievement relate to wider social contexts.

Aug 28, 2026

Uploaded by Maya Linwood