WP2: Rough Draft 1

A comic is a characteristic of comedy. When we think of a comic, we usually associate it with the idea of it being funny, although it is not always. A plus about comics is that they are able to express a touchy subject or a harsh truth in a comedic manner. How the comic gets its argument across to the audience differs between them. Some do it through pictures, some through words, others in one frame, when some take multiple frames. No matter how it is reached, an argument is made for each and every comic.

For this particular comic, the argument is being made that exercise has gotten pushed to the bottom of people to do lists these days, and it is expressing the scare in doing so. The comic is arguing that if you don't work out one hour a day, you will be heading towards death sooner than those that do take the time to work out daily. But how did we come to understand that as the argument? There are many things to led the audience to understand what the comic is all about. For this comic, we of course are given words which directly explain the argument. The doctor is being the speaker which we can tell because his mouth is open and just from the context of the comic. He is telling the patient, who happens to look a little concerned an be a bit over weight, that he needs to start exercising an hour a day no matter how busy his schedule is in order to continue his life.

When we put this comic in the context of the world today, it totally is relatable for majority of people. Weight and exercise issues are definitely evident these days. People find themselves too busy to have time to work out when really, exercising just needs to be moved up higher on their to do lists. The comic is stressing that by having the doctor ask him "Which works better for your busy schedule." It makes the patient realize that they would much rather set aside an hour a day to work out than to die sooner than necessary. Every excuse in the book as been made as the comic below exemplifies.




This comic is not about looking perfect or fitting the perfect body image, but more just about being healthy. We know this because they are not comparing the patient and his weight to any other person or the doctor isn't telling him a specific number he needs to weigh, or way he needs to look. I think that is a more effective way to get across to audiences. People don't want to be told how to look but everyone does know that they need to be healthy. By translating this message through a comic, I think more audiences might learn from this rather than reading a news article or watching a story on the news. We get those everyday, but a comic serves the message through humor which directly has an appeal to our emotions through pathos.

The fact that this comic is just a single frame works for the argument. It goes hand in hand by saying that it is a simple and to the point issue. There is no need to explain or go into detail about it all through multiple frames of explanation. Everyone understands it by one frame, or one person explaining it to them. Comics arguments sometimes get lost in a mess of frames.

As you can see, single frame comics are much easier to understand.

Glasbergen, the author of this comic tends to have a lot of comics poking fun at weight or the lack of exercising. I think once he found one of his comics being effective to his audience, he must have decided to continue down that path. Also, it is an easy subject to poke fun at but yet everyone knows its serious. These subjects have kind of become his "thing" as he currently does a weekly diet and exercise cartoon for newspaper Health & Fitness pages.

We are all globally aware of the issue of not exercising, but it is much more effective to read about it or get advice on the topic from comics. This comic expresses the importance through a funny manner and makes everyone aware that they should be working out at least an hour a day in order to maintain a healthy life.

WP2: Statement of Purpose

Why do we read comics? They might be day brighteners to some, may be a comic relief to others, or they could really serve no clear purpose to others. In most cases, the comics are written about a subject that we can relate to, but we relate to it on a different level when reading it in a comic rather than another source. For example, political comics are at times really harsh, or make a lot of fun at a certain political figure. Somehow though, when reading the truth through a comic it is found funny.

This comic pokes at the war in Iraq and the comic of it all is pointed towards Bush. I think political comics are the most risky types of comics, but in the end they serve a clear purpose to many people.

With the comic I chose for my 2nd writing project, the argument is quite clear. It is proving that exercise has gotten pushed to the bottom of people to do lists these days, and it is expressing the scare in doing so. The comic is arguing that if you don't work out one hour a day, you will be heading towards death sooner than those that do take the time to work out daily. It is hard with our busy lives these days to find time to fit that in and it is easily eliminated from peoples schedules. Why do we have to pick that to eliminate though? It has been found that teens spend 31 hours a week on the computer. Would it be so hard to eliminate 7 of those hours and devote them towards working out? The comic expresses that it is. After you hit 30 years old, you make the decision of either working to maintain a healthy life, or slowly becoming weaker. You decide which path you take based on whether you exercise of not.

The comic is showing that it is an older man at the doctor who is obviously not in tip top shape. I think the comic is a pure image of the fact that you have two decisions. You either follow the doctors instruction to work out an hour a day and maintain a healthy life, or you listen to his alternative of being dead and you don't work out everyday. The way this comic is formed makes it seem like it is such an easy decision. It makes it seem like it should be a piece of cake to find an hour a day to work out, but many would argue otherwise. We all have things we would much rather be doing than clear our day to exercise.
The main comic basically states the obvious. We all know that we need to work out in order to be healthy, but when reading this in a comic, we somehow connect to it more. Its purpose is farther than you would expect a comic to be. It is giving off a crucial life lesson in a funny manner.

Pre Writing #2

When we wake up in the morning, most of us probably think about what all we have to do for the day and sort of make up a plan in our minds. It usually involves things like go to class, eat, study, sleep, workout, do homework, hang out with friends, you know things along those lines. But what we realize as we go through our days is that we just don't have time to do it all. Then the problem becomes, what do I eliminate? The most logical thing would first be hanging out with friends. Then as college students, we might have to give up our naps. But almost always, people will quickly be fine with eliminating working out right away which is not the right option at all. So many of us spend at least an hour or more on facebook or watching tv during the day. But yet we say we don't have an hour to go work out? I am a failure at this issue as well so I was able to relate to this comic very easily.

The comic is trying to express the importance of working out even just for an hour everyday. It is putting it into perspective by loosely saying that if you don't, you will die. It is moreover saying that if you work out everyday for an hour, you will be living a healthy life and doing good for your body. But again, most of us feel like we don't have an hour. We think, ok if I give up an hour of studying then I'm going to do bad on my test. But really, you would gain more energy and positive vibes to help you finish your studying if you went and worked out. For most people, the problem is that they don't have that hour of workout time in their daily schedule and it takes awhile for them to fit it in and get used to it. The LA Times stated that you must do an hour work out for 5 days out of a week in order to lose weight. Experts have found that those that have lost weight and kept it off have been sticking to that plan.

This comic was written by Randy Glasbergen. He began his work with comics when he was 15 years old. He then created work for Hallmark and continued his work as a freelance cartoonist. He tends to specialize in 1 panel cartoons on a variety of different subjects. He tends to have a theme through his work of people that look quite alike. They have heavier set body types which makes for some really funny comics about issues these days. Below is another comic by Glasbergen. He has a bunch on diet and exercise.



The fact that the caption of these comics are being read in a "comic sense" is way different than if they were stated on the news or if someone just said this to your face. You are able to take it humorously yet you know it is true. People will probably be more willing to take the advice or follow through with working out after reading this and realizing that it is important.

Comic Analysis #1

After looking through some funny, some inappropriate, and some silly comics, I remembered a comic that is hanging on my refrigerator at home and decided this was the one I wanted to work with. In this comic you see two men talking to each other. We infer that this conversation is taking place in a doctors office because one man is dressed like a doctor with a lab coat and stethoscope and clipboard in hand and there is also a doctors bed/table in the background. The "patient" appears to be in his undergarments, perhaps having just finished a checkup. The look in the patients face is a bit scared to hear the news the doctor has to say. The words to this comic are at the bottom and it says "What fits your busy schedule better, exercising one hour a day or being dead 24 hours a day?" We aren't told in this comic who is speaking the words, but after reading it and putting it into comparison with the picture, we know it is the doctor talking to the patient. After I look at it again, I guess the doctors mouth is open a bit, but I still don't think that gives away the fact that he is talking.

The colors of this comic are pretty just neutral. The peoples skin color is a bit orange and the colors they are wearing are just red, yellow, white and blue. The bed behind them is green. There are no extremely bright colors except for the doctors hair, which I didn't even realize until i was looking for colors. The font that the words are in is nothing special or crazy and therefore doesn't change or affect the words being spoken. The size of the patient is a little heavier than the doctor, showing that he needs to exercise and therefore follow through with the words of the comic. I find it kinda ironic though that the doctor is the size he is, but I think these characters are meant to have that roundish body type. You can see from looking at another comic by Glasbergen that this is true.

I think this comic is just so perfect for people of today to relate to. Everyone knows that they would be best off fitting any amount of time to exercise into their day, but we all just fall back on the excuse that we are too busy. This comic puts into perspective the fact that it is unhealthy to not have physical exercise in our lives and it could potentially shorten our lives and then we'd be dead. I think when people see this as a comic it will be a lighthearted reminder to go work out. I know i use the excuse all the time that I am too busy, which I am a very busy person, but there is at least 1 hour in the day that I'm not doing something productive and should be working out and this comic is a reminder of that.

Writing Project #1

Authors Note:
Throughout the process for creating this first major writing project, there were many struggles and achievements along the way. At first, I didn't like that we had to keep doing the pre writing assignments because I felt they were a repeat of themselves, but when it came time to write the final piece, I was glad to have assessed different aspects of the image. I never thought I could spend so much time looking at one picture and yet find something different about it with every new glance. From doing this so much, I have even started to be more critical when looking at just everyday pictures. I have even applied this class to a real life situation, using vectors of attention to compare 2 pictures for my friend. Although I have learned a lot from this process, I can't say it was always easy because that would definitely be a lie. I would say that the hardest part for me was probably to get my mind to think through the terms of our book. Prior to this class, I was able to analyze an image or pick apart different aspects of writing, but I had never had to focus on these terms we studied in our book. I think it is great to stretch my analyzing techniques and vocabulary though. Probably the part I liked best about this assignment was getting the opportunity to have other students analyze my image and hear their ideas. We got stuck looking at our image for so long, and I think it was so great to get to see viewpoints from a couple different set of eyes. The peer reviews we did on each others rough drafts were what I found most helpful. I carefully took into consideration everything my peers and teacher suggested. An outside perspective has always been helpful to me and I reworked the structure of my paper after hearing that as an idea from my reviewers. They were very helpful in offering page numbers as well to make me have a better connection with explaining the vectors of attention to my readers. They helped remind me that talking about cropping with my image would be a good idea and helped me combine paragraphs that fit together rather than apart focusing on lighting and darkness. It was interesting to see when my ideas were similar with theirs and when they differed. One peer reviewer agreed that the image was taken in a classroom. It would have been interesting to see if anyone thought differently about that. My main attack during my reworking of the rough drafts to the final post was with the structure in which my thoughts were. I worked to make them fit together more to hopefully make more sense. I also messed with the formation of the images a little bit and combined them in with the words of the paragraph rather than just having them placed above the paragraph every time. I also reworked my citations to be sure every site and quote was accounted for. Through all my changes and revisions and suggestions, I am happy to share my final post for writing project number 1.

2nd Rough Draft

1st Rough Draft

Statement of Purpose




Change. It happens all around us. Whether we like it or not, we know that not all things stay the same forever. Stability. Opposite of change, but again we know that some things do stay the same. One example of this that almost everyone should be able to relate to is school. This is a prime example because during the years, there are aspects of schooling that change, but yet the main idea in education stays the same, meaning that no matter what year it is, or what state you're in, schools are found teaching the important things kids need to know in life. There are unchanging subjects in school such as math, reading and writing. Those subjects and many others are the basis for most classrooms, especially for children at the age in this photograph. My particular image is of a classroom in the 1940's. There were aspects of the image that I could pick apart and analyze just from looking at it, and then there were more things I learned that related to the image after doing some research. When you look into an image through the eyes of the time period, you look at it a little differently. After accounting for the historical context of the photograph, your perspective as the viewer changes. When you remember that there was a war going on at the time of the image and that segregation in schools was occurring and you put the picture in the context of the year and overall situation, more things start to make sense. It usually changes your perception from when you first looked at it, but there might be some things that stay the same as your previous conceptions. We tend to see classrooms in different perspectives because of different time periods. This image was found under the categories of classrooms, and also children signing. We were told that the photographer was Robert Lee and that the picture is from October of 1940. Therefore, we are lead to infer what is happening on our own.

When I first looked at this image prior to picking it, I thought it contained a lot of qualities our book holds. Some of the clearly evident ones were dealing with the colors and lighting, vectors of attention and overall idea of what is going on in the picture. The first thing that stuck out to me was the fact that all the children are looking to their left, or the right side of the image. Their bodies are facing forward though. As we've learned from Compose, Advocate and Design, the photographer obviously wants us to realize the vectors of attention is directed towards the left by the looks of the children. What is interesting with this image is that the children's attention is all directed to something we can't see. We are left to imagine what they are all looking at. From our text, “Vectors of attention are thus about arrangement- the logos of a photograph- but also about emotional connections within the photograph as well as between the photograph and the audience- the pathos of the photograph.” (352)

The overall affect of the image color wise is that it is pretty dark with a light shining down on the kids in the front middle. A thought about the light is that it is shining down on the kids that are fully paying attention, shadowing the boy and girl on the right side that aren't as focused. The photographer might want the focus to be more on the correctly behaved children. Therefore, we feel that behavior is carried out to the audience's perception of the kids. When analyzing the children, many things come up. Overall they look pretty content. Most are smiling or else if they aren't they don't look upset. We might infer that they are content because they are in a music class, which could be used as a break from their other more difficult classes. The little girl in the front on the end is the only one that is distracted and not similarly focused like the rest of the class. If we were to compare the behaviors of these children to the children in a class today, I think there would be a difference in the focus levels. The picture of this class seems to fit the norm of a focused classroom of kids. The darkness of the room correlates with the hard times that just happened during this time period. Their surrounding lives had just gotten out of war, but in the image they are still smiling which is uplifting to the audience knowing that they survived and are pushing through the hard times. After all, youth is a good way to motivate people through seeing their hope. We see that kids can still be happy and learning in this type of environment as well as the type that we are more used to. The photographer chose to focus in on only part of the class, as we can see that there are some children that didn’t make the complete crop. One reason for his doing so with this could be to focus in on the kids paying attention and behaving. For all we know, the trouble makers could have missed the cut.


The formation of the kids is in a riser sort of fashion. It could alternately be set up for a performance, or like a rehearsal. There is a variety in the boys and girls- they aren't in any sort of alternating pattern or rows. They are dressed like the time period they are in, 1940's. They are dressed in nicer outfits than we would expect for school today. They all look happily focused. After looking more into the background and history of this image, we can get a deeper feel for what is going on in these children's situations. We are reminded about the war that just ended a couple months before this picture was probably taken. This image was taken in October in 1940, so they were lucky to be back in school.



At this time, the schools were segregated. When I first looked at the image, that didn't even cross my mind, but when re-looking over the image, we see that is indeed the case. As mentioned before, only one girl really looks distracted, expressing that schools and teachers were quite strict in this time period. When you look at the background behind the children it is definitely fitting for the time period. It has a weird pattern that looks as if it were a piece of fabric being used at a background. The background is almost a contrast to the set up of the kids. The background is pretty busy and jumbled where the children are quite orderly and organized. When we think about classrooms these days, we usually picture bright colors and an overall fun aspect.



When we think about the ethos of this photograph, we find it a bit difficult to understand the story of all the kids because we can't see them talking, but we can go off of their gestures happening when the photo was captured. Most of the kids have their hands folded or behind them, showing a bit of innocence. Their manner of dress can also adhere to the ethos. They look more proper than students today because of their dresses and nice outfits. This helps show the seriousness in school and the style of the time period. Their hand placements could also aid to the seriousness, in that they aren't messing around putting bunny ears on other students, but instead are following the rule of keeping their hands to themselves.

When considering logos, we look at the overall arrangement, the way the arguments fit together to make the whole, and also the patterns. (191) This is like what was discussed earlier with the formation of the kids in the riser format possibly ready for a performance. The arguments fit together to express the overall situation being that these are children at school in the 1940's in what appears to be a music class. The patterns are within the image through the background, the children and the consistent vectors of attention.

Finally, we look at the pathos. We realize that we can't physically know everything about the image. We wish we could study the breathing, singing, verbal communication rather than just still body language. It's almost as if we wish we were able to be standing in the real life scene of the picture being able to take in everything by encountering the situation first hand. But since that can't happen, we are left to our imagination, critical thinking, and interpreting skills to make a story for our images.

This image is relevant to the life of viewers because it lets us revisit a time period and see the changes and similarities that we are familiar with today. When we are given the freedom to examine an image and create a story of our own, it is interesting to see our takes on the image not knowing at all what the photographer wanted us or assumed we would take away from it. We study each aspect of rhetoric terms our book contains and build a strong interpretation on our own, never knowing if it compliments what is the reality of the image or not. This image is relevant to the life of viewers because it lets us revisit a time period and see the changes and similarities that we are familiar with today.

Works Cited
“Ethos.” Wikipedia. Wikipedia; The free Encylcopedia, 24 Sept. 2009. Web. 18 Oct. 2009. .
“Logos.” Wikipedia. Wikipedia; The Free Encyclopedia, 7 Oct. 2009. Web. 18 Oct. 2009. .
“Pathos.” Wikipedia. Wikipedia; The Free Encyclopedia, 25 July 2009. Web. 18 Oct. 2009. .
“Racial Segregation.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica Online, 2009. Web. 18 Oct. 2009. .
“School Classes.” Groups: School Classes and School Sports. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Oct. 2009. .
“Segregation in Schools.” American Decades. eNotes, 2009. Web. 18 Oct. 2009. .
Wysocki, and Lynch. Compose Design Advocate. Pearson Longman, 2008. Web. 18 Oct. 2009. .
Wysocki, Anne Frances, and Dennis A Lynch. Compose Design Advocate. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. Print.