Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

·      sixth president of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 2005

Rising from obscurity

·      the son of a blacksmith

·      born in 1956 in Garmsar, near Tehran

·      appointed mayor of Tehran in 2003

·      reduced social freedoms

·      curtailed many of the reforms introduced by more moderate figures who ran the city before him

·      his rise to power and landslide victory in 2005 surprised the international community

Hard-line campaign

·      strong backer of Iran's nuclear program

·      backed by powerful conservatives

·      support of younger, second-generation revolutionaries known as the Abadgaran, or Developers, who are strong in the Iranian parliament, the Majlis

·      campaign focused on poverty, social justice and the distribution of wealth

·      repeatedly defended his country's nuclear program

·      worried the US and European Union.

·      his re-election caused worst political unrest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Confrontational

·      refused to back down on Tehran's decision to resume uranium conversion

·      its country's right to civilian nuclear energy and its missile development program

·      insists he will not use its technology to make a nuclear bomb

'People's friend'

·      often speaks of women as being at the heart of Iranian society.

·      he talks of empowering them

·      provide insurance for housewives and share Iran's oil wealth with poorer families

·      he would not be confrontational in enforcing women to obey Iran's strict Islamic dress codes

·      has also allowed women into major sporting events for the first time since 1979

·      maintains a populist streak

Scott McCloud - Understanding Comics

According to Scott McCloud, the definition of a comic is a juxtaposed pictorial and other images in a deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the viewer. Although most people think that this form of literature has only recently been used, it has actually been present in our civilization as early as the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Between now and then, thousands of different cultures have created comics: Cortes’ picture manuscript, Mexican art, Norman tapestries, and 20^th century British caricature magazines. Unlike most critics, Scott McCloud considers comics to be high art. McCloud considers comics to be a form of high art because of their sparse representations of reality allowing the reader to inject himself into the narrative. Additionally, comics use principles of art like line, form, and color in order to create an aesthetically pleasing work.

Introduction to Comics

According to Wikipedia, a graphic novel is a book that is made up of comics content. Not necessarily fictional, a graphic novel is applied broadly and can include various different genres. Examples of the top graphic novels include Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Maus, and Persepolis in addition to many more. For the most part, a graphic novel is presented as a story that is presented in comic-strip format and is presented as a book. Although there are a lot of critics against it, comics are a powerful education tool. The strengths of graphic novels include that it is visual and in comparison to other visual media, they are permanent. Because of this, graphic novels transmit a powerful message in a very effective manner.