by Dominique Blain
Editor-in-chief
Every once in a while, a group of fairly intelligent journalists go out for a couple of beers and crawl back home with an amazing idea.
Past moments of journalists-in-a-bar brilliance are responsible for, among others, the game Trivial Pursuit, maybe the crossword puzzle and… ah… well I’m sure there are many more things. Yeah, there are too many things to list here.
One moment of brilliance happened last Tuesday at the Imperial Library Pub, courtesy of Eyeopener editors and staff. A discussion about the goings-on of Ryerson Students’ Union and Student Campus Centre inanities made Alison Northcott, the news editor, turn back to her years as a (pretend) Telelatino soap star. As she tried to act out the drama, it occurred to her audience that maybe, just maybe, students would care about this important, if slightly juvenile, kerfluffle between the student unions and the rest of the Ryerson community if they could get its Northcottonized version.
Suddenly voices from above boomed, “Make it a comic strip, and they shall care.”
And thus the stroke of genius thundered across the upper floor of the Imperial, leaving a half-dozen excited student-journalists in its wake.
(Well, that’s the way the story was told to me. I was too busy being home sick to mix drugs and alcohol in public.)
And thus, dear adoring readers, the Eyeopener inaugurates its news comic strip for your reading, viewing and comprehension pleasure; check out part one of the SCC Chronicles on page 7 of the print edition.
Think of it as the equivalent of the comic strips high-school physics textbooks used to carry to make physics hip to teenagers. Except now, physics is replaced with student politics and you love it.
This is how much the Eyeopener cares.
Yes, the feud is made up of a lot of demonstrative politicking. But politicking was meant to muddle and cloud issues that are more important than the ones being discussed. We need to clear the air and draw things out.
Now, even the Eyeopener does not have the audacity to compare our comic to the graphic novels of Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Gorazde, which, respectively, dealt with the Holocaust and the war in Eastern Bosnia. But those are examples of how graphic art can easily service complicated issues.
We do intend to accentuate the humour and irony existing in the situations as much as possible all the while maintaining the integrity of the facts at hand.
Every once in a while we might also infuse the piece with something completely ridiculous, too, mostly because it’s funny.
Still, if you want to know even more about the issues, don’t hesitate to visit us on the second floor of the Student Campus Centre. Ask for Alison. Just give her 10 minutes to get her costume changes ready.
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