The Colorblind Art Teacher

The Colorblind Art Teacher is a series of minicomics drawn by Mark Teel, who is, in fact, a color blind art teacher. Teel is not a stranger to the world of comics; he’s been writing and drawing them since he was in high-school, but this is his first effort at a widely-marketed publication. At our house we get the comic books, which come out roughly quarterly, in the mail at our house, and we also get the “webisodes” on his site, Bored Beyond Belief.

The Colorblind Art Teacher is chiefly autobiographical, and since Mark is 36, will appeal to any GenXer who remembers Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and the Thriller album. Even as a child, Mark was involved in pop culture, but never as a mindless participant, as so many were and are. Mark has always had a sense of the absurdity of things, the ridiculousness of the extremes that popular culture embraces, and that insight has always come out in some hysterical and biting satire.

In this new series, he turns his instinct for satire on himself. Mark seems to live in an in-between place, like so many of our generation do, where childhood is still real but we have adult repsonsibilities to meet every day. His comic goes back and forth between the two as we watch him try to parent his precocious daughter Audrey. Audrey is, in the comics and in real life, a mini-Mark, as Mark demonstrates by flashing back to his own childhood, and showing his parents trying to deal with him in strikingly similar situations.

The juxtaposition is always funny, especially for those of us who still think of ourselves in some sense as those children, and are sometimes bemused by a fate that would allow us to be parents.

Mark’s drawings are clean and expressive, done in black and white with little extranneous detail, and somehow reflect both a hard-won adult insight and a childlike joy that allow us to enter into some challenging experiences and come out of it chuckling. He holds family life in high regard, and places himself as the target of most of the humor; because of those two things, we are able to both sympathize and laugh.

You can go to Mark’s Website, Bored Beyond Belief, and buy paper copies of The Colorblind Art Teacher. While you’re there, read the past several webisodes, and don’t forget to leave comments.

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