Struggling to Teach Critical Thinking? How comics make critical thinking fun!

I'm ten years old, sitting on the floor of my best-friend Elizabeth's house. There are two comic books splayed out on the floor. I Hate Mondays and the other, Garfield, The Irresistible! I pick up The Irresistible! and begin reading, giggling and then laughing out loud. Elizabeth laughs with me. Being the super-duper friend she was, Elizabeth said, "Take them home and read them."

That fateful afternoon kicked off my love affair with Garfield. I spent hours in my room, laughing at a fat orange cat and his side-kick Odie. Many years later my mother would remark how she missed hearing my giggles as she passed my room.

I spent so much time thinking and talking about this adorable cat that many weeks later Elizabeth said I could keep the books!

I was hooked. I think I bought every single one of them. When my sons were growing up, they loved the comics too.

We would buy other comic books and graphic novels but none had the hook-ability of Garfield. You could easily jump in and begin reading from any comic strip and it didn't matter where you began. You could just dive right in.

This is what makes Garfield so irresistible. Unlike novels and other books, you don't have to invest a lot of time or effort. You can be super tired but still read them.

They're like little snapshots of moments in time. Bite-size stories. Something that is accessible to everyone.

Jump Forward to My Teaching Career

As a teacher, I found myself trying to find little comics to entertain and teach concepts. When I found really funny ones my students loved them, but they were really difficult to find. Scrounging around on the internet for so long that I looked like a cooked goose by the end.

So I started creating my own. I would use clipart, but you can only go so far with drawings that don't really relate to what you're trying to illustrate. I gave it my best shot, though. If I was teaching Animal Farm by George Orwell, I would place barnyard clipart, (for example, a horse to portray Boxer, the ever-faithful loyal servant) to illustrate what he may be thinking and get my students to do the same.

They loved them. They were dorky comics, sure but they were very attention-grabbing. My students loved drawing their own comics too. It was the most engaging part of our lessons.

But the issue of never being able to quite capture what I needed with clipart was still there, and that's where the idea of creating my own came to life. In April 2023, whilst on a flight to Cairns from the Gold Coast, I was reading about how the biggest problem was that critical thinking was not being taught.

I knew this to be true. I had worked in both public and private schools and saw the problem. It's a tough area to teach because there's not much fun or entertaining content out there that also develops critical thinking skills. I know because I would search high and low for it, and many of my teaching friends and colleagues would say the same.

I thought about what methods were the most powerful approaches when it comes to teaching and I knew one of them was comics. Kids loved them. Parents and teachers loved them and I loved them. They're short, concise and clearly illustrated. What better medium could there be?

Duchess and Bruno - the Perfect Duo

That's how Duchess and Bruno came into being. I knew animals are fantastic for illustrating ideas from the real world. They're perfect at representing us, in all our strengths and weaknesses.

I also knew that we need to teach what we know. Animals I knew very well, perhaps the most, especially cats and dogs.

I started with a feline protagonist who is feisty and daring, Duchess. I then needed a companion for her who is very much her opposite. A dog is very much their opposite. So Bruno was born. They couldn't exist on their own though. They needed friends and others who would become members of their community. Boxer, Gizmo, and Bubba, plus Chloe, the cute kitten. And then a whole entourage of supporting characters to make up a society.

I began with Logical Fallacies, which were really tough concepts to understand (especially for me!) but needed to be taught. The Slippery Slope, Straw Man and Bandwagon Effect, for example, are used every day in the media to influence, persuade or manipulate us, but we don't know how to spot them. (Some of them I hadn't even heard of, but the more I dug, the more I could see that logical fallacies are one of the major techniques that we humans use to manipulate one another.)

Now, 24 fallacies later, Duchess and Bruno have become character we love and adore. Their comics are also more than just teaching and learning tools; they bring humour and wit into our discussions, bringing us together as we journey with the feisty Duchess and ever-faithful Bruno. 

If you're looking for way to make critical thinking fun, meaningful and unforgettable, explore our comics, activity packs and cards. Please leave us feedback to help improve too!

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