In February 2007 at the New York Comic-Con, I was approached by Joseph Gregov, a student researcher at the University of Connecticut. He studied mass media effects, and was putting together a project to investigate the effects of subtle pro-social messages in American entertainment media. He chose comics because the nature of the panels and balloons allowed him to better edit the story and see if different versions produced different results in different groups of readers.
As a card-carrying Skeptic with a strong conviction in the benefits and importance of “SCIENCE,” this sounded like a fun, good, and meaningful project for me to contribute to. I low-balled a fee I would charge, hoping to solidify the position, and I got it. Here are the first four pages of the story I was given, before the word balloons were added. I worked from Joe’s script.
[click on image to enlarge]
This is the story:
A guy, who’s just out of a long, serious relationship, gets picked up by his friends to drive to a party, where they meet up with some girlfriends bringing their friends. One of the girls has sewn a banana design on her skirt.
I assume this is where the research and study of people’s reactions to pro-social messages begins. Notice the two below pages are an “alternate ending 1” and “2”. Both begin with holding the car keys, and deciding what to do with them. Decision one: be responsible and don’t give the keys to the drunk. Result: you’ll make out with the girl and she’ll come home with you. Decision two: the drunk asked for the keys, so give them to him, and let him drive you home. Result: the drunk will crash into a parked police car.
Joseph wrote to me in December 2007 to give me some updates on the research project. It was posted digitally online, and he was able to recruit over 400 participants. The statistics showed that overall (65-70%) the primarily non-comics-reading audience enjoyed the art. He didn’t tell me any specifics about the data of the study. For instance, I was interested to hear how people like morality stories jammed down their fiction . . . “DON’T DRINK AND DRIVE.” I was interested if people noticed there was a subtle morality lesson by the lead character not letting his drunk friend drive, or if they just thought it was a nice love story. Things like that.
Joseph said he was planning to post a public link to the story, but I haven’t heard from him again (it being three and a half years as I post this), so I don’t know what the story looks like completed and lettered. I had worked from a script, but he had told me the script would probably change once he saw the art.
Joseph, we’d love to see the story! Are you still planning to post it?