For too long, comics have been the Rodney Dangerfield of the art world.

After all, when we learn to read, we do so with books with lots of pictures and few words. Our goal is to read books that are all words with no pictures when we’re older.

Ergo, doesn’t it follow that comic books, packed with bold lines, flashy images and bright colors, are something only for the very young? Shouldn’t we set aside Batman and Superman, Spider-Man and the X-Men when we get older? (Hollywood knows superheroes sell to all ages, but that’s a story for another day.)

In the United States, that often has been the case, way back to Frederick Wertham’s 1954 alarmist condemnation of comics, “Seduction of the Innocent.” But in Europe and especially Japan, it’s not unusual to see adults reading comics on a bus or at a cafe. It’s all a matter of perspective.

But the times, they are a-changin’. Now there are students majoring in comic art at U.S. colleges and universi-

ties. Comic collections are available in libraries. Comics are being reviewed in professional and popular magazines.

There’s the National Association of Comics Art Educators, whose Web site, teachingcomics.org, is a place where teachers can share syllabi, ideas and resources.

Scott McCloud, a member of the NACAE advisory board, is pleased by these recent developments.

“It’s been a long, hard-fought battle, started long before I was born by people like [comics legend] Will Eisner,” he said. “It’s been enormously gratifying, as if a lot of long-term investments are finally bearing fruit.”

The cry for the study of comics is coming from a new generation of comics fans.

“Probably the most encouraging part is that students are the prime motivators, the ones demanding the courses,” McCloud said. “If you want to make art for a living, comics have to be more interesting than greeting cards, and might strike a young artist as less soulless than advertising.”

From his California home about an hour north of Los Angeles, McCloud has been at the forefront of recent comics scholarship. His 1993 book “Understanding Comics” is a comic book that examines the inner workings of the medium and is considered a seminal work in the field. His 2000 follow-up, “Reinventing Comics,” advocates 12 changes in the way comics are created, distributed and perceived, with special emphasis on the potential of online comics.

The son of an inventor and engineer, McCloud began in comics in 1984, and he was gathering notes already for a book about comics.

“Almost from the beginning, it was my nature to take apart the machine and put it back together,” he recalled. “It was my plan to reverse-engineer the art form, for the purpose of making better comics. I would take apart how other people did it, how we read comics, how they trigger images in our minds. The space between the panels is where everything happens.”

McCloud works on both traditional comic books and online. He’s writing and laying out a Superman graphic novel for DC. His online works can be found at scottmccloud.com. He’s preparing “The Right Number,” an experimental graphic novel in which each panel of the work is imbedded in the next panel.

McCloud was in Maine to teach “Comics: Theory & Practice” over the Columbus Day break at the Hutchinson Center of the University of Maine in Belfast.

Although he’s been lecturing and giving workshops for years, the Belfast visit marked only the third time that McCloud had taught a full-fledged course, having offered it before at two sessions at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in July.

“I got a suggestion from Minneapolis to put it together,” he explained. “The syllabus leaped out of my brain onto paper. I guess I had always known that I was going to teach someday.”

McCloud enjoyed teaching, and got the word out that he’d be interested in mounting more sessions.

That’s when Matt LeClair, who teaches digital art at the Belfast campus, got involved.

“I’ve been a fan of Scott’s for a long, long time,” LeClair said. “We’d brought him here last year for a lecture and workshop, and the students asked to have him back. We got an e-mail asking if we were interested.”

Grants from the Maine Commission for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts helped to make the class a go.

So, on a seasonally cool fall morning, while McCloud is getting a handle on the equipment set up in the Hutchinson Center auditorium, his 20 students, which include four teachers, drift in. As they’re settling in, McCloud asks each what they hope to get out of the class.

Will Davenport is a Hampden native who teaches art at Masconomet Regional High School in Topsfield, Mass. His father, who works at the University of Maine, heard about the class and let him know about it. He stayed with his parents during the course.

“Fifty percent of my taking the class was just to meet and work with Scott,” explained Davenport, 25. “Also, it’s a period of change in the comics industry. I was hoping to find others interested in it, to share my work with other artists, and to give myself a spark to get at it.”

Travis Dandro, a self-syndicated cartoonist from Bangor, knew McCloud could help him.

“I’ve read ‘Understanding Comics’ about 100 times,” said the 28-year-old. “I wanted to learn from Scott and I also wanted to show him my portfolio.”

Kristen Skakle of Stockton Springs saw a way to combine her two passions.

“I’ve always been interested in comics and I love drawing,” said Skakle, 18. “I was immediately interested in the class.”

The first one to two hours of each six-hour class is a visual lecture, including a discussion and close reading of comics.

McCloud gets the students involved with hands-on work immediately, handing out blank sheets of white paper and having them draw a comic strip based on the following scenario: “A man is wearing a hat. The hat is blown off by the wind. He picks up the hat, and puts the hat back on his head. Clearly render the scene, using a minimum number of panels and omitting any extraneous details.”

It’s silent in the auditorium, with only the hum of the ventilation system audible, as the students hunch over their drawings. McCloud has them look up long enough to take their photos with a digital camera. He’ll scan these images into his laptop, then have the students sign beneath their photos. It’s his way of matching names to faces.

After two minutes are up, he projects his 9-year-old daughter’s completed version of the same assignment. The point he’s making: “Drawing comics is something we can do right from the beginning.”

Over the next 90 minutes, McCloud takes the students through the different elements of sequential art and types of panel-to-panel transitions and emphasizes the need for clarity in their work, using numerous examples on the overhead projector. He has them dissect works by the European artist Moebius and independent artist Eric Drooker. (Partway through, he discovers that he has a laser pointer and puts it to use.)

Next, students move down the hall to another room that will serve as the studio for the class. A breakfast buffet untouched from a morning meeting that never was held awaits them.

McCloud hands out worksheets and flair pens (He discourages using pencils in order to cut down on corrections. Spontaneity is always the goal of his exercises). The class draws three types of panel-to-panel transitions.

Next, each worksheet is taped to the marker board at the front of the room. Then each student in turn attempts to describe what’s going on in a classmate’s drawing. Some are crystal clear, others are not, leading to such artists’ explanations as “That’s not a person. That’s a tree.”

After lunch, the class repeats the process for the second set of transition worksheets.

The next exercise has McCloud handing out one of 10 different story lines to each student. He or she has 15 minutes to draw a six-panel comic based on his or her story line. Afterward, McCloud breaks up the class into three groups. Each will select the best comic in their group, which will be posted up front for further discussion.

So it will go for four more days. The final project will be a two- to four-page finished comic, started in the last couple of days of class, and finished by the end of the semester. McCloud will continue to advise students by e-mail through the completion of the project.

After the class wraps up, students said they were impressed with their fledgling teacher.

“He was a great teacher,” said Josh Robert, 27, of Unity. “I had pretty high expectations, and he definitely exceeded them. He was excited about what he does, and he wanted to share as much of his knowledge as possible. He managed to get everyone very excited about what we were doing.”

Dandro added, “During critiques, Scott was respectful to everyone’s work and gave equal time to each. We talked about what worked and what didn’t and Scott always gave helpful advice.”

Davenport is building some of what he learned about online art into his school’s curriculum, creating a new way for students to display their work. Also, he made contacts and is starting a few projects of his own.

Dawn Steeves of Bangor, a freshman at UMaine’s Orono campus, was happy with McCloud’s guidance.

“I’d like to do my own comic, but I didn’t know where to start and what to do,” said the 18-year-old. “Scott made that easier to understand.”

McCloud was jazzed by his experience as well.

“It was rewarding, energizing,” he said. “I feel like I’m doing something of use. I could see doing this regularly, at different places.”

McCloud, who will be teaching the course at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in January, feels that academic study of comic art can open people’s eyes to the possibilities.

“I try to expose them to as many different types of comics as I can, comic strips, graphic novels, comics on the Web,” he said. “There’s no right way to make comics.”

For more information about Scott McCloud, access www.scottmccloud.com. For a directory of online comics, access Josh Roberts’ OnlineComics.net.