Comics

I was recently at a very interesting talk at Oakland. The speaker was an English professor named Jeff Chapman and the talk was about graphic novels as art and literature. Graphic Novels are becoming much more accepted in the art and literary community. He argued that comics can be up there with other great works of literature and that comics are capable of many technical and narrative aspects that art and literature cannot do on their own.

He went on to explain some of these methods, showing some actual works as examples. One that had greatly influenced him from his childhood was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book. What was so interesting about it was the way it told the story. Every page separated the panels into two completely separate stories that were happening simultaneously. The book ended with the two stories unexpectedly coming together.

Something like this could never really be told to the same effect in a novel. It is the combination of graphics and literature that creates this effect. He showed many other interesting works that other comic artists are doing now. Something that I had never really seen before that was interesting was abstract comics. These contained little to no words and had no fluid narrative.

I have always been interested in graphic novels and have been reading them since I was a kid. It is probably because of this that I have no trouble in agreeing with him that graphic novels can become great works of art and literature. I think one of the biggest problems with people's acceptance is that they limit themselves to thinking of comics as a pop culture item for children. Perhaps if people simple read more more than they wouldn't be so quick to judge.