Should Comics be considered "Literature"?

[Jacq]

(Excuse me if there's a rule about noobs creating threads willy-nilly.)

Do you think comics should be considered "Literature" and be able to join the ranks of Shakespeare and Dickens? Should only certain genres of comics (autobiographical) be considered?

Personally, I think comics are a viable form of literature, and can express the range of human experience as well as books. Of course, just like books, not all comics are created equal. Maus (which won a Pulitzer Prize) is obviously not on the same level as Marvel ZOMBIES. However, award-winners aside, there are many great comics out there that are dismissed because either because they are "picture books" or because they aren't about the holocaust. (Such as The Acme Novelty Library by Chris Ware, or Brian Michael Bendis' pre-spider-man noir novels like Jynx)

The last few years have proven comics are marketable to the general populace in the forms of movies (Dark Knight, Sin City, etc) but they haven't yet made it into the 'higher realms' of academia beyond a few special interest courses.

What do you think?

tl;dr: comics are good hurr.

[Nights Mistress]

There is a fair amount of literature based on comic books and their literary merit. A friend of mine recently completed her honours project for her B.A. and I know she referenced half a dozen papers that were about interpreting the sociological meaning of comics and how they are symbolic of things.

I personally have also read papers on comic books for my degree (I'm a final year law student). They're about how comic books are both a representation of the law as it exists and a way of identifying the way that the law fails in its dealings with its subjects. It's really interesting reading, I've found.

It's definitely out there! It's not widely disseminated by every class you'll be in, but if you're interested in the area, there is most certainly academic material out there.

[Dragon Writer]

I think it depends on the comic - not the genre, but the individual comic. Some exist just for a couple of laughs, while others may deal with real issues, and real feeling. At the same, if you look at it that way, you have to ask another question - are all books litterature? Do the small, goofy ones with no depth still count? And if the answer is yes, do we dare just draw a lone somewhere in the midst of comics, and say that, at this point, it stops just being litterature? If the answer, however, is no, not all books are litterature, then simply apply the same criteria you do for books, and you will have your answer.

[Nights Mistress]

I think however that books automatically enjoy the privilege of being considered literature, and then it becomes a matter of excluding the books that are the exception to the rule. On the other hand, graphic novels do not enjoy this privilege. It is assumed that comic books are just for entertainment, and that it is the exception to the rule that engages a real topic or issue.

It's an interesting double standard. Why is it that graphic novels are considered, by their very nature, to be less worthy of literary merit then novels?

[Dragon Writer]

Most likely because of pictures - and animated ones at that. Although this, if anything, will require more skill, the simple fact is that most people would put it in the realm of picture books - kiddy at best, stupid at worse. Also, most see comics through the realm of their own experiences - a thing many of them read as kids, and a large portion if them grew out of, rather than something they use to deal with real issues, or to convey oppinions.

[Nights Mistress]

It's interesting as well, because political cartoons have been considered a valid form of political and social expression. I wonder if it is instead the idea of superheroes in comic books that brings about the dismissal of it being valid.

[Jacq]

Night's Mistress, your first point is interesting in that academia uses comics as a "here and now" reflection of society at a given time. Even now, something like Maus is studied more for its novel way of storytelling, the themes of the use of masks or racial stereotyping, as opposed to it being a chronology of war. A thousand years from now, do you think it's possible that American Splendour will be used in classrooms to highlight the lifestyles of 1970s Americans the same way we study Thucydides or Hobbes today?

Superhero books are such a toss up for me. On one hand, they're the reason the industry was robust enough to support independent artists in the first place. On the other, they flood the market and homogenize everything.

Thanks for your replies. It's really interesting

[Kathy Li]

I tend to agree more with the Scott McCloud view that comics are merely a medium, not a genre. Asking "should comics be considered art" is like asking "should movies/photographs be considered art?" or "should books be considered literature?" The content and the quality of the content will always be open to debate, but the medium is something separate. It's just the form that holds the content.

[Dragon Writer]

Where does one draw the line on content, though? At what point does it loose the right to be considered art, or litterature? Or is it not a line, but something we just decide for ourselves and debate with among our friends later?

[alla]

I'm not a big reader of comic books; I prefer to read prose, than look at pictures, but that's just me. That being said, I think the answer to this question would depend on how you define 'literature'. To me, literature is something that is more than just a book, and more than just a story, it has to make or have made an effect on society, or give information on society at that point in time. But that's just my opinion. According to Wiki, literature can refer to any written text, but can be narrowed to exclude genre fiction.

Of the limited number of comics that I have read, most of them delve more deeply into society than most of the books that I've read. That may be because I tend to stick to reading genre fiction. I've also found that on re-reading most of the 'laugh out loud' comics, there's usually a deeper and often very keen sense of society hiding under the surface jokes.

[Nights Mistress]

The superhero comics are interesting for me, as they reflect the inadequacies of law. If things were perfect then there would be no need for a power/control fantasy whereby by punching someone in the face, you correct a social problem. Superhero comics reflect the here and now and so they also reflect the flaws inherent in a system. In looking at them, we can see how the law is flawed in how it deals with its subjects. Like. If you pick up a comic book run, you can flick through it and see how they can be interpreted with respect to feminist theory or critical legal scholarship. Or even through a Hobbean perspective! (to be fair, I am biased: this is my honours project)

As for American Splendour being an educational text, I couldn't see why not! It's probably more along the lines of a cultural artefact.

[Dragon Writer]

I suppose that the problem is that the meaning of litterature, for us, seems to have grown to be larger than the actual definition itself. As readers, we look at the depth more than some, and really try to see it. Maybe, in some cases, we create the depth out of a need to have what we read worthwhile, but the truth is that there really is more depth than most people want to bieleve is out there.

[Kathy Li]

Actually, what I find most interesting about superhero as a genre, is that it's a mashup of three of the biggest genres around: science fiction, fantasy, and detective/mystery. I love how the Big Three on the DC side reflect both this common inheritance, and also how you can skew towards any one of the three base genres: Superman is obviously more of a Sci-Fi story (alien from outerspace lands in a rocket ship); Wonder Woman (Amazon warrior raised by a Greek myths and gods) is more Fantasy-oriented; while Batman (who started out in Detective Comics, remember) is obviously of the gumshoe/noir vein of detective.

And right now, probably the only comic I still follow avidly is Kurt Busiek's Astro City.

Personally, I can really only think of a handful of comics titles I'd consider to be literature. And (you can tell I hang with Scott McCloud waaaay too much during comic-cons) I also can't stand the term "graphic novel", given the bad connotations "graphic" can have, and the fact that these things typically aren't novels (although I suppose you could argue that Dickens, et. al. were also serial collections--but those were not open-ended serials). I far prefer "drawn book" but that's never going to catch on.

To me literature is not necessarily something that changes society or comments on society, but is something that is relevant to society, something that stands the test of time and remains relevant beyond passing fads/concerns/nostalgia of the day. Not just in what is said about the human condition but in how it is said. But comics that, say, deserve a Pulitzer? I'd only count a handful I'd put up. (and no, Maus or American Splendor or an Alan Moore work would not be my first choice. Cages would. With Jimmy Corrigan running a close second).

I think popular literature can be classed as literature, much as popular film can be classed as art. I'd point to Dickens and Shakespeare as other examples. Whether something is created to be fine art has little to do with whether it is art, in my opinionated view.

[Jacq]

I think it's rad that you've hung out with Scott McCloud. Though I don't entirely agree with him on some issues, he has some very interesting points about how digital media and the internet has revolutionized the industry (partially). I own his three books and I loved to know what his (updated) thoughts regarding viable income in digital comics - especially on Galliger's (moderate) success with Megatokyo and the other end of the pay-to-read stuff like .. ahaha I've totally blanked. PAL comics I guess, though that's not really what I mean.


I need to think about some the other excellent points that have been brought up here a bit more before posting a substantial reply, but I wanted to address the semantics quickly. I have no problems with the term graphic novel, as it and "trade paperback" were catch-all phrases used for any collection or anthology. Eisner's sequential art has merits, I guess, but all of those, as well as "comic", mean the same thing to me.

[Kathy Li]

I think it's rad that you've hung out with Scott McCloud.

This is what comes of being old. I was a fan of Zot! when it was coming out in color. You can imagine that back in those days, there weren't that many folks who stuck around Scott McCloud's table to chat in Artists' Alley (hell, I remember when Eastman & Laird and Matt Groening were sitting there, too). It was really something the year that Understanding Comics was about to come out, and seeing everyone in the industry stop by Scott's table to see the pages.

He jokes a lot about how going digital has done him out of a main source of income, since he probably made more selling the artwork for Understanding Comics than he did off its first print run.

Though I don't entirely agree with him on some issues, he has some very interesting points about how digital media and the internet has revolutionized the industry (partially).

Yeah, the micropayments thing hasn't worked out.

I own his three books and I loved to know what his (updated) thoughts regarding viable income in digital comics - especially on Galliger's (moderate) success with Megatokyo and the other end of the pay-to-read stuff like .. ahaha I've totally blanked. PAL comics I guess, though that's not really what I mean.

I'm still not sure that "The Wrong Number" is doing much for him. Although Scott was dead happy when he got to tell me that Monkey Punch had stopped by the booth and wanted to give him the quarter then and there. I was apparently the sixth person he told that story to, but I was the first one to squee! with him about it, since everybody else was too young to know who Monkey Punch (Lupin III) is.

He sounds just the tiniest bit frustrated that the "online" version of the Google Chrome comic is the for print one...

... I have no problems with the term graphic novel, as it and "trade paperback" were catch-all phrases used for any collection or anthology. Eisner's sequential art has merits, I guess, but all of those, as well as "comic", mean the same thing to me.

I think the difficulty with sequential art is that you know that Marmaduke is comics, but there's no sequence per se to a single-panel comic. Trade paperback is about form, and is more or less content-neutral, so that works for me, but isn't specific enough to nail down with-pictures. And I know that "comic" is just as wrongfully-connotation-loaded as "graphic novel", but nobody a snob about using the word "comics". But I may just be suffering backlash against a term I embraced heartily in the '80s when it was created. I used to think direct market was great, too.