Should Comics be considered "Literature"?

[SpacePen]

alternative to 'comics', 'graphic novel', etc.

I personally like the term "storyboarding" - but that has specialized connotations pertaining to outlining a film. But why can't we hijack film terminology for some other use?

as for it being literature or not - comics are caught in the largest net that the word "literature" can throw.

As for any deeper, more specific meaning - I find it profitable to start reasoning like this:

1) What is literacy? What is illiteracy?

2) Do you need to be literate in order to read comics? If you are illiterate, can reading comics help you become literate?

[Jacq]

Interesting, Spacepen. For what it's worth, the Latin translations of TinTin were pretty much indispensable for me. But literature has so many more connotations then simply being literate. Maybe that's another problem.

I need to proofread more. That sentence in my post above should have read that 'graphic novel' and 'trade paperback' were the terms used when I was younger and very much more into the "scene" (read: hanging about the comic shop everyday and playing M:TG and all that jazz. About a decade ago.)

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.

Yes, and also the other end of the spectrum with something like Thieves and Kings, where huge blocks of prose break up the comic sequences. Unlike film, which is named after a medium unique to itself, there's no real option. Storyboards is probably my favourite brought up in the thread so far, though.
(I think whoever decided that "graphic" = "dirty" should be dragged out into the street and shot, btw)

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.

Most of the artists I know (like five >.>) have dealt with this. Many offer their art for free/cheap online, but make the big money on traditional commissions or prints. I'm guilty of perpetuating this, sadly. I like tangible pictures that I can touch and are MINE and all that jazz, so though I'll buy a print run of a free webcomic (MacHall, for example), I don't think I've ever paid for access to a digital comic.
(On the other hand, my boyfriend is a flash animator </plug>, and a substantial amount of his income is for purely digital work, though he's done quite a lot in the comic scene, it's just not viable financially for most.)

Night's Mistress, Kingdom Come addresses those exact issues head on. But I'm not sure how well I follow the argument. I mean, Superman cookie-cutters are definitely power-fantasies of the sort you mean, but there are so many others of the super-hero ilk that just don't wash that way. Is X-men a power-fantasy? I mean, there's the idea that the outcasts of society have something relevant to offer but...

On the subject of webcomics... I'm not sure where to place something like A Softer World. I love it very much (despite a personal vendetta against the "three-panel-punchline" format) but is it a comic? I can't figure it out.

Art and objectivity are so hard for me for wrap my head around, which I guess is what the argument really boils down to (as stated earlier). I have to agree with Kathy Li yet again here, except that I'm not sure that relevance should be the only criteria. I'm having a hard time trying to explain this, but I guess for me the question is "relevant to whom?" I dislike the term "society" in reference to this general sort of mass of everybody, because when you take it into account like that, it actually represents nobody. For me, art just is, regardless of form. But what is art/literature to me, isn't necessarily YOUR art, or HIS art, or Stephen Harper's art. Because I initially deny that criteria is possible, I can't say what defines a book or a play or a comic as Fine. But that doesn't mean I can't recognize it.
(^- apologies for the nonsensicalness. I thought about this too much and confused myself)

(As an aside, the only comics I'm actively pursuing are Theives and Kings (which has been on indefinite hiatus for two years now ) and as of this Christmas when I received #19, The Acme Novelty Library, of which I'm working my way backwards but it's a nightmare to find even the 5-year-old volumes.)

tl;dr: I leik those buks w/picktures.

[SpacePen]

Interesting, Spacepen. For what it's worth, the Latin translations of TinTin were pretty much indispensable for me.

I loved TinTin!

But literature has so many more connotations then simply being literate. Maybe that's another problem.

Ah, but there's the point. What does it mean to "simply be literate"? I am indebted to (an irate) Dorothy Sayers for the concept of "illiterate reading" - it is quite possible to be literate in a superficial sense and yet not gain an accurate understanding of what the written words actually say. Do you need to be literate in a more profound sense in order to gain an accurate understanding of what a storyboard/comic actually says? Moreover, can a person who is only superficially literate in other genres be enticed into actually paying attention to the written word by reading a comic? Can the comic open the mind of a person to new ideas that were not there before?

Storyboards is probably my favourite brought up in the thread so far, though.

Yay for storyboarding!
Converts: 1
Population still in the dark: everyone else


It's just occurred to me that another profitable comparison might be to the other genre that is sometimes considered as if it were literature but really has more in common with the comic than it does with, say, Dickens. That is theatre - more specifically the script. In fact I often see comics "summarized" in script form when a set of panels cannot be transmitted easily. If you go see a drama as it is intended to be seen, you have all the elements of a comic: Characters, lighting, action shots, facial expressions, spacial cues, dialogue, possible narration, scene changes, etc. Reduce a comic or a drama to a written script and you have something that might be considered literature, though it lacks the "full" features of the genre. Why are plays often considered literature? Why is Shakespeare studied the world over in English lit classes? Perhaps the comic as a genre need only produce a shakespeare and in a hundred years or so it will be taught in the Lit. classes too.

[Daylily]

I personally like the term "storyboarding" - but that has specialized connotations pertaining to outlining a film. But why can't we hijack film terminology for some other use?

as for it being literature or not - comics are caught in the largest net that the word "literature" can throw.

As for any deeper, more specific meaning - I find it profitable to start reasoning like this:

1) What is literacy? What is illiteracy?

2) Do you need to be literate in order to read comics? If you are illiterate, can reading comics help you become literate?

[SpacePen]

I am your english teacher

Actually, I am your English teacher, and I'm not impressed. (Just Kidding!!) ;-)

literacy ... involves analyzing, predicting, and thought.

There you've hit upon it. Can a storyboard (i.e. comic or graphic novel) provoke analysis, prediction, or thought on the same level that, say, Jane Austen or Charles Dickens does?

IF it can, the further question before us becomes: DOES it? I don't mean in a general sense, but in a specific sense. Is there an author who provokes these things in the readers with the same regularity that Shakespeare or Austen (or Tolkien) does?

Is there a comic that ought to be mentioned as a first or best in its class or or as an only in its class alongside the depths of human character plumbed by stories like "les miserables" or "hamlet" or "animal farm" or "a tale of two cities" or "war and peace" or "huckleberry finn" or "the scarlet letter" or even "the lord of the rings"?