Comics as literature?

In the video about Anti-boy schools I noticed that the woman mentioned we should employ comic books as reading material in schools. I thought about the idea in an extension to just employing comics in literature studies all together, use it for references for aspiring writer. However, despite some of the comics being masterfully written with intriguing stories, complex characters, and really good writing, there is a fundamental difference between books and comic book that simply disables using comic books as literature reference.

Does that mean I think comic books shouldn’t be regarded as a form of art? Of course not. I’m completely aware of comics being able to carry just as much drama and depth as books or any other media for that matter. I mean, it’s basically take two forms of art, writing and drawing, and puts them together. How can that NOT be considered art? While superhero comics are the ones most popular, they can also tackle sensitive or everyday material. If you are not sold on how good comics can be, I recommend reading the online comic Sunstone by Stjepan Šejič here. That is, if you are over 18.

So why can’t we employ them for literature studies? It has a large part to do with the fact that comics are illustrated, employing a visual aid in a way.

When writing a book, a writer must rely on words, and words alone. He can’t show you what a grassy plain looks like, or a great mountain. He is reliant only on the black ink on the paper and your imagination. For that, he has to learn to choose every word he uses carefully, knowing the slight difference in how that particular word will affect its readers, what they will imagine.

Comic books don’t have that problem. They CAN and they WILL show you what that grassy plain looks like. They can even portray a lot of emotions just by drawing. Additional words of description will just seem redundant and take the reader out of the story. Yet, that means that almost all sort of description get pushed back, emotional writing limited to dialogues. 

Also, if you see an image with the text, that automatically alters your mindset. If, let’s say, a comic book artist wanted to show someone possessing great strength by lifting a big bolder, he would just draw it. The bare image of someone lifting a rock twice his size over his head is enough for people to get the sense of strength.

You don’t really have that kind of ‘luxury’ in books. The mere act won’t impress your readers, because this great show of strength would be limited to simply one sentence, if you would describe only the action.

“He lifted the bolder over his head.”

We all know that’s a heavy thing to do, but if you only mention it so passé it doesn’t hold strength. Instead, a writer really has to describe what’s going on to get you to see the rock, to feel it’s weight.

“His muscles tensed as his strong hands clutched the rough surface of the rock. He bent his knees, grunting as his biceps budged out from the sheer weight of the bolder, blocking his way. Sweat began to race down his forehead, his chest, his legs, his arms as he slowly lifted the rock off the ground, gasping for air as he did so. And then, just as his body looked like it’s about to give under the weight of the bolder, he victoriously stretched out his arms with a winner’s shout, his heavy burden above his head.”

This way, by describing the act in detail, it becomes much more memorable, and holds much more ‘weight’. This sort of description is necessary to learn if you want to write a really engaging book, and comic books simply have no use of it most of the time.

That is why comics will probably never be the go-to material for aspiring writers, because they simply have no need for certain skills a writer should have. That is not to say that writing/illustrating comics is easy. I’m sure they have their fair share of problem. Keeping balance between text and image must be a hard thing to do for one.

So should we really group comics and literature together? Probably not. The art forms are just too different and surely both would lack if compared to the other’s standards. A much better solution is to just accept comics as art on their own, offering classes focusing on this particular form of art. A collaboration between a literature class and an art class might be a good start, even if it’s very rough.

Why literature classes are a joke!

I consider myself a person who does admire and appreciate literature. I enjoy intriguing characters, grappling storylines and immersive writing. If the previous has been supplied, I can even appreciate a particular writing style or stylistic choice so long as it doesn’t make the piece incredibly hard to read. *cough* Ulixes by Joyce *cough* However, I am also a very fickly reader and won’t hesitate to put a book down if I’m not drawn in by it in the first few chapters. I also wouldn’t hesitate to call some old classic out-of-date at best or just word mashes at worst.

Not that my opinion has more grounding than any other, but, going through elementary and high school, I got a feeling the academia flat out fears the fact that I might not perceive any of the ‘classics’ as anything other than God-given gems. They really seemed to do their darnest to make me fall down on my knees and praise some book they declared good. They fragment the text, trying to make us appreciate every little word the author might as well had used on a whim. They focus on the author and all the wonderful things he had done or the perils and hardship he endured as if the book was literally written in his blood. They want us to make personality charts for every single character, regardless of how unimportant they may be. Worst of all, they make us look for profundity that might not even be there.

My point is, we hardly ever discussed these books just as books. We were always spoon-fed our opinion to us, saying these books are great because the academia says they are. We were not allowed to say that we think the convoluted writing alienates the reader, the characters are incredibly passive and uninteresting or the story non-existent. Heaven forbid that you imply that a book from today’s popular culture might do something better! “No!” they would yell, “those books are LEISURE literature! A REAL book must have at least a hundred parallels to an old thing you have never heard of or put style in front of story!”

People who diss these books are seen as uncultured, stupid or too lazy to read something other than basic sentences. Therefore their opinion doesn’t matter and can simply be dismissed. They are never asked why they would prefer the new Harry Potter over Madam Bovary or the new Twilight over Kafka’s Metamorphoses. So there are never new, more daring ideas or concepts brought into the discussion, making the “intellectual” circle polluted with inbreed ideas that had no critics for at least 50 years.

This later carries over into the classroom. Students get bored by having to know every single detail about the author’s life or the book’s release.  We don’t share our actual opinions on the characters or the story, or maybe what we think is good and what’s bad.

The problem is, the academia doesn’t realize this might actually HELP people to appreciate the work, because they would feel their opinion is appreciated as well. For example, for the longest time I considered William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet a terrible love story. They see each other, “fall in love”, get married, die… that’s what the book sounded like to me, a horrible misrepresentation of what true love is like. However, Is tumbled on a video online, also talking about whether or not Romeo and Juliet is bad.  And guess what happened; they showed me a side of the story that I didn’t think about.  That maybe it’s not the story of ‘true love’, but young love. About the time when you actually feel like this love is eternal, without real rational reason. I found that now, I could relate to the story. But in order to get to this point, that someone must have first said that Romeo and Juliet sucks as a ‘true’ love story.

By not discussing literature, but teaching it, we rob the children of a valuable opportunity. If you talk about something where opinions can’t be anything other than subjective, the children would learn how to form their own opinion, present it, respect the opinion of others and learn how to admit they might have been wrong or right on something. It’s an important lesson in tolerance, one that can be done without making them make posters about how bullying is bad or how important acceptance is. Have trust in them, they can work that out on their own if given an opportunity.

The thing is, by the time the kids reach high school, it’ll probably be too late to start. They will be so used to being told what to think that making a discussion group will just confuse them. They will get bored, uninterested. In general, they will have a feeling like what they say doesn’t matter anyway and just carry out the exercise half-heartedly to appease the teacher and not get in trouble.

That is why I believe that the way we teach literature should undergo some fundamental changes, possibly along with the whole educational system.