Despite popular belief, there is nothing wrong with graphic novels. It’s true that they continue to grow in popularity, but the stand against them also continues to be strong and this is a problem. As a writer and an artist, as a reader and an art appreciator – because it is possible to be all of these things at once – I believe that they have a place. I do not believe that graphic novels should (or will) ever replace the written novel, but I do believe that they are worthy of as much respect. More specifically and more personally, I strongly believe that in the fight of like or dislike over these supposedly glorified comic books, it has been forgotten who they are important for and why. To belittle the graphic novel is to belittle those who create them as well as those who learn from them. It is to belittle people like me, who are otherwise considered imaginative, talented, and worthy.

My passion for reading began, as with the vast majority of readers and writers, in my childhood. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, my first love was more than text. It was not a simple illustrated book like most children are given. It was a comic strip collection: Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson. Watterson’s comics were always vastly more intelligent and more artistic than the majority of newspaper comic strips, but many would have still said that I could not possibly be learning from them because they are, after all, mere comics.

Still, to this day I look back on those beaten and worn copies on my shelf – many of them colored in with Crayola markers (oops) – and I can see exactly where my love of language came from. At age four I learned the many definitions of the word “character”. I learned what panache is. I learned Shakespeare quotations that later led me to jump with joy when our English 30 unit was on Hamlet. I learned to use my parents’ big black dictionary because of these supposedly simple comics.

I also learned the beginnings of art. I used to color in them, as I said. Aside from teaching me that markers bleed through paper and that I really should be more careful, they were my coloring books and taught me about which colors look best together and about staying in the lines. They also taught me cartooning styles, in a rudimentary way. I used to copy drawings of Calvin – not trace, but teach myself by putting paper beside the book and looking back and forth as I drew – until I’d learned the simplest hair and eyes and hands and could produce and tweak them from memory. Some of my art techniques, especially with hair, still reflect those days.

Nowadays, graphic novels have evolved quite beyond what I had access to. They existed when I was a kid in the 1980s but not nearly to the extent that they do today. Back then, the few that were around were more likely to be collections of standard comic books than actual graphic novels designed specifically to be graphic novels. If they existed for children, they were collected comics like Calvin & Hobbes or Garfield and almost never intended to be a continuing storyline.

Now graphic novels do exist for all ages, and they’re not merely collections. They are graphical stories. For example, my mother is a librarian in an elementary school and one of her recent books is a children’s graphic novel based off of the cartoon series Avatar: The Last Airbender. Along with this are a collection of graphic novels featuring Richard Scarry’s character Critter, who, when I was little, was one of my imaginary friends for a brief time. Back then, however, he was only ever in the standard form of an illustration along side a block of text. Times have changed and I believe it’s for the better. I would have loved to grow up with these things. It took Calvin and his tiger friend to properly launch me into books and reading. I can only imagine what would have happened if I’d been handed these recent gems when I was a few feet shorter.

Still, there are a lot of people who continue to believe that if it’s not complete text, it’s not worth it. I agree that it’s important to teach kids to enjoy a variety, from graphic to literary books, but the extreme to which some people will go in making sure that their small charges don’t become too addicted to pictures is appalling. For example, a few months back, my librarian mother was on a funded trip to Calgary with teachers and other librarians from all over her school’s division, on a mission to buy new books for their libraries. There were books of all kinds to choose from and, among those, an entire wall of graphic novels. To her surprise, a handful of her companions outright turned up their noses at the whole display. They’re not real books and certainly not worth being in a school’s library, of all places. They’re trash. Junk food reading.

My mother has since stocked her own library with a selection of graphic novels alongside the rest. They’ve been a hit with the kids, who read them cover-to-cover, share them with friends, and often use them as a stepping-stone into a variety of types of books.

Right there is another great point: Certainly these books are great for the more visually oriented individuals like myself, but my kind – who learn reading and writing as voraciously as they learn art and who simply work best when both are presented in conjunction with one another – are an admittedly rare breed. We’re easy to miss and hard to stand up for. However, we’re not the only ones who benefit from copious quantities of illustrations. At such a young age, everyone does. Kids love pictures, and the reason is simple: humans are visual creatures and art is a language that everyone instinctively understands. After all, we all have eyes and it’s incredibly basic instinct to make sense of what we see. Imagery is the fundamental language that helps to teach simplified symbolic language.

So if you have to start with pictures in order to take the next step to symbols, why are their people like those teachers that left mom to peruse the graphic novel display on her own? They’re afraid that if they have such books available, they’ll be so much fun to read that it’s all the kids will want to read. In this age, where it’s harder and harder to even get a child to pick up a book, I say that the worry is a foolish and even counterproductive one.

“We want kids to read. Who cares how they start?” Says my mom. “If they’ll pick it up and devour it, jeez, get it.” Indeed, just getting them to start is a victory. If they can enjoy a book and see it as a friend instead of an enemy, it makes it all the easier to encourage them to take a step further and a step further until they are, remarkably, readers of a wide variety of works. Everyone needs to start somewhere. The battle has not been won even in childhood, however. My entire purpose for writing this is that the issues still abound and with myself in my early 20’s and thinking much more complicated thoughts, the arguments have followed suit and become much more complicated themselves.

Most commonly are the railings that graphic novels are not really books, a statement that at first puzzled and then severely annoyed me. Books are written, not drawn, people say. Graphic novels are something else, something incomparable, something, often, lesser.

For example, one of my best loved series of graphic novels is the surreal and often deeply insightful Sandman series by Neil Gaiman. I have been inspired again and again by the imaginative tales told within those volumes, and many of them have stuck hard with me. It seems I’m not the only one who saw them as a treasure as well. In 1991, the story “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, which appeared in the Dream Country volume, won the World Fantasy Award. Shortly afterwards, the rules were changed so that comics could win in that category again (http://www.biblio.com, 2006).

This is not the last time I’d hear of people demanding a rift between “real books” and graphic novels. In fact, it was an article on October 26, 2006 at Wired Magazine’s website – “The Day the Music Died” by Tony Long – that particularly set me to ranting. It illustrates exactly the kind of attitude that causes a perfectly valid art form to accumulate flak that it does not deserve: “…it's a comic book. And comic books should not be nominated for National Book Awards, in any category.” Tony Long states, “That should be reserved for books that are, well, all words.” He continues on to explain that “as literature, the comic book does not deserve equal status with real novels, or short stories. It's apples and oranges.”

While this is an opinion that I’ve seen stated many times in many ways, there are very rarely any justifiable or accurate reasons given for why the author believes as they do, that graphic novels are not worthy. The closest Long comes is this: “If you've ever tried writing a real novel, you'll know where I'm coming from. To do it, and especially to do it well enough to be nominated for this award, the American equivalent of France's Prix Goncourt or Britain's Booker Prize, is exceedingly difficult.”

The amusing thing is that I have tried to write a real novel. I’ve been working on it for the past few years, trying to craft it just so. I have also been trying to compose a graphic novel. As someone who has always been a writer and always been an artist, it comes as no surprise to me that both require the same amount of work. Both are just as difficult to assemble. And they are not, in fact, apples and oranges.

To prove this, let us compare. Where the author fights to find just the right placement of words to create clarity and power – to paint the picture, so to speak – the artist struggles just as much with each panel and each page. An artist’s lines are his words; each completed figure or object is a sentence. Each panel is a paragraph. The author considers point of view, and the artist considers the visual angle. The author considers what to tell and what to show, the artist considers where to lead the eye (what to hide from the less diligent, what to be certain is shown to all). The author has considerations of style to make: short powerful sentences, unconventional usage to paint a picture, and so on. The artist has his own style to ponder: how realistic, how skewed, how simplified, or how surreal. Each choice carries a different implication for both artist and author.

Not one part of it, for either the author or the artist, is anything but deliberate. In the end, they are both just as conscious of what they do and how, with the same goal in mind: to communicate their message as effectively as possible, while stealing the reader away for just a while. In the end, art and writing are simply different languages. It is wrong to consider a Chinese book to be of lesser value than one written in English, and it is just as wrong to consider one written in art to be lesser than one written in the symbols that make up our alphabet.

Perhaps that’s it, however. As I mentioned before, imagery is the language we all understand. The reading of it does not need to be taught because we all do it instinctively. It’s why we have eyes. When something is built-in like that, it can be easily taken for granted. To everyone but the artist – one who draws to communicate that which he cannot write or speak; one to whom art is his native tongue – a picture is just a picture. It is something seen and interpreted. But truly, it is a language.

After all, what is an image? It is a two-dimensional symbol that represents an object or an idea. What is a word? It is a two-dimensional symbol that represents an object or an idea. The only difference is that a picture looks so directly like what it represents that it needs no translation, while words are simplified for ease of use (artists are rare; writing is for anyone) and need their associations to be taught before they can be understood.

So it is that because reading art is so instinctive and so easy, it’s seen as less worthy than reading words. Humans base worth on challenge, on the sense of accomplishment. It’s what keeps us building and adapting our world, changing and desiring mastery over our universe. It’s what makes us what we are. In this case, it does communication via art a definite disservice. So art is easy to read. Is it not the fundamental of good writing to communicate the message as easily and clearly as possible? Clarity is key in writing. Events must flow logically. The point must be clear enough that it will be understood, or the writing will be purposeless.

So what is truly wrong with using imagery to communicate? There is nothing about a graphic novel that limits the complexity of the story itself. There is nothing that stops it from generating a compelling message. There is nothing that brings down its worth in comparison to a “real” novel, if only one can see past the misguided belief that easier interpretation will equal lesser quality.

There is one final issue. Even with the worth of the graphic novel restored, some continue to actually fear its existence and growing popularity. A growing respect for them would cause these people to wail in terror. Why? It’s just as I’ve stated: Graphic novels are easier to follow. They get their message across faster. They’re more attractive to our nature. The fear is that as a generation raised with graphic novels alongside text novels grows up, the graphic novels will render straight text obsolete. Admittedly, their popularity is growing. I remember a time when I would have to scrounge the shelves of specialty stores to find my next fix, and now all I need to do is walk into any Coles or Chapters and there will be shelves upon shelves for my perusal. This is really a result of two things: simple increased awareness that has resulted in higher demand and therefore higher supply, and an evolution of technology to make that supply possible. The mass production of graphic novels has only really been feasible within the last century and truly possible within the last two decades. Text based books – entirely comprised of combinations of our alphabet’s 26 letters – are far easier to produce again and again. Art, which varies infinitely and, for the longest time, could only be reproduced by hand or in poorest quality. Computers have since made that far simpler, and now that it’s all possible, the cry goes out for more.

Still, as much as this is possibly a revolutionary evolution among books, it is no different than any other evolution in our entertainment and communications industries. Humans love to be entertained and informed, so our communications mediums have always evolved. Has one form ever done away with another? No. Film and television have the same draw as graphic novels, but to an even higher extreme: they are visually oriented, and can get their message across that much faster. They also use sound and music, something that graphic novels can only reproduce using more text. Did they replace books? Did they replace radio? Did they replace anything? No. They merely found their own niche. Some information and some stories are best suited to one medium and not others. So it has always been and so it will always be.

Another point is the simple fact that while most can read a graphic novel, very few can create one. Art is a skill that only a few can easily master, and art is what makes the graphic novel a graphic novel.

As a writer and an artist at once, it is my belief that anyone – barring learning or other disabilities – can be taught to read and write. Anyone can be taught to take an interest in writing and eventually understand how to properly put sentences and paragraphs together. It is an art – and as with any art, some are born with a natural talent for it, or are born with a talent for picking up on it – but it is also a science. There are concrete rules, and if one has the capability to learn what goes where, how to please the reader’s mind, and what can be toyed with to what extent (and dubbed stylistic), writing can come from either side of the brain, left or right. Anyone can do it.

That doesn’t mean everyone will. Not everyone is raised on books like I was and will take an interest that way. Not everyone has that natural talent, like my best lady friend, who is herself a budding author in a family never inclined towards reading or writing. Not everyone will see the inclination to learn the mastery of it. But everyone inherently can.

Art, on the other hand, is different. It is a right brain activity and very little of it can simply be taught. Either the person has a natural propensity for art or they don’t. I can draw. My brother can’t, even though he’s always wanted to. Everyone can understand a picture, but it’s a rare individual who can create one. The number of artists is always going to be less than the number of writers. This is why we are all taught to write in school, but only encouraged to toy with art. English is a mandatory course and Art is optional. Not everyone can do it.

Similarly, the number of artists is always going to be less than the number of people with something to say. Writing will always have a place because if one has a message, it is easier to for most to learn to write it than to learn to draw it. Therefore, writing will never die out as a creative and informative medium. Words always have been and always will be necessary.

Fearing and belittling the graphic novel is misguided and foolish. It is not anything better and it is not anything worse. It will not conquer, and it will not dumb down. All it will do is finally allow artists to speak clearly to us in their native tongue. Celebrate, accept, and reward that language. It has much to say.

Sources Cited

Neil Gaiman Biography and List of Works (2006). Retrieved December 20, 2006 from http://www.biblio.com/authors/656/Neil_Gaiman_Biography.html

Long, Tony (Octover 26, 2006). The Day the Music Died. Wired News. Retrieved December 20, 2006 from http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,71997-0.html