Commentary on various works from the beginnings of comic books


I've never fully understood the phrase 'graphic novel'. I've been an avid reader of both comics and books from a very young age, and while I can say that many comics are just as rich and stimulating as excellent novels (or that many novels are just as pulpy and vapid as the stereotype of comics) I don't think I could say that the feeling of reading them is at all similar. That is, until I read the selections for this week's readings.

I'm not used to seeing the narrative of a comic unfolding so explicitly through narration and speech bubbles. Weird Fantasy in particular had so much text on the page that I could feel my brain shift from interpreting it as "comic with lots of words" to "writing with lots of illustrations," which I actually found easier to process and read. This tendency to explicitly say every detail of the story as it's happening is something I've seen parodied plenty of times, so it was amusing to read an old Superman story where he runs out of a room talking about how his special glasses let out a warning alarm that is inaudible to everyone but him and that he must immediately make his way to the supercomputer he built that can predict the future. That's definitely one way to quickly flesh out your world!

Many of the webcomics and graphic novels I grew up reading had rich plots, but the stories unfolded much more slowly, with an emphasis on depicting the changing motions and expressions of the characters as events were happening-- something that almost seems closer to storyboards and films than the roots of comic books. This bias toward reading visuals more than words makes a lot of sense, given that we now spend far more time around screens and moving images than we used to. I can only think of a few recent comics I've read that are driven more by word than image, one of them being Homestuck-- and judging by its immense influence on young artists and the internet as a whole, plenty of people are still interested in word-heavy visual narratives.

As a side note, one other trend that I noticed among the recommended readings was boundless optimism about technology and the future. These comics were all created before man had set foot on the moon, and it's delightful to see how excited these creators were about scientific advancements, to the point where a couple of the comics (Tintin's Explorers on the Moon being a great example) started to feel more like edutainment than pure fiction. I find this optimism charming, but also a bit sad; I don't think much media today shares that same bright outlook about humanity's future.