OUR VIEW: Brush the dust off of your comic books
Have you checked out the exhibit on graphic novels in the library? We haven’t. Well, maybe a little. We mean, it’s right in the middle of the lobby, so how could we have avoided it? OK. We confess. We spent an hour reading every dialogue bubble.
Why is it so hard to admit we like comic books?
Parents. Parents have been giving comics the evil eye since before violent video games were invented. Parents write angry letters “en masse” demanding newspapers water down the funnies page until it becomes a soggy mass of mind-numbing pulp. Protective parents harangued comic book publishers until they created the Comics Code Authority, which is meant to keep any topic of substance out of comics altogether.
With a history of censorship like that, is it any wonder society attaches a stigma to comics? When readers tried to lose the stigma by rebooting their books as graphic novels, they may have tricked a few inattentive consumers. For the most part, though, it seems like people now assume comics are for nerds, and graphic novels are for mega-nerds — nerds of a different caliber, nerds who speak languages like Klingon and Elvish.
Now the mega-nerds are coming out of the closet. As the masses embrace film adaptations of “X-Men,” “V for Vendetta” and “300,” it’s easier to admit you’ve read the comic versions. You know, just for comparison, of course.
Gradually, graphic novels are rising above their pulp-fiction origins to a form of actual substance. No, Sarge stomping Beetle Bailey won’t teach kids what war really means, but what about “Maus?” With a few simple brushstrokes, Art Spiegelman depicted the holocaust with more emotional force than a history textbook could ever hope to muster.
The library’s exhibit states that some educators use graphic novels in their classes. It’s been done before, and done well. Physics Professor James Kakalios said after he replaced textbook physics demonstrations with super heroes in his class, he stopped hearing students complain they would never use the principles in real life.
Graphic novels could be hit or miss with students. We can already hear many students whining, “Why do we have to read this crap?” On the other hand, reading a 100-page graphic novel in half an hour is no Herculean feat. If the thought of reading a graphic novel makes you cringe, well, more difficult required reading is not hard to come by.
No matter your view on graphic novels, the genre looks like it’s here to stay. The “Scott Pilgrim” generation has made a hallmark of resilience to parental scorn. From Razor scooters to Ninja Turtle T-shirts, students on campus don’t show signs they’ll put away their other childhood things, so why shelve comic books?