The Graphic Novel Era

Oh my God(metaphor), I'm finally here after months of idling away and being a jerk and it's hard to believe that I'm actually writing my first blog entry about graphic novels . Coming up with this topic has been a real pain in the a** (even sent me into a dreadful writer's block) but what the heck, this blog is supposed to be the mouthpiece of my opinions and so it's fair enough that I start it by talking about one of my greatest passions of all- literature. Well, you'd say how come comic books are even remotely related to literature, wouldn't you? Aren't comic books meant for children, for imbeciles who cannot understand metaphors, linguistic gymnastics or imagery and are sublimely stupid to need pictures to understand a story? Doesn't reading a comic book hinder your independence to sit in the narrator's shoes and evaluate his side of the story like a mature reader? Enough of this jibberjabber. My sentences are getting too long and stupid and I can't understand how people can still believe all this.

But till some years ago I used to be a jackass in the same lines. I'd read novels when I wanted to do something creative while I'd occasionally revert to comics for light refreshment.All that was until I came across one Frank Miller's Daredevil by a complete chance in a Kolkata bookstore in 2003. And I had never been as absorbed in finishing any book any time before. It was fascinating to see the way he'd integrated his story with his art. The graphic novel had a gritty film-noir look and varying shades of darkness had been used to signify the states his characters were in(and to particularly highlight the hero's blindness and nihilism). The pictures seemed to tell another story and there was enough symbolism hidden in the architecture, the costumes and the general background. It made me think how so much of a novel's space is wasted on trying to describe the setting of a scene. Meticulous details about architecture or a person's facial expression or the scenery are more often than not very distractive and take the force away from the nub of the matter. While the same meticulous detailing in a visual medium like comic books becomes its forte, making it a much more compact and powerful medium.

Over the years I read more and more of Frank Miller( The Dark Knight Returns, 300, Sin City, Daredevil-born again,etc.) . As his superb comic books transcend descriptions, the reader's focus becomes thoughts. Paranoia, jealousy, rage, chaos, hatred, whatever emotions Miller's books want to evoke they do it with a double effect. You assimilate stories from your own perspective because nothing but a picture is telling you what is going in the characters' heads. And with the stupid comics code out of the picture things are really looking up for non-mainstream, adult comic books. Art Speigelman's Maus won a Pulitzer prize, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen was included in the Time 100 all-time great novels (this one deserves a separate entry I'll write as soon as I finish Watchmen for the zillionth time) and Niel Gaiman's The Sandman was the only comic ever to win a World Fantasy Award.

So this is how my perspective changed and now I staunchly believe that in only a few years, comic books are gonna kick some more butt to finally take over the literature scene. And I'm gonna sate you with thousands of entries with comic-book references in the meantime. So, this is all I have for this time. I'm going back to reading Batman-Year One now, so bye-bye.