Are comics serious literature?

Are comics serious literature?
If not: Can they be?

What does it matter?

It matters because if you claim they're not a gay cowboy comes and beats you up.

Who cares

...

I know one guy who, without a trace of irony, calls himself a graphic novelist rather than a comic book writer.

Does he write comic books or graphic novels?

There is no meaningful difference. It's a bullshit term Eisner made up to convince a publisher to put out his comic book.

this thread is incredible

No, of course not.

Don't you know that medium dictates credibility and not content?

>not wanting to get into fistcuffs with a gay cowboy
What's wrong with you?

>There is no meaningful difference
I thought the general definition of a graphic novel is a large comic book that's not a collection of smaller issues, and a comic book is a small graphic novel, or collection of them.

Nothing in comics has come near the level of the great works of literature. Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, Ulysses, War and Peace, etc... etc...

There's some pretty good stuff out there though.

>Don't you know that medium dictates credibility and not content?
But this is true to the majority of people, most people are normie scum user.

That's just how homosexuals choose their queen.

It was literally made up while Eisner was freaking out about how to pitch his comic book to a publisher that hated comic books.

A lot of people these days retroactively define it as a book published as a single volume, as opposed to a trade paperback, which is a number of single issues collected into a book to sell as a single volume.

It doesn't mean shit though, really, and is only used by pretentious dudes that are too up their own arse to admit they make comic books.

Have you ever even read the divine comedy? It's Bendis tier fanfic.

>Then me and Virgil were best friends and everyone I hated was in hell and my waifu was a beautiful angel.

I could see how it might seem like that to someone who lacks an understanding of the historical context of when it was written and its influences, but its influence is beyond dispute. Dante's Inferno shaped western civilization's perception of hell more than anything else ever written.

Based Kupperman.

I think the comics in our canon are MOSTLY "serious literature"--I mean you've got your "literary comics" types (it's a real thing, trust me) like Clowes, Ware and Tomine, who writes in that tradition of Gen. X ennui-filled character studies but has started taking himself a lot less seriously as of late, Clowes always knew he was creating within what was seen as a "gutter medium" so the best issues of Eightball have a really appealing "don't-give-a-fuck"-ness to them which ameliorates his more high-brow conceits...that's why he's one of the best at what he does. Ware is kind of the same but I kind of think he wants to write The Great American Novel in comics form.
But at the end of the day comics aren't literature and they aren't art, they're something else entirely. Seeing as reading.

No. But then again, you say "serious literature" like it's a good thing.

>more than anything else ever written.
Milton gives him a run for his money, at least in the depiction of Satan himself.

Ask yourself if those are great because of some magical, inherent quality or because of the time they were written, context, age and cultural overhyping?

Divine Comedy is one third Dante being petty to anyone who slighted him and two thirds boring

Trying to make literature and actually making it are two vastly different things. I don't think any of those guys come close.

My English 1102 class is about graphic novels

To ask this question is like asking "are films serious paintings?" or "are books serious television?"

>Are comics serious literature?

Yes.

>If not: Can they be?

Cred Forums doesn't like comics that have any really artistic integrity or are challenging to a status quo or to the readers' biases

Cred Forums would rather eat popcorn and complain that it tastes salty

So what you're saying is that it had mass market appeal.

What does From Hell count as?

Have you actually read any of those works?

No? I think they do...I mean if you took a Tomine comic and made it into a short story (if that makes sense) it'd be like, I dunno, one of those post-Carver McSweeney's types, like an author from The Book of Other People (where that Clowes story that Shia Laboef ripped off was first published), or something...I know that's really nebulous but you know that kind of clipped, introspective style...of course similar style does not make something "literature" but there's a depth to those guys work that you don't get in capeshit, f'rinstance.
Or something like My Summer of Love by Debbie Drechsler--probably the best female "coming of age" (graphic) novel I've ever read. If it was a "real" book she'd be a darling of the Paris Review set.
Do you think any cartoonists come close to making literature? What of the heavyweight, intellectual novelists who're on record as speaking very highly of certain comics, even newspaper strips? I'm think of Umberto Eco, John Updike, people like that...Were they praising the work because it was "literature"? Or because of some nebulous, medium-specific quality that transcends labels like "literary"? I think I'm pretty well-read (certainly in the Western "canon") so I can recognise "literary" qualities in comics.
Cred Forumsmrades that like that stuff are out there believe it or not familia! But the preponderance of capeshit on this board does depress me, it's true...

Some are, most aren't. Coincidentally, this is also true of regular novels. Who'da thunk?

I think if you only examine the text of a work, few comic book writers would rank up their with the literary giants. Writers like Moore are few and far between in the medium. You could argue that comics have literary value, and that is enough to call them literature - but really, that stinks of someone either desperately trying to elevate their medium to conform to the expectations (and social acceptance) of another, or of someone who doesn't appreciate that comics are their own medium and shouldn't be viewed under the same lens. Visual storytelling (obviously a combination of words and art) goes far beyond either of its parts, and where a writer/illustrator could falter in one aspect, they could very well make up for in another. Unfortuantely there isn't enough of an initiative to look at a piece as more than the sum of its parts.

A comic

>Cred Forumsmrades that like that stuff are out there believe it or not familia! But the preponderance of capeshit on this board does depress me, it's true...

I have nothing against superhero comics because I accept they're the lifeblood of the industry. There are superhero comics of creative worth. But Cred Forums hasn't read them or is unwilling to critically examine them.

But it's startling to hear hardcore fans rant about the tiniest minutia of superheroes and being unwilling to really acknowledge if the comic they're bawling about is good by a metric other than its adherence to continuity.

Cred Forums so predictably turns against every new author in comics when they inevitably overstep the accepted pliability of superhero stories.

Moore is not even close to the best the medium has to offer

Cred Forums LIKES comics like that, but we don't TALK about them because talking about good things doesn't really sustain threads
>I like thing
>I too like thing
>here are the reasons I like thing
>those are also the reasons I like thing
End of thread

They are both serious literature and serious art if you look in the right places

And at a certain point, the industry has written every "smart" superhero critique, homage, deconstruction, or meta-reevaluation. It becomes a game of everyone repeating themselves.

People rail against Marvel for canceling Fantastic Four, but no one seems to be able to suggest a writer and artist who could get them to buy and read a new F4 comic. It becomes a game of wanting to damn Marvel with one hand but offer no alternative with the other.

There's more to "serious" comics than cape critiques, user

>Moore is not even close to the best the medium has to offer

He is. He is immensely popular and widely read, and withstands critical evaluation across decades of stories.

I don't care if some dusty Intelligentsia has decided someone other than him is more important, he is the de facto name for a great comic book writer. He is actually being read, not thrown away on some bookshelf.

His ABC Comics stories like Tom Strong and Promethea are some of his best work, but his early superhero stuff for DC on Swamp Thing, Batman, and Watchmen is calcified into the zeitgeist of comics.

He moved on a long time ago but it's the readers who won't let go of him.

The only good things to come out of FF are Franklin and Doom.

It be great literature, but that's not what the audience wants, so it won't be.

>There's more to "serious" comics than cape critiques, user

Yeah, but try and get an audience to read those stories

Well some are, just like with novels you know, Tom Clancy is not serious Literature, Tolstoy is though.

You make Eisner look very bad here, I think he had better intentions, like making the point that comics in fact could show literary qualities. also back when Eisner wanted to market his Comics, there actually was a significant difference between his work and what the rest of America(!) considered Comics. Today though, the Medium covers all sorts of genres, so the term "Graphic Novel" has become a mere marketing fad and should not be used by comic enthusiasts.

What the hell kind of argument is this? People won't read them so they might as well not exist?

No, comics are a different medium. Film don't get called literature and neither should comics. It's just people trying to ape something in order to appear more legitimate when they don't need to. This is the same bullshit that made people call it esports.

I'd argue for Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Boy on Earth, but that's just me.

>immediately breaking the 180 rule

Impossible, there was no mass market. The ignorant masses at the time couldn't even read.

Moore is the most popular writer in our little circle of the medium, but our circle is a small, closed-minded, downright incestuous echo chamber. As an example of how little we know, I think Raina Telgemeier is the most popular comic writer in America at this very moment, but she's a Literal Who? on Cred Forums and on the websites that Cred Forums follows like CBR and BC. Moore is "actually being read" only by the people who PROUDLY reject all forms of comics outside of the industry of mandatory fight scenes and nerd culture fetishization.

But more importantly, why are you confusing popularity with someone being "the best"?

I used to believe this until it came time to vote. Not only does Cred Forums not read graphic novels (and get angry when it sees that term used), but when presented with an opportunity to show that Cred Forums "LIKES" comics that it doesn't "TALK" about, Cred Forums voted Spider-Island as the Best Graphic Novel of the Year. And then a couple years later, the same thing happened again with Forever Evil.

The good comics do get storytimes and sometimes even get a critical analysis to go along with it. Though I haven't seen a thread like that in quite some time.

Some are, most aren't.

A lot of the works that are considered graphic novels, Watchmen, Maus, Dark Knight Returns, were originally published I'm serial form so that definition doesn't always work

Dudes,
if one is to analyse a Comic, the terms one uses in his analysis, along with terms exclusive to the medium, are the terms of literary analysis.
Hence comics must be literature.

Except if you're only analyzing the comic using literary criticism methods you're ignoring half the comic

I think it works because, whether intentional or not, the guy with the advantage is always staged on the left.

>comics
>COMICs
>comic=funny
>are funny stuff serious?
You tell me.

So there are terms in literary criticism for character design, layout, and coloring? Books are really different from when I grew up.

what in
>along with terms exclusive to the medium
didn't you understand

>character design
Who makes a big deal about character design outside of the monthly floppy superhero crowd?

Man you must be fucking retarded.

if it uses terms exclusive to the medium wouldn't that make it its own medium separate from literature?

You got me there, but you're argument is essentially that comics is just using terminology that was already in place for story structure which is used in loads of other mediums besides literature, and terms it had to make on its own.

Just because it isn't overly obvious in noncapes doesn't mean that isn't key to the identity of a character. It's just more subtle in the more mundane stuff. Also, read some scifi comics.

people with a sense of aesthetics

>Also, read some scifi comics.
I don't recall anybody ever making a big deal about the fact that one of the Prophets has a tail, or the fact that John DiFool has a bumpy nose.

>It's just more subtle in the more mundane stuff.
In my experience, if it's mentioned at all, it's simply not part of the meat of the conversation when getting into comics analysis and criticism.

The guy was talking about character design in comics, specifically capeshit. Hence why I was talking about character design. . .in comics.
Even in books it can be mentioned though. Easiest example is Harry Potter specifically having his mother's eyes. There are more examples besides just that, but that's the most obvious that most people are familiar with.

I thought that we're talking about criticism and analysis.

Do literary critics make special note of Harry Potter's eyes when performing literary criticism on the Harry potter books?

Typically no, which just furthers cements comics as not being literature, but rather their own medium.

Serious literature is vastly inflated as a term.
In practice it mostly means "stuff we remember after the author died".
Most of the stuff we adore today was not that popular when it came out. Much like a ton of critics initially slammed Star Wars.
So-called serious literature is pretty much hipster shit and hype around whatever is trendy and has a new gimmick.
It's an elitist circle-jerk half the time, even if the other half is actually good books.
But I just hate these experimental books written in a way that just serves to obscure a simplistic story by making it hard to read and understand.
And that notion that one has to be so fucking grave about it all the time! Fuck that noise.
Makes you appreciate Against the Day, which starts out with the first chapter being a huge 'yo momma' joke including a balloon festival.

I agree almost completely.
The experimental stuff is kinda important since it lets other authors review it and see what works from the idea and what doesn't. It's useful to keep stagnation at bay. Just too many dick riders hopping on a book for simply being experimental though.

You're confusing medium with genre again.

Like we've already discussed, people only make "serious" attempts to analyze and criticize character design in the genre of superhero comics, not the rest of the medium.

>What the hell kind of argument is this? People won't read them so they might as well not exist?

I'm saying don't pretend A Contract with God is the cool hip comic book that all the kids are talking about.

A creator-owned comic is a huge success to sell 10,000 issues a month.

A few million people have read the Killing Joke, or Watchmen. Superheroes are where the money and attention are.

Comics don't have a 180 rule. That only applies to film.

That's just the poor vocabulary of the English language.

>But more importantly, why are you confusing popularity with someone being "the best"?

Because given how absolutely tiny the comic book community it is, it's unbearably myopic to pretend that a comic book maybe a hundred people have read is actually more important than what the majority of people are reading.

I'm a populist in this argument. If most people never read a specific comic, can it really be the best by any metric?

>a comic book maybe a hundred people have read
You're the one who is being myopic, since you think that if a comic isn't being read by this "comic book community" then it isn't being read at all. I already gave you Raina Telgemeier as an example. "Most people" on Cred Forums and CBR/Bleeding Cool/Newsarama/etc haven't read her work, yet in the real world she somehow moves MILLIONS of units. But because she isn't popular on Cred Forums, I guess that doesn't count somehow.

The comics that aren't popular here on Cred Forums are _not_ necessarily comics that don't have vast appeal and huge audiences.

Your either flipping between literature and capeshit or just not following the conversation.
>mention character design
>that only applies to capes
>still relevant to mundane and explicit in scifi
>books don't make a big deal about it
>yeah, comics aren't books
>character design only matters in capes
The conversation so far.

>>still relevant to mundane and explicit in scifi
What are some mundane or scifi comics where character design is a substantial part of the critical analysis?

Yes

Also you're retarded

Comics are far too new of a medium to have produced anything on the scale of profundity that other art mediums, such as literature, fine art, and music, have.

Sequential art is literally the oldest artistic medium there exists a record of

It's normally tied into world building, but Descender. Robots are critical to the plot and there is a specific encounter with cyborgs for the plots advancement.
Also the constant imagery of the SS in Judge Dredd's visor.

Well except for oral storytelling, but I know what you mean.

I haven't read Descender, can you explain that in more detail?

For Judge Dredd I consider that more worldbuilding and not so much an aspect of Dredd's character design, since that imagery is part of ALL the Judges and not Dredd specifically.

Addendum: Like, I wouldn't call it character design to have a doctor character who wears scrubs, or a firefighter who wears turnout gear. That's just the world that they live in, not the unique design for a character.

That means it's part of character design _for_ the judges though. Imagery and design aren't divorced from each other.
A god machine lays waste to the entire galactic civilization. As such the organic races become super hostile to the robots they had built. There is a secret cult of cyborgs that are assisting a character hunting for his childhood robot.

What specifically about character design is important in Descender and part of the critical analysis?

In a story about people racist against blacks, if there's a black character, then people are going to be hostile to that character. But their black skin is a character trait, not character design.

Holmes you do realize movies give awards for design. Sequential art is a visual medium and you are trying your damndest to ignore half of it.

I'm specifically talking about character design. What is the importance of character design in Descender, and where are the critics who debate the importance of that design?

In a story about Californians prejudiced against Texans, if there's a Texans character, then Californians are going to be hostile to that character. But their Texan birthplace is a character trait, not character design.

>“There are two more turds, smaller ones, and when he has eaten these, residual shit to lick out of her anus. He prays that she'll let him drop the cape over himself, to be allowed, in the silk-lined darkness, to stay a while longer with his submissive tongue straining upward into her asshole. But she moves away. The fur evaporates from his hands. She orders him to masturbate for her. She has watched Captain Blicero with Gottfried, and has learned the proper style.”

"Literature" is a meme.

The main cyborg for the group has her lower jaw into her throat replaced clearly putting emphasis on her words and how her outlook has changed since she had the procedure.
Now tell me again how Judge Dredd isn't relevant and has already proven my point.

Is this your own on-the-spot backed-into-a-corner analysis or are there really critics out there saying this about Descender?

>Now tell me again how Judge Dredd isn't relevant and has already proven my point.
His uniform tells us about the Judges as a whole, but it doesn't tell us anything about Dredd himself, because it's just a uniform.

Daily Reminder that Cerebus the Aardvark is the Gravity's Rainbow of comics.

It's still character design for the judges. It further reinforces their fascist nature as a whole. Design isn't limited to single characters, it can easily apply to a group.
Also your entire argument is centered around critical analysis not being applicable to art. So when you can actually justify that issue I'll continue.

>Also your entire argument is centered around critical analysis not being applicable to art. So when you can actually justify that issue I'll continue.
Uh, no?

>She has watched Captain Blicero with Gottfried, and has learned the proper style.”

WELCOME TO JACKING-OFF 101

YA GOTTA GRIP YOUR JUNK IN A DEATH LOCK AND PULL IT LIKE YA'R TRYING TA RIP IT OFF

>This thread

And yet is one of the best threads I've seen in a while

There are plenty of words in the English language that etymologically mean the opposite of what they actually mean
It's very important to remember that English is the most beautifully terrible language there is

They absolutely are. Unlike books or movies, in a comic you can choose exactly what you want to show in every frame. Death of the Author can still happen, like with the Batman killing Joker in Killing Joke theory, but you have much greater control on where the eye is drawn.

OK
Guys, this was a good thread.
We had a good discussion about a topic which is consideres to be one of the most important aspects of the hobby by most enthusiasts.
thank you guys, thank you chinamoot.

That's a problem with the people in the discussions, not the works themselves.